Chris Waring - From 0 to Infinity in 26 Centuries

Rating: 3/5

Review:
A good attempt but flawed

I generally enjoy books of this kind very much and this one does have its merits, but I'm afraid I thought it had some serious flaws, too.

It is presented in a series of brief sections, most of which give an outline of the contribution of an individual to mathematics, from ancient Greek, Chinese, Indian and Arabic mathematicians via people like Descartes, Newton, Euler and so on up to the 20th century where both concepts and people become less familiar. These are generally well written, the concepts on the whole are well explained and the tone is amiable and welcoming with not too much in the way of scary equations, which is excellent for the non-specialist.

However, as a story of maths (which it claims to be) I found it rather lacking because there is no sense anywhere of how the ideas described fit together, and although it is roughly chronological it seemed just a random scattering of stories without any sense of movement through history. And while Chris Waring mentions applications of some of the concepts and techniques, I didn't really get a sense of how it all fitted into the world.

More seriously, some of the explanations are badly flawed. For example, I thought I was losing my mathematical marbles on page 54 because Euclid's Theorem of Infinite Primes is so poorly and inaccurately explained that it seems to be self-evidently false. Waring says "If you multiply all the primes together you generate a number. This next number..." What he means by "this next number" is, "if you then add one to the generated number, this new number..." which is something very different, and even when (or if) you realise this, the explanation still omits a vital step in reasoning. The example of the use of Napier's Bones seems to imply that 5+1=7 until you finally deduce that he has forgotten to tell you to start on the right and that you have to carry over to the next section. And so on.

There are inaccuracies scattered throughout, which in a book about anything other than mathematics probably wouldn't matter but here are significant. For example, "24 is not a weird number because we can add its factors (2,4,6 and 12) together to make 24." What he means is "we can add *some* of its factors together" (leaving out 3 and 8) which, in a section about perfect numbers, is a critical distinction. I'm afraid that there was a good deal of this sort of sloppiness and I found it increasingly irritating because, unlike in fiction, say, small errors in mathematics render it plain wrong, and precision is vital even in a book like this for the general reader.

I am sorry to be critical. Chris Waring deserves credit for attempting to write an accessible book on the history of maths and this isn't terrible by any means, but it is flawed and I can only recommend it with some rather serious reservations.

Gabriel Roth - The Unknowns

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An amusing, readable and thoughtful novel

I enjoyed this book. It is a very well written, readable novel which is both amusing and quite insightful in places. Gabriel Roth is a promising author and as a first novel this is impressive - not least because he doesn't pad it out but has the sense to produce a concise, neatly constructed 200-page book. Set in 2002, it is told in the first person by Eric Muller, a socially inept computer geek who has made a large fortune in the dot com boom. Using this device of the over-analytical outsider as narrator, Roth examines aspects of life including being the bullied outcast at school, the genuine pleasure that Eric derives from programming and, most significantly, human relationships.

For a good deal of the book I found this readably amusing in a sub-Woody Allen sort of way, but wasn't sure it added up to all that much. I also thought that a socially inept, un-literary character like Eric wouldn't be making this sort of penetrating observations in pithily constructed prose. However, the last quarter of the book took on a deeper tone in its examination of what we can know about ourselves and others, what we should expect to know and how that knowledge may affect us and our relationships. This lent the book an intellectual and emotional weight which took it well above the ordinary and made it well worth reading, I thought, and I suspect that this part will stay with me for some time.

I dithered over whether to give this four or five stars. Considered as a whole, I rounded it down to four, but it's a very good book and that may be a little harsh. I would certainly still recommend this warmly as a readable, enjoyable and ultimately very worthwhile novel.

Ben Aaronovitch - Rivers Of London

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Immensely enjoyable

Just to add my voice to the chorus of praise for this book (and this series) - it's immensely enjoyable.

It is a load of old hokum really, of course, but it's very well written and takes itself seriously enough to be an involving and exciting read, but not so seriously that it gets all ponderous and self-regarding. The narrative voice of Peter Grant is very engaging, there is a decent number of good laughs and there's a lot of very interesting stuff about the history, architecture and infrastructure of London, all delivered in a readable, enjoyable form.

I think this series is a real pleasure: exciting, humorous and engaging but with some real content to mull over, too. Very warmly recommended.

Lissa Evans - Crooked Heart

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and very enjoyable

I enjoyed this book a lot. It is an original and interesting story, very well told.

It sounds rather cliché-ed at first: an isolated, introverted 10-year-old boy is evacuated from London and is billeted with a rather scatty woman who tries to solve her financial problems through dishonest schemes, and who keeps bringing humiliation and disaster on herself. There is also her aged, mute mother and a lazy, dishonest son, and all of them are to some extent redeemed and given fulfilment through love. It is greatly to Lissa Evans's credit that she has made from this an enjoyable, thoughtful book which feels fresh and unsentimental.

Much of this is due to her writing, which is excellent. It is clean and unflashy but really generates a fine sense of time and place, and her characters are extremely believable and well drawn. Even the minor characters like the schoolteacher or the pub bore are excellent, recognisable creations and this was a real strength of the book. The sense of trying to survive the early years of the war and of the people who resorted to dishonesty and criminality either as a means of survival or out of plain selfish venality is exceptionally well evoked, and she gets the period exactly right. It is also a very well structured story with tension and real narrative drive, and I found it an excellent read with some very affecting moments.

This is a book which carried me along, gave me plenty to enjoy and think about while reading and left a strong impression afterward. Very warmly recommended.

Ian Rankin - Standing In Another Man's Grave

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another excellent Rebus novel

I'll just add my voice to the chorus of praise for this instalment of the Rebus saga. Neither Rankin nor Rebus has lost any of their brilliance, even though Rebus is no longer a serving police officer but id working as a civilian for a Cold Case Unit. All the old fire, wit and complex but clear plotting are there. So, too, is Rankin's brilliance at creating believable characters, utterly convincing dialogue and a superb sense of place - this time often in the isolated rural parts of Scotland around Inverness and Pitlochry.

This is, as always with Rankin, a great read with shady moral issues well to the fore. Rebus is still his old, cantankerous, alcohol-soaked, flawed self (thank heavens!). It's good to have Siobhan Clarke back in my life, and the whole thing was a real pleasure. It has the subversive appeal to make me keep reading well after I should have stopped and gone to sleep and, if a Rebus novel needs another recommendation, I can recommend it very warmly. It's well up to standard, which when talking about Ian Rankin is saying a lot.

Sharon Bolton - Little Black Lies

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good, gripping thriller

I enjoyed this psychological thriller.  It is very well written, it has a very well-painted backdrop and it was very engrossing for most of its length.

The story is set in the Falkland Islands in 1994.  The story is told in three successive first-person voices: Catrin, whose children died three years ago because of her best friend's carelessness; Callum, an ex-soldier now living on the Islands; and Rachel, Catrin's (ex-) best friend.  Catrin is plotting some terrible revenge on Rachel, and meanwhile a child goes missing on the Islands – the third to do so in three years.  Memory lapses, misguided loyalties and other complications mean that a very tense situation develops.

The narrative voices are well done, I think, and the sense of place is excellently developed with that slightly paradoxical mixture of a small community where everyone knows your business, but with great uninhabited areas and very isolated from the rest of the world.  The characters' internal states are plausibly developed, and I found Catrin's desolation and hatred very convincing, as was the all-pervading depth of Rachel's sense of shame and self-loathing.  The plot developed well and I was largely gripped.

Sharon Bolton does go in for some rather stagey cliff-hangers at times, and the climaxes to her books can be a little overdone for my taste.  For me, the confrontations and revelations here would have been even more effective without the extra external shenanigans, and I could have done without the frankly absurd final paragraphs, but these are minor reservations and they aren't shared by a lot of people.  Certainly Sharon Bolton writes very well and I thought this was a good, gripping thriller which I can recommend.

Rebecca Wait - The Followers

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
Well written and chilling

I thought this was a very good book. It is well written and involving, with important things to say.

The story concerns the induction of Stephanie and Judith, a struggling single mother and her teenage daughter, into a small, isolated community on the Yorkshire moors. The cult there is led by Nathaniel, a "prophet" who uses a mixture of charm, emotional manipulation, religious fundamentalism and violence to enforce his will. It's a rather bleak and oppressive tale, but very well done so that the characters and the story's seemingly inevitable progression toward a dreadful climax kept me hooked.

Rebecca Wait writes very well: she paints very convincing portraits of her characters and a chillingly believable picture of how someone like Nathaniel creates and sustains his oppression and manipulation of the members of the cult. There is a necessary and refreshing leaven of teenage sarcasm and rebellion in Judith and of genuine, if naïve, goodness in Moses, another child born into the cult who befriends her, and later a hopeful and redemptive note which I found genuinely affecting.

This isn't an easy read at times, but it's a good one which will leave you with a lot to think about and a clear if distressing insight into manipulative, domineering behaviour and the internal dynamics of cults like this. Recommended.

Robert Glancy - Terms & Conditions

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Thoughtful, witty and enjoyable

In the end I enjoyed this book very much. I had my reservations about it, particularly at the start, but overall I found it witty, insightful and memorable.

The book is narrated by Frank who is initially recovering from a major car crash and can remember nothing about his life. It turns out that he is a corporate lawyer who writes the fine print (Terms and Conditions) in contracts, and as he recovers he finds himself re-evaluating his life. So far, so conventional, and for the first 50 pages or more I struggled a bit because I found it little more than a faintly amusing polemic against things like modern corporate-speak and the self-obsession, vacuity and insincerity of much of corporate life (and a good deal of life outside corporations). As the book progressed, though, I became much more involved. As the reality of Frank's life becomes clearer his response to it becomes much more humane and profound, and the book has important things to say about corporate and individual responsibility as well as human relationships. The characters are slightly exaggerated for effect but still convincing, and I found Frank's emerging yearning for real human contact genuinely touching in a world which substitutes profiling and "people skills" for the genuine, sincere, flawed and delightful relationships between us. It's not a particularly original theme, but it is very well done.

One small difficulty I had while reading was that the whole thing has such an American feel to it that it brought me up short every time there was an explicit reference to it being set in London with English characters. This may not be a problem for many readers, but it did keep throwing me out of the story slightly.

Minor reservations aside, though, I can recommend this as a thoughtful, readable and enjoyable book.

Ryan Gattis - All Involved

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Thrilling and insightful

I thought this was a very good book, and for a good deal of its length it was really excellent. It is readable, insightful and both thrilling and repellent at the same time.

The story is set during the six days of the Los Angeles riots of 1992 which followed the acquittal of three police officers for the beating of Rodney King. It is the story of a large and diverse group of characters, all linked in some way, in a gang-dominated district of South Central LA. It is narrated by their different internal voices as they respond in their various ways to the rioting and the consequent lack of policing as the authorities are stretched beyond their capacity. We get the story of those who join in the mayhem, those who settle old gang scores, some who are innocently caught up in the violence, a nurse, a firefighter, an anonymous Dark Ops agent whose team is sent in for some "extra-legal" enforcement activity, and so on.

It is generally extremely well done - the voices, period and sense of place seem excellently done to me and the narrative is repellently exciting. It put me in mind of writers like Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe or Irvine Welsh, which is high praise. We get a genuine insight into the minds of the various gang members, their motivations and attitudes, and into those of the others caught up in the destruction and killing. The tension and narrative drive are electric almost throughout, although I did think it flagged a little in the later stages, especially with a long section about a graffiti tagger, which sapped the pace rather.

This is not a book for you if you want likeable characters to identify with, and do be warned that if this were on TV it would carry warnings for violence, strong language, drug use, scenes of a sexual nature...and just about anything else you can think of. It's all absolutely necessary in a description of the time, though, and forms a very good, intelligent and exciting read. Warmly recommended.

Laura van den Berg - Find Me

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Atmospheric and very well written, but...

I have struggled to give this book a rating. Some things about it are excellent but in the end I wasn't really sure what it added up to. I didn't think its content really warranted four stars, but three stars seems churlish for such an atmospheric and well written book so I have rounded 3.5 stars up to four. Just.

The story is set in a near future in which a memory-destroying disease has swept across the USA and disrupted lives and much of society. The narrator is Joy, a 20-year-old woman who has grown up in institutions and foster-care and whose life is unstable and chaotic. The story opens with her in an isolation hospital for those immune to the disease, and in the second half turns into a road-trip through the USA on a quest. (It might be too much of a spoiler to say what the quest is in search of.) Joy's narrative voice is excellently done; it has a flat, unemotional but extremely haunting quality about it and an absorbing, almost hypnotic rhythm at times. It is a tour de force of writing ability, I think, and it kept me reading throughout in spite of my reservations about the book.

Those reservations are about the content, or rather the possible lack of content. This is really a book about alienation and the nature of memory. The alienation is excellently conveyed in Joy's voice and experience, but I'm not sure it had that much to say otherwise. I kept reading, expecting some insights into memory or how extreme experiences affect our perceptions, perhaps, but I'm not sure there really was much. There's plenty of claustrophobic, almost hallucinogenic atmosphere and a good sense of not knowing what is true and what is not, but I finished the book with a sense of not really knowing what all that had been about. I don't mind the unresolved stories and unexplained events at all, and I certainly didn't want everything neatly explained and tied up, but I'm afraid I didn't quite see the point of it all.

Others feel differently about this book, and have found insight and depth in it. I didn't; I found a haunting, engrossing narrative voice and a powerful atmosphere created by a very talented writer, but I didn't find all that much else.

Don't let me put you off reading this. It's very well written and realised and you may find more in it than I did, but I can only give it qualified recommendation.

Jack Klaff - The Bluffer's Guide to the Quantum Universe

Rating: 4/4

Review:
Entertaining but not wholly reliable

I had the good fortune to be sent a few of these Bluffer's Guides for review by the publisher: they are pocket-sized and only around 100 pages long and I have found them all amusing, informative and very enjoyable. The Guides are, in fact, a bluff in themselves because although they purport to be a handbook for those who simply want to bluff their way, they use this as a cover for providing lots of very sound fact, written by people who really know and love their subject while being very witty about it and often scathing about the pretence which surrounds it.

This Guide, by Jack Klaff, has rather more in the way of information and jokes (some of them very good, some less so) and rather fewer "bluffer's tips" than some others, which in a way is a strength. It is certainly an enjoyable and very entertaining read. To give a flavour of the style, speaking of Relativity he says, "Furthermore, the faster you travel, the slower your brain would run. Planes, trains and motorways are full of examples of that." It's a decent gag - provided, of course, that you know enough about Relativity in the first place to see why it's a decent gag.

I am a physicist by training and my Inner Feynman (I wish!) compels me to point out that the information here isn't as consistently sound as I would expect from a Bluffer's Guide, so the unwary reader does need to be a little careful about accepting all the physics at face value. A couple of examples:
On p. 29 the Guide says: "The nucleus is one ten-thousandth the size of the entire atom." Well...not really. It depends on the atom, but as a rough guide the nucleus has between one twenty-thousandth and one-hundred-thousandth the *radius* of the entire atom, so it's *volume* is somewhere around one million-billionth of the volume of the entire atom - a rather different matter. And rather more seriously, on p.31 we get "protons are 1836 times bigger than electrons." In fact, protons are 1836 times as *heavy* (massive) as electrons. (As far as I know, an electron is still considered a "point particle," and no-one has determined a meaningful, accurate physical "size" for it. Yet.)

Perhaps precision in these things isn't critical in a book like this, but I do think the strength of these Guides is that, beneath their jokey and apparently flippant surface, they have a really solid base of knowledge, so it is a genuine concern. Mind you, I can forgive Klaff almost everything because he quotes approvingly from the Rev. Dr. J.C. Polkinghorne KBE, FRS etc - a distinguished physicist, a truly good man and one of the finest teachers I have ever had. And, as a man who forced himself to read the whole of Baudrillard's The Gulf War Did Not Take Place while alternately muttering variations on "Oh, for heavens' sake" and laughing out loud, I very much enjoyed the debunking of bogus use of terms from quantum physics to try to make works in the Humanities seem deep.

Minor caveats aside, this is a very enjoyable and generally informative book. It is probably best suited to people with some background in physics who want an amusing read, but would do pretty well for the novice and aspiring bluffer, too.

Gavin Extence - The Universe vs. Alex Woods

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific book

I thought this was a terrific book. It is funny, thoughtful, touching and profound in its way, and I found it utterly engrossing as a story. It is hard to give any account of the plot without giving away more that I would have liked to know before I started, but it is narrated by Alex, a serious, studious seventeen-year-old. He forms an unlikely friendship which leads him in a very unexpected and challenging direction - which sounds thoroughly corny, sentimental and cliché-ed, and isn't any of those things. It is an engaging, funny and touching story with some important things to say.

Alex has a fantastically well-realised narrative voice, with very penetrating observations to make about lots of things, all of which are deadpan and as a result are often funny as well as being very shrewd. For example, of his mother, a clairvoyant, he says: "...my mother revealed that she'd foreseen the entire catastrophe. Of course, she didn't realise that she'd foreseen the entire catastrophe until after it had happened." There are many examples of this sort of thing, and I loved it. I found echoes of Mark Haddon's The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime in Alex's voice, which is high praise indeed. Other characters are very believable and beautifully portrayed, and all have their own very distinctive and recognisable traits and voices. The story is excellently structured and paced, and I found myself utterly bound up in this book and it eventually hijacked my day because I couldn't bear not to finish it.

This is one of the best and most memorable books I have read for some time - very warmly recommended indeed.

T.R. Richmond - What She Left

Rating: 3/5

Review:
An interesting idea, but not well enough written

This is an excellent idea for a crime thriller which didn't quite work in the execution.

The story is a mystery about the death of a young journalist, Alice Salmon, by drowning: was she killed, did she fall or did she commit suicide? The mystery is solved not by the police but by Jeremy Cooke, an aging professor of anthropology who knew Alice and her mother and who decides to write a tribute book to Alice by collecting newspaper articles, diaries, tweets, blogs, random jottings by those involved and so on to piece together a portrait of her life and death.

It's a strikingly original and very interesting idea, which for the first 100 pages or so I found excellent. The structure is as random as its "source material" with all sorts of older bits and pieces and later letters interspersed among material about the time of Alice's death. The trouble is, you need to be really, really good to keep this up convincingly and grippingly. I'm afraid T.R Richmond isn't quite up to it, so by the time I got to about page 250 I had a sinking feeling when I realised that I still had to get through over another 100 pages.

The major problem is with the characters' voices, which I didn't think remained sufficiently individual or convincing. It all starts out very well, and Richmond initially does a good job of capturing characters and the way things develop on Twitter or in below the line comment on articles. It isn't kept up, though, and styles begin to falter. As an example, the glue which holds the plot together is Jeremy Cooke's letters to a friend which effectively form a detailed journal. Cooke is an old-fashioned linguistic pedant, but his writing is littered with errors that a man like that would find repellent: "elucidates" foe "elicits", "hung" for "hanged", and so on. At one point he actually corrects another character:
"That stuff they've written about Alice and me, it's pure fantasy."
"Alice and I," I said. "It's Alice and I."
Well, no it isn't - Alice and me is correct. I wouldn't usually be so picky, but there's a lot of this sort of thing and for a character based almost solely on his voice and who makes such a point of these things there were enough solecisms to keep wrecking the character for me. This happened to an extent with other characters, too - the voices weren't sufficiently convincing to maintain my belief.

Also, as the book wore on, many of the voices began to sound less like those of their character and more like that of a novelist. This showed both in their language and in the way they structured blog posts, diary entries or letters not as any normal person would do, but to create little cliffhangers and to conceal the real point of what they are writing. We get the usual false leads and switching of suspicion from one character to another in this way and eventually it all felt rather contrived and mannered rather than innovative and fresh.

I'm sorry to be so critical, but I didn't much enjoy the book in the end. It turns out to be a pretty ordinary thriller with an unconvincing denouement and lots of people learning little life lessons as a result - complete with an epilogue of rather sententious advice written by Alice to her younger self. It's a very interesting idea for structuring a book and it has its moments, but I can't really recommend it.

Arnaldur Indridason - The Draining Lake

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Intelligent and gripping

I thought this was a very engrossing and enjoyable book. It is the first of Indridasson's I have read, and I will be looking out for others by him.

Indridasson writes very well in a low-key style which I liked very much, and the characters are very well-drawn. The translation is excellent. There is no overblown prose or breathless descriptions of implausibly violent events, but the atmosphere and sense of place, both in present-day Iceland and in 1950s East Germany is exceptionally well evoked and truly engrossing - I really enjoyed getting a feel for Iceland in particular. The plot is (thank heavens) both comprehensible and believable and there is mystery and plenty of genuine tension in spite of a total (and to me welcome) absence of sex scenes, explosions and car chases.

In short, this is an intelligent, thoughtful and humane book which is also a really gripping read. Highly recommended.

Stuart Neville - Ratlines

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good thriller

This is a good thriller. Stuart Neville is a fine writer and this is well up to standard.

Ratlines is set in Ireland in 1963. The plot revolves around Nazi fugitives who were given safe haven in Ireland after the war, and around one real historical Nazi figure who is known to have lived in Ireland and to have met Charles Haughey (the future Taoiseach). Neville creates a fast-paced action story around these characters, featuring an Intelligence Operative, a beautiful woman, dangerous gangs...and so on. It's not unlike a classic James Bond novel in structure, although the writing is much more realistic and the action often darker.

Neville writes very well and the story is gripping. He creates pretty convincing characters (including a poisonous portrait of Haughey as a vulgar, untrustworthy, self-serving manipulator) and his evocation of the historical background and the attitudes of the time is very well done. Be warned that there is graphic violence including some vivid and prolonged scenes of torture, but they are (just) justified by the plot, I think.

It's not a profound novel, but it's an enthralling read which gives some interesting insights into a little-discussed aspect of Ireland's past. Recommended.

Kent Haruf - Our Souls At Night

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Exceptionally good

I thought this short novel was outstandingly good. I hadn't heard of Kent Haruf before (although it seems as though I ought to have!) but I thought that if people like Peter Carey, Anne Tyler and Roddy Doyle think he's brilliant then he should be worth a look. He most certainly was.

A brief synopsis doesn't sound great: two elderly people, Louis and Addie, both long-term residents of a small Colorado town and both widowed for some years, start a relationship, refuse to be cowed by the consequent gossip, begin to flourish emotionally, and are further fulfilled by the arrival of a young grandson to stay... It just sounds cliché-ed, patronising and sickeningly twee, but it's none of those things. Far from it; the book is quietly humane and unsentimental, and genuinely tender in places. It is written in seemingly simple prose that is actually something very special and I found the whole thing memorable and very affecting. The writing has a lovely cadence about it somehow, apparently describing simple things in simple words. The book is also unusually short but it is still far more profound and far more poetic than several over-long, self-consciously "lyrical" books I've read.

This is a book about maturity, fulfilment, regret, the nature of love...and lots of other things. Haruf creates wholly believable characters and shows remarkable insight and compassion in his treatment of them. He writes in quiet, straightforward prose and we get almost no account of the characters' internal state, but everything is laid out beautifully in simple speech and unshowy description. I found it mesmerising and completely gripping; he seems to be saying simple things in simple words but there is real profundity here, delivered in a lovely, almost poetic cadence.

Don't look for lots of action or major plot twists (although important things do happen). This book is concerned with things like how our pasts affect us both in our own behaviour and in how others behave toward us, the pleasure of ordinary things and activities, and the importance and fulfilment of openness and friendship. I think it is truly exceptional and I can recommend it very warmly.

Susin Nielsen - We Are All Mde Of Molecules

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Engaging, funny and  involving

This is a thoroughly enjoyable novel for young adults. The basic story is a pretty well-worn one: set in Vancouver Stewart, a geeky, intellectually gifted and socially inept boy and Ashley, a vain, shallow, self-obsessed and bitchy girl are forced to live and to go to school together when their single parents move in together and they all form a "blended family." It is narrated by each of them in alternate chapters. Over time and through tribulation their initially completely hostile relationship begins to thaw and they each learn some valuable growing-up lessons.

Frankly, it sounds like just another sickly, moralistic and cliché-ed story, and if it were made into a Hollywood movie it probably would be. However, Susin Nielsen creates such brilliant characters through their voices and weaves such a humane, funny and sometimes exciting tale that it is completely engaging. I found both Stewart and Ashley wholly convincing; Stewart is extremely engaging from the start and Ashley's voice captures her character quite superbly - and we even begin to empathise with her as she and her naïvely self-centred world suffer some severe shocks.

There are faint echoes here of The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nighttime and of R.J. Palacio's Wonder, but Nielsen creates her own story and characters, and does it very well. I stayed up too late to finish this, which is always a good sign. Its message is not staggeringly original but I found it engaging, compassionate, heart-warming without being sentimental, exciting and funny. It also tackles some important issues like grief and loss, and also bullying and homophobia. This not-at-all-young adult thought it was a really good read and I can recommend it warmly.

Carol O'Connell - Crime School

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another great read from carol O'Connell

I always love Carol O'Connell's Mallory novels. This, the sixth in the series, is no exception.  It's written with her usual flair, wit, insight and excellent storytelling.  As always, it is extremely well structured so that the story and tension build slowly but grippingly and the climaxes are both thrilling and surprising.

The crime story itself is about a serial killer who, it emerges, has links to characters from Mallory's childhood on the streets, so the story is interwoven with revelations about Mallory's past and how she came to be the woman she is.  It's all well done; you always have to suspend disbelief to an extent while reading a Mallory novel and the same is true here, but it's a satisfying and engrossing story with her characters (including old friends like Riker and Charles Butler) as well drawn as ever.

This is perhaps rather darker in tone and more revealing of Mallory's past than some others and so more traumatic and thoughtful.  I slightly missed the comic aspects of Mallory's if-you-do-that-your-life-will-be-an-utter-misery-from-now-on approach which aren't strong here, but it's still a great read and warmly recommended.

Shalom Auslander - Hope: A Tragedy

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Funny and profound

I thought this was a fantastic book. Irreverent doesn't come close to describing it and as a result I often found it very funny indeed and regularly laughed out loud while reading it. However, it is also very touching and insightful, and uses its outrageous premise and its humour to say some very important things about how our lives are affected by our approach to our histories and to hope, grief and fear.

My grandparents and others of my family perished in the Holocaust, so I am well aware that it is a serious, dreadful and deeply tragic event which still exerts a powerful influence and inflicts awful grief and suffering on many people. There is plenty of great literature about all of this by people like Primo Levi, André Schwarz-Bart, Tadeusz Borowski (to whom Auslander makes a sly, witty reference a one point) and many others. There is also plenty of other stuff like Sophie's Choice which I have found obnoxiously exploitative. This book is neither. It is shrewd and funny and in my view a profound book which never mocks the tragedy of the Holocaust itself, but dares to treat attitudes to the Holocaust with something other than awe-struck reverence and uncritical acceptance, summed up in the brilliant observation, "Never forgetting the Holocaust is not the same as never shutting up about it."

The book satirises the embracing of despair and using historic grief as an excuse to evade real, present-day challenges and responsibilities. Auslander paints a merciless and brilliantly funny satirical portrait of a Holocaust-obsessed mother who will not accept the "unhorrible truth that life, tragically, hadn't been so bad," and who pretends have been intimately involved in the Holocaust, indulging in a permanent "Misery Olympics" in which her pain must be greater than anyone else's. There is a brief but telling competitive conversation between two people about who has lost more relatives in the Holocaust and whose opinion should therefore carry more authority, a wonderful satire of a personal counsellor who maintains that hope and aspiration are responsible for the world's problems: if we all effectively hid in an attic expecting and doing nothing then we would never be disappointed and would cause nothing bad to happen, and so on. The book is full of these gems.

Beneath the wit and satire is genuine erudition, often used to terrific comic effect - Spinoza and his mother's deathbed keep popping up, for example, and regularly had me doubled over with laughter. There is real content here, too. Auslander explicitly speaks of the damage which may be done if anyone, not just Jews, defines themselves strongly - as individuals, as an ethnic or religious group or as a nation - by past injustice or injury. It seems to me that Auslander is saying to all of us that our histories are important but that life is here and now and needs to be lived.

There is much more that I would like to say, but this review is probably too long already. I loved this book and if, like me, you share its sense of humour you will find it profound, touching, wise and often very, very funny. I recommend it very warmly.

Marcus Sedgwick - She Is Not Invisible

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A cracking read

I thought this was a really good book. I found it exciting, gripping and thought-provoking, and it has some real intellectual content, too.

The story concerns sixteen-year-old Laureth who, perhaps slightly implausibly, runs off to New York to look for her father with her seven-year-old brother Benjamin (and his toy raven) in tow. I say "in tow," but that's not really accurate; I hadn't read the blurb on this page before reading the book, so the reason why Laureth needs to take Benjamin with her emerged, brilliantly I thought, from the story. You may already know, but for me it would have been a spoiler and, just in case, I won't say more. Their adventures and discoveries over the couple of days that follow are very well told by Laureth herself who makes a thoroughly believable and engaging narrator and they held me gripped throughout.

As well as being a cracking story, this book has important things to say about disability and people's attitudes to it, how families interact and their importance and - subtly, just once but very tellingly - about race. There is also some very good, thoughtful and intelligent stuff about the nature of coincidences and what they mean or don't. It is genuinely funny in places, too. One passage about how Laureth and Stan the toy raven got their names, for example, made me smile throughout and laugh out loud at its end.

This book is for "young adults" and I am sure any intelligent young adult would love it, but this not-young-at-all adult thought it was terrific, too. I read it in a couple of sittings, I really didn't want to put it down and it has left me with things to think about, too. It's a really enjoyable, intelligent read and I recommend it very warmly.

Jane Smiley - Early Warning

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not for me

I didn't like this book, but I think it's my fault rather than Jane Smiley's. I don't usually get on with Sweeping Family Sagas but allowed myself to be persuaded to read this by glowing reviews...and I shouldn't have done.

It's rare that I give up on a book, but I've had a good go at this and I simply can't face slogging through any more of an interminable-seeming sequence of disconnected vignettes while trying to work out who is who, and to whom they are related and how. I'm afraid I just don't care enough, which is a pity. Jane Smiley writes very good prose, she creates convincing characters and shows real insight into the things she portrays, but as a novel it just didn't hang together for me and became far too much of a chore with very little in the way of reward or enjoyment.

Some worthy-looking books which I have expected to struggle with have surprised me by being readable and engrossing (Cloud Atlas and more recently A Little Life being notable examples). This isn't one of them. I've given it a neutral rating because, although I didn't like it myself, I recognise that it's well written and has genuine merit which others may appreciate far more, but personally I really can't recommend it.

Kafka - Metamorphosis (trans. Muir)

Rating: 3/5

Review:

A rather clunky and stodgy translation of a true classic

Needless to say, I am not presuming to give a critique of Kafka's monumental classic, which is quite brilliant in its insight and originality. My three-star rating is of the translation, which I find clunky and hard to read.

This is a reprint of the original Penguin Modern Classics edition which has been on my bookshelf for forty years now and which I took down again because of the attention given to the centenary of Metamorphosis. Reading it again, I must say that this translation has not aged well. It dates originally from 1933, and even then I suspect it may have seemed on the stodgy side. I find this a surprise: Edwin Muir was a fine poet and a very distinguished academic, and as a couple the Muirs produced some very highly-regarded translations of Kafka and others. However, for this reader the prose often seemed rather awkward as if over-influenced by the structure of the original German rather than flowing, natural-sounding English.

This sentence is an example of what I mean: "With his sister alone had he remained intimate, and it was a secret plan of his that she, who loved music, unlike himself, and could play lovingly on the violin, should be sent next year to study at the Conservatorium, despite the great expense that would entail, which must be made up in some other way." It's not exactly flowing prose, is it? I suppose it could be argued that this fits Kafka's surreal, claustrophobic stories, but for me it just made it hard going - and Kafka really doesn't need any help with that a lot of the time.

So, if you're looking for a decent translation of Metamorphosis (which is the work of principal interest here) I can't really recommend this one. I haven't tried any others (yet) so can't make a recommendation, but I'd suggest trying some samples of more modern translations and seeing whether there's one that suits you better.

Tim Bowler - Game Changer

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
Thoughtful and gripping - but bleak

I thought this was a good, thoughtful and gripping book for young adults. It is pretty dark and bleak, but well done and I read it pretty well in a single sitting.

The story is told by Mikey, an intelligent, articulate 15-year-old who suffers from a form of acute anxiety, including a type of agoraphobia and insecurity bordering on paranoia, which makes his life, and the lives of his parents and sister, a real struggle. He witnesses something terrible (we don't find out what until over half-way through the book) and the perpetrators are now pursuing him. His narrative voice is very well done, and we get a thoughtful, compassionate view of Mikey's problems, how hard things are for him and how terrible he feels about how his condition makes his family's life so tough, too. The writing is involving and convincing, with very believable characters and dialogue.

The story itself is no children's adventure with mild peril but no real threat - it's a grim and frightening tale in which genuinely dreadful things happen. It's a dark, threatening tale, which mirrors the terror Mikey experiences about much of everyday life and although there is real warmth in his family's love a redemptive note at the end, it most certainly isn't a book where everyone learns a little Life Lesson and emerges largely unscathed as a happier, better person. It's a tough story in many ways and will genuinely frighten some young people, but will enthral others and treats them with respect as mature readers.

Personally I found the unremitting darkness and grimness a little overpowering, and I could have done with a slight leaven of humour, for example. Nonetheless, it's very well done and many will enjoy it very much. Recommended.

Kevin Powers - The Yellow Birds

Rating 5/5

Review:
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant


This is a superb, moving and insightful book about war and its effects on the men and women who take part in it. The author, Kevin Powers, is a veteran of Iraq in 2004 where this book is set and is now a poet. This combination of first-hand experience and ability with language coupled with great insight and honesty creates something quite remarkable.

The book is narrated in the first person by private John Bartle on his first tour of duty in Iraq. The language is heightened throughout, often poetic and sometimes almost hallucinatory. The timescale moves between his time in Iraq, his pre-tour training and his homecoming and after. The story is really that of Bartle's psychological journey and is quite stunning in its evocation of the war itself and of the state of mind of the young man who went through it. It is deceptively quiet in tone with even the violent action (of which there is relatively little) described without hysteria, and this lends it a remarkable power to convey things like fear, exhaustion, the rush of excitement and the dreadful problems of reintegrating once home.

All this may sound forbidding, turgid or preachy but it isn't at all. This is an engrossing, readable book which is quite short but has immense impact and which will stay with me for a very long time. I think this genuinely belongs among great war books such as All Quiet On the Western Front and Dispatches. I could give a long list of examples of how thoughtful, insightful and honest it is, but I will just say that I recommend that you read it. It is truly exceptional and you will never forget it.

Jean Baudrillard - The Gulf War Did Not take Place

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Muddled and poorly argued

I thought this book was largely (but not quite entirely) provocative nonsense. There is some decent sociological analysis in it, but there is also a very large amount of utter drivel.

In spite of the title, Baudrillard accepts that military events took place in the Gulf and that people suffered and died during them, but he maintains that what took place was not a war, and the version of events we saw on TV and in other media was not what really happened. Plainly, the title is intended to attract attention (and it's a clever reference to Jean Giraudoux's play), but Baudrillard simply fails to make any sort of case to support it. He argues that the war we were presented with on TV and through government propaganda isn't the same as the war as it happened. This is true, but hardly profound or original; "In war, truth is the first casualty" has been attributed to Aeschylus two and a half millennia ago, and although he gives some modern analysis of this, Baudrillard doesn't get far beyond it.

The real trouble begins when Baudrillard attempts to describe "reality," because in using the word "reality" to mean "one person's subjective truth" postmodernists like Baudrillard muddle the distinction between fact and interpretation, and sometimes use the muddle dishonestly. For example, Baudrillard laments the lack of a declaration of war, then says "Since it never began, this war is therefore interminable". Now, if he'd said "The lack of a clearly defined declaration makes a clearly defined end very difficult, and the successors to Saddam's regime will have to deal with insurgents for a very long time" he'd have made a good point and been proved right by recent events. But he doesn't do anything of the sort. He claims that the war never began, which is simply not the case. This is simply denying facts, not commenting on perceptions of them. And to use the phrase ".....is therefore interminable" implies some logical imperative which just isn't there. It certainly won't go on for ever, which is a very long time indeed.

In another example, he asserts that we TV watchers were submitted to "the same violence" as Saddam's prisoners, tortured into "repenting" in public. I accept a parallel in the distortions of the truth by the two sides, but to maintain that I, as a TV watcher at home, was somehow subjected to "the same violence" as some of Saddam's most brutally abused victims is an obscene thing to say. He's not writing poetry or a novel here. The aim is to give clear insights into an analysis of what is really happening. The words "the same" have a specific meaning here, and it is facts, not interpretation, which are being denied.

Let me repeat, some of his poitical and sociological stuff is actually rather interesting. For example: "One of the two adversaries is a rug salesman, the other an arms salesman: they have neither the same logic nor the same strategy, even though they are both crooks. There is not enough communication between them to make war upon each other. Saddam will never fight, while the Americans will fight against a fictive double on a screen." It's overstated, of course, but thought-provoking and a pretty good analysis of the two sides' differing approaches to the war. But what *are* we supposed to make of a passage like this, about the video archive which will be studied by future historians of the war:
"The archive also belongs to virtual time; it is the complement of the event 'in real time', of that instanteneity of the event and its diffusion. Moreover, rather than the 'revolution' of real time of which Virilio speaks, we should speak of an involution in real time; of an involution of the event in the instanteneity of everything at once, and of its vanishing in information itself. If we take note of the speed of light and the temporal short-circuit of pure war (the nanosecond), we see that this involution precipitates us precisely into the virtuality of war and not into its reality, it precipitates us into the absence of war. Must we denounce the speed of light?"

Now, there really are limits and this exceeds all bounds. If he's saying that the video footage isn't the real war, fair enough. It isn't, as Magritte cleverly pointed out. But " the temporal short circuit of pure war (the nanosecond)"? I'm very sorry, but three words, the first and last of which are "oh" and "off" come inexorably to mind. And as for "Must we denounce the speed of light?" - well, words simply fail me. I genuinely cannot remember ever having had to read such abject tosh, and I have studied psychology in my time so it's up against some pretty stiff competition.

I'm sorry this is so long. I feel better now, anyway. I've given this two stars because there's the odd interesting idea, but overall I'd recommend giving it a wide berth and reading something - almost anything - else instead.

Hanya Yanagihara - A Little Life

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Quite magnificent

I think this book is quite magnificent.  I tried it on the recommendation of a friend whose judgement I trust, but I really didn't like the look of it: it sounded like 750 pages about four high-achieving friends all having their little identity crises in New York.  No, thanks.  I was completely wrong, though – it turns out to be one of the best things I have read for a long time: a superbly told story which is readable and completely gripping, and also outstandingly thoughtful, insightful and intelligent with some very important things to say. 

(At the start, by the way, I thought it was going to be exactly as I had feared because the first 70 pages or so are pretty dull and made me rather grumpy, but this is principally Jude's story and when he takes the central role the book really begins to grip and it never let me go after that, so don't be out off by the opening.)

Jude is a highly successful lawyer in New York with an astonishingly traumatic past which has left him physically disabled and mentally scarred – which sounds like the set-up for an overblown load of manipulative tripe, but it's a world away from the sort of lazy pop-psychology and exploitative use of childhood abuse which is sometimes brought in to lend spurious gravitas or character motivations to a novel.  This is an unflinchingly honest account, showing real understanding of what abuse can mean and its lasting consequences.  It is phenomenally insightful and thoughtful, and looks minutely at Jude's situation with humanity and deep compassion.  We get the story of his early life in episodes throughout the book, but principally it is a brilliant evocation of his internal state, of his effect on those around him, and of their response to him. Yanagihara doesn't shy away from cruelty and truly horrifying events and depictions of self-harm, which in places were positively gut-wrenching and sometimes made me physically wince, but she also conveys love and true kindness so delicately and beautifully that I was moved to tears in places.  All of this is done in a straightforward, clear-eyed tone which avoids all sensationalism, mawkishness or sentimentality.

I found the book as gripping as a good thriller much of the time.  I became so involved with Jude and his well-being that how things would develop next became incredibly important.  Yanagihara conveys brilliantly the desperate sense of unworthiness, the near-impossibility of speaking to anyone at all about what has happened to him and that sense (which many of us will recognise a pale echo of) that if only people knew what we were really like, in all our faults and failings, everything would come crashing down.

The prose is excellent, in that quiet unobtrusive way which means that you are wholly involved in what it is saying and largely unaware of the prose itself.  It is generally quite spare and has a tone which allows each event to speak for itself, without literary tricks for effect.  Just as a tiny example, the simple phrase "he could feel their careless derision," is so perfectly evocative; that "careless" is brilliant but unobtrusive.  The writing is full of such things and the outstandingly good narrative voice makes the book all the more powerful.

Against all my expectations, I thought this was stunning: one of the most involving, most insightful and most memorable books that I have read for many years.  If there is any justice, this quiet masterpiece will be a major contender at this year's literary awards.  It is quite magnificent and unreservedly recommended.

(I received a review copy via Netgalley.)

Rene Denfeld - The Enchanted

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Quite exceptional

I thought this was an exceptionally good book. It is profound, haunting and original and is also extremely gripping and readable.

The story is told by a prisoner on Death Row, and it is a remarkable narrative voice. It is somehow both simple and poetic and gives an exceptionally perceptive portrait of this damaged man and some of the things which formed him. The narrative of the book is extremely atmospheric and almost hallucinatory at times; it is a remarkable portrait of a mind. To give a slight flavour of the book, during a brilliant, haunting passage about what happened to him and the idea of remorse he says, "My soul left me when I was six. It flew away past a flapping curtain over a window. I ran after it, but it never came back. It left me alone on wet stinking mattresses. It left me alone in the choking dark. It took my tongue, my heart and my mind." I found that "I ran after it, but it never came back," quite heartbreaking even in this man who has done terrible things, and the book is full of such things.

The book is beautifully structured and crafted, and prison life is brilliantly evoked. Violence and death are always present although their actual occurrences are almost never described, and Rene Denfeld manages to convey a haunting atmosphere of threat and sometimes horror as a result. Only prisoners are named; others are called the lady, the priest, the warden and so on in a subtle inversion of normal perception. The lady is a death penalty investigator whose job it is to discover grounds for mitigation of the death penalty for the inmates whose cases she works on. Denfeld is herself a death penalty investigator so she knows this world intimately and gives an insightful, knowledgeable and deeply thought-out picture of the world and its inhabitants. It is anything but a polemic, and she paints subtle portraits of the death row investigator who has doubts about her work, the warden who believes profoundly in the death penalty but is a deeply humane and compassionate man toward his inmates and others, and so on. It is exceptionally thought-provoking and presents no easy answers.

I found the whole book utterly involving, and the final sixty pages or so were so completely gripping and profoundly moving that I was left in a state of emotional turmoil. Denfeld manages to convey understanding and compassion for these "monsters" (and some of their acts really were monstrous) and even manages to find some redemptive notes, without ever excusing or sympathising with what they did or forgetting the terrible grief and damage they caused to so many others. It is a remarkable achievement which conveys above all the overwhelming sadness of it all.

This is one of the finest books I have read for some time and I strongly recommend it to anyone who likes an intelligent, thought-provoking and gripping read. It is quite exceptional.

Sabato - The Tunnel

Rating: 1/5

Review:
Not for me

I thoroughly disliked this book. It is probably my own fault for ordering an "existential classic." I understand and have a good deal of sympathy with the existentialist notion that it is the responsibility of every individual to give meaning to his or her life, but I have never got on with most existentialist literature and wanted to have another try at finding out what people see in it. I thought that at least this wouldn't be the self-obsessed maunderings of another pretentious and self-regarding Frenchman and I was right - it isn't. Instead it is the self-obsessed maunderings of a pretentious and self-regarding Argentine.

The narrative consists of the thought processes, given in minute detail, of an artist with no regard for or understanding of others, who is socially completely inept and alienated from any other person. (Well, of course he is - it's an existentialist classic.) His own needs and desires are all that matter to him and this, coupled with a flawed and tortured internal logic, leads to the murder to which this is the confession. To give a small flavour of the tone of the book, the narrator sees a woman looking at one of his paintings in a certain way and, solely because of this, he instantly decides that he needs her desperately but doesn't speak to her. He tries to think about how to find her again:
"The girl, I could assume, was in the habit of visiting art exhibits. If I saw her there, I could stop beside her and, without too much awkwardness, start a conversation about one of the paintings.
"After examining the possibility in detail, I abandoned it. I never go to art exhibits." (The last sentence is in italics in the text.)

Now, I can understand the desire to convey that terrible inner awkwardness and the futile planning of casual meetings to try to overcome it, but why would an intelligent, logical character have to examine the possibility *in detail* before realising that he never goes to art exhibits on principle? Surely there must be some limits to inconsistency and absurdity even in existentialist classics. There is an awful lot of this sort of stuff which I found tedious in the extreme. At least in Camus's L'Étranger, for example, one genuinely does feel the alienation of the narrator and gain some insight into the human condition. Here we are presented with someone who seems like a deeply unpleasant and unreal caricature of a cross between the young Adrian Mole and the narrator of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but with none of the human insight of either book and only a fraction of their literary merit.

I'm afraid I thought that the best thing about this book was that it is mercifully short. Although plenty of intelligent, discerning people have liked and admired it, I certainly didn't.

Sheena Lambert - The Lake

Rating: 4/5

Review:

An enjoyable read

I enjoyed this book.  Although the discovery of a body drives the plot, this is really a character study of Peggy, its main protagonist, and a vivid portrait of life in a small Irish town in the mid-1970s.

The story is a simple one:  a body, apparently buried 20 years or so ago, is discovered in Crumm, a tiny place in Ireland and a detective from Dublin is sent to investigate.  This unearths not only old history – which is very interesting, by the way – but the arrival of the detective provokes emotions and change in the pub which Peggy, the 23-year-old, youngest member of the Casey family runs on behalf of herself and her three siblings.  The investigation is really only a minor sub-plot to the main story – that of Peggy, her heart, her ambitions and her family. 

It could be dreadful, but it's very well done.  Sheena Lambert writes very well in easy, unflashy prose which conveys intense emotion very well.  Her insights and character creations are very good, so we really come to feel we know these people and are involved in their lives.  The background and sense of place are also very well done, and there is a nicely understated romance which runs through the book.

I didn't think this was quite the fabulous creation that many other reviewers do, but it is very good and an enjoyable rewarding read which I can recommend.

Ali Sparkes - Car-Jacked

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An exciting read

I enjoyed this book.  It's well written and exciting, and it kept me engrossed right to the end.

The story is of 12-year-old Jack, a "boy genius" who becomes involved in the adventures of a criminal who steals a car with Jack in it.  An involved chase ensues, avoiding capture in order to confront and confound the Mr Big who is behind it all.  It's very enjoyable: it has to be said that the plot is absurdly implausible and depends on so many strokes of good luck that you need to suspend disbelief from a pretty high point, but that's fine in a book like this and I think readers of around 12 years old would love it.

There's more to it than just an exciting crime caper, too.  Ali Sparkes is very funny at times, and the opening couple of pages are brilliant, I thought.  Her portrait of an over-pushy, over-protective mother is a bit of a caricature but makes the point well and with humour, and the message about the importance of things other than achievement and self-improvement is well made.

I didn't think this was a real classic, but it's a very enjoyable read with plenty to make you laugh and some serious content too, and I can recommend it.

Danielle Ramsay - Broken Silence

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Promising but flawed

There is a lot to enjoy in this book but I think Danielle Ramsay has tried just a bit too hard to make an impression with her first Jack Brady novel, so that it suffers rather from overkill both in plot and prose style.

Good things first: it's a very decent story, well plotted and paced. I thought the killer's identity was well and quite fairly concealed until late in the book and the denouement was believable and well done. It is much to Ramsay's credit that she spares us an implausible Cornered Killer Climax; the interview scenes in which the truth finally emerges are among the strongest in the book and provide a gripping climax of their own. I certainly think that there's enough substance here to warrant a second book and possibly a series.

I do have reservations, though. Firstly, in her keenness to give us an interesting detective, Ramsay lays on the personal complications with a large trowel. As well as having a monumentally complex and dysfunctional personal life, Jack Brady seems to be emotionally or professionally compromised (sometimes both) in his relationship with almost everyone involved in the case: a major suspect, the suspect's wife and daughter, the defence solicitor (his recently ex-wife, for heaven's sake), his sidekick, his boss, an arrogant sergeant, the local mafia boss... and so on and on. It really did get a bit much and I began to wonder whether a character would ever appear with whom he hadn't slept or fought or shared a shady past.

Secondly, the style (he coolly introduced). Ramsay cannot just let characters speak for themselves (he briskly stated) but has to pile on the adverbs (he firmly asserted) and clumsy synonyms for "said" (he curtly attacked). After 100 pages or so I found the cumulative effect of this incredibly irritating and it really distracted me from the narrative. Mercifully, in the climactic interview scenes this almost disappears and they are tense, tightly written and really engrossing, showing that Ramsay is able to write really well when she allows herself to flow in an unaffected way.

I think Danielle Ramsay just needs to relax and tell the story, and I hope she will do that in future books. I couldn't in all conscience give this book four stars, but I hope it will be the start of a more mature series, which has the potential to be very good.