Robert Bryndza - Nine Elms

Rating: 1/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m afraid I didn’t get on at all well with Nine Elms. I found it rather clumsily written with an inability to distinguish between atmospheric description and tedious, unnecessary detail and with a plot structure which made it blindingly obvious where we were heading. Combine this with yet another Troubled Detective With A Personal Involvement, the implausibility of civilians being given access to police resources and crime scenes, some over-convenient coincidences and a swathe of clichés of the genre and I got very fed up and gave up around half way. It simply didn’t convince, and I didn’t really care what was going to happen because I didn’t believe any of it.

This came highly recommended, but it really wasn’t for me.

Terry Pratchett - Soul Music

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Great fun, but not one of the great man's best

I loved Soul Music when I first read it. On a third reading there is still a lot to enjoy, but I don’t think it’s one of Pratchett’s best.

The story involves Death wandering off trying to forget all he knows, while his “granddaughter” Susan has to step in and carry on the Family Business. Meanwhile, a mysterious universal force is unleashed and Music With Rocks In (i.e. Rock Music) is let loose in Ankh Morpork. There are plenty of terrific jokes and musical references – some wittily sly, some joyfully unsubtle – but as a whole it doesn’t hang together as well as the real Pratchett classics, I think and I found it dragging ever so slightly in places.

This is still great fun, especially if you get references like:

“We lived in the woods, among the evergreens.”

“It must have been a big place?”

“More of a shack…,”

Even a slightly weaker book by Terry Pratchett is better than most, but although it’s a lot of fun Soul Music isn’t out of the great man’s top drawer.

Jane Haddam - Not Creature Was Stirring

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very enjoyable

I enjoyed Not A Creature Was Stirring. It is the first in a long series featuring Gregor Demakian, and Armenian-American ex-FBI investigator who here gets drawn into the case of a sequence of murders in one of Philadelphia’s richest families.

As a story it’s all pretty cosy and really the equivalent of a familiar Country House mystery set in 1990 Philadelphia. I thought more than once that it was very like a Poirot and then one of the characters said almost exactly that (although the denouement was more Miss Marple than Poirot) – and all that was just fine with me. The real strength of the book lies in Jane Haddam’s very good writing and structure (although it did drag a little in the middle, I thought), her thoughtful characterisation – especially of Demarkian – and her depiction of the Armenian community, all of which I found very good.

I am grateful to Susan Riaz for introducing me to this series. This opener isn’t a classic but is very enjoyable and has real promise for the rest of the series, of which I shall definitely be reading more. Recommended.

Tayari Jones - An American Marriage

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m in the minority about this one, because I didn’t think much of An American Marriage. It started well enough but I got very bogged down and I’m afraid I gave up around page 150 and didn’t finish it.

The story is of Roy and Celestial, a black American couple and their friend Andre, who is there largely to provide a love triangle. The opening, narrated first by Roy, then by Celestial recounts their stormy but passionate marriage and then Roy’s unjust, racist conviction for a crime of which he is innocent. We then get an exchange of letters, mainly between Roy and Celestial, as Roy serves his time, and this is where things began to go badly wrong for me. I didn’t really believe in the characters, their writing styles didn’t convince me at all and all the voices sounded too similar for any realism. I also thought that, having made its initial, powerful point about the threat to black people in the USA, it descended into rather bland soap opera and, frankly, I lost interest.

I’m sorry to criticise, but this simply didn’t do it for me. Other contemporary authors write more powerfully about the experience of black people in the USA while also making their books compulsively readable; I’m thinking of Paul Beatty, Joe Ide, Attica Locke and others. For me, this isn’t in the same league and I’m afraid I can’t recommend An American Marriage.

Terry Pratchett - Monstrous Regiment

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A Pratchett gem

I think Monstrous Regiment is one of Terry Pratchett’s best – which is really saying something.

It is the story of Polly, who disguises herself as a man and joins the army to fight for Borogrovia, a benighted country, permanently at war with its neighbours, beset by absurd traditions and religious restrictions and on the verge of collapse. Pratchett uses this to make some very shrewd satirical points about sexism, oppressive religion, militaristic jingoism and so on. It’s also very funny and very readable. There is silly humour, some very sly humour and Pratchett’s wonderful subverting and playing with the clichés around vampires, trolls, Igors and so on to make some powerful social points while entertaining us hugely.

Probably little more need be said. Pratchett was a real master of his craft and he is at his best here. Very warmly recommended.

Ani Katz - A Good Man

Rating: 2/5

Review:
A struggle

I’m afraid I struggled with A Good Man. It’s a bold idea and Ani Katz certainly writes well, but I got very bogged down in a slow, oppressive narrative.

The book is narrated in the first person by Thomas, a man with an apparently idyllic family life with his wife and daughter and a successful career. We can tell that something dreadful is looming, but it takes a very long time indeed for anything approaching an event to occur. Thomas’s narration is plainly unreliable – and very well done, to be fair – and through his eyes and interpretation we get a lot of history of his marriage and of his rather creepily dysfunctional mother and sisters as he becomes increasingly disturbed by things in his life. The trouble is that for me it just went on and on being oppressive and foreboding with little to really draw me in and, frankly, I found it a real struggle after a while. As a result, I’m not sure I really learned much about what Katz is really trying to tell us.

I applaud the book’s ambition, I think Ani Katz is a good writer and others have plainly derived far more from A Good Man than I did, but personally I couldn’t really get on with it.

(My thanks to Random House for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Deon Meyer - The Last Hunt

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another excellent book from Meyer

I thought The Last Hunt was excellent. I have enjoyed Deon Meyer’s books in the past and I think think is one of his best.

Benny Griessel (now sober and living with Alexa) and Vaughn Cupido are sent to investigate a dodgy death on a luxury train and immediately come up against secretive obstruction from other agencies. Meanwhile we also get a seemingly unrelated narrative of Daniel Darret in Bordeaux who turns out to be an ex-fighter for The Struggle, trying to make a new, peaceful life for himself. What follows is a beautifully paced and completely gripping mix of excellent police procedural and a sort of Day Of The Jackal story, all of which I found believable and involving.

The great strength of the book is its characters in Daniel and, of course, in Vaughn and especially Benny, who is at his most human as he tries to raise the courage to ask Alexa to marry him. The other fine aspect is the picture of South Africa under Jacob Zuma and the frightful extent of corruption and “state capture” by Zuma and the Gupta family who are never named but often referred to. The writing and translation (by K.L. Seegers) are excellent and I was wholly absorbed from start to finish.

Even if you haven’t read any of the previous books in this series, this is a very fine novel and a great read. Very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley.)

M.W. Craven - The Puppet Show

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An enjoyable read

I enjoyed The Puppet Show. It was a recommendation which I approached with some dubiety; another serial killer, a maverick detective brought back from suspension because of a personal message from the killer...it all sounded very stale and clichéd to me, but M.W. Craven writes well and manages to make this seem quite fresh.

There are a lot of good things about it: principally a decently told story, the Cumbrian setting, some well described and interesting police work, the fact that for once the victims are men rather than women and a very enjoyable character in Tilly Bradshaw. She is a mathematical genius and data analyst who is socially naive and inept but very endearing and who becomes Poe’s partner in the investigation. It all kept me reading with enjoyment, but it did have its flaws, too. There are some very crude targets for Poe’s wrath (pantomime bullies of one sort an another) and the denouement is, as one can spot from very early on, the inevitable One-To-One Stand Off In A Deserted Location between the killer and Poe. The killer’s full explanation sounds as though it’s written by a novelist rather than being spoken by an ordinary person...and so on – although to be fair, Craven does put a somewhat different slant on the encounter from normal.

In spite of these reservations, I found The Puppet Show a good, absorbing read. The setting and characters are convincing and I shall be reading more of this series. Recommended.

Sophie Hannah - Haven't They Grown

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Intriguing and enjoyable

I enjoyed Haven’t They Grown. It’s pretty far-fetched in places, but Sophie Hannah always writes very well and has produced another intriguing, readable mystery.

The story is told in the first person by Beth Leeson, a mother of two teenagers in Cambridgeshire. The set-up is excellent: she sees a friend from whom she has been estranged for 12 years with her two children who still look five and three years old – as they did twelve years ago. We get Beth’s dogged attempts to solve the mystery, interspersed with her domestic life. It’s very well done; I especially liked Hannah’s subverting of the old “am I mad/imagining things?” trope we usually get with women (it’s almost always women) in this situation. Beth knows what she saw and won’t be persuaded otherwise, and she’s a tough, determined character who is genuinely concerned about her friend and the children. Another highlight was Beth’s sixteen-year-old daughter Zannah (short for Suzannah, I was relieved to discover), who is brilliantly painted and for me a joy throughout.

All Hannah’s characters are very convincing and she structures and paces the book very well. I found things getting just a tad incredible during the last third of the book and rather more than a tad incredible at the denouement, but it’s still an enjoyable, ingenious read from a fine writer of the genre. Recommended.

Louis Theroux - Gotta Get Theroux This

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good

I thought this was very good, in spite of the dreadful title. (It’s a reference to other people’s “humorous” use of his name, but even so…).

Louis Theroux is a very intelligent, amusing, thoughtful and humane man. His TV work speaks for itself and, like many others, I have enjoyed it and learned a great deal from it. There is a good deal of interesting insight here into how Louis got into making documentaries, the process of making them and some of the consequences of the programmes for him and for others. What really shines through here, though, is his insights into people, including himself. He gives thoughtful, nuanced portraits of those he has met and of his own behaviour. He is honest and very self-critical at times, but also recognises the complexity of people and of human behaviour, including his own.

The spectre of Jimmy Savile looms large in the book, as it must. Louis became sort-of-friends with Savile after making a documentary about him and I found his thoughts about the whole affair fascinating and very well-balanced. For example, he describes his own complex responses to the revelations: “I felt alternately defensive, annoyed apologetic and self-critical. I was irked by the piety and self-righteousness of those critics who suggested I should have seen more. And I wished I had seen more.” And this, of the aftermath: “[Savile’s] purpose was now to make everyone else in society feel OK that they aren’t him. He had become a thought-stopping device, and a way for creepy men to make themselves look better...” I found all that very insightful, and this was true of a great deal in the book.

I found Gotta Get Theroux this a readable, stimulating and enjoyable book. Recommended.

Ian McEwan - Nutshell

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Involving and enjoyable

I enjoyed this quirky, updated version of Hamlet (or of the bones of the story, at least) but I did have some reservations.

Told from the point of view of an unborn foetus, we get the story of his mother’s (Trudy’s) infidelity with her husband’s brother (Claude). It’s a very clever idea which itself was enough to hold my attention. The narrative voice is a mixture of inexperience of the external physical world and a sophisticated, cultured, knowledgeable view which for me teeters on the edge of pretentiousness while only occasionally falling into it. There are some thoughtful but acerbic commentaries on modern life and attitudes, very often slyly referring to events and speeches in Hamlet – even down to talk of putting poison in someone’s ear (and the title, of course). It is witty and knowing...and just occasionally a little too much so for me, with a slight air of self-congratulation. Nonetheless, it’s an involving read with some genuine tension toward the end.

Slight reservations notwithstanding, this is an involving, often very enjoyable read. Recommended.

Jorn Lier Horst - The Cabin

Rating: 1/5

Review
Very disappointing

I am in a small minority, it seems, because I really couldn’t get on with The Cabin and eventually gave up before I finished it, which is a very rare thing for me.

The Cabin is a Norwegian police procedural and the first of the series that I have read (and the last, I suspect). A prominent politician dies and Wisting is sent to investigate what is left in the man’s holiday cabin, which leads to a dark, twisty story relating to some older cases. The trouble is that the storytelling just seemed plodding and tedious to me, with lots of detail which could have been interesting but read like a boring litany, some clumsily signalled Significant Events which the police don’t immediately spot even though it’s made pretty obvious to the reader, and so on – and the prose is lamentable in places. I don’t know how much of this is due to the author and how much to the translator, but the effect is pretty ghastly. In just the first few pages I picked out some terribly clunky writing like “’Let’s sit down,’ he said, gesturing with his hand,” some horribly stale usages like “This promised to be an investigation on a totally different level from what he was used to,” and some positively unforgivable, crashing clichés like “Amalie usually chattered nineteen to the dozen.”

It got no better and I’m afraid it became too much for me after a while. I’m very surprised to have such an unfavourable response to an author who was admired by Marcel Berlins and I am sorry to be so critical, but the truth is that I found The Cabin so poorly written that I couldn’t get through it.

(My thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Jeffrey Bernard - Low Life

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good - in small doses

Jeffrey Bernard’s writings are by turns hilarious, acerbic, self-excoriating, bitter and very sad. I had read only a little of him before now and I’m very glad to have a chance to read more, but it’s a mixed experience for me.

This is a collection of Bernard’s weekly columns for the Spectator which he wrote for about twenty years from 1975 almost until his death from the effects of alcohol abuse. Many of them recount anecdotes of his chaotic life and of the fellow drinkers and other “low life” with whom he associated. The writing is brilliant: it is poised, elegant, witty and (certainly about himself) uncompromisingly frank. There are some genuine laugh-out-loud moments and plenty of amusing ones, but there is also a fundamental bleakness under the devil-may-care facade which, in quantity, became quite hard to take. As one might expect, his attitudes, especially toward women, are anything but enlightened and even making allowances for the prevailing views of the period the sexism and misogyny are pretty repellent at times. Set against this is his refusal to have anything to do with pomposity and pretentiousness, and his skewering of them can be very enjoyable.

This is definitely a book to dip into. I can see the appeal of one of these articles per week (or less, because he was frequently and famously “unwell”); too many together left me feeling a bit desolate and rather soiled. The collection has many redeeming features, including the sheer excellence of the prose, but for me needs to be handled with a little care.

(My thanks to Duckworth Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

John le Carré - Agent Running In The Field

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good, but not his best

John le Carré is still a master storyteller and this is a fine, gripping read although it doesn’t have the depth and complexity of some of his greatest books.

Nat, a spy near the end of his career, gets wind of a major Russian operation to recruit a British agent...and even that is probably a bit of a spoiler. More plot details certainly would be, but the heart of this book is principally about attitudes to Brexit and Trump and their effect on Britain. It is fair to say that le Carré approves of neither Brexit nor Trump, so this certainly isn’t a balanced analysis. One character especially gives some very hard-hitting and extreme opinions about things which, although relevant to the story, are pretty strong stuff (to the point of clumsiness in places), so ardent Trump supporters and Leave supporters may find the book hard to swallow.

Personally, I found the story well developed and completely gripping from about half way. I don’t think the characterisation or real complexity which made le Carré so brilliant are quite there this time, possibly because he is so immersed in the issues. There is also a surprisingly sentimental ending which I found a little hard to believe, but it’s still a very well constructed story and a very enjoyable read. Recommended.

Salley Vickers - Grandmothers

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Not one of Vickers' best

I enjoyed Grandmothers, but I did have reservations.

Salley Vickers tells the story of three quite different characters who are grandmothers (strictly, two are grandmothers and one is a good friend who fulfils the role) who don’t know each other at the beginning of the book. They each have a close relationship with and often take care of one grandchild, and their stories develop over one year, during which they overlap and interact. Vickers uses this structure to explore those relationships, to examine their effect on and importance to both the grandmothers and the children and to give her views on a variety of topics, some neatly, some rather clumsily.

Vickers, as always, paints intimate and compassionate portraits of her subjects, both adult and child. They are strong, thoughtful and insightful pictures by and large. (The men are peripheral and largely act as cyphers for male failings, but this is a book about the women and the children they relate to and the focus is rightly on them). She writes very well, of course, and I found the book an easy and quite involving read much of the time, but there was a lot of familiar ground: slightly lost women finding fulfilment and new delight in life, the significance of art, especially religious art and angels, the importance of great religious buildings and so on don’t have quite the freshness and emotional impact they did when I first read Miss Garnet’s Angel and The Cleaner of Chartres, for example. There is quite a lot of quotation and cultural reference which I felt verged on showing off, and I found the ending, which is intended to be moving, rather sentimental and twee. Vickers also goes a bit over the top in her prose occasionally. For example, a character is reminiscing while boarding a train:

“Her mind arabesqued – as she begged the man whose aisle seat was next to the window seat that her ticket proclaimed hers to excuse her – to how they had dined...” That’s a bit rich for me, and although it only happened a few times, I think Salley Vickers is better than that.

Overall, this is a recommendable read, but in spite of some very good things about it, I don’t think it’s one of Salley Vickers’ best. 3.5 stars, rounded up to 4.

(My thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)

James Crumley - The Last Good Kiss

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Compelling and very well written

The Last Good Kiss is still a very good novel after 40 years.

C.W. Sughrue is an ex-army man turned to private detective work. It’s not glamorous and, as in this case, often involves finding runaway husbands. Sughrue is on the trail of Abraham Traherne, a well known writer, and becomes bound up in both his rather tangled life and in looking for the daughter of a woman he meets while looking for Traherne. It’s a convoluted but comprehensible plot, there’s a good deal of violence, quite astonishing amounts of drinking and quite a lot of inexplicit sex, but also some quieter, more contemplative passages so the whole thing seemed very well structured and paced to me.

The real strengths of the book are Crumley’s excellently painted characters, his wonderful evocations of different parts of the USA from the seediest bars and clubs to the magnificent landscapes, and the very fine prose he uses to describe them. Sughrue’s narrative voice is tough and world-weary, but he also has a strong moral sense (even if he can’t always follow it) and it is excellently done. I found it involving and very convincing and while it may not be an absolute classic of the genre, it’s very good and I can recommend it warmly.

Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Disappointing

I’m afraid I didn’t get on nearly as well with His Bloody Project as many people did and in the end I was disappointed in it.

There are good things about the book: the narrative voice is well done and largely convincing, Graeme Macrae Burnet paints a compelling picture of the hardship and repression of mid-19th-Century crofting life, the landscape is beautifully evoked and so on. However, I found that the slowness which at times seemed almost self-indulgent combined with an unremitting bleakness made it a tough, almost turgid read. I enjoyed the first hundred pages or so, but began to get very bogged down and eventually just slogged my way to the finish.

The quality of the writing and the atmosphere make this worthy of three stars, but for me it was a disappointment.

M.C. Beaton - Agatha Raisin: Beating About The Bush

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m afraid Agatha Raisin and I didn’t get on. This was my first Agatha Raisin and, in spite of all the praise this series has garnered, it will probably be my last.

The plot, for the record, concerns Agatha and her detective partner Toni investigating industrial espionage at a local factory, where all kinds of Odd Things seem to be going on and someone is Out To Get Them. It’s mildly amusing in places, but I found most of the humour clunky and overdone, the characters so caricatured and over-explained as to be tedious clichés rather than witty parodies and the whole thing a bit of a bore, really. After some judicious skimming I didn’t feel I had missed much and I was quite glad to get to the end.

So, it definitely wasn’t for me. Plenty of others, including people whose judgement I respect greatly, find Agatha Raisin very amusing, but personally I can’t recommend Beating About The Bush.

(My thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Kate Elizabeth Russell - My Dark Vanessa

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Intelligent, thoughtful and readable

I thought My Dark Vanessa was excellent. It is about a difficult subject so it’s not a light read, but it’s extremely well done and I found it compelling and thought-provoking.

The book is narrated in the first person by Vanessa, now in her 30s, who at 15 was groomed and had a sexual relationship with a 45-year-old teacher, Jacob Strane. We see her life now as a lost, isolated soul in an unrewarding job who relies on drink and drugs to get through the evening and night, and in flashback through the beginning of Strane’s grooming, her response to it and the consequences later.

It sounds grim – and the subject matter certainly is – but it drew me in and held me spellbound for much of the time. I was half expecting a bandwagon-jumping #MeToo potboiler beating me over the head with obvious points, but I was completely wrong. This is a book with real intelligence, insight and both emotional and psychological depth. We see how Vanessa, who is socially isolated, a little awkward and unconfident, is utterly overwhelmed and thrilled by the attention and compliments of Strane, how for a long time she denies that there was anything untoward in their relationship and feels a strong loyalty toward him, even though his behaviour made my flesh creep. The complexity of her emotions is superbly portrayed as she argues, for example that “it wasn’t rape rape,” as are the emotional consequences, which are intelligently and compassionately depicted, while never evading the reality. Kate Elizabeth Russell avoids neat, simple conclusions and messages and manages to show how issues may appear simple to outsiders, whereas they are extremely complex to Vanessa.

It’s all done with great skill and excellent judgement; for example, Russell manages to make the sex explicit – as it needs to be – while never the remotest bit titillating, but quite the reverse. The prose is very readable, the whole thing is well structured and there is a welcome dash of hope which never resorts to easy sentimentality.

My Dark Vanessa is an important book which is also an engrossing read. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to 4^th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Sandi Toksvig - Between The Stops

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific read

I loved Between The Stops. I was a little dubious about the initial premise, which sounded a bit contrived, but in fact it’s a delightful read, full of wit, well argued good sense and extremely interesting oddments about all sorts of things.

The set-up is that Sandi travels regularly on the Number 12 bus from her home in East Dulwich to where she works in central London. She is genuinely fascinated (to the point of geekdom) by the places through which she passes on the journey: snippets of local history, interesting shops and people, the roads and who they are named after and so on. She uses these also as jumping-off points for bits of autobiography, anecdote and opinion – which sounds a bit iffy as a device, but in fact is interesting, thoughtful and very funny in places.

What comes across is that Sandi is humane, intelligent, thoughtful, passionate about injustice and very funny. She achieves an excellent balance between these things and has the judgement to know when to make serious points in a witty way. She is generally kind to people, but isn’t above the occasional wittily waspish remark, like the time she sat between Ken Dodd and Julian Fellowes at a dinner: “Ken was genuinely fascinating and Julian was impressive in the self-belief that he was too.”

In short, this is a terrific read; it’s very enjoyable and with some real substance. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to Virago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Dorothy L. Sayers - Gaudy Night

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine novel

I thoroughly enjoyed Gaudy Night second time around (after about forty years). Although I’ve been back to the others many times, this was my first re-reading of Gaudy Night. It is principally about Harriet Vane and her return to her old Oxford college to investigate some rather sinister goings on.

I think what made me like the book more this time is that I accepted from the start that it is not primarily a detective story and that Wimsey doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. There is a mystery which drives the narrative, but it’s really a novel about sexism and how it relates (or related in the 1930s) to marriage, women in academia and attitudes to women generally. It is also a book about Oxford and Sayers’s love for both the city and the academic rigour for which it stands.

She writes beautifully and penetratingly about all these things, creating very well observed and well painted portraits of her subjects, who are principally the Dons in a women’s college. The mystery forms a backdrop at best and isn’t hugely interesting in comparison with the novel’s setting and with the relationship between Harriet and Peter. Her understanding of people is acute and she gets vital human details exactly right, like the poignancy and mixture of feelings when returning to university for a reunion, for example

I found the whole thing engrossing, witty, exceptionally intelligent and a pleasure pretty well from start to finish. I think it was a little long, with some episodes which could have been left out, and Wimsey remains implausibly accomplished in absolutely everything, but these are minor niggles. This is a fine novel which I can recommend very warmly.

Marcus Berkmann - Rain Men

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

Rain Men is brilliant. It is genuinely hilariously funny and also captures the spirit of amateur cricket perfectly.

Now well over 20 years old, this remains one of my favourite books about cricket. It is the true tale of Berkmann’s amateur cricket team who are untalented but enthusiastic, with many reflections on aspects of cricket and the people involved in it and devoted to it. I think you do need to be of a certain age to fully appreciate many of the references – the brilliant description of Jim Laker’s commentary or the question “What is the point of Jack Bannister?” for example – but anyone who has played or loved the game at any level will identify with this book and find it extremely entertaining. This passage from the beginning of Chapter One gives a flavour:

“Non-believers cannot understand how anyone could allow themselves to fall under the spell of a game, and such an intrinsically silly one at that. Their sneers and contempt, not to mention their endless satirical use of the phrase ‘bowling a maiden over’, can undermine the most robust of personalities. What they don’t understand is that we know it’s stupid, but England are 84 for 4, for Christ’s sake. Which, needless to say, answers all their questions in full.”

The whole thing is a joy. I laughed out loud very regularly and literally cried with laughter a few times. It’s also knowledgeable, insightful and rather touching in places. If you have any interest in cricket, I can recommend Rain Men very warmly indeed.

(Oh, and if I ever meet Marcus Berkmann, I shall have just three words to say to him: Little Harry Pilling.)

Mark Hebden - Death Set To Music

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and enjoyable

I enjoyed Death Set To Music. Written in 1979, this is the first of the Inspector Pel series (and the first that I have read); it is a decent police procedural with some amusing aspects which is very well written.

Pel is an Inspector in the French Police, based in Burgundy. He is a grumpy, rather misanthropic hypochondriac, but a very good detective. Here he and his team investigate the gruesome murder of a fairly wealthy woman and the story unfolds slowly (rather too slowly at times) as Pel’s well-drawn officers diligently pursue leads. It can drag a bit, but it isn’t too long, it was well written and had enough humour to keep me interested. The denouement was a little contrived but it didn’t spoil the book and I found the whole thing an enjoyable read.

I can’t say that this is a classic, but it’s certainly good enough for me to read more of Inspector Pel and I can recommend it.

(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Jane Rogers - Body Tourists

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good but flawed

Body Tourists had a lot of very good things about it, but for me it didn’t quite live up to its initial promise.

The book begins excellently. It is 2045 and a lone scientist with a super-wealthy backer has found a way of downloading the minds of dead, cryogenically frozen people into the bodies of young, healthy (and well paid) volunteers for 14 days. Jane Rogers uses this to explore the consequences and ethics of such a procedure, as well as to make some strong political points about the direction our society seems to be taking. This includes the increasing use of robots and the consequent loss of jobs, income and self-respect and people’s use of Virtual Reality effectively as a drug to deal with the effects of this as the unemployed are shipped out to bleak “Northern Estates” and left there with almost no facilities. The wealthy, meanwhile have a fabulous time – which begins to include the wealthy dead taking over the bodies of the poor so that they can return to life.

It’s an intriguing concept and Rogers does pretty well with the ideas and examines both how things can go terribly wrong but also how it may be an opportunity to resolve injustice and bring resolution. We get several points of view, some in the first person, some in the third. For me, there were rather too many to keep the narrative sufficiently tight, some were more effective than others. There is also a long story which for much of its length isn’t directly relevant to the Tourism concept; it’s well done and I can see why Rogers wanted to give such a fully drawn background, but it doesn’t sit well with the book as a whole. The issues weren’t always considered in the depth I’d expected and I also found much of the ending rather rushed and over-neatly resolved – but there is also a brief but brilliant and quietly chilling final section in the voice of the rich backer.

Jane Rogers is a very good writer, so there is much to like about this book. Flaws notwithstanding, I can recommend this as an exciting and thought-provoking read.

(My thanks to Sceptre for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Elizabeth Strout - Olive, Again

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Involving and insightful

I thought Olive, Again was very good indeed. For me, it is that rare thing: a sequel that is better than its predecessor.

Olive, Again has a similar structure to Olive Kitteridge (which I strongly recommend that you read first). It is a sequence of linked short stories about the various people of the small town of Crosby, Maine, in all of which Olive features to a greater or lesser extent. Elizabeth Strout again shows her remarkable insight into character and human motivations and writes beautifully about all of them. The real strength of this book, though, is that it has a more linear structure and – crucially for me – it is far more concerned with the development of Olive’s own life, with most of the other characters as a part of it. There are exceptions which work very well, but the increased focus here made it more compelling for me.

Olive is still that beautifully painted human mixture of social awkwardness and directness bordering on rudeness with compassion, a refusal to pretend that things are not as they are, and the rare, precious ability genuinely to listen to someone with empathy. I found it wholly engrossing for much of its length and some stories, most notably February Light and Friend, quite outstandingly involving and insightful.

This is Elizabeth Strout at her best, which is probably all that really need be said. Very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Caroline Criado Perez - Invisible Women

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Readable and fascinating

I agree with all the favorable reviews for Invisible Women; it is excellent. It is readable, fascinating and extremely well-researched.

Caroline Criado Perez has produced a real eye-opener of a book. She uses data to illustrate how women and their needs are simply omitted from planning in a huge range of areas. She says clearly that this is not deliberate, it is simply because the default assumption is that when we talk about “people” we are talking about men unless otherwise specified – or, as she puts it, “men go without saying.” She gives a wide range of fascinating examples from snow-clearing (believe it or not) to the allocation of space for toilets in public buildings and so on and so on. All of this is backed up with solid data and persuasive argument.

The great thing is that the book is so fascinating (and at times shocking) and so readable. I learned a huge amount and also thoroughly enjoyed reading it. This should be read by everyone; warmly recommended.

Brian Clegg - Scientifica Historica

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A beautiful introduction

I like Scientifica Historica very much. I studied History and Philosophy of science as an undergraduate many years ago and have maintained an interest in it, so this is an area I’m familiar with in an amateur sort of way – and am pleased (and slightly smug) at the number of books discussed by Brian Clegg that I have actually read.

The first thing to say is that the book is beautiful. The illustrations are lavish and inspiring much of the time – especially for me, seeing original scripts from millennia ago and handwritten notes by some deeply revered scientists but also pages and covers from great books. This makes it more of an introduction and a coffee table book than an in-depth work on the historiography of science, but that’s just fine because it fits that role very well. All the great works of pre- and 20th-Century science you’d expect are here, from Aristotle and Hippocrates through the great Arab works of the 9^th to the 12^th centuries, then Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, Galileo, Harvey, Malthus, Dalton, Faraday, Darwin, Einstein… plus a lot more, all of which is a delight to see. Each is discussed readably and with enough depth to inform the casual reader and to encourage those interested to seek out more.

Things become quite interesting with 20th-Century selections as science broadens out and I think it’s here that people may find some editorial choices controversial, especially in the final section on popular science books. Clegg doesn’t give us any Freud or Jung, for example, but does include Oliver Sacks and two (two!) of Desmond Morris’s books. To me Sacks is unarguable, as are many others he chooses, but two Desmond Morris books but nothing whatsoever by Peter Medawar or Stephen Jay Gould? My judgement would have been different – but then, that’s always going to be the case in such a selection.

So, as an enticing introduction to some of the great (and in my view some not so great!) books of science, this works very well and I can recommend it.

James Sallis - Drive

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A minor masterpiece

James Sallis is an outstanding writer in this genre and Drive is a minor masterpiece, in my view.

Like all Sallis’s novels, this is brief (under 200 pages), spare and superbly written. The protagonist, known only as Driver, is a superb driver who works in movies and also as a getaway driver for select criminals. When a job goes bad he is forced into retaliatory measures as the victims of the heist come after him.

Sallis never wastes a word. He creates a bleak, harsh world with the occasional flash of humanity which makes it all the more stark by contrast. There is some cutting back and forth in time as we get some of Driver’s history, but the narrative drive (sorry) is extremely strong and I found it utterly involving.

This is a brilliant, haunting book which gripped me from the first and never let go. Very, very warmly recommended.

Katy Brand - I Carried A Watermelon

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

I loved I Carried A Watermelon. I am most definitely not the target audience; I’m a bloke in his mid-60s and I have never seen Dirty Dancing (I had no idea what the title meant). I only tried it, with some trepidation, because I really like Katy Brand and her work – and I still loved it.

Katy Brand has had a lifelong (well, since she was about 12) obsession with Dirty Dancing. This is a long love-letter to the film, which she uses to make extremely intelligent, thoughtful and humane points about all sorts of things. These include the effects of dancing; father-daughter relationships; sexism; what is good, consensual sex; class (she’s brilliant on this) and a lot more. There is also a lot of autobiographical stuff, which I found very interesting, too.

The thing is, Brand is such a good writer with such an infectious enthusiasm for what she is writing about, that it’s immensely entertaining throughout. I even thoroughly enjoyed parts I would expect to be excluded from, like her superb analysis of the adaptations and remakes in which she absolutely nails what is so often wrong with modern, “bigger and better” versions of classics, or her description of a fan weekend at “Kellerman’s,” the setting of the film. I was right there with her, feeling every nuance of excitement and friendship, even though I’d never seen any of what she was talking about. The book is a pleasure from beginning to end.

This is a hugely entertaining book about so much more than a classic movie. If I enjoyed it, I think anyone would and can recommend it very warmly.

(My thanks to HQ publishers for an ARC via Netgalley.)

Bernard Cornwell - Sharpe's Tiger

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Disappointing

This is the first Sharpe book I have read and I’m afraid I don’t share the general enthusiasm for it.

Sharpe’s Tiger is chronologically the first Sharpe story. We find him as a private in India in 1799, first in serious trouble with his regiment and then involved as a spy in the siege of Seringapatam. It’s a fairly rollicking tale with plenty of action but it didn’t really engage me. I suppose I was hoping for a land-based version of C.S. Forrester or Patrick O’Brian, but I didn’t think this was a patch on them; it seemed stodgy and over-explained by comparison with none of the excellent characterisation or superb storytelling of either of the naval series. There is a good deal of pretty implausible action – for example, Sharpe endures 200 lashes which cause so much damage that actually expose a rib, but he’s fit for active duty almost immediately. There is a villain who is positively pantomimic in his clichéd antics...and so on.

I know I’m out of step with the majority on this one, but I wasn’t impressed. It’s not terrible, but I ended up skimming fairly extensively without feeling I was missing much and I probably won’t be bothering with the rest of the series.

Liz Moore - Long Bright River

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Disappointing

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t get on well with Long Bright River. I like Liz Moore’s work and thought that Heft in particular was excellent. This one didn’t do it for me, I’m afraid.

The story is narrated by Michaela (“Mickey”) who is a police officer in a tough, drug-riddled part of Philadelphia. Mickey’s sister Kacey is a drug addict and is missing, it emerges that there is a killer preying on such women and we get her search for Kacey intercut with Mickey’s history, while the police investigation feels rather like a minor side-issue.

Liz Moore’s books aim for deep, insightful character studies and this is a study of Mickey and a picture of the drug culture in some parts of the USA. It’s pretty good at both, but I didn’t find it all that original this time and it is extremely slow to the point of turgidity in places as we also get pictures of lots and lots of other characters including Mickey’s extended family - which seems to extend forever at times – while the crime story is a bit thin and unsatisafctory. I’m afraid I got pretty fed up and began to skim.

I’m genuinely sorry to be critical of an author whom I like and who is writing about important matters, but the truth is that I didn’t like this one much. If you haven’t read Heft I’d strongly recommend it, but although others have enjoyed it more than me, I can only give Long Bright River a very qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Edward Carey - Little

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Terrific

I thought Little was terrific. It’s beautifully written, utterly engaging and extremely interesting.

This is the somewhat fictionalised story of the childhood and younger adulthood of Madame Tussaud, narrated by her. Born Marie Grosholtz in Switzerland we get the story of this small, odd-looking orphaned girl who finds a talent making wax anatomical models. Moving eventually to Paris, her story is of servitude, the desperation to express her talent and her yearning for love and humanity. There is a beautifully created atmosphere of pre-Revolutionary Paris, of life in the Palace of Versailles and of the Revolution and The Terror. All is seen from Marie’s – or “Little’s” plain point of view and described in quite simple, unemotional language, which makes it all the more impactful and real.

I found the story and its telling wholly gripping. It is sometimes macabre, sometimes fascinating, sometimes profoundly touching and is wonderfully illustrated with the author’s drawings, done as a part of Marie’s narrative. The characters that Edward Carey creates are complex, human and completely convincing and his research into both Marie’s life and the historical background is plainly extensive but never intrudes; it simply paints a wonderful picture of the woman and her times.

Little is one of the best books I have read this year. Very warmly recommended.

Emma Donoghue - Akin

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Rather disappointing

I was rather disappointed in Akin. Emma Donoghue certainly writes well, but I found the book a bit of a mish-mash of themes which in the end didn’t say anything very new.

The story is of Noah, a retired, recently widowed professor, approaching 80 with a comfortable life in New York and on the verge of a sentimental journey to Nice where he was a child before the war. He becomes temporary guardian of Michael, his great-nephew whose mother is in prison, whom he has never met and who comes from a much tougher background and they head to Nice together.

What follows is a mixture: the rather unoriginal story of the two hopelessly unmatched people beginning to understand and bond with each other, a love-letter to Nice, some history of the dreadful events of the Nazi occupation of the city and a rather unconvincing mystery about Noah’s mother’s activities during the war. I’m afraid it felt like a bit of a mess to me because it lacked focus as it jumped from one theme to another, and the supposed mystery didn’t convince at all as Noah jumped from one tenuous, ill-founded conclusion to another. I found Michael’s character and voice pretty unconvincing as he quite often showed an astuteness and vocabulary well beyond his years. I was also slightly uneasy at the use of some of the Nazi and Holocaust material which felt just a little exploitative to me – although that may be just a personal view as my antennae are rather sensitive to that because of my own family’s history.

Donoghue is a good writer, so it’s all readable and I did finish it (with a little judicious skimming), but I wasn’t bonkers about it and it’s certainly not a patch on the brilliance of Room.

(My thanks to Picador for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Philip Parker - The A to Z History Of London

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Beautifully produced

This is a beautifully produced book with a lot of interesting stuff in it.

The first thing to say is that this history of London in maps really only covers the last 100 years, since the A to Z was born. I was a little disappointed to find such a thin covering of London’s rich history before then, but in fairness this is an A to Z history, so I can’t really complain. The bulk of the book is set out in topics like Entertaining London or Moving London which cover the development of a specific aspect of London life over the last 100 years or so. It is all very well researched and in general nicely illustrated with maps from different periods, posters and advertisements and the like, and there are plenty of nuggets of interesting information.

This is very definitely a coffee-table book rather than a serious work of history, but it is well founded in good research. It looks lovely and is very well printed and made. It would make an excellent gift for anyone interested in the history of London and I can recommend it.

H.F. Ellis - The Papers of A.J. Wentworth B.A.

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An amusing read

I thought that The Papers Of A.J. Wentworth BA was gently amusing, but the cover quote of “One of the funniest books ever,” from the Sunday Express is stretching it a bit.

Wentworth is a hapless, inept and hopelessly unaware schoolmaster in a small boys’ boarding school in 1938. Mainly told in the first person by Wentworth himself, we get accounts of various “mishaps” as the boys amuse themselves at his expense, while Wentworth pompously tries to preserve his dignity, oblivious of the fact that the rest of the world is laughing at him. It is very neatly done and cleverly written, so that I recognised some traits of teachers I have known and the attitudes of the boys.

For me this a brief, lightly amusing read rather than laugh-out-loud funny, but there is actually some rather acute character observation underpinning it. Not a classic, then, but certainly worth a read.

(My thanks to Prelude Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Rosamund Lupton - Three Hours

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Gripping and thoughtful

A lot about Three Hours was excellent. I found it very gripping and well done a lot of the time, but it did have its flaws in the end.

This is the story of a school siege by initially unknown gunmen. The school is in an isolated part of north Somerset and it is snowing heavily, giving the story extra atmosphere which Rosamund Lupton does very well. It begins dramatically with the shooting of the headteacher and from there we get several points of view as it unfolds: various students including a refugee from Syria with PTSD, a parent, a police officer and so on. These are all excellently handled and feel very real so that even filling in the back-stories, a device which can sometimes feel very clumsy and tired, seems natural to the narrative. Lupton also writes very well much of the time; as an example, capturing the intensity of teenage love (before the siege has begun), “A white snowflake landed on a fiery gold strand of her hair and for a moment he saw the beauty of it,” which I thought very evocative and there’s plenty more of a similar quality.

For much of its length this was a five-star read for me – gripping, exciting, intelligent and thoughtful. In the last third or so, though, there began to be just a few too many unlikely contrivances for the sake of a tense plot which weakened it for me. Also, there is suddenly some rather heavy-handed political evengelising. I agree entirely with what Lupton is saying and she is making very important points, but it did feel a little clumsy and over-polemical to me.

That said, Three Hours is still very good. It is very well researched, I found it hard to put down and Lupton’s thoughtful and sensitive portraits of her characters are excellent. Recommended.

(My thanks to Penguin Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Tim Dorsey - Shark Skin Suite

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Cracking entertainment

This is another absolutely cracking entertainment from Tim Dorsey. The Serge Storms books are always a pleasure and Shark Skin Suite is no exception – although it perhaps starts a little less alluringly than some.

The book opens with Serge on the run from both the law and his ex-wife, which is quite amusing but not the carefree Serge we know and love. However, he’s soon back to racing around Florida spouting high-energy facts and history (much of which is genuinely very interesting), dealing with Coleman’s drug- and alcohol-fuelled antics and visiting satisfying revenge on scumbags of various sorts. The main focus this time is on the greed and careless arrogance of banks and large corporations and their lawyers, some of whom get a very pleasing come-uppance in the end.

As always, this is funny, engrossing and with an underpinning of both erudition about Florida and a shrewd analysis of the behaviour of some financial institutions. I loved it and can recommend it very warmly.

Joyce Porter - Dover One

Rating: 3/5

Review: 
Disappointing

I didn’t enjoy Dover One nearly as much as I’d hoped. Farrago have done an excellent job in finding and reissuing some really good humorous series – notably Colin Watson’s Flaxborough books, the Bandy series by Donald Jack and Miss Seeton; sadly, for me this wasn’t nearly as enjoyable.

Written and set in the mid 60s, the book features the eponymous Chief Inspector Dover who is idle, unscrupulous and offensive in both manner and person. He and his super-keen and squeaky-clean sidekick are called to investigate the disappearance of a young woman in “Creedshire” where we meet, Agatha Christie style, a cast of locals who may all have had a motive for doing away with her, but her (very substantial) body is nowhere to be found.

The mystery is decently plotted and well written but I’m afraid I became pretty tired of it all by about half way and began to skim. I still can’t quite put my finger on why, but it’s partly that the characters are a collection of almost uniformly repellent caricatures which I found rather heavy-handed rather than witty. Things do move pretty slowly, so in the absence of an engaging character or of much to make me smile I got quite bogged down. Also, even allowing for the prevailing attitudes of the time, I found some of it pretty jarring and using the hideous suffering survived by one character in a concentration camp as a humorous (even darkly humorous) plot device really did seem a bit much.

It may just be me; the prose is well written and it’s well plotted, so others may enjoy Dover far more than I did, but personally I can’t really recommend it.

(My thanks to Farrago for an ARC via NetGalley.)