Category Archives: 1990′s

Review: THE ROPE by Nevada Barr

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THE ROPE is Nevada Barr’s 17th novel featuring nomadic National Parks Service ranger Anna Pigeon, though in a timeline sense it is the first of Anna’s stories. Without any gimmickry or awkward flashback-filled plot devices Barr simply opens this prequel to her popular series in 1995 when Anna has taken a summer job at a national park near Lake Powell, Arizona. She has left her job as a stage manager but still wears the black clothes her former life demanded and, struggling to come to terms with the recent death of her husband, Anna has been distant with her colleagues and new neighbours. So no one is particularly surprised that she and all her belongings disappear one day; all assuming she has returned to New York or moved on to some place that suits her more. In reality, while out hiking on her day off, Anna gets lost then stumbles across a crime in progress which turns out to have very sinister consequences for her  She wakes up groggy and naked and realises she is trapped in a dry well from which there appears to be no escape.

THE ROPE has many of the qualities that I have come to expect from this series including the spectacular setting which is, once again, so deftly described that I feel I too have climbed the canyons and cruised the lake and learned a little more about this poor old planet of ours and the damage we seem determined to do to even the prettiest bits of it. Characters, especially the women, are another strong feature of Barr’s books and this one showcases three very different women. Anna is basically the same person as we see in later books: determined, independent and prone to not doing as she ought though, naturally, not quite as fully formed as she becomes. She remains one of the few fictional characters I’ve ever thought I would like to meet if such things were possible. Her boss for the summer is Jenny Gorman whose job involves collecting the alarmingly large amount of poo the park’s summer visitors deposit where they shouldn’t and trying to educate those same campers on proper poo-managing etiquette (this was an aspect of managing a national park I had never considered but now can’t stop thinking about). Jenny is an intense character whose own dark history is revealed as the story progresses as is her developing love for Anna (she acknowledges that this will be an unrequited love as Anna is not gay though she fleetingly dreams of things being different). The third woman to feature heavily in the book is Bethy, wife of one of the Park Services’ office employees Regis Candor, who, like Anna, undergoes something of a transformation throughout the book. Her husband and the other male characters are less successfully drawn, being somewhat two-dimensional and using awkwardly inserted language that doesn’t feel right for the situation (or maybe it’s just me who has never heard an adult use the word ta-ta’s in a non-ironic sense).

On a less positive note I did find THE ROPE slow, indeed almost glacial for the first half though it picked up a little. This is, I think, due to the book being almost ‘literary’ in the way it focuses on the inner lives and thoughts of Anna, Jenny and Regis & Bethy rather than being driven by complex plotting (honestly the plot is straight-forward and, I thought, fairly predictable). Even though I like Anna I was a little bored by her time in the dry well which lasted a very long time and had almost no suspense at all as it was a given she would escape so she could go on an star in the rest of the series. The other factor that spoiled the book a little for me was that it had one too many near-death escapes for our heroine. On my informal ‘believability scale’ one such escape from almost certain death is required, two is borderline acceptable and three, especially where the situations are very similar, pushes the story into pure fantasy territory. Perhaps this is only because I was listening to it, but by the end, when Anna portentously heads off for what is a blindingly obvious (to everyone but Anna) trap I started thinking of the story as a children’s pantomime where the audience is meant to yell “look out, he’s behind you” at appropriate points. In fact I’m not quite sure that I didn’t actually mumble this under my breath while on public transport.

I did like the book and enjoyed meeting a younger, slightly more vulnerable Anna than I have come to know from later stories but THE ROPE won’t make it to my favourites of the series. If you are an existing fan I’m sure there’s lots here for you but I wouldn’t recommend it as the first place to start for those new to the series and its heroine. I can however recommend the book in audio format, this time ably narrated by Joyce Bean who seems to have permanently (and very competently) taken over narrating the series from Barbara Rosenblat.

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THE ROPE has been reviewed at Kittling: Books (by Cathy who is a true aficionado of the series and was the reader who introduced me to Anna Pigeon.

My other reviews of Nevada Barr’s books are HUNTING SEASON (book #10) FLASHBACK (book #11), BORDERLINE (book #15) and BURN (book #16)

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My rating 3/5
Narrator Joyce Bean
Publisher Brilliance Audio [2012]
ASIN B006VFKYUY
Length 12 hours exactly
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #17 in the Anna Pigeon series
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: Frozen Moment by Camilla Ceder

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My first book for the 2011 Nordic Book Challenge takes place in Sweden over a cold Christmas/New Year period.

In the countryside of western Sweden an elderly man, Åke Melkersson, is looking for a mechanic to carry out emergency repairs to his car when he discovers the body of a man who has been shot and, for good measure, run over. Melkersson is so shocked he drives away but then calls police and asks his young neighbour Seja Lundberg to take him back to the site. The investigation team is led by Inspector Christian Tell, a complex character who is troubled by the lack of evidence available to progress the investigation which stalls until a second murder is linked to it. Alongside this narrative there are chapters from 1993 which tell a story about troubled young girl called Maya who left home at 15 due in part to the mental illness and drug addiction of her mother. Although readers assume Maya’s story is something to do with the present-day murders, Ceder does a great job of drawing us into the initially unconnected story

Ceder is very good at depicting characters. From the very first one we meet, Åke Melkersson who is driving to work for the last time before his retirement, she shows us a very realistic and complete picture, even though we see virtually nothing of this character again. The central characters are drawn with the same care, though obviously fleshed out more fully. In some ways Christian Tell offers nothing terribly unique, he is something of a loner and very introspective, but I like the way Ceder explores his working relationships alongside his personal ones and admire the fact she resisted the temptation to give him any extreme characteristics. There are memorable and interesting characters among Tell’s team who I’m sure I will enjoy getting to know further in future installments of the series. I also thought the characters in the second thread were compelling, especially Maya’s mother.

Overall the plot of Frozen Moment is intriguing, though after the initial chapters it did drag for a little while as the introductions all took place and the investigation seemed to go in circles for a little while. However once it picked up again there was a good build up of suspense and a genuinely engaging and layered story was revealed. I’m not sure that the ‘move over Wallander’ tag prominently displayed on the front cover of the book applies, or even needs to apply for that matter, but I enjoyed this series debut and will be keen to read the second novel, Babylon, when it is translated into English.

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Frozen Moment has been reviewed at Books Please, DJ’s Krimiblog and Material Witness

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My rating 3.5/5
Author website http://camillaceder.com/ (though the whole thing is in Swedish, google translate makes it interesting)
Translator Marlaine Delargy
Publisher Weidendeld & Nicholson [English translation 2010, original edition 2009]
ISBN 9780297859499
Length 378 pages
Format trade paberback
Book Series The first book in a new series
Source I bought it

Review: The Old School by P M Newton

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This debut novel by ex policewoman P M Newton made it to my shopping basket because I’m trying to read as much Aussie crime fiction as I can and because a crime fiction commentator I respect, Graeme Blundell, said the book “puts Newton in the company of Gabrielle Lord and Peter Temple“. After that I couldn’t resist.

It is 1992 and Nhu ‘Ned’ Kelly is a relatively newly qualified Detective Constable in Sydney’s west. When two sets of bones are discovered in the foundations of a building being demolished Ned is drawn into the investigation both for professional and personal reasons. Determining who the people were and what happened to them unfolds within a wider context of social issues affecting the city both in the mid 1970′s, when the bodies were placed in the concrete foundations, and sixteen years later when they are discovered. The Aboriginal land rights movement, the treatment of soldiers returning from the Vietnam war, the absorption of different cultures into the sprawling city and the misappropriation of power by some within the police force are all woven into a complex but highly believable story.

Having lived on the fringes of the giant sprawl that is Sydney during the late 80’s and early 90’s the aspect of the book that stood out most strongly for me was that Newton has captured perfectly the things I loved about living there and the things that drove me away. The multitudes of cultures that rub along together, the endless traffic snarls, the dodgy politics, the chasm between haves and have nots are all to be found in this novel. Anchoring the book to its time are major real life events including the Independent Commission Against Corruption’s inquiry into corruption in the NSW Police Force. I can honestly attest that, just as in this book, ICAC wasn’t an acronym in Sydney in 1992: it was a word that everyone knew the meaning of and everyone was talking about. Another significant event that is used to great impact in The Old School is the speech given by our then Prime Minister (and written by one of Australia’s unsung political heroes) to launch the International Year for the World’s Indigenous Peoples.

Born in Australia to a Vietnamese mother and an Irish-Australian father she carries not much more than her name to acknowledge the Vietnamese part of her heritage. And even there she prefers the Australian nickname that was inevitable with a surname like Kelly and an unpronounceable first name starting with N. There are reasons for Ned’s decisions and these are teased out beautifully in the story to provide depth to her character. She is surrounded by other intriguing people too. Her loving sister, her prejudiced Aunt, a range of colleagues with their own foibles and personal demons. All of these people are imperfect and often unlikable but they are all highly credible and the kind of people you want to read more about.

This book has all the ingredients of the top notch crime fiction. There are believable, interesting characters, a story that keeps readers guessing, a strong sense of its time and place and something to say about the human condition. Would police be so open to corruption if they were all paid enough to live comfortably in one of the most expensive cities to live in the world? Can we learn anything from our collective past or are we doomed to repeat the worst abuses of our fellow man over and over again? There is a slight over-reliance on coincidence and perhaps a thread or two too many woven into the plot but overall this is a highly readable and impressive debut and I look forward to reading the next installment of this series.

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My rating 4/5

Publisher Penguin [2010]; ISBN 9780670074518; Length 363 pages

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The Old School has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise

You can listen to Paul Keating’s 1992 speech here (though only if you have IE or Firefox).