Rating: 3/5
Review:
OK but unsatisfying
Smokeheads is the story of four middle-aged friends who take a brief trip to the small Scottish island of Islay to sample the world-famous whiskies made there. A slight sense of menace and impending doom and a somewhat clunkily-placed reference to Deliverance give the reader a pretty good idea of what is to come, and I won't spoil the book by giving away any more of the plot. It is a well-written book which eventually turned into an exciting story, but I thought it was ultimately lacking in anything enduring.
The narrative is prefaced with a page of heart-pounding action from later in the book to hook our attention. Just as well, from my point of view because the opening was rather slow and introduces us to the characters who are pretty much a stock group of disparate stereotypes - particularly the obnoxiously cocky and flash millionaire fund manager. As the publishers put it "events spiral out of control" and the middle section is exciting and gripping, but in the end I thought it added up to very little. In particular, I found the thinly-drawn characters, and especially the lack of any development of the one enigmatic and promising character, very disappointing.
The book has a good build-up of atmosphere and is rather interesting about whisky itself. There is a lot of well-described action, pursuit and sickening violence which certainly kept me reading, but in the end I didn't think it amounted to much and I found it very unsatisfying in lots of ways, so I can't give it more than three stars.
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