Category Archives: Contemporary

The book is set in or around the ‘present day’ relevant to its publication date

Review: THE CALLER by Karin Fossum

Posted on
7

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
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Surrender by Donna Malane

Posted on
8

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

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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 http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: THE HIDDEN CHILD by Camilla Lackberg

Posted on
12

THE HIDDEN CHILD is the fifth book centred around the summer tourist town of Fjallbacka on the west coast of Sweden featuring police detective Patrik Hedstrom and his true-crime writing wife Erica Falck. In this outing Patrik is starting paternity leave to look after the couple’s daughter Maja while Erica is looking forward to getting back to work and engaging in more adult intellectual pursuits after a year of looking after Maja herself. However when a dead body is discovered in town on the first day of Patrik’s leave he cannot resist the temptation to take a look at the crime scene, even though it means bringing one-year old Maja along. Erica is a bit miffed with Patrik for taking their daughter to a crime scene and for failing to grasp that looking after Maja does not mean leaving their daughter at home with Erica while Patrick goes shopping. But she too is soon interested in this crime as the dead man turns out to be the historian whom Erica visited when she discovered a Nazi war medal among her dead mother’s possessions. In fact the past has a particular pull on Erica as she also discovered some diaries her mother had kept as a teenager during the war years, and Erica keeps putting aside her own work to read the diaries in the hope they might provide some insight into her mother’s neglectful treatment of Erica and her sister Anna. When it becomes clear that Erica’s mother was friends with the historian who has now been killed Erica becomes involved in the investigation too.

From a criminal plotting perspective this is probably Läckberg’s best novel, incorporating two strong plots. The contemporary plot to determine the murderer of the historian is well thought out and doesn’t involve nearly as much police incompetence as the previous novels (though there is still a little). All the small police force play useful roles, including new recruit Paola who seems to fit in well, and the case explores some interesting issues including the rise of neo-Nazi groups in modern Sweden. But perhaps the book’s biggest strength is that this storyline links to a second one taking place in 1943-45, involving the recently killed historian, his brother who spent time as a prisoner of the Germans and several other Fjallbacka residents including Erica’s mother. Eventually the solution to the present-day crimes is located in the past though the nature of the connection is well hidden until the end of the book.

While the family lives of the characters in this series have always been a feature of the novels that I have enjoyed I do think this instalment went a little overboard with the minutiae of characters’ lives. Certainly not all the children are hidden in this novel. In fact the thing is teeming with pregnancies (five), births lengthily described (two), and assorted toddlers and teenagers not to mention yet another love interest for Patrik’s romantically unlucky boss Bertil, an encounter with Patrik’s ex-wife and assorted other minor dramas. It doesn’t feel like Läckberg has held much back for inclusion in the next instalment (aside from several more births I suppose). I do generally enjoy the lighter side of these novels though and it was nice to read a book in which pretty much everyone has a family life in the normal range (i.e. no dramas that can’t be sorted out with a good chat and no alcoholic/near suicidal loners lurking underneath the covers).

Overall then I enjoyed THE HIDDEN CHILD and thought the translation up to the usual good quality even though duties have switched from Steven T Murray to his wife Tiina Nunnally. I think it interesting that my two favourite mysteries to be solved by Läckberg’s fictional characters are the ones where Erica takes more of a central role in the investigation (my other favourite is the first book in the series, THE ICE PRINCESS in which Erica really takes centre stage) and wonder if she’ll continue taking more of a proactive role in future novels.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’ve reviewed all of the earlier four books in this series THE ICE PRINCESS, THE PREACHER, THE STONECUTTER and THE GALLOWS BIRD (mini review)

THE HIDDEN CHILD has been reviewed at Euro Crime (Maxine) and Nordic Bookblog

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Tiina Nunnally
Narrator Eamonn Riley
Publisher Harper Collins [this translation 2011]
ASIN B0056GUO4U downloaded from audible.com
Length 17 hours 34 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series #5 in the Erica Falck/Patrik Hedström series
Source I bought it

Review: THE WINTER OF THE LIONS by Jan Costin Wagner

Posted on
7

THE WINTER OF THE LIONS is a peculiar book.

On one level it is a police procedural in which Finnish police seek to work out who killed a pathologist then a puppet maker then attempted to kill the television personality who had once interviewed both men on his highly rated chat show. But it’s hard to imagine any police force in the world operating as this one does, with little actual police work being done. Instead the lead investigator, one Kimmo Joentaa, makes a random, I might even suggest far-fetched, guess about the probable motive for the crime and proceeds to narrow down the pool of suspects his guess leads to in a fairly haphazard and not terribly successful manner (given that the culprit eventually shows up on their own virtually shouting “look at me over here, I’m the one”). So the book isn’t recommended for people who like their crime fiction to involve puzzles solved in a linear fashion with oodles of evidence.

That said, I enjoyed it a lot.

Part of that enjoyment invariably stems from the fact it didn’t tread the familiar path of a million police procedurals before it. I really do like authors who take interesting risks with the genre’s tropes, even if they’re not always successful. And there’s no doubt I was hooked by Kimmo’s approach to the case and was never not desperate to know who the culprit was and whether or not they would be found before more deaths occurred (something that never felt like a sure thing).

The characters are very strong too, though they do generally conform to the melancholic  stereotype associated with Scandinavian crime fiction. In fact Kimmo Joentaa could have been the prototype of the lonesome, introspective detective on which all others are based. His wife died some years ago and he is clearly still coming to grips with that, a fact borne out I think by his becoming somewhat bizarrely and immediately attached to a woman whose name he doesn’t even know. But perhaps my thinking this relationship an odd one says more about me than it does about Kimmo. Either way it added intrigue to the book.

We also meet the murderer fairly on in the book; though we don’t know who it is we know it is someone who has been involved in a tragedy and lost someone close to them. I’m normally not much of a fan of ‘seen through the eyes of the killer’ scenarios but here it was not sensational and offered some insight into how people cope (or don’t) with the traumas they experience. In fact the entire book could be looked at as a treatise on this subject, with Kimmo still suffering from his wife’s death and then losing his friend the pathologist who was killed at the outset of this book. And the television star who is the subject of the attempted murder is also a study in the kind of mental impact such a thing might have on a person.

Perhaps I was just in the right mood for peculiar (and cold, I did enjoy all that snow as I read the book during our sweltering summer) but I enjoyed THE WINTER OF THE LIONS more than I thought I might based on some of the reviews I read. Things surreal are not normally my cup of team but this one was just ‘normal’ enough to have me lapping it up and planning to go back and read the earlier books in the series (now that I have committed the cardinal sin of reading out of order).

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

THE WINTER OF THE LIONS has been reviewed at Crime Pieces, Euro Crime, International Noir Fiction and Mrs Peabody Investigates

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My rating 3.5/5
Translator Anthea Bell (from German)
Publisher Harvill Secker [2011]
ISBN/ASIN 9781846553462
Length 268
Format paperback
Book Series #3 in Kimmo Joentaa series
Source Borrowed from library
Creative Commons Licence
This work by http://reactionstoreading.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Review: Trick of the Dark by Val McDermid

Posted on
12

Having complained often and at length about authors who write the same book over and over again I chose to TRICK OF THE DARK up precisely because it was clear from the disparity of opinion about it that, if nothing else, McDermid had written a different book from her previous work. My main exposure to her writing has been through the Tony Hill books which are a bit bloody for my taste though I do like her writing so I was keen to try more of her standalone novels.

There were lots of things I enjoyed about TRICK OF THE DARK though my relationship with the book didn’t start well as the main character, psychiatrist Charlie Flint, is angst-ridden about whether or not to cheat on her wife Maria with another woman. I groaned audibly I think as the ‘to cheat or not to cheat’ storyline is a particular annoyance of mine both in real life and in fiction (cheat if you must but don’t bend my ear about your vacillation is my motto). But even though that thread does run throughout the novel I thoroughly enjoyed the rest of this complicated and fast-paced book.

As well as considering embarking on an affair, Charlie is in professional disgrace as the book opens due to an assessment she had made in a criminal case. Although something of a side thread I found this quite fascinating as it explored the notion of guilt and whether or not people can or should be prevented by society from committing crimes they’ve only thought about. One morning she receives some curious news clippings in the mail about a murdered bridegroom she doesn’t know. After some plot contrivances she works out that the clippings have been sent by one of her tutors from her time at Oxford and the widower of the bridegroom is Magda, whom Charlie knew as Maggot when she used to babysit her some years ago. When she gets in touch with the tutor, Corinna, she is is asked to investigate Magda’s husband’s murder. Corinna doesn’t think the two people who have been found guilty of the murder were responsible, instead she blames Magda’s new love interest, a woman called Jay who is also a former student of Corinna’s and is now a very wealthy business woman. Corinna tells Charlie that if she does not investigate and find evidence of Jay’s guilt Corinna will do whatever it takes to protect her daughter from the woman she perceives as evil.

That’s about as simply as I can summarise the early part of the book and it gets more complicated from that point on but it’s surprisingly easy to follow. Though perhaps that’s just because McDermid has the skill to make such twists and turns look easy. The book does require the suspension of disbelief but I had no trouble doing that, quickly getting caught up in the whydunnit aspects of the novel and the lives of its three main characters.

In some ways I thought Charlie the least interesting of the three (though admit that’s mainly because I was bored by the whole cheating thread). Jay Stewart, whose point of view much of the story is told from, would be intriguing I think even if you weren’t always wondering in the back of your mind if she is a serial killer. She has already published one book, a misery memoir of her horrid childhood, to much acclaim and has been persuaded to write a second biography. This volume will focus on her more recent life of ‘triumph over tragedy’ and we learn about her life as she writes different chapters though readers are always aware of the unreliable nature of Jay’s ‘recollections’. It would be a terrific sign of society’s maturity to be able to write about this book without mentioning that the three main characters (and several minor ones) are lesbians but the women’s sexuality is a significant factor in the stories. Their various experiences of coming out (or not doing so) and being on the receiving end of homophobia significantly colours the lives of all the lesbians in the story and so is an integral part of the book. Unlike some of the more vitriolic reviews on Good Reads and Amazon I thought this aspect of the book was handled sensitively and intelligently.

TRICK OF THE DARK managed to draw me into subjects and worlds I have no experience of including the cloistered atmosphere of Oxford college and its lingering pull on all who attend, as well as the tribulations of being gay and hated for that fact (in my bubble world I like to think we’re all grown up about such things now but clearly not). Having had somewhat ambivalent expectations of this book through reading very positive and very negative reviews I was pleasantly surprised and would recommend the book to those who can suspend their disbelief in the interests of a ripping, and thought-provoking yarn.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

TRICK OF THE DARK has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Euro Crime (2), Petrona and Savidge Reads

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My rating 4/5
Author website http://www.valmcdermid.com/index.html
Publisher Hachette Digital [2010]
ISBN 9780748117017
Length 362 pages
Format eBook (ePub)
Book Series standalone
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: Trackers by Deon Meyer

Posted on
10

It’s hard to know how to talk about TRACKERS without giving away too many of the book’s surprises which come from both story and structure so I shall err on the side of caution. I don’t think it’s letting too much out of the bag to say that there are three distinct books here, and though the reader assumes the stories will eventually intertwine most connections are not made until almost the very end so you are really reading three independent stories. While this maintains suspense it does require more than the usual amount of small-detail retention on the part of the reader, something that proved quite challenging with the audio version of the book.

The first and most prominent of the three stories centres around a woman called Milla Strachan who, when we meet her, is just coming to the decision to leave her violent, philandering husband and their boorish, spoiled son. Although she trained to be a journalist she has not worked for many years and struggles to find a job until she spies a small newspaper advertisement. That leads to a report-writing job with a government agency. In the second book we meet a young freelance bodyguard called Lemmer who is hired for the seemingly innocuous job of escorting two endangered rhinos being smuggled into the country from Zimbabwe on behalf of a wealthy and slightly dodgy farmer. In the final book of TRACKERS we follow the trail of former policeman Mat Joubert as he starts his new job as a private investigator and takes on the case of a missing husband whose wife is unsatisfied with what she perceives to have been a fairly cursory investigation by police.

All three stories are compelling in their own right though I have to admit to finding the first one a little tough-going in parts. Although the audio narration was excellent I found the very complicated plot a little hard to follow in this format and did have to rewind quite a bit which is something I very rarely need to do. I had no such problems with the other two books within this book and perhaps for that reason I enjoyed those two stories slightly more than the first.

There are several elements which link the books, the most obvious being that each depicts some version of tracking; be it people, animals, objects or something less tangible.  This could have been clumsy in a less talented author’s hands but Meyer is a terrific storyteller and manages to use this device almost without the reader noticing it’s being done. Another theme common to the stories is that the main character in each one is at something of a crossroads in his or her life and the events cause, or force, them to learn something not entirely comfortable about their own makeup. Milla Strachan’s case is probably the most dramatic of the three but these threads are all fascinating and provide part of the depth of this book.

The remainder of that depth comes from the other thing which links the books which is the  ever-present commentary on life in modern South Africa. It is almost as if Meyer has written a non-fiction book underneath the fictional one in which he is depicting a year in the life of his country. Setting the main part of the story in the time leading up to the country’s hosting of the football (soccer) world cup offers scope to show how the country and its residents want to be seen on the all-important international stage, while the disparate stories within TRACKERS allow a broad cross-section of ‘routine’ lives to be depicted which helps readers build up a real picture of the country today. Again it is something you almost don’t notice until the book is finished when you suddenly realise you have such a detailed picture of the place that you feel like you could walk into the pages and feel at home.

I think I’ve only scratched the surface of all that is good about TRACKERS so can only recommend you read the book for yourselves, though I’d only recommend the audio format to seasoned listeners. It is an intelligent, compelling thriller with a fantastic range of characters and an absorbing sense of place. At a time when many successful writers seem content to write the same book over and over again Meyer is to be applauded for continuing to stretch himself and his readers.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Trackers has been reviewed at International Noir Fiction, Mysteries in Paradise, Petrona, The Game’s Afoot and was chosen as one of 2011′s best thrillers by Kirkus Reviews

I’ve reviewed three of Deon Meyer’s other books Devil’s Peak, Dead at Daybreak and Thirteen hours.  There hasn’t been a dud in the bunch.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4.5/5
Author website http://www.deonmeyer.com/
Translator K.L. Seegers (from Afrikaans)
Narrator Saul Reichlin, Rupert Degas, Sandra Duncan
Publisher Hodder & Stoughton [2011]
ASIN B005OSUOAE (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 17 hours and 55 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
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: A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths

Posted on
15

In the fourth book to feature forensic archaeologist Ruth Galloway the mystery starts early on. Ruth has been asked to attend a local museum for the opening of a coffin which was found at a construction site and is thought to contain the remains of a medieval Bishop. She arrives to find the museum’s curator lying on the floor. Not being certain if the man is alive or not she phones an ambulance and the police. The man is pronounced dead on his arrival at hospital and the police investigation steps up a notch which introduces DI Harry Nelson to the action.

Of course anyone who has read the previous novels in this serious would have been waiting for this meeting as Ruth and Harry have a personal history which was left at a rather dramatic point at the end of The House at Sea’s End. I’m trying not to give spoilers to this or previous books so I won’t say much more, other than to reflect that I thought Griffiths did a good job of capturing the awkwardness realistically. She’s also done a good job of encapsulating the essence of the personal lives of Ruth, Harry and their friends and colleagues so this would be a decent place to start the series if you are interested in trying it out but don’t feel you have the time or energy to read the three earlier books.

The mystery element in this novel is stronger than has been the case in the previous novels which, while entertaining, were all fairly easy to stay ahead of, especially for seasoned crime readers. Here there are several threads that need to be sorted out including the very basic question of whether or not the museum curator was murdered or not. There do prove to be two potential motives including a possible connection to claims being made for the repatriation of Australian Aboriginal bones and skulls in the museum’s custody. Ruth’s old friend Cathbad is a member of a group which has requested the items be returned to Australia for a proper burial, as is her new next door neighbour who is an academic visiting from Australia. He is also a member of the same tribal group to which the bones belong so he has a personal stake in the repatriation of the items. The issue of such repatriation is becoming increasingly vitriolic in the real world but Griffiths handled its complexity and sensitivity well. In particular Ruth’s needing time to weigh up the pros and cons on a personal and professional level rang very true. I’m always a little wary of ‘foreign’ books which throw in Australian characters or tackle other subjects I am familiar with but Elly Griffiths has done well on both counts here.

It’s fair to say that most fans of this series are at least as interested in the personal stories of Ruth, Harry and friends as they are in the whodunnit aspects of the books and those fans will not be disappointed with this instalment. Ruth’s daughter has her first birthday in this book but Ruth still frets about her mothering skills and seems a little preoccupied at times so she is not quite the dominant character in this book as she has been in the past and Harry’s dry humour is also quiet for a while when he undergoes a particularly nasty trauma. While I did miss the presence of my favourite two people a little, there were many developments in the lives of the lesser characters to keep me interested. I have quite a soft spot for Cathbad who is a lab technician at Ruth’s university but is also a Druid and seems willing to participate in any vaguely spiritual ritual he thinks suitable for a given situation which often has unforseen circumstances.

I look forward with much anticipation to the arrival on my doorstep of the annual instalment of this series and, once again, the reading experience lived up to my expectations, providing a very enjoyable and satisfying read with just a hint of what might happen in the next book.. I read A ROOM FULL OF BONES in a single day (again the housework was neglected) and had a very contented smile on my face upon completion, you can’t ask for better than that.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Room Full of Bones has been reviewed at Euro Crime

I have reviewed the first three books in the series: The Crossing Places, The Janus Stone and The House at Sea’s End

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Quercus [2012]
ISBN 9781849163699
Length 344 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series #4 in the Ruth Galloway 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: Matilda is Missing by Caroline Overington

Posted on
6

Matilda is Missing is narrated by Barry Harrison, a pensioner from a typical working class suburb in Melbourne. As the book opens we learn that Barry’s wife Pat is struggling to cope with the loss of access to her grandchildren after her son’s marriage collapses. At the same time Barry inherits some documents from an old friend of his, Frank Brooks, who was a judge in the Family Court. Frank believes he made a mistake in a case he presided over and, knowing he is dying, thinks Barry will know the right thing to do and so arranges for the case files to be passed on. Barry has no clue why Frank chose him to deal with the matter but he is not the sort of bloke to shirk a duty so he starts to review the documents. As he does so  the troubling story of Garry Hartshorn and Softie Monaghan and their struggle for their daughter Matilda unfolds.

I’ll be up front and say this is not the sort of book I would normally read. I was wary of comparisons in the book’s own marketing material to the works of Jodi Picoult as I’ve read a couple of those and found them too manipulative of reader emotions and opinions for my taste (to me they have an air of the author pushing the reader to be in a flood of tears by the end and if you’re not there’s something wrong with you). However, when I signed up for the Australian Women Writers challenge I opted to dabble in genres beyond what I typically read and I chose Matilda is Missing as one of the “out of my comfort zone’ books. In the end I had a couple of misgivings about it but overall there was much more to like than I anticipated.

One of those misgivings concerned the contrivance used to make Barry the teller of this particular story. Aside from questioning the legalities of such a handover of documents (one component in particular is illegal where I live) it was a little too convenient to be wholly believable that the court documents would include a series of taped sessions with a psychologist that were perfectly ordered and complete in the details they provided about the histories and shared life of the two main characters. But while I’d have preferred some other method for enabling Barry to be the narrator, I think Overington made a great choice in using him for the role as the novel did need to be told from the perspective of an outsider to the central relationship. He was far enough removed from the heart of things to allow him (and by association us as readers) some objectivity but involved enough to offer some authentic insights into the events being depicted and the emotions experienced by the various players.

Barry was also a very realistic character, often sounding like my own dad (who is a bit older but has a very similar background and philosophy to Barry’s). I particularly liked the way Overington used him to help show the generational differences in the way men display their thoughts and feelings about their families. I warmed to Barry’s laconic, pragmatic voice very quickly and wanted to give him a great big hug at the end when he took a practical approach to his own family’s problems. My dad would approve too.

The couple at the heart of the story are also realistically depicted, as is their tale of misguidedly getting together. I know some people whose lives have panned out exactly as they planned when they were eleven, but I know a lot more (myself included) who have muddled their way through and often found themselves astonished at the situations they’ve gotten into. Garry and Softie fall squarely into this second category and the book does a great job of showing us how easily such things happen, irrespective of how smart the participants are or how many warning bells ring. Overington shows us why Garry and Softie either couldn’t see the disasters looming in their relationship or why they chose to plough on regardless. The plot device used is a series of taped sessions the two participated in individually with a psychologist as part of the court process and so we see two vastly different interpretations of the same events on multiple occasions and this is fascinating. Their first date for example is described truthfully by both of them but it sounds as if they are talking about two entirely different events because, as with most things in life, the truth is often a matter of perception. As a whole though the two were shown with an almost complete lack of moralising about their behaviour and choices; another benefit of the narrative device and another strong point in the book’s favour.

My only other misgiving is about the ending. The bulk of the book is an even-handed and thoughtful exploration of the fallout from family breakdown in a modern setting. Through the various scenarios depicted we see that whether you go down the route of using the Family Court or trying to sort things out amicably between the parties, splitting one family unit into two can’t result in happiness for everyone (or in many cases anyone). For me that provided enough drama but the story takes a final, fairly sensationalist twist that I found a little disappointing. Funnily enough I liked the very end which some reviewers who otherwise love the book struggle with due to its ambiguity. But life is full of such loose ends in my experience so I thought this a perfect ending to this sad but realistic story.

All in all this was a very enjoyable read with a terrifically authentic narrative voice which allowed an objective exploration of a difficult subject. Matilda is Missing manages to depict the family breakdown scenario from multiple viewpoints, including that of the often-forgotten extended family members, without demanding that readers take a side. I suppose if you had been through a similar scenario yourself you might find yourself identifying more with one party or the other, but not having been through that experience (thankfully) I found Overington’s characterisations of both Garry and Softie to be even-handed and judgement free. I eagerly gobbled the book up in a couple of sittings and recommend it to all.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Caroline Overington is a Walkley Award winning investigative journalist and has published two non-fiction books as well as three novels to date including Ghost Child and I Came to Say Goodbye in addition to Matilda is Missing.

This is my first book counting towards the Australian Women Writers Challenge 2012 in which I am aiming to read and review 10 books by female Australian writers (actually I’m hoping for a number somehwere closer to 25 by year’s end but the offical challenge is for 10 books). I’ve opted to be a dabbler as far as genres go. I’ve no idea what genre this book belongs to (which kind of supports my premise that genre labels are silly) but in the absence of anything else will go with contemporary fiction.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 4/5
Publisher Bantam [2011]
ISBN 9781742750385
Length 353 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series standalone.
Source I borrowed it 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: V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton

Posted on
10

The 22nd outing for Kinsey Millhone, private detective in the fictional California town of Santa Teresa starts with a brief prologue in which a young man is thrown to his death from the top floor of a Las Vegas parking garage after failing to pay his gambling debts to a loan shark, Lorenzo Dante.The story proper then starts two years later when Kinsey spots two shoplifters in a local department store and after alerting the store’s security to follow one of the woman Kinsey trails after the other. The first woman is Audrey Vance and she is arrested, but shortly after being bailed out of jail by her boyfriend her body is found, apparently having committed suicide from a local bridge. Kinsey is then approached by Audrey’s boyfriend who doesn’t believe she was shoplifting and wants her good name cleared. However Kinsey soon becomes convinced that Audrey was a professional shoplifter, part of a large operation. While all this is going on we’re introduced to a woman called Nora who is married to a wealthy Hollywood agent but soon experiences an upheaval in that relationship. She meets Lorenzo Dante who is tiring of his life of organised crime and becomes smitten with Nora which has unforeseen circumstances. Of course the two stories eventually connect, in several ways by the end of the novel.

This book is a return to a more traditional storytelling format after the departure into part historical fiction of 2010’s U is for Undertow. From a plotting perspective it is complicated but in Grafton’s assured hands the different elements are juggled well, always keeping the reader’s interest There are plenty of twists and turns along the way as Kinsey unravels the shoplifting racket and Nora and Lorenzo do their separate dances with fate. There is a one unlikely coincidences at the very end which I could have done without but I forgave it. I did think it a nice change for a crime novel to spend most of its investigative energy on the crime of organised shoplifting which I had no idea could be so lucrative and…well…organised! Who’d work in retail?

It’s fair to say that Kinsey has never been the most deeply drawn character in crime fiction but here she does seem to be even more solitary and one-dimensional than usual. In the past couple of books she has made tentative connections to the extended family she has discovered, after being orphaned as a young child, but there is no mention of her relatives here. Even Henry, her octogenarian landlord, plays only a minor role as he is out of state for most of the book. So for character development we turn to others including Nora and Lorenzo whose backgrounds are vastly different but whose current dissatisfaction with the direction their lives have taken is interesting to watch unfold.

I have written before about my fondness for this series and have even admitted a certain lack of objectivity which might result in me being a bit more generous about these books than others I read so you’ll have to excuse me a little. Though even I can admit that V is for Vengeance is not the best of the series.It’s a bit long for example. The first books in the series were never 450+ pages long and this one didn’t need to be either. For instance fans of the series already know about Rosie the bar owner’s dodgy Hungarian cooking and I’m sure even readers new to the series would have gotten the gag with less than a dozen or so references to it. There seemed to be a bit of unnecessary filler content like this that in earlier books was either never there to begin with or was edited out.

That said I still enjoyed catching up with Kinsey again and am philosophical about the slight waxing and waning of quality that happens with any long running series. I think i’m still objective enough to be able to say that this series is not on a downward spiral like several I’ve stopped reading all together (e.g. Patrica Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series). Essentially this book is well in keeping with its predecessors and the main characters didn’t do anything ridiculous. I will look forward to the remaining 4 installments of the series. If you’re new to the alphabet books and are curious I would recommend you read the previous novel, U is for Undertow, which I think works much better than this one as a standalone novel or as an introduction to the series. But long time fans will be happy enough with this outing, though most will probably wish for a bit more Henry as I did.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Publisher Mantle [2011]
ISBN 9780230756212
Length 437 pages
Format trade paperbak
Book Series #22 in the alphabet 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: A Short Cut to Paradise by Teresa Solana

Posted on
9

The private consultants who aren’t quite detectives who made their debut in A Not So Perfect Crime are back for another adventure among the upper echelons of Barcelona society. This time they are tasked with proving that Amadeu Cabestany was not responsible for the murder of famous novelist Marina Dolç The police have arrested him on the grounds that he was heard to threaten Marina and on the night she was killed she had won a prestigious literary award that he was sure he was about to win. But his agent and some-time lover does not believe in his guilt and she turns to Eduard and Borja for assistance. They discover that Amadeu’s alibi is very shaky as there are no witnesses to his leaving the hotel before Dolç’s death and being mugged at a local disco and no one else seems to have much of a motive. They do however start to learn some interesting things about the famous author’s life.

There’s something about a holiday week that calls for lighter than normal reading and I was quite chuffed to find this book unread on my shelves as I had such fond memories of the first book in the series. Happily this one too is clever and funny and thoroughly engaging; perfect for reading on a warm summer day with a glass (or two) of sangria. It’s probably not the book to reach for if you like your mystery solving to be at the forefront for the length of the novel but if you don’t mind the odd (in some cases very odd) tangent or three you could do a lot worse.

Eduard is a former lefty radical who spent 20 years as a middle-class banker before setting up in business with his twin brother Borja (formerly known as Pep). We see most of the tale through his eyes as he recounts the brothers’ attempts to uncover evidence and a suspect or two. Though not as strongly as he was in the first book, he is still vaguely put out by Borja’s social climbing, especially when it requires Eduard to wear classy suits rather than his preferred jeans and otherwise operate out of his comfort zone (heaven forbid he must spend a night in a five-star hotel). But at heart the relationship between the two brothers is sweet and a definite highlight of the novel, being the source of much humour.

The rest of the humour comes from the observations about local society. Although I know nothing about Catalan literary circles the depictions of the social events with public displays of bonhomie hiding private hatreds and petty jealousies was pitch-perfect. I just inserted the names of local authors in the roles of literary versus popular fiction authors to make the humour complete.Solana seems to take great relish in satirising literary circles and I suspect she particularly enjoyed writing the scene in which most of the players are accidentally drugged so that their true natures are on full display.

More poignant moments in the novel come from the short chapters told from perspectives other than Eduard’s. Among the ‘character vignettes’ we meet a man driven to undertake an armed robbery even though he has no criminal record, get a surreal glimpse of prison life for Amadeu who the other prisoners stay clear of due to his resemblance to a movie murderer and his seeming ability to cause grown men to die at his feet and even briefly meet a long-suffering policewoman who has to wrangle a rookie cop with a big mouth. All of these are delightful interludes as well as providing little nuggets of information which help make sense of the overall story.

The crime’s resolution offered a slightly unsatisfactory note in that it didn’t quite make sense but overall I thoroughly enjoyed this slightly surreal and very witty tale of literary madness which gave me one more reason to be glad I’m a reader not a writer.  I am pleased to learn (via excellent Spanish-reading blogger Jose Ignacio at The Game’s Afoot) that a third book has been released. Translation now please.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Short Cut to Paradise has been reviewed at Euro Crime, International Noir Fiction (though noir this definitely isn’t) and Lizzie’s Literary Life

I’m slightly cheating in using this as the last book for my What’s In a Name challenge in the category of book with a size in the title. I suppose short isn’t officially a size but it will have to do as the book I was half way through reading (At Close Quarters) fell into the washing up sink and didn’t really recover as well as I might have hoped.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 3.5/5
Translator Peter Bush
Publisher Bitter Lemon Press [2011]
ISBN 9781904738558
Length 284 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #2 in the Eduard and Borja 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.