Category Archives: Nigel McCrery

Review: Scream by Nigel McCrery

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DCI Mark Lapslie of the Essex Police is in Pakistan for a conference when he receives an email that sends him scurrying home. Attached to the message is a sound file of a woman screaming and because it has been sent directly to him Lapslie thinks something sinister is afoot. The fact it will allow him a reasonable excuse to get out of presenting at the conference is a bonus. At the same time the woman who is normally his Sergeant, Emma Bradbury, is being put in charge of a case of her own. The badly mutilated body of a young woman has been found on nearby Canvey Island and the investigation must be put into motion. When Lapslie returns it becomes evident there might be a link between the case and the sound file but the pair have to trawl through old cases to find a pattern of behaviour.

In my review of Still Waters, the first book in this series, I wrote

Rather than larger than life serial killers making suits out of human skin (Thomas Harris) or similarly fantastical yarns this was a story that one can imagine happening in the real world.

Sadly from my point of view the subsequent two books have strayed further and further into ‘suits of human skin territory’, to the point where this one will be the last I’ll read of the series. It’s not that the book is bad or poorly written; rather that it seems consumed with describing hideous violence and mutilations experienced by the killer’s victims, either as they happen or as reconstructed by the pathologist and various forensic experts and I simply have no interest in reading such descriptions.  In the first book of this series the few scenes of real violence (one of which I still remember vividly to this day) stood out because of their rarity

Leaving the gore aside for a moment there a positive elements of the novel. The Mark Lapslie character is developed nicely, especially for those who have been with him since the beginning. He has a condition called synaesthesia which in his case manifests itself by causing him to experience strong tastes whenever he hears something. In the past this has been very debilitating for him but here is getting treatment that is working and he is able to function far more normally than in the earlier books. It’s interesting to watch him enjoy his new experiences like eating a spicy meal or attending a concert. His depiction as being both excited and a little scared of all this felt very natural to me. His relationship with Emma, who has become romantically involved with a known (but never convicted) criminal, is well-drawn too.

Without adding any particular twist or nuance to the long line of novels featuring crazed serial killers on a quest only they understand I didn’t think the plot of Scream anything more than serviceable. On top of the gore factor I frankly didn’t find the killer (who I thought obvious early on) remotely credible (though to tell you why would be a jolly big spoiler) and there were several other plot points that were far too obvious as devices.

I listed the first book in this series among my top ten books of the year for 2008 because I thought it offered something unique to the genre and the crime at its heart was an all too believable one which involved real people I could care about. So it is a little sad for me to see the series head in the blood-soaked direction of a hundred similar tomes published each year, but knowing how my tastes are rarely in sync with those of the mainstream this probably means the Lapslie books will now sell by the tonne. I shan’t be reading any more though.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Scream has been reviewed at Euro Crime.

I have previously reviewed Still Waters and Tooth and Claw

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 2/5
Publisher Quercus [2010]
ISBN 9781849161176
Length 403 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #3 in the DCI Mark Lapslie series
Source I bought it

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Review: Tooth and Claw by Nigel McCrery

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

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

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

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

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

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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

Last in, first out

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

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

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

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

Will this one give me nightmares too?

2008 a year in reading

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Before I list my best books of the year a few statistics that sum up my reading year:

tbr-20081227

  • I started 94 books this year and finished 82 of those. That’s a few more DNFs than I usually have but I did try a lot of new (to me) authors so some uncompleted books are to be expected.
  • I acquired 158 books which is worrisome not only because it’s far more than I read but also because it is indicative of my growing ‘problem’. This time last year my TBR pile sat comfortably on a corner of my nightstand and now occupies its own separate bookshelf (see photo)
  • I bought less than half of those books and acquired the rest via mooches, gifts, review copies and borrowing
  • I tried 47 authors for the first time (a definitive personal record)
  • I joined four online reading groups and one new face-to-face one

Although it’s my favourite genre I don’t only read crime fiction and thought I should include a couple of my other great finds this year:

  • Shakespeare: A Short Life by Bill Bryson (a witty, beautifully observed ode from one word craftsman to another and I devoured it)
  • Blind Faith by Ben Elton (this saw Elton back at his best and offered a funny, if depressingly possible, vision for our collective future that is scarier than anything a crime fiction writer has ever written)
  • Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks (detailing the events of a fictional English village which isolates itself to control an outbreak of plague in 1666 it brings alive one of the most vividly depicted fictional worlds I’ve ever had the good luck to stumble into)

And now on to my 10 favourite crime fiction reads of the year. Looking at the list, which has been mulled over extensively in the last week or so, there are some common elements to all the books: fascinating characters of one sort or another and the creation of a strong sense of location being chief among them.

As I rarely read books in the year they’re published (I’m too cheap to buy them at the exorbitant new release prices in Australia)  only one of these was actually published in 08. As I wasn’t blogging all year only some of the books have been reviewed here (links where available):

  • The Broken Shore by Peter Temple (which does, without trying, a far better job of representing Australia than the film of that name which was released this year and has oodles of dry humour and wonderfully sparse writing as well)
  • The Savage Altar (a.k.a The Sun Storm) by Asa Larsson (my first foray into Scandinavian crime fiction and a thoroughly suspense-filled, unpredictable story)
  • Blue Heaven by C J Box (a book that made me feel like I’d been to North Idaho by the time I’d finished reading it)
  • Still Waters by Nigel McCrery (the book with the most disturbing opening image I read all year which continued on to do something unique with this genre I love so much)
  • Devil’s Peak by Deon Meyer (yet another innovative approach to crime fiction with marvellous characters and great scene-setting imagery)
  • A Certain Malice by Felicity Young ( the second of three new-to-me Australian authors appearing on this list who can tell gripping yarns in a recognisably Australian voice without making me cringe and pretend to be Canadian)
  • Earthly Delights by Kerry Greenwood (a book with such warmth and great characters that reading it made me want to pack all my worldly belongings and move into the apartment building at its heart)
  • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by  Stieg Larsson (a book I was pleased to have been bullied gently encouraged to read by Kerrie due to the wonderfully unique and captivating Lisbeth Salander) (I’ve even bought book 2 in the series at new release prices!)
  • Vodka Doesn’t Freeze by Leah Giarratano (not relying on a sole protagonist this book is brimming with strong, memorable voices including the villainous Jamaal Mahmoud with his simmering violence and pull-the-blankets-over-your-head terror inducing contempt for everyone he meets)

And my number one read of the year

#1  The Collaborator of Bethlehem by Matt Beynon Rees (published as The Bethlehem Murders in the UK and Australia but I got mine from the US).

I didn’t have to look at my reading notes for this book when preparing this article. I remember it most vividly both for its content and the way it made me feel. Though reading it made me so sad I struggled to finish it through streaming tears it’s the book I reflect most upon since finishing it. There’s a reasonably straight-forward plot about a flawed but morally strong and stubborn man trying to clear the name of his friend and stand up to the bullies around him. On another level there’s the depiction of Palestinian Bethlehem which is simply breathtaking. I’ve travelled in the Middle East and do keep up with news from there as much as I can but headlines, even in-depth reporting, never tell the whole story. This book humanised the news and events I hear so much about and provided what I think, sadly, is a fairly realistic picture of the day-to-day lives of displaced refugees in the region. It wasn’t a book I could put back on the shelf and forget. I’ve picked it up countless times to re-read passages, some of which still make me cry, and have badgered others silly until they agreed to read it too. I’ve yet to meet anyone who isn’t moved by it.

*****

In some ways this list is a little arbitrary. Perhaps the fact that these stuck with me a little more than the others is more an accident of timing than anything else because there are another 35 or so excellent books that I read this year that I had to weed out of this best reads list.

They are all, in combination, the collective reason I’m so happy that I’m one of those people who can enjoy the simple pleasure of losing myself in a great book and am very grateful to authors everywhere for supplying me with an abundance of choices in which to get lost. Bring on 2009.

Review: Still Waters by Nigel McCrery

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Title: Still Watersstill-waters1

Author: Nigel McCrery

Publisher: Quercus (2007)

ISBN: 978-184724-075-0

In what is one of the most alarming openings to a book I’ve ever read, a children’s war-time tea party goes horribly wrong and readers spend the rest of the book trying to work out the connection to a modern-day crime. In the present day an old lady’s body is discovered on the fringe of some woodlands at the site of an unrelated car accident and Police have to unravel the story of how she came to be there. In parallel we meet another elderly lady called Violet (or is she?) who makes a habit out of befriending lonely, isolated women. Then killing them.

Called in from what is euphemistically known as ‘gardening leave’ to investigate is DCI Mark Lapslie who suffers from a neurological condition in which most sounds he hears trigger overwhelming taste sensations in his mouth. For example his mobile phone ring triggers the taste of chocolate (which sounds like yummy-ness without the calories) while the sound of a busy office triggers the taste of blood (less appealing all around I imagine). The book does a great job of demonstrating how such a condition impacts Lapslie’s life and the lives of those around him and seems quite realistic in its portrayal of how such a thing might drive and shape a person. In the end there isn’t a great deal of plot-driving point behind Lapslie’s condition but it would be a different story without this element because the condition does shape the Lapslie character.

The other major character in the story is Violet/Daisy who’s own character is equally well developed. Very early on we know she’s a killer but knowing that doesn’t detract at all from the building up of tension in the story. I found myself wanting quite desperately to know how she came to be the person she was and wondering what kind of connection she had (for there must have been one) to the awful event that opened the book.

There were quite a few story threads and potential plot devices that went nowhere or were left unresolved but I rather liked that. In many of the best-selling thrillers these days it seems as if everything that happens has to tie up neatly at the end which is so unlike real life. Here there were things that just happened and turned out to have no deeper meaning which made the whole thing more credible (and helped keep me guessing right to the end). This all added to the book’s unpredictability. There were several times when events happened and I thought I knew exactly how that particular thread would be resolved (having read a police procedural or three in my time) but in each case the predictable, forumulaic thing didn’t happen. The main story was resolved to my satisfaction so the loose ends that remained actually added to my enjoyment of the book rather than detracted from it.

The underlying reason for the events in the book were also, sadly, credible. Rather than larger than life serial killers making suits out of human skin (Thomas Harris) or similarly fantastical yarns this was a story that one can imagine happening in the real world. It’s about people who live on the fringes of society and to whom grizzly things can be done without much consequence. In fact a variation of this kind of thing did happen in my very own city not so long ago (google The Snowtown Murders if you’re interested).

I borrowed this book from a friend several months ago but, due to the ever growing TBR pile of my own books, was planning on giving it back un-read until I noticed it was scheduled for a Buddy Read at the Murder and Mayhem bookclub and I do enjoy discussing a book with others. I’m grateful to the person who scheduled it because I found the book to be a totally engrossing read with beautifully created imagry. On top of that it managed to do something quite different with a very familiar genre.

My Rating: 4.5/5

Other reviews of this book

Euro Crime reviewed it in August 2007

Aust Crime Fiction reviewed it in February 2008