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Stuart Neville – Stolen Souls

Jan 21st, 2012 by

Author: Stuart Neville

Title: Stolen Souls

Publisher: Harvill Secker

Trade Paperback: 312 pages

ISBN: 978-1-846-55452-0

Price: £12.99

Publication Date: 26/01/2012


It’s not very often that you find a novel that grabs you by the neck and won’t let go. You know, the type of book that you settle down with, only intending to read a few chapters of before bed, and which is so compelling that you end up surfacing from it hours later as you turn the last page. Well, Stuart Neville’s latest novel, Stolen Souls, is exactly that kind of book.

Clammy, claustrophobic and filled with suspense, Neville has produced a taut novel that never lets up. It is a thriller of the highest order.

From the grisly opening scene in a small Belfast bedroom, where a young Ukrainian sex slave, Galya Petrova, murders the Lithuanian trafficker who is about to rape her, Stolen Souls grips like a vice and refuses to let go until the final page has turned.  And at the centre of it all is Galya. Tricked into leaving her homeland in search of work, she has been trafficked into prostitution. And, when she manages to escape from her captors but finds herself alone and on the run from the brutal henchmen of a ruthless criminal, Arturas Strazdas – who wants to extract his revenge upon the ‘property’ that killed his little brother.

The only person that she can call on is the man who gave her a silver cross and a phone number. The man who claims he can help her escape. But as Galya is about to discover, appearances can be deceptive…

Searching for her, as the clock ticks inexorably, is DI Jack Lennon [not to be confused with Jack Lemmon!!], who returns for his third novel in the series. Plagued by guilt after the death of his young daughter’s mother in Collusion, Jack is – like Galya – an increasingly isolated figure, in a world mired in corruption and danger.

But, whilst Lennon remains a fascinating and deeply flawed character, and an integral cog in the plot, it is Galya who is the novel’s beating heart and soul [title pun not intended – promise!!]. She’s a victim of circumstance and of bad luck, but you know that she will never give up – her inner strength will not allow it, and she is certainly a far cry from the stereotypical ‘damsel-in-distress’ found in crime fiction. From the moment that the reader meets her on the first page, with blood on her hands and two thugs beating on the room’s locked door, you find yourself rooting for her – desperate for her to escape and survive. And Neville puts us inside her head brilliantly, revealing her past, her hopes and her fears, and her atavistic drive to survive.

And, when she finds herself locked in a fortified old house in an industrial wasteland, hemmed in by locked doors and tempered glass windows, with no way of calling for help, you find yourself sharing her fears as Neville remorselessly ratchets up the tension and the already relentless pace.

At a little over three hundred pages in length, Stolen Souls is a seriously stripped, fast-paced thriller. Lean beyond belief, with all extraneous matter carved away, its rattling pace is further amplified by Neville’s brilliant use of short, punchy chapters and tightly controlled prose. Dark and bloody, Stolen Souls is certainly not for the faint-of-heart and you can certainly imagine Belfast’s Tourism Board being rather put out by Neville’s depiction of the city’s seedy and vicious underworld! An engrossing and pulse-pounding thriller from an author who just gets better and better with each book.

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Carol O’Connell – The Chalk Girl

Jan 14th, 2012 by

Author: Carol O’Connell

Title: The Chalk Girl

Publisher: Headline

Hardback: 448 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7553-8538-6

Price: £19.99

Publication Date: 17/01/2012


Carol O’Connell has never been what you would call a prolific author. It is two and a half years since her last novel – the brilliant, spellbinding Bone By Bone – was published. And it has been almost four years since her last Kathy Mallory book [2008’s Shark Music].

So, for me – a self-confessed O’Connell addict – the release of a new novel featuring the inimitable Kathy Mallory is something to be savoured. A beautiful sociopathic NYPD detective, Kathy [never, ever Kathleen!] is – as the shoutline on The Chalk Girl’s cover makes clear – a prototype and forerunner for Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander. Like Salander, Kathy is a constant outsider – unable to relate to those around her or feel empathy.

I have always been addicted to – and fascinated by – damaged characters in fiction. From Estella in Great Expectations [Dickens’s version rather than the recent BBC butchering of the character by making her nice!], to Salander [who was, for me, the only thing that made Larsson’s series more than just your average Scandi-crime books], to Dorothy Dunnett’s Francis Crawford of Lymond [in the incredible Lymond Chronicles series], and on to Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent [whose destructive ‘relationship’ with his wife, Angie Polaski, continues to fascinate], all are characters that I think that readers are drawn to because they want to understand and ‘fix’ them.

But Mallory stands supreme and triumphant over all of them – a fascinating mass of contradictions that I still haven’t worked out, even after ten novels! Tall, beautiful, with angelically curly blonde hair, catlike green eyes and a penchant for made-to-measure, designer cashmere blazers, Mallory seems more like a model than a detective. And yet she undercuts this image of femininity [and it is very much a constructed ‘image’] by her choice of firearm – a .357 Smith & Wesson [think of the hand cannon that Clint Eastwood waved around in Dirty Harry and you are on the right tracks!].

Like Salander, Mallory is also an incredibly good hacker and is more than willing to bend – and often break – the rules, in order to get what she wants. Indeed, rather than use the authority of her NYPD badge, she is more likely to flash her .357 to elicit fear and get things accomplished in a far speedier fashion.

The Chalk Girl sees Mallory – after Shark Music’s Route 66 setting – returning to her natural environment, New York. When a smiling, red-haired, bloodstained little girl named Coco is discovered in Central Park, she leads the police to discover a body in a tree. And in Coco Mallory recognizes a kindred spirit, one who leads her to uncover a years-old story of murder, violence, blackmail and cruelty. Cruelty that only someone with Mallory’s dark, dark past would understand…

As a novel, The Chalk Girl bears all of the hallmarks that have become associated with an O’Connell novel – there’s the raft of eccentric characters, the slightly surreal occurrences and the tight, dense, almost ‘floaty’ prose-style. I also loved the manner in which O’Connell uses Coco brings out a new, almost alien, side of Mallory – one where she almost seems to engage and care for someone. In many ways Coco can be read as a mini-Mallory [one at that point of her life when she needs a Markowitz-type to take her in – Louis Marcowitz having been the detective who, with his wife, adopted the wild young Mallory].

The one thing that did strike me is that the main characters – Mallory, Riker and Charles Butler – all seem to be slightly more accessible than they were in the early novels. This is especially true in the case of Mallory, who is far less disassociated and sociopathic in The Chalk Girl than at any other point in the series [which, you would imagine, will make her far more palatable for an audience that has been made more receptive to fictional sociopathic protagonists by the success of Stieg Larsson’s books and Jeff Lindsay’s Dexter series].

Ultimately, I absolutely loved The Chalk Girl – although, quite frankly, I’m highly biased. Whilst it certainly isn’t quite on a par with my favourite O’Connell novels, Flight of the Stone Angel and Bone By Bone, The Chalk Girl is still an exceptional piece of crime fiction and I doubt that many books published in the genre this year will come close to it. Something to be read slowly and carefully – and to be savoured.

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Karen Rose – No One Left To Tell

Jan 4th, 2012 by

Author: Karen Rose

Title: No One Left To Tell

Publisher: Headline

Hardback: 534 pages

ISBN: 978-0-7553-7394-9

Price: £16.99

Publication Date: 05/01/2012


It wasn’t until I had read about fifty pages of Karen Rose’s latest novel, No One Left To Tell, that I was finally able to scratch the nagging mental itch that had been plaguing me since I had opened the book.

Rose’s novels aren’t a series. At least not in the conventional crime fiction sense. But, occasionally, there is overlap between books – usually in the form of a character from one book reappearing in another novel. And, as I was reading No One Left To Tell, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I recognised its heroine – and principal protagonist – the beautiful martial arts expert and aspiring PI Paige Holden from somewhere else.

Try as I might though, I could not work out why she was so familiar. And it was starting to annoy me…

Until Paige was phoned by her friend, Olivia. And then I realised where I had seen Paige before. Because Olivia Sutherland and David Hunter were the main characters – and romantic leads – in Rose’s 2010 novel, Silent Scream. And Paige had been Olivia’s best friend! Somehow, despite the fact that it had been almost two years since I read Silent Scream [a period of time in which I had read hundreds of other books], something about Paige had stood out as a character – even though she had played a fairly minor role in Silent Scream.

So, itch finally scratched, I was able to settle down and devour the rest of No One Left To Tell.

The novel’s plot and themes are fairly well-trodden Rose territory. Paige, beautiful but unlucky-in-love, comes into possession of the only piece of evidence that could exonerate a man serving a life sentence for a murder that he didn’t commit. And when the man’s fiancé is murdered, Paige – unable to turn to the police – must rely on the help of District Attorney Grayson Smith to expose a huge cover-up and capture a ruthless killer, one who is interested in Paige herself. And, of course, this task isn’t made any easier by the devastatingly attractive [!!] Grayson and the feelings that Paige feels for him – and he for her…

I have to admit that I found the opening sections of the book – where a raft of characters and numerous backstory elements are introduced – quite a lot to get my head around. There are a lot of characters and point-of-view arcs and processing it was quite difficult at first. But once the novel got into its swing – and I managed to work out who everyone was! – I found myself caught up in the twists, violence, and most of all in the romantic travails of Paige and Grayson.

And, for me, it is the romantic aspect to Rose’s novels that has me coming back time-and-again. There is something quite moreish about the Hollywood-like, over-the-top nature of Rose’s characters and their love lives. I am not normally one who goes for romance [especially in crime fiction], but there is something about the way that Rose writes it that makes me need to read her books. Perhaps it is the confidence, glamour and American-ness of her books that makes them work so well [you certainly couldn’t imagine the themes and tropes of No One Left To Tell working if they were set in most other countries around the world!]. Or the fact that Rose does strong, independent [well, except for their romantic yearnings!] women so well.

Whatever the reason, it is a formula that has made me an addict, and I thoroughly enjoyed being transported by Rose’s latest slice of glamorous American crime fiction as the wind and rain battered the windows of my house in grey old unglamorous London!!!

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Jon Ronson – The Psychopath Test

Dec 30th, 2011 by

Author: Jon Ronson

Title: The Psychopath Test

Publisher: Picador

Hardback: 287 pages

ISBN: 978-0-330-49226-3

Price: £16.99

Publication Date: 03/06/2011


Having finished Jon Ronson’s latest book, The Psychopath Test, I quickly realized that, as Ronson himself had done in his book, I was becoming somewhat of an amateur witchfinder-general of the psychopath-spotting world. Armed with my rudimentary knowledge of Robert D. Hare’s PCL-R Test [Psychopathy Checklist-Revised – a 20-step psychopath checklist which gives individuals scores between zero and forty; the higher the score, the more psychopathic the person], gleaned from the pages of Ronson’s book, I had begun to run through many of my family and friends, scoring them according to Hare’s test with trigger-happy zest as I ticked off each part of the checklist that applied to them!

And then, little-by-little, I realised that I had stumbled straight into the trap that I had read Ronson stumbling into only a short time before. Because Hare’s checklist is so seductively simple and easy to understand that it reels you in before you know it. Much like the title of this book.

For The Psychopath Test is not actually exclusively about psychopaths – even thought the name might suggest that it is.

I can certainly see why Ronson and the publisher decided to use the title. It is very strong and does grab your attention. But it proves to be something of a misnomer, as only part of the book really deals with psychopaths and psychopathy.

For the book also deals with – and explores – psychiatry, the incarceration of ‘dangerous’ individuals, the prevalence of medication in contemporary society, and how we recognise and deal with ‘madness’ in society. In fact, it is the book’s subheading – A Journey Through The Madness Industry – that best describes the scope of Ronson’s topics [but it would be a remarkably boring and uncatchy title, so I’m not surprised that it was kept as a subheading!].

Written with the wit and clear, uncluttered style that has become Ronson’s trademark [he is the author of Them: Adventures with Extremists and The Men Who Stare at Goats], The Psychopath Test is an incredibly engaging, page-turning read – not something that I normally would associate with non-fiction books on mental illness.

Reading in many ways like a mystery novel – it starts with a mysterious manuscript that has been sent to various academics around the world – the book finds Ronson undertaking an incredible, surreal journey that brings him into contact with a gallery of fascinating, odd, occasionally dangerous people, often from the fringes of society or at the very least from the fringes of normal behaviour. So you find Scientologists, psychopaths-next-door, the leader of a Haitian death squad, and a cross-dressing former MI5 agent rubbing shoulders on the page.

The gonzo-style of Ronson’s narration – along with the manner in which he blends the various stories together – sometimes makes you wonder whether it is in fact a work of non-fiction at all. So surreal and weird are some of the situations that he finds himself in that you could be forgiven for believing that it was made up [but rest assured, frequent jaunts onto the internet whilst reading The Psychopath Test by your truly revealed that everything that Ronson talks about is real!].

And there is something about his ‘character’ in the book that is so naïve and disingenuous that people are willing to open up to him. Indeed, the guards at one institution that he visited laughed at him for looking like Harry Potter [just look at the author image in the back of the book and you will see quite how apt a description this is!].

But, whilst I found this an incredibly fascinating book to read, it was not without its negatives. In fact, its major strength is also its major weakness. It is such a quick and easily digestible read, skipping as it does from surreal story to surreal story, that Ronson is able to raise a number of serious and focused questions [such as the appalling number of children in contemporary society – especially America – who are being prescribed drugs for their ‘mental illnesses’] but is rarely able to go beneath the surface in any one area.

Of course, it should be remembered that it is a massive area that Ronson is trying to cover, and it would be impossible to cover everything – and go into great detail on each section – in only 287 pages. For, in The Psychopath Test Ronson is – to quote one of his journalist friends – like a “medieval monk … stitching together a tapestry of people’s craziness. You take a little bit of craziness from up there and a little bit of craziness from over there and then you stitch it all together.”

There are undoubtedly longer, weightier, more serious books on psychopathy and the realm of mental illness out there, but none of them will manage to be as witty, serious, horrifying and wonderfully absorbing as Ronson’s manages to be. Highly recommended.

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Ben Aaronovitch – Rivers of London

Dec 11th, 2011 by

Author: Ben Aaronovitch

Title: Rivers of London

Publisher: Gollancz

Paperback: 390 pages

ISBN: 978-0-575-09758-2

Price: £7.99

Publication Date: 25/08/2011


A London-set urban fantasy novel that blends magic with elements of crime fiction and the police procedural. Even before starting to read Ben Aaronovitch’s debut novel, Rivers of London, I knew that it was the prefect book for me. After all, I make no bones about quite how much I love London [something that my friends will – wearily – attest to!]. And one of my favourite novels is Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere – a book that has irrevocably changed the way that I view a number of London’s great [and not so great] landmarks and locations.

Although this intense affection for the city I have grown up in means that I am also quite demanding when it comes to fiction set in its environs. Luckily though, within only a few pages of starting Rivers of London and being introduced to young PC Peter Grant through his first-person narrative, I knew that I wasn’t going to be disappointed. Rivers of London is a long love letter to London and the city is brilliantly realised – one of the main reasons why this book works so well.

Peter Grant is saved from a life of boring paperwork in the Metropolitan Police when he gets a tip-off on a recent bloody murder. The only problem is that the witness is a ghost! His almost-but-not-quite girlfriend [Peter fancies him, but she seems oblivious to this fact] – who has just received a plum posting to the Murder Squad – is profoundly sceptical [but then, who wouldn’t be?]. But for Peter it is his first glimpse into a new, and unseen, world. And soon he finds himself apprenticed to the last working English wizard, Thomas Nightingale [who also works for the Met].

But this is a real apprenticeship – where results are gained through hard work and bloody-minded persistence, rather than waving a magic wand around and spouting made-up words. And the way in which the police procedural elements are woven into the plot feels convincing – Aaronovitch has obviously put a lot of thought into how a magical division would slot into the Met and the combination of scientific and procedural-led investigation with the utilization of magic never feels too jarring.

And, as in all of the best urban fantasy, what makes Rivers of London work so well is the confident way in which Aaronovitch juxtaposes the ‘real’ London and its oblivious inhabitants with the unknown, ‘other’ side to the city that is just below the surface.  So there are vampires, trolls, a ghostly magistrate, a nymph, and warring river spirits – who are brilliantly personified and seem to be influenced by their locations.

That’s not to say that Rivers of London is perfect as a novel. There were a few sections in which there was slightly too much exposition, certainly for my liking, and a couple of the plot resolutions didn’t entirely make sense.

But, it shouldn’t be forgotten that this is the author’s debut novel and I thought that the blend of gruesome murder hunt and otherworldy politicking worked brilliantly. And it is a quintessentially English type of novel – wry, witty and knowing, with just the right amount of darkness and black humour to make it fizz along.

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Joe Abercrombie – The Blade Itself

Dec 4th, 2011 by

Author: Joe Abercrombie

Title: The Blade Itself

Publisher: Gollancz

Paperback: 515 pages

ISBN: 978-0-575-07979-3

Price: £8.99

Publication Date: 08/03/2007


Having been a fairly heavy-duty fantasy reader during my teenage years, I have to admit that I have somewhat fallen out of touch with the genre more recently. So when someone recently recommended Joe Abercrombie to me I was interested to give his books a go and see how – or if – the genre had changed.

On the face of it Abercrombie’s first novel in The First Law series, The Blade Itself, seems to fit within the old school parameters of the genre. For a start it’s part of a trilogy. Then there are the characters. An ancient wizard. A barbarian hero being mentored by the aforementioned wizard. There’s a callow and untried youth who slowly evolves over the course of the book. There’s a feisty and [very] angry young woman. And, because this is a fantasy novel, there’s also the threat of a non-human force gathering on the northern-most reach of humankind’s lands.

So far so similar. And I definitely saw elements of David Gemmell’s gritty fantasy style about The Blade Itself, as well as similarities to Gene Wolfe’s seminal Shadow and Claw series. Indeed one major character in The Blade Itself, the crippled Inquisitor Glokta, is a torturer by profession – like Wolfe’s Severian [and one of Glokta’s two assistants is called Severard. Which is surely not a coincidence!].

But, scratch beneath the surface – and after reading just a few pages of the book – and it quickly emerged to me that what makes Abercrombie’s debut novel so special is quite how human and nuanced he is able to make his characters. Indeed all of the three ‘major’ characters – Logen Ninefingers, Jezal dan Luthar and Inquisitor Glokta – are flawed in some way, emotionally and sometimes mentally. And whilst the reader may have difficulty empathising with them [something that frequently occurs –at least early on in the novel – especially with the arrogant and preening Jezal], they still display enough human potential that the reader cannot pigeonhole them as either good or evil. They are characters with texture and depth, drawn in shades of grey, rather than in black or white. None of them are perfect, and you suspect that at some point in the trilogy each of them will do something horrifically evil.

They are credible as creations, and this is also true of the world that world that Abercrombie has constructed. It does have a distinct Mediaeval Europe flavour to it [there’s a place called Angland and knights and ‘barbarian hordes’]. And there is magic, and mystery and elements of the supernatural in the story, but none of it is done overtly.

Interestingly, for a fantasy novel, there isn’t a map at the beginning of the book. Whilst this might be a negative for many readers, I actually liked it. Truth be told I tend to skim past maps when they are inserted in books. It’s a personal thing, but I prefer to just be immersed in the story and not have to overthink where the characters are or the action is taking place – I would rather build up my own vision of the landscape and cities, rather than be led by the nose! And I can think of nothing more annoying than having to flick back and forth between what you are reading and the map at the beginning of the book.

I also thought that the dialogue was incredibly impressive – it is gritty and snappy, but also very humourous. There are also heavy-duty amounts of swearing [not actually a bad thing!], which might be a bit much for some readers, but this is supposed to be a vicious environment and, for me, it really complimented the world that Abercrombie has constructed.

And, whilst it has a number of characters and a certain degree of Machiavellian skulduggery, The Blade Itself resists becoming too complicated and tangled [a charge that could certainly be levelled at other fantasy series around at the moment!]. And this allows Abercrombie to balance just enough action with backstory, character development and intriguing plot. And the ultimate compliment that I can pay is that I liked all three of the storylines. Usually, when an author has multiple character arcs, there is one [or sometimes more] that I find slightly boring. So I will skim those chapters to get to my preferred characters. But, in The Blade Itself, this never happened. I might not have always liked or empathised with the characters [indeed, at certain points I absolutely loathed each and every one of them], but that did not stop me being completely fascinated by them. This is gritty, nasty, brilliantly realised fantasy that I absolutely loved. And if you are hoping for a happy ending, then don’t – Joe Abercrombie isn’t an author who does nice and fluffy! Mwahahaha!!

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Tales from the CRYPT

Nov 13th, 2011 by

A couple of Thursdays ago I found myself in a rather alien situation – it’s a dark November evening and I am standing in the crypt of a church in Clerkenwell, a glass of wine in my hand [not a particularly uncommon situation for me, I admit], and with my face painted to resemble some kind of undead being. Three nights before I had avoided celebrating Halloween with my usual unswerving diligence. However, faced with a couple of minutes of cajoling from Sam Eades [@SamEades], my anti-face paint reserves crumbled and I found myself being sitting down to be painted and dusted with glitter!

The event itself was the launch party for Andrew Hammond’s debut YA novel CRYPT: The Gallow’s Curse [CRYPT being an acronym for the Covert Response Youth Paranormal Team]. In attendance were members of one of Andrew’s old forms from when he was a teacher, along with a number of people dressed [and face-painted] as characters from the novel.

And there was also Sam dressed as a ghostly French onion seller [see image below!!]. Though this costume was given a bit of context in Andrew’s speech, when he revealed that one of his childhood homes had been haunted by a rather strong smell of cooking onions late at night [and when no-one in the house – or neighbouring houses – was cooking].

Wine was drunk [it was a publishing launch party after all – although there were soft drinks for the younger attendees], Haribo was consumed in vast quantities, and there were some very tasty cupcakes in a cauldron [not onion flavoured, thankfully!].

And I enjoyed prancing around with my face painted – up until the point when I realised that I had to get back home on the bus. There then followed a rather long period of trying to clean my face in the bathroom. Not a total success, but no one pointed and laughed on the trip home [at least, no more than usual!] and, other than rather a lot of glittery dandruff on my coat, it was a really enjoyable launch for a really great new YA series.

Now check out the images in all of their glory!!

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Neil Cross – Luther: The Calling

Nov 2nd, 2011 by

Author: Neil Cross

Title: Luther: The Calling

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Trade Paperback: 360 pages

ISBN: 978-0-85720-337-3

Price: £12.99

Publication Date: 04/08/2011


DCI John Luther likes to be different. Not just as a detective and character, but even as far as how he crossed from the screen to the page. Most television detectives start out their life as literary creations and eventually – after, no doubt, much to-ing and fro-ing between production companies and television executives – they make it onto our screens. Luther strode onto our televisions a little over a year ago. And, only now, has brought his hulking presence to the page with Neil Cross’s Luther: The Calling.

The novel is a prequel to the television series, and its climax links directly to the first show [but it is still an original novel and not a tie-in or novelization]. And this allows the book to operate on two levels. For the uninitiated [those unlucky enough to have missed the television series], this works as a great standalone piece of crime fiction – one that can be the perfect springboard for getting into the BBC series. And for the fans of the show, this book works brilliantly as a backstory piece – exploring and explaining Luther’s past.

The novel involves two cases – and a lot of exploration of Luther’s tortured mind and personal life. The first case involves a property developer, who is putting heavy pressure on an elderly tenant to move out of the home that he has lived in for decades [and in which his wife died]. As the book opens, Luther’s colleague, Ian Reed, has been beaten up after trying to protect the old man – which inevitably brings Luther into the picture. The second, more dominant, plotline involves the incredibly brutal murder of a young couple and ‘theft’ of their unborn baby [who has been cut out of her mother’s womb!].

There are quite a few scenes and sequences in the novel that are incredibly violent [never a bad thing in my opinion!], and the power and impact of these scenes is only enhanced by Cross’s taut prose style. Little time is spent on backstories or overly long descriptions, which leads to a tight, relentless read. Initially it took me a little while to get used to the style [by which I mean maybe a couple of pages!], but then I was unable to remove myself from the book’s grasp.

But there is a visual quality to the book – it almost felt like reading a television script in novel form. It was filled with short, sharp sentences. Settings were described in a handful of words and characters in little more. It might sound sparse, but it really works.

And, looming over it all is Luther. Idris Elba made the character his own on the series and many of his mannerisms have undoubtedly wormed their way into Cross’s mind. The way that he speaks, and walks, and the tiny little mannerisms that are seen throughout the novel – Luther runs his hands over his stubble and ‘washes’ his face with the palms of his hands. Elba and Luther have melded across the two media and it really shows in this book.

If I had one thing that I didn’t think totally worked then it was the levels of suspense throughout the book [especially compared to Cross’s other books]. I didn’t feel that the novel was quite as tense as it could have been – and as I was expecting it to be. But the pace of the plot and action, and the brilliance of Luther as a character did not make this a major concern in a very strong crime novel.

It will be interesting to see where Cross will take Luther next, though. Especially as he has used the prequel angle – and done it so well.

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Terry Pratchett – Snuff

Oct 12th, 2011 by

Author: Terry Pratchett

Title: Snuff

Publisher: Doubleday

Hardback: 378 pages

ISBN: 978-0-385-61926-4

Price: £18.99

Publication Date: 13/10/2011


It is a truth universally acknowledged, that the publication of a new Terry Pratchett novel is a time for rejoicing [certainly in my universe it is, so there!]. So it is fair to say that I have been eagerly anticipating the publication of his fiftieth novel [and thirty-ninth book in his seminal Discworld series], Snuff, for a long time now. And it was well worth the wait.

I am undoubtedly biased when it comes to Terry Pratchett and his Discworld oeuvre [having first become addicted to them when I was barely into my teenage years, and now read well over forty of his novels]. But, conversely, this also makes me hyper critical, because I expect – and demand – so much from reading Pratchett’s work. And Snuff more than held up under my scrutiny, and is filled with all of the elements that have become the hallmarks of his Discworld novels – clever wordplay, ingenious worldplay, razor-sharp banter and a brilliantly realised, sprawling cast of characters.

But one character stands out [although not in terms of height!]. For this is a full-on Sam Vimes novel [in recent books in the series he has made only the occasional brief cameo – so it is a relief to see him again]. The book begins as he is ousted from his office – and from being Commander of Ankh-Morpork’s Watch. Luckily it is just for two weeks, as he has been ‘cajoled’ into taking a holiday by his inimitable wife, Lady Sybil.

There then follow some hilariously funny scenes as Vimes – an eternal city boy – struggles with the bucolic pursuits of the countryside. He visits the local pub and has a half of beetroot juice [he’s a former alcoholic]. Then he spends time exploring the country pile that belongs to Sybil’s family [which has the brilliant name of Crundell’s!].  He even accompanies Sybil to take high tea and talk about bonnets with Sybil’s friend and her five daughters – a hilarious scene in which Pratchett subverts the conventions of an Austen novel as Vimes doles out advice to the women on how to find husbands and get jobs [whilst one of the sisters, Jane, who aspires to be an author, quietly takes notes!!].

But the country life is all a bit too sedate for him, even if the locals – yokels and aristocracy alike – all seem a bit shifty every time someone mentions goblins [which happens quite a lot – the local pub is called The Goblin’s head and there’s…well, a goblin’s head nailed to the wall above the bar]. Until, that is, a body turns up – giving Vimes the chance to return to the role that he feels most comfortable with, being a copper. It leads Vimes to a vast and far-reaching conspiracy, one that allows Pratchett to link the demonization of goblins to the crime of human slavery.

When written down so bluntly I am sure that some people will wonder how a comic fantasy novel could try to deal with such an evocative topic. But that would be to miss the point of many of Pratchett’s novels. For, beneath the entertainment and the humour there has always been a moralistic slant to the Discworld series – so Feet of Clay dealt with the issue of cheap human labour through the form of the golems. And Vimes himself has always been an advocate for equality and integration [he does, after all, employ an Igor and a werewolf in the Watch!].

And in Snuff the links between the goblins and slavery are not made lightly and are treated with the gravity that you would expect from Pratchett. In doing so, he adds another layer of meaning to the text. And it is this that makes Pratchett’s Discworld novels so special. You can read them purely for entertainment and laughs, but they are also nuanced and often scathing moral and satirical attacks on the evils and problems of the contemporary world – and Snuff is another perfect example of this.

I must admit that, it being a Vimes novel, I had hoped to see more of his Watch colleagues – Angua, Carrot, Cheery Littlebottom, Nobby Nobbs and Detritus – but that is more of a personal gripe than any kind of complaint against the book [I have grown up reading about them and watching them evolve, so I suppose it’s just that I miss them!]. Nevertheless, Snuff was another engrossing and funny novel from a brilliant author. Highly recommended.

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Lee Child – The Affair

Oct 10th, 2011 by

Author: Lee Child

Title: The Affair

Publisher: Bantam Press

Hardback: 427 pages

ISBN: 978-0-593-06570-9

Price: £18.99

Publication Date: 29/09/2011


A Lee Child novel entitled The Affair! I have to admit that I, much like a number of Child fans that I have spoken to recently, was rather bemused by it as a title. It sounds, to be frank, like it should be adorning a romance novel. But, once you get beyond the slightly suspect name of the novel, the book itself proves to be a great addition to the Reacher oeuvre, exploring his time as a Military Policeman and taking place in 1997 just before the onset of Child’s first novel, Killing Floor [thus finally revealing why he left the military]. In effect it is the Reacher creation myth, and finds its man-mountainous anti-hero in a reflective mood as he recollects and reinterprets – through his first-person narrative – an early and seminal period in his life. Thus the Reacher of The Affair is a younger, less experienced and infinitely more fallible figure than seasoned Child fans will be used to – but it is something that Child uses to great effect to add more depth and history to Reacher’s character.

Sent to a remote town, Carter Crossing, in Mississippi, one near an Army base, Reacher must go undercover in the town and provide support for an investigator on the base who is trying to ascertain whether or not army personnel are responsible for the brutal slaying of a local woman. But he comes under suspicion from the beautiful Sheriff, who is ex-military and hiding her own secrets, and ultimately Reacher must make a decision – does he choose the right way, or the Army way…

All of the usual ingredients are at play in this novel – there’s the small, remote town, there’s Reacher as the lone outsider dispensing justice as only he can [and drinking horrific amounts of coffee!], and there’s violence [although a lot less than you would expect, especially by Child’s standards!]. But it was also intriguing to see the gritty Reacher of recent novels replaced by a far younger and more naïve version, far less jaded by the world but still as intelligent and sharp as you would expect.

If I had a gripe with the novel then it would be the ‘bedroom scenes’ – the actual descriptions of Reacher having sex are a bit uncomfortable [for the reader!] and it also rather destroys the mystique of what Reacher is like in the bedroom. Love scenes are notoriously difficult to get right and Child’s complex and pin-sharp prose style certainly didn’t lend itself well to these scenes, at least in my opinion.

Ultimately though, these sections were the only moments that felt jarringly out of sync with the rest of the novel. For The Affair is a page-turning and enthralling prequel – one that is driven forward by Child’s punchy prose, crisp dialogue and his gigantic multi-layered protagonist [a man who, despite his blunt and rugged exterior, continues to evolve and fascinate the reader – a remarkable feat for a character in his sixteenth outing].

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