Category Archives: 5 Stars

Review: The Dramatist by Ken Bruen

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Roughly as many friends told me I would love Ken Bruen as told me I wouldn’t. I would love him because he is a brilliant writer or I wouldn’t because noir is not really my thing and/or I wouldn’t ‘get’ him.

‘They’ (or half of them anyway) were right. I loved The Dramatist.

It is the fourth novel in a series featuring Jack Taylor, former policeman in the Irish Guarda with a self-destructive personality that manifests itself most obviously in a series of addictions (alcohol, booze, nicotine) and poor handling of personal relationships. At the start of The Dramatist he is newly sober (through choice) and free of illegal drugs (because his cocaine dealer is in prison). Ostensibly the plot is driven by Taylor being asked by said drug dealer to investigate the death of his sister which has been ruled an accident by police. But really it is just the continuing story of Jack’s meandering, blighted life.

I don’t know how to pitch that the story of one Irish drunk’s life is worth reading so you’ll just have to trust me. Despite the fact that Jack’s investigation runs to not much more than a couple of phone calls and badgering one of his old colleagues a few times there is a load going on here and it’s all captivating. With black ‘you should feel guilty for laughing’ humour Jack struggles with his addictions, entangles himself with women, a priest and some nasty vigilantes and observes the political and social changes in his world in a way that makes it impossible to stop reading. I should also point out that although I haven’t read the first three books in the series there are enough reminiscences to ensure I didn’t feel lost.

The story is told in Jack’s first-person point of view which is normally not something I enjoy but is well-suited here as it allows us to see the best and the worst of Jack who may not be likable but is compelling. Friends, of the kind that don’t mind being dismissed most of the time, and the inevitable enemies swirl in and around Jack’s life. Sometimes he is nice to them, like the lovely moment when he tries to cheer up the elderly lady who runs the small hotel he lives in, but more often he isn’t, because it just doesn’t come naturally. All of them though are totally believable and I really did get sucked into this world. I was going to say ‘drawn into’ but that would suggest I had a choice and after the first 10 minutes or so I had to keep listening.

To be fair the other half of my friends were right too, I don’t always enjoy noir. It’s not the darkness of the subject I mind nearly as much as when there is absolute certainty from the outset that the darkness will prevail.  Where there is certainty there is boredom for me as a reader. I like most of all to be kept wondering. What Bruen does to perfection  with The Dramatist is tease readers with the possibility that things might not end in darkness after all. While there are events in the story that are very dark indeed there are also incidents in which things for Jack border on peachy and therein lies the tantalising hook. Will this incident trigger his downward spiral? Or that one? Or might there not be a downturn at all? Until the last moment of the book I didn’t know and that’s all I can ask.

If you’ve read Charles Ardai’s brilliant definition of noir (and if you haven’t, go now) then you’ll know that

“In noir novels…any apparent order is generally illusory; things don’t work the way they’re supposed to; justice is rare and, when present, often accidental….It’s a broken promise. It’s a book that betrays us and that we love for it…”

That’s The Dramatist in a nutshell: accidental justice and a brutally broken promise. It was the end that tipped the book from good to great for me. It’s 36 hours since I uttered a loud “no” upon hearing the completely unexpected event as I walked through my office building’s lobby and I still can’t quite rid myself of a lingering sadness (not to mention the funny looks I’m still getting from the security guards who were on duty at the time). But I also know that the ending was the perfect one for the book and that’s such a rare thing to find that I will savour it, sadness and all.

What about the audio book?

With the story being written from the first person point of view and with Gerry O’Brien’s mild Irish lilt I really felt like Jack Taylor was telling me his own story in his own words.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5
Narrator Gerry O’Brien
Publisher Isis Audio Books [this edition 2010, originally 2003]
ISBN N/A (audio download)
Length 4 hours 24 minutes
Format download from audible.com
Source My collection

Review: Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland

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I try quite hard to have no expectations of the books I read. Even if I have enjoyed an author’s work before there is no guarantee I will do so the next time and sometimes I disagree with even my favourite reviewers. But I admit to tingling with anticipation when notified by the bookseller that my pre-order of Gunshot Road had left the warehouse and was on its way to me. I read it as the last book in my Aussie Author Challenge for this year.

Emily Tempest has become the world’s most unlikely cop, an Aboriginal Community Police Officer no less. On her first day on the job in Bluebush in the Northern Territory she is one of the officers called to the scene of a stabbing out at Green Swamp Well. On the surface it looks like an open and shut case: two old drunks got into a fight and one stabbed the other in the neck. But to Emily, who knows both the victim (Doc) and the suspect (Wireless), something doesn’t feel right and she can’t let the investigation slide.

Gunshot Road has it all. Literally. Everything I could possibly want from a work of fiction all in one gorgeous package.

First there are fantastic characters. Emily Tempest is brave and stubborn and smart and funny and, as was the case with the first book in which she features, I’m still not entirely sure how a bloke can create such a credible female character but I’m delighted he has. In this book she is more mature than in her first outing though she still struggles when she knows what she should do is not what she wants to do and usually her heart wins out over her head. For better or worse.

There are plenty of other beautifully depicted characters to look out for too. Like the teenage Aboriginal boy called Danny who is deeply troubled by something and unable to communicate his fears to Emily. And the town’s new top cop, taciturn and uncomprehending of all the things he doesn’t know, but trying to do the right thing in his way. And of course the setting, the harsh land in the country’s centre, is just as much a character as any person in the book.

The desert isolation, the unrelenting heat, the laconic humour, the often awkward relationships between blacks and whites all combine to form an unmistakably Australian story. It’s not always a pretty one though and no one could accuse Hyland of trying to make it so because he tackles touch subjects such as the rampant domestic abuse of women in Aboriginal communities, endemic poverty and racism. However he somehow manages to do it without once lecturing from a self-proclaimed moral high ground. That’s a much rarer trait than it ought to be in modern literature.

Next there is writing that made me simultaneously jealous at someone else’s ability to string words together in a way that I will never be able to and grateful that he didn’t keep his gift to himself.  This is from the opening chapter about an initiation

The town mob: fractured and deracinated they might have been, torn apart by idleness and violence, by Hollywood and booze. But moments like these, when people come together, when they try to recover the core, they gave you hope.

It was the songs that did it: the women didn’t so much sing them as pick them up like radio receivers. You could imagine those great song cycles rolling across country, taking their shape from what they encountered: scraps of language, minerals and dreams, a hawk’s flight, a feather’s fall, the flash of a meteorite.

The resonance of that music is everywhere, even here, on the outskirts of the whitefeller town, out among the rubbish dumps and truck yards. It sings along the wires, it rings off bitumen and steel.

I could go on but I’d end up quoting the whole book. In short, Hyland’s writing is a thing of beauty and the entire book is, in part, one long ode to its country.

Finally there is a great story and Gunshot Road is a more solid piece of crime fiction than its predecessor. For the first half of the novel there’s a fairly slow, humorous approach to the investigation as we’re introduced to all the players and people tease Emily about her new obsession. Then at a certain point the novel switches gears and speeds up as it becomes more serious and foreboding. Together these halves make up a perfectly paced story with a genuine nail-biting finish.

Heck the book even incorporates, glorifies actually, geology, my favourite science. What more could I possibly ask for? Gunshot Road is a funny, beautiful, sad and thoughtful book that everyone should read. Immediately.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Publisher Quercus [2010]; ISBN 9781849162158; Length 369 pages

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I read, and loved, Adrian Hyland’s first novel featuring Emily Tempest, Diamond Dove (a.k.a Moonlight Downs in the US) last year.

Gunshot Road has also been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction, International Noir Fiction, Kittling Books and Petrona

Review: Thirteen Hours by Deon Meyer

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This is the last book I needed to read to complete the 2010 CWA International Dagger Award shortlist and is the third book I have read by Deon Meyer.

The story takes place across a single day. In the early Cape Town morning almost simultaneously a young girl’s body is found in a churchyard and a record producer is discovered dead in his home with his alcoholic wife sleeping nearby. Both cases are high profile and require urgent action, the first because it soon becomes clear that there is another young girl, an American tourist called Rachel Anderson, on the run from the people responsible for the dead girl and the second because if the man’s wife didn’t kill him then the most likely suspect is a celebrated gospel singer.  Two relatively new detectives, Vusumuzi Ndabeni (Vusi) and Fransman Dekker, are put in charge of one case each. Both are being mentored by Benny Griessel who is something of a dinosaur in ‘the new South Africa’ but who has lots of knowledge and experience to share if Vusi and Dekker choose to learn from him. Benny is under enormous pressure from himself and everyone around him. Can he still cut it when it matters?

A few weeks ago I described my perfect thriller. I said

If a thriller has

  • A twisty, turn-y plot that clips along at a decent pace and offers a pay-off for my investment of time (e.g. family reunited/world saved/justice done)
  • At least a couple of characters who, if not exactly three-dimensional, provide enough humanity that I care whether they live (or die), triumph over adversity (or fail) or right a wrong (or don’t).

it will probably get a rating of 3 (= decent/solid entertaining read) on my personal scale. There is a chance of extra points for humour, above-average excitement levels, deeper than usual exploration of a theme that interests me, a male character who doesn’t viewevery woman he meets as a potential bed mate or a female character who doesn’t look like a supermodel yet, miraculously, proves to have some value to the world anyway. Keeping the car chases short and detailed descriptions of weaponry to a minimum also scores bonus points.

Thirteen Hours gets a tick for each and every one of these points and a bonus for something I didn’t include above (but should have): an ending that didn’t make me roll my eyes and/or wish I’d stopped reading 30 pages beforehand. In essence it’s a perfect example of its genre and I absolutely loved it.

In thrillers plot is king and here the story is fast, unpredictable and has just the right level of complication. We switch back and forth between the two cases with often breathtaking speed and there are no convenient spots at which to pause for respite. This is the kind of book that the ‘page-turner’ cliché should be reserved for as I literally tore pages in my haste to find out what would happen next.

What excites me even more than a great story though is characters who involve and engage me and Thirteen Hours has bunches of them. Benny Griessel is intriguing: a recovering alcoholic struggling to re-connect with his family as well as find a place for himself in the newly restructured police force. But far from being dour or melancholic he’s funny and philosophical while still driven to do his job well for all the right reasons. His two mentees are equally interesting though vastly different people from Benny. Vusi is a quiet man reflecting on his mother’s simple view of the new world while finding his feet in a city new to him and Dekker is angry about prejudices he has been subject to as a coloured man in a black and white South Africa. There are plenty of other deft portrayals too and never knowing who would be a minor character and who would play a larger role made them all the more interesting.

Perhaps it didn’t hurt that the buzzing of the dreaded vuvuzela accompanied my reading of the last few chapters of the book (during the opening moments of the football world cup final) but another of the things that the book does beautifully is create a sense of its location. It is done more subtly than in Meyer’s previous books, such as when Rachel’s parents learn about South Africa’s crime rate from the internet and an when an elderly man who briefly helps Rachel discusses the country’s past and future, but it has no less of an impact for that. All the complications of a country in a state of great change where people of all backgrounds are both eager for and fearful of the new ways are played out in a myriad of small but fascinating details.

It’s not often that I feel like describing a book as perfect but I simply cannot think of a single thing I would change about Thirteen Hours. It has everything you’d want in a thriller and loads more besides, and is the hefty object I shall be hurling at the very next person who says in my hearing that crime fiction isn’t real literature.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Translator K L Seegers Publisher Hodder & Stoughton [this edition 2010, original edition 2008]; ISBN 9780340953600; Length 412 pages

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Thirteen Hours has also been reviewed at Crime Scraps, Euro Crime, Material Witness, International Noir Fiction and Reviewing the Evidence

Deon Meyer’s Devil’s Peak was one of my top ten reads for 2008 and Dead at Daybreak was another excellent book of his that I read this year.

Review: The Darkest Room by Johan Theorin

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Johan Theorin’s first book was one of my top ten reads of last year so I didn’t need much incentive to settle down with his second novel, though being able to count it towards my 2010 Scandinavian Reading Challenge obligation and knowing it’s one of the four books I have left to read on the CWA International Dagger shortlist didn’t hurt.

Even though I read it alone and there wasn’t a campfire in sight reading The Darkest Room was a similar experience to having sat at the feet of an old-fashioned storyteller and become engrossed in his latest tale. Different threads and themes are woven together in a way that would be a disaster in a lesser craftsman’s hands but in Theorin’s, who is clearly a master of his craft, the sensitively translated product is deliciously atmospheric.

The novel centres on a house which was originally built from timber washed ashore after a shipwreck in 1846. The house, at Eel Point on the remote Swedish island of Öland, has seen many inhabitants in the subsequent decades and the book reveals what happened to some of them in between recounting the story of the house’s current owners Katrine and Joakim Westin. Just as they and their children are settling into their new home after moving from Stockholm tragedy strikes the family, as it has befallen many of the house’s previous occupants, and Theorin teases us by slowly revealing that things are not as they might first have seemed. Are there ghosts at Eel Point or does the danger that lurks take a more earthly form?

In addition to the Westins we meet Tilda Davidsson, a recently graduated police officer who is the sole officer operating full-time out of a newly re-opened station in one of the island’s towns. Her job is primarily a community liaison though she does have at least one more serious investigation to worry about as the island experiences a string of burglaries. As well as being an interesting character in her own right Tilda’s familial relationships offer a way for Theorin to include Gerlof Davidsson here, who was my favourite figure in the first book, Echoes from the Dead. There just aren’t enough clever octogenarians featured in fiction these days and even though Gerlof’s role is a more minor one I appreciated his insights as Tilda records his thoughts and stories in an informal oral history.

I know that saying that a book’s setting is a character is frowned upon in some reviewing circles but I can’t think of any other way to describe the presence in this story of the house in particular and the island in general. The action takes place in the Northern winter when the island is at its coldest, harshest and least inviting. Snow, ice and storms feature heavily and I can’t be the only reader to have reached for a warming cup of tea and another blanket as I lost myself in the tale. Aside from the natural environment the book also explores a theme that Theorin is clearly engaged by, namely the social changes the island has seen as Sweden has moved from being an agricultural based society to a more urbanised one.

There are plenty of other aspects of this absorbing book I could talk about but I’m wary of giving spoilers and frankly further discussion on my part is just taking you away from your next task which is to track down a copy of the book. Now. It is part historical fiction, part ghost story, part whodunit, and part sailor’s yarn. It is wholly enjoyable and recommended to all.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Translator Marlaine Delargy; Publisher Black Swan [this edition 2010, original edition 2009]; ISBN 9780552774611; Length 474 pages

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Among the many places The Darkest Room has been reviewed are Crime Scraps*, Crimetime, EuroCrime, DJ’s Krimiblog, It’s A Crime (or a Mystery)* and Mysteries in Paradise (The reviews with an asterisk next to them are both quite lovely but they do give away a little more of the plot than I would like to have known before embarking on this particular book)

Review: A Thousand Cuts by Simon Lelic

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I read this book because Maxine told me to (and even sent me her copy because she is so lovely). I have learned (the hard way) to listen to her and only to her :)

As the book opens we learn there has been a shooting at a London school and that three students, a teacher and the gunman are dead. Lucia May is the police Detective assigned the case but everyone, including her boss and the school’s headmaster, assumes she will wrap it up neatly and quickly. However as she interviews those connected to the shooting she unravels the thousands of moments of bullying and torment that led to the shooting and realises it’s not an open and shut case.

Most of the short chapters in the book are a succession of the interviewee’s sides of Lucia’s discussions with those connected to the shooting including students, parents and teachers. Although we jump quickly from one voice to another I never once had difficulty in working out who was talking or following the action. The different perspectives are depicted cleverly, without gimmickry of any kind and are stunningly realistic. Some of them hit me like a punch to the stomach while others made me weep with sadness. But despite being knocked around by the conflicting emotions I simply could not stop reading.

Interspersed along the way are more traditional narrative chapters told from Lucia’s perspective though these have no less emotional impact. As the sole woman in a squad of men all but one of whom continuously tease her about things like being raped, participate in gross practical ‘jokes’ at her expense and physically torment her, Lucia’s working life is unbearable. The cloying sense of dread that she feels whenever she has to interact with her colleagues is, again, incredibly realistic. She is demonstrably affected by her situation physically and psychologically but, perhaps because there are parallels between her circumstances and the events that led to the shooting, she perseveres with her investigation.

In one sense this book is an easy read being relatively short and not, to me anyway, appearing to have a single unnecessary word. It flows beautifully and is truly compelling. In terms of content however it’s hard going. The violence of the shooting is not described in graphic detail but the violence, fear and torment prevalent in this community is portrayed in the written equivalent of full colour so that you can’t just read and forget. These people and this story will stay with me for a long time.

One of the (many) things that saddens me about the state of modern media is that coverage of real-world events like the one that is the subject of A Thousand Cuts is so superficial. For a couple of days there is outraged coverage about guns/bad parenting/heavy metal music/government regulations or whatever other nonsense is decreed as the evil of the day. After that, after the blame has been laid at the feet of some object or person far removed from ‘normal’ society all is forgotten. What Lelic has done is show how implausible it is that any such event could ever be so clearly linked to a simple identifiable cause and that it’s far more likely that we’re all responsible because of the things we do or say, and the things we don’t do or say, every day.

A Thousand Cuts is beautiful, intimate and sad. Read it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Publisher Viking [2010]; ISBN 9780670021505; Length 294 pages

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Thousand Cuts has the title Rupture in the UK, with one or other title the book has been reviewed at Euro Crime (by the aforementioned Maxine), Reading Matters,  Reviewing the Evidence, It’s A Crime (Or A Mystery)


Review: Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indriðason

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Prior to this book I’d only read one of Arnaldur Indriðason’s Erlendur series, Jar City which I liked but didn’t love. However, when Hypothermia became available at my local library I thought I’d use it as my first book to count towards the 2010 Scandinavian Challenge being hosted by Amy at The Black Sheep Dances.

A woman is found hanged in her weekend cottage but all indicators point to suicide. Erlendur of the Reykjavik Police must talk to the woman’s husband but it seems to be a matter of routine. At around the same time Erlendur is reminded of one of his earliest cases: the disappearance some 30 years previously of a young man named David whose father is now dying and Erlendur feels obligated to look into the case one last. Although there is no identifiable action to take on either case Erlendur finds them occupying his thoughts and he becomes somewhat obsessed by uncovering the facts relating to each incident.

I’ve been trying for a couple of days but I can’t seem to explain why I found a book in which there’s not a great deal of action as quite as compelling and moving as I did.

As I read the book almost in a single sitting, I fell asleep at about 2:00am with a handful of pages to go and quickly devoured them the next morning, the word that kept popping into my head was yearning. Maria, the woman whose body was found hanged, is yearning so much for her mother who recently died and her father who died many years earlier that she is driven to seek out psychics and mediums. Erlendur too is yearning for a resolution to his own childhood tragedy which saw his only brother disappear forever in a wild storm one night. Erlendur adult daughter forces her estranged parents to talk with each other so that she might know the kind of family life she never had. And what dying father of a long-disappeared young man wouldn’t yearn to know what had happened to a much-loved son?

The way this is all teased out is via a rather simple but effective plot which involves Erlendur talking to the friends, relatives and acquaintances of both Maria and David and slowly piecing together each jigsaw puzzle. He does it without any official warrant so has virtually no assistance from his colleagues but the book is still a procedural of sorts I suppose.

Frozen Lake Þingvellir

Of course it’s impossible for a monolingual person like me to know for certain but I feel, by virtue of its invisibility if nothing else, that the translation is sensitive to the author’s original intent. It is certainly a very readable book in its English form. The sense of place in the book too is strong. Physically this is primarily due to the setting of several key scenes in and around Iceland’s lakes, in particular Lake Thingvellir (when Erlendur and his daughter spend a day driving around to see several lakes I couldn’t help but hit google for some images). Intellectually we see the interconnectedness between people and events that must be a part of life in a country of only 300,000 people and there is an undercurrent of the country’s folklore sitting, however uncomfortably, side by side with things modern.

Hypothermia is without the kind of explosive drama that a lot of crime fiction thrives on but, for me anyway, the subtle drama of these exquisitely depicted, intertwining stories was equally as intriguing. It is sad, though not depressing, thoughtful and ultimately quite beautiful.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Translator: Victoria Cribb; Publisher: Harvill Secker [200]; ISBN: 9781846552625; Length 314 pages; Setting: Iceland, present day

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Hypothermia is reviewed beautifully, as always, by Maxine at Euro Crime,

Review: Awakening by S J Bolton

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I picked up Awakening a couple of nights ago and planned to read for 10 minutes before heading to bed. Before I knew it I was on page 162, had a crick in my neck from sitting so still and was semi-seriously pondering whether I could call in sick the next day. I’m not (quite) that irresponsible but I did stay up way too late the next night because I simply had  to  know. It’s been a while since a book hooked me like this and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

Awakening is set in a small English village. One morning, Clara Benning, a wildlife vet who lives in the village, receives a desperate plea for help from a neighbour who reports a snake has made its way into her baby’s cot. Unfortunately, incidents involving snakes only increase and become more dangerous and Clara gets caught up in events in a quite terrifying way.  I’m not going to reveal any more of the plot because one of the things that made the book so gripping for me was that I didn’t know anything about what to expect next and if you should choose to read the book you should have the same chance. All I’ll say is that it was full of suspense and unexpected turns and it’s one of very, very few of the many 500+ page books I’ve read recently that I haven’t mentally edited as I read.

Another  aspect of the book that hooked me was Clara, from whose perspective the story is told. She’s clever and brave but a bit of a curmudgeon (though a young one) which would all be good enough but there’s an additional element provided by her badly scarred face.  Bolton has done a terrific job of depicting how the presence of the scarring has influenced Clara’s development and behaviour and choices in life and I found myself interested in Clara for her own sake as well as for her contribution to plot development.

There are some other good characters, including the local Assistant Superintendent and a Steve Irwin-style reptile expert and documentary maker but the other ‘character’ that really stands out is the village itself. It’s people as a collective and a dark event in its history play a key role in the story which is yet another reminder that rural life isn’t always as idyllic as the postcards would have us city girls believe.

I enjoyed S J Bolton’s first book, Sacrifice, but found Awakening even better. Once again Bolton has created a credible picture of a remote setting, filled it with interesting people and has elevated her storytelling abilities to an even better art form.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Publisher: Transworld [2009]; ISBN: 9780552156141; Length 538  pages; Setting: England, present-day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Awakening has also been reviewed at Euro Crime and at D J’s Krimiblog where Dorte explains how she experienced a credibility issue with the book that spoiled it a bit for her.

Review: Mistress of the Art of Death by Ariana Franklin

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I am indebted to Norman (alias Uriah) (or is it t’other way ’round?) from Crime Scraps for introducing me to this book and the rather magnificent Adelia Aguilar. As is usually the way when I fall in love with a book I can’t quite explain why. Oh I can (and will) describe the things I liked about it but I can never seem to explain what sets the books I love apart from the books I like immensely. I find this annoying. Never-the-less, on with what will be a gushing review.

Mistress of the Art of Death drew me into its medieval English setting immediately with a present-tense opening description of a cavalcade of pilgrims, and three important foreigners, returning to Cambridgeshire after Easter in Canterbury. The foreigners are from Salerno in Italy and they are Simon of Naples (an investigator of renown), Adelia Aguilar (a qualified doctor who can ‘read’ corpses) and her manservant Mansur. They have been sent to Cambridgeshire because King Henry II asked the King of Sicily to send his best people to investigate a crime. One young boy has been horribly killed (crucified so they say) and several other children are missing. The town’s Jewish population, having been blamed for the atrocities, have been provided sanctuary in the King’s local castle but still they are hounded, afraid and, more importantly from King Henry’s point of view, unable to earn money from which they can pay him taxes.

Although it runs to 502 pages I gobbled up this book in a couple of settings, wishing I had the patience to take things more slowly because I didn’t want it to end but being unable to resist the pull of just a few more pages. The character of Adelia Aguilar would have been enough to capture my heart as she is a feisty, intelligent woman who is not afraid of telling things as they are as evidenced by this extract

It wasn’t that she had anything against the faith of the New Testament; left alone it would be a tender and compassionate religion…No, what Adelia objected to was the Church’s interpretation of God as a petty, stupid, money-grubbing, retrograde, antediluvian tyrant who, having created a stupendously varied world, had forbidden any enquiry into its complexity, leaving His people flailing in ignorance.

Eschewing romance (though not necessarily love) for science and the practice of medicine Adelia is unconventional in many ways but is very humane and thoughtful too. If she’s not enough for you there are a swag of other terrific characters here too. The housekeeper Gyltha and her grandson Ulf who both ‘test’ the foreigners in their way before giving them support and information in equal measure are treasures. As are Simon of Naples, a wise and moral investigator deeply in love with his wife; Prior Geoffrey, grateful for Adelia’s ministrations to his delicate prostate problems; and Sir Rowley Picot, initially a suspect in Adelia’s eyes but who goes on to become an object of her affection. Even the unsympathetic characters like Prioress Joan are well drawn.

I’m sure there are period scholars who could pull apart the book and find inaccuracies but I can’t and probably wouldn’t care if I could. From my limited knowledge there do not appear to be too many liberties taken with important factual elements incorporated into the story and the rich detail of daily life fascinated me. Medical practices, the grittiness of the Crusades, the treatment of women, the bigotry between religions, the interesting role played by Henry II in history (who always is upstaged in the history books by his later namesake and all his wives) are all depicted in a very engaging way. These details wrap themselves around a horrific crime, the essence of which at least was factual according to the author, which was recounted in such a compelling way that I was forced to stay up way past my bed time to finish.

Mistress of the Art of Death offered a delicious reading experience loaded with wit, terrific period imagery and details, an intriguing mystery and unpredictable, fascinating characters. I have already ordered the next adventure to feature Adelia and whoever else she takes with her on her next adventure.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating 5/5

Publisher: Bantam Books [2007]; ISBN: 978-0-553-81800-0 Length: 502 pages Setting England, year 1170-71

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Mistress of the Art of Death is reviewed at Crime Scraps (thanks again for the recommendation Norm), Dear Author, Euro Crime,  again at Euro Crime and at My Fluttering Heart. It is also used as the basis of an interesting commentary on historical fiction at Detectives Beyond Borders.

Review: A Beautiful Place to Die by Malla Nunn

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beautiful place to dieTitle: A Beautiful Place to Die

Author: Malla Nunn

Publisher: Pan MacMillan [2008]

ISBN: 978-1-405-03877-5

Length: 397 pages

Genre: Historical crime fiction / police procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: A stunningly confronting yet beautiful book.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In the early 1950′s in the small South African town of Jacob’s Rest the police captain, Willem Pretorius, is found brutally murdered. When Detective Sergeant Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate he struggles against the backdrop of the newly instituted racial segregation laws (apartheid) . Pretorius’ Afrikaner family want quick vengeance: they distrust Cooper who is English and assume it is the black community or coloureds who have killed their patriarch. At the same time the Security Police descend on the town and work on the theory that Pretorius was killed by a communist or other political activist and they soon sideline Cooper from their investigation.

Of the many striking things about this book the one that is likely to stay with me longest is the unflichingly honest picture it paints of the time and place in which it is set. So many engrossing details of both the political and physical setting are provided that I easily felt myself in the town of Jacob’s Rest with its roads for whites and its kaffir paths and its segregated Sunday church services with potluck dinners. I felt awkward and angry as the realities of the segregation laws were demonstrated through the story playing out but despite my discomfort I found myself unwilling to leave the place even for a moment and read the entire book in a single sitting.

On top of the setting the book has stunning characters. Cooper struggles with nightmares from his days in the trenches during the war and regularly argues with the voice of his former Sergeant Major. Although white he is distrusted by the powerful Afrikaners but also finds it hard to be accepted by the myriad second class citizens although, ultimately, it is a myriad collection of these people, including captain Pretorius’ Zulu ‘brother’ Constable Samuel Shabalala, who help him with his investigation. But it’s not only the sympathetic characters who are brilliantly depicted: Lieutenant Piet Lapping of the Special Branch is one of the most loathsome men you’ll find in crime fiction, all the more so because he’s entirely believable.

Of course none of this would be worth much if the book didn’t also tell a gripping story and there’s a real old-fashioned whodunnit here. In trying to uncover who killed Willem Pretorius Cooper uncovers a series of crimes that have been left unsolved because the victims weren’t white and also learns of Pretorius’ own moral lapses. He races to find what these events may have had to do with Pretorius’ death as he tries to salvage his own career from being ruined by the Special Branch.

This is yet another book that has everything I look for in my crime fiction and had me alternating between indignant mutterings under my breath, heart-in-my-mouth fear and more than a few tears.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A Beautiful Place to Die has been reviewed at Aust Crime Fiction,  Reviewing the Evidence and Crime Down Under

Malla Nunn was born ins Swaziland but lives in Australia so we’re claiming her as ours. This interview with her on Radio National’s Book Show last December prompted me to go out and buy the book (and it only took me 11 months to rescue it from the TBR pile).

Review: Don’t Look Back by Karin Fossum

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Title: Don’t Look Back [the second Inspector Sejer novel although the first in the series available in English]

don't look backAuthor: Karin Fossum [Translated by Felicity David]

Publisher: Harcourt Books [2002]

ISBN: 978-0-015-603136-3

Length: 295 pages

Genre: Police Procedural

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: Thoughtful, captivating and very, very readable.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

In a small Norwegian village the near-naked body of a teenage girl is found at the lake. Once they identify her as Annie Holland Inspector Konrad Sejer and Officer Jacob Skarre learn that everyone liked the athletic young girl who babysat for most of the village’s children although many people mention the change in her behaviour some months before her death. Having precious little in the way of evidence they have to determine whether it was just a normal part of growing up or whether there an event in her life that may have had something to do with her death.

I’ve had this book in my TBR pile for over a year and it may have continued to languish there among all the others but for this week’s crime fiction alphabet post by Maxine at Petrona. What struck me particularly was a quote from Fossum about being interested in “‘the good guy who does something evil’ rather than the bogeyman.” Although I have read my share of rampaging serial killer books I generally don’t find them as satisfying as those that explore the circumstances and motivations behind ordinary people reaching some kind of breaking point and so was keen to get stuck into the first Inspector Sejer book translated into English.

I knew absolutely nothing about the story when I started reading (I deliberately didn’t look at the blurb) and was hooked by the twist in the opening. As the book started I thought it was going to be about one sort of crime and just as I geared myself up for that it turned into something completely different. From then on the story was pieced together like an intricate jigsaw with many pieces needing to be turned this way and that before slotting into place to help reveal the whole picture. Without car chases or guns blazing the story managed to be suspense-filled and captivating from beginning to end as Sejer and Skarre teased out important details about village life from its inhabitants

Fossum builds up her characters in a similar way as she does the plot: slowly revealing their secrets, pasts and fears over the course of the book. As you’d expect with the main characters we develop a fairly clear picture of Sejer and Skarre over the course of the novel but the minor characters too are equally well depicted, even if only in one aspect of their lives. Annie’s father’s conversation with the man in charge of the crematorium is one of the most beautiful depictions of a grieving father I have read.

Don’t Look Back has all the things I love most in crime fiction: interesting, believable characters, a puzzle-like plot, a setting I can get lost in and a tangible credibility that sometime somewhere that exact scenario has played itself out in reality. Or will one day.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Don’t Look Back has been reviewed at Reading Matters and Thoughts of Joy