Carl Hiaasen - Skinny Dip

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Hugely enjoyable 

This is another terrific read from Carl Hiaasen. I have discovered him rather late in life and I’m having enormous fun catching up on what I’ve missed.

Here we have a slightly convoluted tale of attempted murder, wanton pollution of the Everglades, corruption and, principally, of a nasty scumbag getting his prolonged come-uppance. It’s great; Hiaasen writes very well and extremely wittily, he creates terrific characters, including the very engaging Mick Stranahan and tells a very involving story with some important observations on people and their behaviour. He knows Florida intimately, including its political shenaningans and some of its more extraordinary inhabitants, and the sense of place is very well done.

In short, this is a hugely enjoyable read. Very warmly recommended.

 

Derek B. Miller - Radio LIfe

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

Not bad, not great 

 

Hmmm. Post-apocalyptic SF isn’t my normal genre but I loved both Norwegian By Night and American By Day so I gave Radio Life a go. It’s not bad by any means, but it didn’t really do much for me.

Set at least a century in the future, the world has been all but destroyed and access to buried old knowledge and technology is valued by The Commonwealth but very difficult because of a Sickness still lurking in the Gone World, and because of others who want to destroy all old knowledge before it destroys the world again. Serious conflict looms...

It’s a decent set-up and Miller writes very well, of course, but I somehow never quite engaged with either the world he creates nor the characters he fills it with. It just felt a little laboured, somehow, and I was always looking in at what Miller was doing rather than being caught up in his world. This may just be me, and I think that fans of the enre may well enjoy Radio Life very much. For me, though, it’s not in the same league as, say, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Riddley Walker by Russell Hoban. Only a qualified recommendation from me, I’m afraid.

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

Christopher Fowler - The Water Room

 

Rating: 5/5

Review: A gem

The Water Room is the second in the Bryant & May series and it is a gem. I read a couple of later ones and decided to start at the beginning; the series is giving me great pleasure and this s the best I have read so far.

The plot is, as usual, slightly bonkers but in a very believable way, somehow. Arthur and John are asked by two different friends to look into two apparently unrelated matters. Things become very convoluted as the Peculiar Crimes Unit swings into its unique sort of action and a very good story gradually unrolls. It is full of Fowler’s usual fascinating, arcane detail about the history and hidden parts of London, this time especially about London’s lost and underground rivers, its labyrinthine subterranean waterways and how they are managed. There is a great cast of characters, many very amusing and all extremely well painted.

Fowler’s wit, style and obvious passion for his subject makes this great reading and I enjoyed it enormously. Very warmly recommended.

Lawrence Block - The Burglar In The Closet

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Another enjoyable outing for Bernie 

 

I’m enjoying these Bernie Rhodenbarr books. This is the second and establishes a bit of a pattern: Bernie, a professional gentleman burglar in New York, takes on a job and as a result finds himself wanted for a murder he didn’t commit. He then has to solve the crime to prove himself innocent, usually assisted by his female companion of the moment.

It’s very nicely done. Don’t look for hard-boiled realism, but the plot is well structured and the story very well told in Bernie’s wry, observant voice. Lawrence Block is a very good writer and the narrative carried me along nicely. His characters and sense of New York are very good, all of which makes this an enjoyable, diverting read. Recommended.

Andy Hamilton - Longhand

 

Rating: 5/5

Review: Excellent stuff

 

I thought Longhand was excellent. Andy Hamilton has been writing top-class comedy on radio and TV for a very long time; this is well up to standard.

The book is in the form of a (long) letter from a man to his partner of 20 years explaining why he must suddenly leave. It is difficult to give an outline of the plot without significant spoilers, so I won’t. However, it’s readable, very engrossing, has plenty of very amusing bits which are laugh-out-loud funny in places and has Hamilton’s familiar underpinning of lightly-worn learning and wisdom. Here he takes some of the Greek myths and subjects them to the scrutiny of a modern consciousness, finding a great deal of comedy in their sillinesses and contradictions, but also, as he does so brilliantly in Old Harry’s Game, finding the genuine, sometimes profound human revelations in them.

It’s excellently done and I was completely hooked. The story moves at a good pace and Hamilton’s characters and settings are wholly believable. I loved the little insights that crop up regularly, like this about the big moments in our lives “Weird, isn’t it, how often the climaxes end up feeling anti-climactic. The big scenes never seem quite real.”

The format of actual handwriting works very well, I think. Hamilton always writes his scripts in longhand and has a lovely, readable italic hand. (There is also another clever reason for the title which is lightly revealed early on.) I found the whole book a real pleasure; it’s an excellent piece of work from one of our very best comic writers and I can recommend it very warmly.

Paul Morley - A Sound Mind

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Very hard going 

I’m afraid I struggled with A Sound Mind. Paul Morley says some interesting things and makes some valid points, but oh dear – he does go on. And on. And on.

The subtitle of the book gives a clear idea of the content. It’s the story of how Morley began to develop an interest in and then a love for classical music, having been a rock critic for decades. There are some interesting observations, especially as I (like many others, I suspect) have made a similar move toward classical music as I have aged. He is very acute, too, on things like the universal, instant accessibility of huge amounts of music and how it means that we probably value it less than when an album was a significant investment of pocket money. But…

All of this is almost submerged in a deluge of self-referential verbiage. Quite early on, Morley actually talks about rock critics’ “compulsion to use too many words,” but apparently without any self-awareness, because it certainly applies here. He makes the error of assuming that all his readers are as fascinated as he is by every nuance of the development of his emotional and intellectual response to classical music. I’m afraid that this reader wasn’t and this, along with some clumsy and almost incomprehensible semi-metaphorical ramblings about plane journeys and the like made the whole thing very hard going for me. (And if I read one more sentence with endless lists of “from Haydn to Bowie, from Webern to [insert name of obscure band]….” I will not be responsible for my actions. OK, Paul, we get it – you’ve listened to a lot of music.)

At well over 600 pages, I suspect that this would have been a much better book if it had been half the length. There are quite a lot of interesting and penetrating observations here, but finding them is a real effort. I think the book is summed up for me in this little quote: “...the prog-rock concept album, with its own bloated, self-involved aesthetic that needed urgent, almost therapeutic puncturing by punk rock”. He is, as so often, absolutely right, but can’t seem to see that his own book is just as bloated and self-involved and needs urgent, almost therapeutic puncturing by a good, strong editor. I can’t really recommend it.

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

John Banville - Snow

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

Ho-hum 

 

I found Snow rather mediocre, I’m afraid. It’s not actively bad, but it does plod, it’s not as clever as it thinks it is and there’s not much Banville brilliance in evidence.

The set-up is like a vintage Agatha Christie. Set in December 1957, a Detective Inspector is sent from Dublin to investigate the murder of a priest in a large country house. It is peopled by stock Christie characters - which Banville points out several times - it contains some arch references to Murder On the Orient Express and so on. Banville “subverts” the genre with some explicit sex scenes, but otherwise it pretty much plods through a Country House Mystery plot. It’s all terribly knowing and postmodern, but for me it did not make a good read and became pretty irritating. Even the intimate characterisation and evocative scene-setting which I have found so involving in books like Ancient Light aren’t really there; just little sparks every so often.

The plot and motivation are very well-worn, with pointers toward priestly malfeasance very early on. I think that by now we know that priests and the hierarchy of the Catholic Church in Ireland last century did some dreadful things which were covered up; as a core plot it really needs more than Banville gives it here to be other than a rehash of what we’ve read many times by now.

The book does have its moments; a scene between the Inspector and the Archbishop is very well done, for example, but even the structure is very clumsy in places, with an out-of-place monologue from a different point of view toward the end and an unconvincing epilogue.

Snow isn’t terrible by any means, but it was a bit of a slog and didn’t do much for me. I suspect that I may have reached the end of the road with John Banville; I haven’t genuinely enjoyed a book of his for some time and I can’t really recommend this one.

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

Carl Hiaasen - Skin Tight

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Hugely enjoyable 

 

This is great fun. I have come very late to Carl Hiaason but I am thoroughly enjoying catching up on his books.

In Skin Tight, Mick Stranahan is an ex-Private Investigator living a quiet, isolated existence on a stilt house out in a Florida bay when events at a cosmetic surgery clinic mean that a case he once investigated might threaten the clinic’s owner. As a result, Mick’s own life and those of others are at risk and a convoluted and somewhat bonkers plot ensues – and it’s terrific fun.

Hiaason writes very well, he is genuinely witty (and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny) and has a high old time taking swipes at the worst of Florida: corruption, vain and vacuous rich residents and visitors, slimy lawyers, dodgy plastic surgeons, ludicrous TV hosts and so on. There’s a great cast of characters and Mick himself is a fine, calm and competent protagonist. The whole thing is a pleasure which I can recommend very warmly – and I’ll be reading more Hiaasen very soon.