Category Archives: 5 Stars

Review: THE CALLER by Karin Fossum

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

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

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

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

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

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

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

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
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: Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin

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I had no real plan to read this book until I noticed it won the UK CWA’s Gold Dagger award earlier this month and was the only book from the shortlist for that award which I had not read. As I was not blown away by any of the shortlisted books I was curious to see what kind of book the winner was. 

In Amos, Mississippi Silas ’32′ Jones is the lone police officer, sharing his office with the town clerk and spending most of his time on mundane duties like directing traffic or extricating snakes from mailboxes. When the daughter of the town’s wealthiest family goes missing people start pointing the finger at Larry Ott, better known as Scary Larry. He garnered the nickname 25 years earlier when another young girl went missing and Larry was the only suspect in her disappearance. Though that case was never resolved the entire town believed has always believed him guilty of her murder and he has been a virtual outcast all the while. Even Silas, once Larry’s only friend, has kept his distance from Larry ever since that night.

I love books which draw me in their world and Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter does so masterfully. The combination of exquisitely poignant characters and a totally absorbing depiction of small town Mississippi, complete with dialogue rich in local idioms and, at times, confronting language is simply perfect. As I read I could almost feel myself slowing down to the deliciously languid pace of the novel and Franklin’s writing made it easy for me (who has never been closer to Mississippi than a few days spent in Louisiana many moons ago) to conjure up images of the town and its people in my mind. Even when I was only a few pages into the book I felt like I was there in Amos and I was reluctant to tear myself away, which accounts for me staying up late into the night to finish the book in one sitting.

Although ostensibly about the mystery of the two missing girls the book, for me anyway, was mostly about the two men, the disparate tracks their lives had taken and the ways they coped, or didn’t, with their various hardships and guilty secrets. After being introduced to the men as adults we learn about their pasts, both shared and separate, and only the coldest of readers could fail to be won over by them both, even though (or perhaps because) neither is perfect by any stretch of the imagination. In a relatively short space (the entire book is only 270 pages) with scenes of stark symbolism and authenticity we see the events that shape the boys into the men they will become.

I am always wary of the much-hyped book but in this instance all the buzz, awards and kind words are well deserved. For a book in which poverty, racism and domestic violence feature heavily it is remarkably gentle and, ultimately hopeful. It somehow straddles the line between harsh realism and overt sentimentality to be that rare thing: a perfect reading experience. I would recommend it to everyone.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Publisher William Morrow [2010]
ISBN 9780230753051
Length 274 pages
Format trade paperback
Book Series standalone
Source I borrowed it from Kerrie – thanks :)

This post is published at http://reactionstoreading.com if you are seeing it at another site then it has been stolen and/or used entirely without permission.

Kinglake-350 by Adrian Hyland

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Regular readers of this blog will know I am rather taken with the writings of Adrian Hyland. His two novels set in central Australia, Diamond Dove and Gunshot Road, are both among my favourites of the past few years. But Kinglake-350, officially published on 1 August, is a different kettle of fish all together from these two stories.

Based on Hyland’s personal experiences, countless interviews and solid research the book is an account of the terrible February day in 2009 when the most ferocious bushfires on record swept through large swathes of rural Victoria, leaving 173 people dead, thousands of homes destroyed and much of the environment forever and irretrievably altered.

Rather than trying to account for every detail of the enormous tragedy the book offers a handful of individual stories of the day, with that of Acting Police Sergeant Roger Wood at its heart. Wood was in charge of the Kinglake police station on Saturday 7 February 2009 and Hyland takes us through his day from the moment he wakes up knowing that conditions are the worst they could possibly be from a fire hazard perspective. Leaving his wife and children at home on the outskirts of St Andrews he drives 13 kilometres up a dangerously winding road to the town of Kinglake to start his day’s work and reports into the police communications centre with his radio call sign: Kinglake-350. With one eye always on the sky, the weather, the air itself Wood goes about his routine duties until the first fire in the region breaks out in the early afternoon. He then hurries from one mini-crisis point to the next: diverting people from harm’s way, helping them to evacuate, driving victims to medical help and undertaking countless other tasks. For most of that time he is unable to contact his own family after hearing that their house is in the direct path of a fire.

Of course Wood is only one of thousands of participants in the day’s events and Hyland has included others. There are the Country Fire Association volunteers, nurses, policemen and ordinary people whose stories unfold alongside Wood’s as they try to save people, homes and entire towns without much in the way of resources or the much-needed early warnings. We meet people who survived due to good preparation, others who survived through luck and more who didn’t survive at all.

By their nature these personal accounts of the day are fragmented and can tell only snatches of the bigger story and so Hyland has complemented them with research into various aspects of what led to the fires, what happened on the day itself and, in a more limited way, the aftermath. There are sections dealing with elements such as

  • the weather and prevailing conditions in the region that explain how fires of such intensity and never-before-seen behaviour occurred
  • the alarming facts about the kinds of people who commit the crime of arson and the paltry number of whom are ever caught
  • the psychology of human behaviour in crises
  • the damage we humans have done to our precious environment and our seeming inability to learn anything much at all from our mistakes
  • the systems and procedures that worked on the day, and those that didn’t
  • how much (and how little) we know about the science of fires

As someone who was in no way involved with that terrible day and who has only ever watched a bushfire from the relative safety of the outer suburbs I found this book, with its combination of personal stories and academic elements, provided one of the few comprehensible accounts of tragedy I have ever read. So often the media and other true accounts of such events focus on tallies of the dead and injured or become embroiled in the blame game. I can’t tell you how much nonsense I saw and read about these fires in the days after that weekend, often from people who know as little about what causes bushfires and how to fight them as I do (which in case I haven’t made it clear is none at all).

What Kinglake-350 did instead for me was provide a comprehensible depiction of how the world fell apart for thousands of people, largely through no fault of their own. Certainly some some individual events on the day might have gone differently if this agency had better communications or that person had had a proper fire plan but, in the end, the blame game is fairly pointless (if not out-rightly dangerous by lulling people into a false sense of their own safety and security). But ultimately this is a book about  a community of people who coped with a natural disaster in the best way they could with a combination of knowledge, skill, luck and courage. Their individual and collective stories are sombre, heart-wrenching and so totally compelling I read the entire thing in a single sitting, starting late last night and finishing at about two o’clock this morning.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Publisher Text Publishing [2011]
ISBN 9781921834738
Length no idea (this ebook format is peculiar)
Format a Booki.sh ebook (which lives forever in the cloud)
Source I bought it

Review: The Quarry by Johan Theorin

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The Quarry is the third of Johan Theorin’s quartet of seasonal novels set on the Swedish island of Öland. It is the beginning of spring now and 83 year-old retired sea captain Gerlof Davidsson has decided to leave the senior citizen’s home in which he has been living. He doesn’t want to watch any more of his friends wheeled slowly from the home after dying alone in the night and he wants to spend however many years he has left at home in his cottage in Stenvik. As he settles himself back into his cottage he reacquaints himself with those villagers he has known for ever and starts to meet his new neighbours. Although the Swedes don’t really come to Öland in any numbers until the summer, Gerlof is not alone. There’s Per Mörner who inherited his uncle’s cottage near the quarry which was once a source of employment for villagers but is now abandoned. We also meet Vendela Larsson and her husband Max. Vendela grew up on the island as the poverty-stricken daughter of a quarry worker but now she is the owner of one of the newly built luxury homes and she has come here with Max so that he can write his latest self-help book (using an astonishing three desks and a significant amount of Vendela’s expertise).

Per’s father Jerry has recently had a stroke and so when his house is burned down Per, reluctantly, brings him to Stenvik to recover. It seems that Jerry’s shady past might be catching up with him and Per feels compelled to investigate what might have happened even though his relationship with his father is strained to say the least. If nothing else though it will take his mind away from the awful reality of his daughter’s hospitalisation for an unknown illness. Per is a brilliant characterisations in which a full range of human experience and emotion is credibly depicted. We see his frustration at not being able to do anything for his daughter, his ambivalence over his father’s unsavoury career and current circumstances and his yearning to connect with his own son and not knowing quite how to achieve it.

Alongside this main story there are multiple threads which are expertly woven together in a way that demands you read on while the suspense becomes almost unbearable. Gerlof, who can never resist a puzzle, spends some of his time helping Per with his investigation but he also embarks, rather guiltily, on reading his wife’s old diaries that he was meant to have burned after she died. He learns about some of the events in her life that took place while he was away at sea for long stretches and which just adds to the mystery unfolding before us all. Gerlof is one of my favourite characters of all time I think, the kind of 80-something I aspire to be: intelligent, thoughtful and pragmatic about the hand life has dealt him.

As he did in The Darkest Room Theorin has incorporated mythical elements of local folklore into the book intelligently. This time it is the legend of the trolls who, according to Vendela’s father, lived under the quarry and the elves who lived in the nearby alvar (sparsely vegetated area). In the middle of the alvar is a stone which, as a child, Vendela was taught to leave offerings on top of if she wanted her wishes to be granted. Her successes as a young girl fuelled her life-long fascination with elves and when she returns as an adult she is once again drawn to the stone and its magical powers. In a lesser writer’s hands I think Vendela would have been an unbelievable caricature but in Theorin’s she is a beautiful, sad person who has used fantasy to cope with the harsh deal life has thrown at her.

As has been the case with the previous two novels of this series I was once again enveloped by the atmosphere Theroin, ably aided by his translator Marlaine Delargy, has created here. It didn’t feel like I was just reading about the island’s slow awakening from it’s harsh winter to spring: I lived through the lengthening days, the appearance of the first butterflies, the people getting to know each other and themselves. I loved every moment of this book from its first word to its excellent closing line. I loved the intrigue, the gamut of real human emotions on display, the way that the past was connected to the present in surprising ways, the people who compelled me to find out more about them and the dual meaning of the book’s title.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Quarry has been reviewed at Falcata Times, Milo’s Rambles,  and The Nordic Bookblog,

I’ve reviewed the two earlier books of this series Echoes from the Dead and The Darkest Room

The only black mark I would give this (and I know it’s nothing to do with the author) is that the blurb on my copy of this book rather appallingly gives away a fairly major plot point that doesn’t occur until more than half-way through the book. Bad form.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Translator Marlaine Delargy
Publisher Doubleday [2011]
ISBN 9780385619295
Length 409 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #3 in a quartet
Source I bought it

Review: Water-Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar

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As this book opens we meet Leo Caldas, a Police Inspector in the Spanish town of Vigo, as he is participating in the weekly radio broadcast Patrol on the Air, during which people can ring in with questions or complaints for the police to investigate. Caldas is a grudging participant in the PR exercise and entertains himself by keeping a running tally of how many enquiries he will need to follow up on and how many he can hand over to the City police. When he’s finished the show he barely has time to sit in his office chair before he and his subordinate, Rafael Estévez, are rushing to attend a luxury apartment building where a man has been killed. The man, local jazz musician Luis Reigosa, has been tied to his bed and suffered horrific burn-like injuries to his stomach and groin but forensic specialists need time to identify the exact cause of death, which doesn’t give Caldas and Estévez many leads with which to begin their investigation.

Several elements of this excellent novel compete for status as the standout feature but in the end they all come together to form the perfect novel. Perhaps the thing I loved most were the characters who are richly drawn and highly believable. Although this is the first novel in which he appears Caldas is a fully formed man whose past we see in glimpses as the current narrative unfolds. His personal life is complicated by an uneasy relationship with his father and a split from the woman in his life due to their differences over the idea of having children. His working life is also complicated, mainly by having to deal with the consequences of Rafael Estévez’ aggression which is generated when he encounters the difficulties of his new home. Poor Estévez is not a native of Galica (the region of northern Spain in which Vigo is situated) and he has struggled to adjust to his new environment. He finds the unpredictable weather and steep streets equally frustrating but worst of all

To Rafael Estévez’ stern Aragonese mind, things were this way or that, got done or didn’t, so it was only with considerable effort that he managed to decipher the ambiguous expressions of his new fellow citizens.

This issue generates much of the warm humour of the book, though I felt a little guilty for laughing at Estévez as I too have a tendency towards literalness and find ambiguity annoying to deal with.

If the local tourist bureau in Galicia hasn’t paid Villar something for his work then they should because my overwhelming desire upon finishing the book was to investigate how much it would cost me to fly there and stay a while. The environment is described beautifully and the relaxed pace of life depicted appeals to me greatly. Even a serious police investigation must stop for deliciously described meals and the occasional paddle in the ocean and I couldn’t help but wish that all of life was prioritised in this way. Of course Caldas manages to have a fascinating conversation about philosophy with other patrons during one memorable lunch and this ends up leading him to an important discovery in his investigation which proves there’s nothing wrong with this way of working at all.

I was undoubtedly pre-disposed to liking this book because of its length. At 167 pages it is tiny in comparison to many of the lengthy tomes published these days but is an absolutely captivating read without any of the dead weight of its competitors. It’s fast, witty, oozing a sense of its location, has terrifically memorable characters and a taut, compelling plot. It is also beautifully readable in its second language, a testament no doubt to the skill of translator Martin Schifino, who has managed to capture the poetic essence of the Spanish very well. This is a true gem of a novel that would be enjoyed by all readers, crime fans or otherwise.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This book has been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Petrona, Reviewing the Evidence and The Game’s Afoot (where Jose Ignacio read the book in its original Spanish).

I’m using this as the first book for my European leg of this year’s global challenge

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Translator Martin Schifino
Publisher Arcadia books/Euro Crime [this translation 2009, original edition 2006]
ISBN 9781906413255
Length 167 pages
Format paperback
Book Series The first in a series to feature Leo Caldas
Source I bought it

A Review (and musings on storytelling) – The Woodcutter by Reginald Hill

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I’m going to provide even less of a plot synopsis for this book than my usual skimpy effort because a big part of my enjoyment of this book was that I knew so little about it to start with (I listened to it on a whim following a comment by Barbara at the 4 Mystery Addicts online reading group). I quite literally had no idea what it was about when I started and still had no clue what direction the story would take when I was well into its Machiavellian depths and think you should have the same opportunity. So all I’ll say is that it’s one of Hill’s standalone books and tells the story of Wilfred ‘Wolf’ Hadda, a Cumbrian native of working class birth who makes a name for himself in the world of business before his world falls apart in a rather alarming way. If that’s not enough for you to ponder reading it, there are plenty of great easily google-able reviews that will tell you more.

The thing I have discovered more lately than I ought to have done is that Reginald Hill is a truly superb storyteller in the purest sense of the term and this, in my opinion, is one of his best. Having studied the storytelling art a little over the years I’d boil the essence of a good story (regardless of whether it is told, written or shown) down to these attributes

  • they must draw their audience in and make them feel connected to the events being described
  • they must have a basic structure of beginning, middle and end
  • they need at least one central character who encounters some form of conflict that prevents them from going along the path they had been taking
  • they must invite, even prompt, the audience to picture or imagine the places, people and events that are being described
  • they cannot offer an easy resolution to the issues or conflicts they are describing

For me The Woodcutter ticks all of these boxes with gusto. The audience is drawn in by Hill’s wonderful depictions of Wolf’s out-of-the ordinary young life in the forests of Cumbria and then a very early depiction of his fall from grace. Knowing that an author wouldn’t willingly use up all their most dramatic material in the first few chapters of a novel the reader is left wondering what sort of theme this story will explore..redemption? wronged man? revenge? something else?

Using several characters in addition to Wolf, Hill manages to present several versions of the truth, exploring the notion that what’s true depends on the perspective and facts or knowledge a person has at any time. As a reader you are prepared to go along with each subtle variation of reality, never quite knowing where the whole thing is headed, but somehow always feeling confident that the resolution will be a satisfying and authentic one. Along the way there are splendidly depicted images of both the Cumbrian landscapes and the characters (including a terrific fictional dog) who are central to the story.

Part of the way Hill draws the reader in and keeps them glued is the interesting array of ideas and themes he explores along the way and unlike so many writers he does this, always, as part of the story. The book is a masterclass in the concept of showing not telling. He examines things like the way the British class structure plays out in contemporary society, the role and nature of the justice system and even takes a look modern psychiatry in a way that makes you think.

Literary critic (and professional controversy-starter) Christopher Booker once claimed that there are only seven basic plots for stories and, if this is true, it must get harder to be original as they keep being re-told. In broad ways The Woodcutter is an age-old tale that you’ve heard a thousand times before (in fact it bears a strong resemblance to a 19th Century French adventure classic) but with it’s sparkling dialogue, intricate plot, wonderfully realised characters and the thought-provoking ideas it ponders it is utterly unique. I cannot think of any reader who would not enjoy this wonderful book, crime fiction fan or not, especially via the narration of English actor Jonathan Keeble whose mastery of accents and gender roles was, as always, outstanding.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5
Narrator Jonathan Keeble
Publisher Whole Story Audio Books [this edition 2011, original edition 2010]
ISBN n/a downloaded from audible.com
Length 16 hours 34 minutes
Format mp3
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

Review: Box 21 by Anders Roslund and Börge Hellström

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Box 21 (published in the UK as The Vault) is not for the faint of heart. It’s not even for the mid-strength of heart. It is strong stuff. There were things about it that I thought were excellent, one thing that didn’t work, and many things that made me very, very angry. Basically, there’s not a lot of middle ground with this book.

Though dark and extraordinarily sad the plot is quite outstanding. There are two main threads, both involving Stockholm detective Ewert Grens. In the first Grens is on the trail of Jochum Lang, a criminal of the nastiest kind who is being released from prison on the morning the book opens and Grens’ sole objective is to send him back there as soon as possible. Twenty five years earlier Lang caused an injury to Grens’ colleague (who was also his girlfriend) which resulted in massive brain damage. She has been institutionalised and unable to recognise him or communicate with him since the incident and Grens s proven pathologically incapable of recovering from the incident himself. When Lang is sent to sort out a young heroin addict who has upset Lang’s criminal bosses, Grens sees an opportunity to arrest Lang again.

The second thread is one of the saddest stories I have ever read. Lydia Grajauskas and Alena Sljusareva are two Lithuanian girls who have been tricked into leaving their country for lives as whores (not the waitresses they believed they would be), the property of a man they call Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp. As the book opens the girls have been working for him for 3 years, servicing 12 clients every day and have become fractured souls in the process. On this particular day Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp beats Lydia so badly that neighbours call the police and she is hospitalised. This enables her to put her long-dreamed-of escape into action.

These threads unfold and intertwine expertly. The pace is fast, and the action credible. The ending is horrific but, in the best noir tradition, is entirely suitable. Although the violence and abysmal treatment of the two women is described in quite graphic detail it never felt gratuitous to me. There was no revelling in the descriptions here, merely a factual accounting of events and their impact that would surely make even the toughest reader weep. I have read books dealing with this theme before but none has touched me in quite the way this one did; keeping me awake, making me seethe with anger and feel impotent that there is nothing I can do about the real-world examples this fiction is surely based on.

The characters, even the minor ones, are vivid. Lydia and Alena are credible in addition to being heart-wrenching and that’s not an easy combination to achieve. But they will stay with me, especially Lydia, and her truth. Ewert Grens will, unfortunately, stay with me too. He is a self-absorbed, dysfunctional, cowardly, bigoted, hypocrite. I regularly fall in love with fictional characters but it’s very rare for me to fall in hate; Grens is an exception. While he is the worst of the bunch there isn’t a remotely decent male in the entire book, which is the only real qualm I have about it. I shy away from unintelligent generalisations about any population group and I know in my heart that all men are not the bastards they are collectively depicted as here (though I might have argued differently in the wee hours of this morning as my anger at the book’s resolution swirled around my un-sleeping brain).

I baulked at giving a book which made me feel so wretched, a book in which there is no lightness, no levity and never even the merest suggestion of a happy ending a five star-rating. But in the end I had no choice. Box 21 does everything I could ask of fiction: it transported me into another world, it introduced me to people I will never forget and it explored social issues thoughtfully and so credibly that I have lost sleep.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

As I lay awake being haunted by Lydia and Alena last night I looked up what I could about real-world human trafficking. The best site I found was HumanTrafficking.Org which lists each country of the world in which trafficking takes place (either to or from) and lays out the legal and other efforts to control it. It didn’t do much for my insomnia but I did feel better informed. I’m also looking for a credible charity to donate to that works in this area. If anyone knows of one let me know, it would be good to find one close to home (having discovered that Australia is a large destination country for human traffickers) but I’ll consider them all.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This book has been reviewed at Kittling Books (where Cathy prompted me to put the book on my TBR shelf where it sat for 2 years plastered with a post-it that read “don’t read when sad”), Petrona and Reviewing the Evidence

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Author website http://www.roslund-hellstrom.com/
Translator none named (so I have to assume the authors did it themselves as the book was originally published in Swedish)
Publisher Picador [2009]
ISBN 9780312655341
Length 393 pages
Format horrible floppy paperback with really thin yucky paper
Book Series It is the sequel to Beast which was also published in English but there are several earlier books which have not been translated (so far).
Source I bought it

Review: What Was Lost by Catherine O’Flynn

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This is my favourite book of the year so far. It’s a bit early to tell but I suspect it will be hard to beat for the rest of the year. It might even be my favourite book of the decade. Or the century. Or …you know…of forever.

It is I suppose one of life’s cruel ironies that the books I love most are the ones I find it most difficult to write about. I have even wondered if there is something sinister at work in my subconscious. Do I perhaps not want to explain it properly so that I won’t tempt you to read it too and then I can keep all its luscious wonderfulness to myself? Honestly I don’t know the answer to that (and I daren’t go near a psychiatrist to find out) but I’ll try to tempt you to read it in spite of my evil other self.

The first part of the tale introduces us to 10 year-old Kate Meaney. It is 1984 and Kate lives in Birmingham in England, has recently opened her own detective agency and even received her first commission (to investigate sweet pilfering at the local newsagent’s). Her trainee partner is Mickey, a stitched monkey wearing a pin-striped gangster suit and spats who travels in a canvas army surplus bag. We are given details of Kate’s day-to-day life (school, home, her surveillance work, how she would advertise her agency on the bus etc) which might sound dull but I was utterly gripped from the beginning. Although there is sadness in Kate’s life it never overwhelms her because she is so dedicated to making a go of being a detective, an element of the novel which is portrayed so deftly that as a reader I accepted this rather ludicrous premise without a second thought. I was so absorbed in finding out how the agency, and Kate, would flourish I completely forgot the book was ostensibly crime fiction. Until Kate vanished into thin air.

The next part of the book takes place twenty years later when we meet two new characters. Kurt and Lisa don’t know each other though both work at Green Oaks, a large shopping centre. Kurt is a night-shift security guard and Lisa is a duty manager at a music mega store. Neither of them planned to spend their lives at such work and we slowly learn what has led both of them to be there and we get some insight into their less than fulfilling jobs. Green Oaks is the place where Kate Meaney used to undertake much of her surveillance work and one night Kurt spots a small girl with a stuffed monkey on his CCTV monitor which, eventually, makes him the subject of ridicule by the centre’s staff as they all, including Lisa, hear about his encounter with a phantom. Or was it?

The way the story is told is clever but not too clever if that makes sense. There is tension and suspense but it never goes over the line into melodrama, and the way that the various threads and tangents are drawn together is intelligent, compelling and unpredictable. It was one of those books I took every opportunity to read more of, and ended up being 45 minutes late for work so I could finish it. At the same time as the terrific story unfolds we’re treated to a series of beautiful, funny and astute observations about the people of this part of Birmingham and the horror that is Green Oaks. The encounters that the protagonists all have with the shopping centre’s customers are superbly accurate (it’s clear O’Flynn has worked in retail) and her broader wistfulness at the loss of community that such centres have induced is also evident, though never in a preachy way.

I’m running out of superlatives but the characters are tremendously engaging too. They’re not soppy or sentimental even though all of them have sadness in their lives. This is somehow balanced though by the humour and warmth and what my Aunt Nell would have called pluck so that the reader is not burdened by sadness for them. I have really vivid images of them all in my head, helped I think by Colleen Prendergast’s narration which is outstanding.

Another thing I loved about the book is its length. At 6 hours and 33 minutes the only shorter books of the 112 I’ve listened to since I started keeping track of such things are four Agatha Christie novels and Ken Bruen’s The Dramatist. The reason I mention length is that sometimes I feel like authors are being paid by the kilo for their output with the result that half the words in some books are superfluous, detracting from rather than adding to the reading experience. In this book each word adds something to the whole and not a single one is wasted or unnecessary.

I don’t really feel as if I’ve managed to properly convey what made the book such a rewarding reading experience for me (perhaps evil Bernadette prevails) but I really do hope I’ve tempted you to read one of my new favourite books of all time. And that you enjoy it just as much as I did.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

What Was Lost has been reviewed at Euro Crime,

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Narrator Colleen Prendergast
Publisher ISIS Audio books [this edition 2008, original edition 2007]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 6 hours 33 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it

Review: Exile by Denise Mina

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11

The second book of a trilogy, Exile continues the story of Maureen O’Donnell, abuse survivor, ex-mental patient, reluctant volunteer shelter-worker and genuine heroine for the age. Having survived the dramatic events depicted in Garnethill Maureen is spending her days trying not to cry and volunteering in the office at the Place of Safety women’s shelter. When Ann Harris, one of the women who had stayed at the shelter after supposedly being beaten by her husband Jimmy, goes missing no one but Maureen’s best mate Leslie seems bothered. When Leslie involves Maureen in the search for Ann, Maureen soon learns that all is not what it seems in Ann’s life.

I’ve put off plucking this book from my TBR pile for ages. Though there was a little apprehension that it might not live up to its predecessor (one of my top ten reads of 2009) my main reason is that I wanted to save it for a time when I needed a guaranteed great read. Happily my ‘second book’ apprehension was completely unfounded and Exile delivered on its promise of being an absorbing, gut-wrenchingly sad and darkly funny book.

It’s hard to know which of the dozens of brilliant things about this book to highlight in a short review but I have to comment on the writing which is superb. It is richly descriptive without an ounce of floweriness or unnecessary length and seems to leap off the page in its desire to be read, savoured and rolled around one’s tongue. There are gems scattered all throughout the novel but perhaps they’re illustrated best in Mina’s descriptions of her characters. Leslie is introduced with “…[her] hair was short and dirty and stuck up like a windswept hampster’s…She walked into every room as if she was there to get her money” while one of the policemen is described as “…an officious prick with a Freddie Mercury moustache and the social skills of a horny lap-dog”. That’s my kind of imagery.

The characters are another standout feature of the novel. For me Exile is about an underclass of abandoned, abused and abjectly poor women who are heroes in exactly the way those our society labels as such never really are. Maureen is the kind of person you want to wrap in a hug due to the traumas she’s been through, then you would re-think the folly of hugging a cactus. She launches into everything at an often reckless full-throttle and is dogged, loyal and though plagued by self-doubts I’d want her on my side in any fight. Then there’s Leslie’s mother, having raised two generations of kids virtually on her own and nearly dropping with age and fatigue she is ready at a moment’s notice to go to the aid of Ann Harris’ 4 children to save them from going into care. Even Maureen’s own clinging, alcoholic of a mother sobers up when it looks like her grandchild will need her intervention. These are people I won’t forget in a hurry.

Finally there’s the story itself. Against the backdrop of Mina’s brutal, sad and violent Glasgow an utterly compelling tale unfolds. It’s only crime fiction in the loosest possible sense, being more a story of intertwined lives of desperation, courage and surviving bastardry in all its forms. And for me the thing that saved it from being worthy misery lit, which a book tackling such subjects as this one does could easily become, is the vein of dark but totally credible humour evident from beginning to end. As if Mina is saying this is how real people do it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I reviewed the first book in the trilogy, Garnethill, in 2009

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦
My rating 5/5
Author website http://www.denisemina.co.uk/
Publisher Bantam Books [2000]
ISBN 9780553813272
Length 446 pages
Format paperback
Book Series #2 of Garnethill trilogy
Source I bought it

Review: Pandaemonium by Christopher Brookmyre

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13

I have been reading pretty solidly for 39 years and by now I have a fairly good idea of the kinds of books I like and the kinds of ones I don’t. But not wanting to be entirely predictable I occasionally try something that I think will not be my sort of thing. Just in case. Usually this works out as expected. For example I thought Eat, Pray, Love would be utter pants and it was. But there was a slim chance that it might not have been so I gave it a go. For another example I didn’t really expect to like a horror story in which most of the plot is driven by teenagers (horror being something I grew out of when I was about 20) (around the time I last had a lot to do with teenagers en masse). But in this instance the slim chance was in my favour. I loved Pandaemonium.

The story is a simple one. The senior students of St Peter’s Catholic High School are taken on retreat to a remote spot in the Scottish highlands because one of their classmates stabbed another one of their classmates to death and someone in authority thinks that a bit of hiking is just the thing to get them all over their ordeal. Unfortunately their camp site is next door to a mysterious Ministry of Defence facility at which experimentation goes awry in a major way and the gates of somewhere closely resembling Hell are opened to unleash creatures intent on killing all humans they encounter. The kids therefore have to stop their dancing and snogging and fight for their lives with not much more than their wits and a rolled up tea towel.

A little bit more than half of the story takes place before the fighting of monsters begins which should be a point against the book but Brookmyre takes care to paint such vivid and varied portraits of the children, their teachers and even some of the military types that by the time the monster-fighting started I was heavily invested in the survival of the characters. Their secrets, heartaches, crushes and worries are so credibly human that you can’t help but fall in love with them collectively and hope they’ll triumph over the daemons which you know are just around the corner.

And while on a surface level the language and the violence (I’ll be honest, neither are for the faint-hearted) might lead some to think the book is just cursing and gore there is another level to it. There is the gently laid out moral tale that you wish all teenagers could be made to understand without having to go through the trauma of seeing their friends mutilated beyond recognition. And then there is the deep and very thoughtful questioning of both the trappings of organised religion and the very nature of faith itself. This theme is also not for the faint-hearted though if like me you spent 12 unhappy years in a Catholic girls’ school you just might identify with one of the students and her musings

Most of the time Caitlin can just zone out during mass, let her mind drift so that the tedium passes quicker but occasionally she can’t help but pay attention and that’s when the sheer inanity of it really grates on her cognitive faculties…We believe in one God, the father the almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen, a.k.a the intelligent designer. The Vatican had latterly decided it could accommodate evolution within its view of creation, largely because it could no longer accommodate the embarrassment it was feeling by continuing to do otherwise, but it was adamant that acceptance of evolution didn’t preclude God from having started it. Yes, God set in motion this astronomically complex process but knew all along despite the infinitely branching possibilities created by an incalculable multiplicity of random factors that the end product would be mankind. Begging the question if that was always the plan why did he take the long way round instead of creating mankind right off the bat?…Having waited 9 billion years for earth to form then having held off for another 4 and a half billion for his chosen species to fully evolve he blows his wad early by sending down his Messiah during the Bronze Age? If he wanted us to believe in him and to live by his word couldn’t he have hung on another infinitesimal couple of millennia and sent his miracle working super hero ambassador in the age of broadcast media and other verifiable means of record instead of staking 13 and a half billion years work on the reliability of a few goat herders in an insignificant backwater of a primitive civilization?

Which of course brings us to the writing itself. It is bitingly clever, funny and quick and you sense that every individual word has been carefully considered before being slotted into exactly the right place. How else would a description of teenagers as “sophomoric mind clones pathetically enslaved by the tyranny of cool” come about?

Pandaemonium is undoubtedly not for everyone. If you don’t like rude language, horror-style violence or the questioning of religious dogma then I’d suggest you stay away. But if you can live with those things and enjoy great writing and human characters with all their foibles then give it a go. Even if it doesn’t sound like your kind of thing there’s a slim chance you’ll love it and sometimes taking a risk pays off.

What about the audio book?

Gorgeous. Simply gorgeous. Though (confession time) I might be a little biased. It is narrated by a Scottish bloke (Kenny Blyth) and I adore the Scottish accent. Seriously. A Scottish lad could read me the phone book and I would swoon. Heck I’d swoon even if it was a Scottish lassie. But still, it’s a delight to listen to.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5
Author website I couldn’t find one so head to Wikipedia
Narrator Kenny Blyth
Publisher ISIS Audio Books [2009]
ISBN N/A (downloaded from audible.com)
Length 13 hours 3 minutes
Format audio (mp3)
Book Series standalone
Source I bought it