Denise Mina - The Long Drop

Rating: 4/5

Review:
very good

Denise Mina is an excellent writer of crime fiction.  This is a move into Real Crime in a semi-fictionalised form, and she does this very well, too.

The Long Drop is an account of the crimes of Peter Manuel who, in 1957, was a serial rapist and murderer in Scotland.  It is firmly rooted in known fact: the excellent trial scenes are based on court records, of course, and are intercut with some of the events, in necessarily fictionalised form, which led to Manuel being caught and convicted.  Mina, as always, creates vivid, believable characters whose psychologies and thought processes are credible and often very insightful.  She is a little free with speculation in places – in stating that William Watt paid to have his wife murdered, which was never established, for example – but it is generally an accurate and very gripping account. 

Mina's prose style is spare and matter-of-fact, which makes the horror of some of the crimes even more stark and real.  There is a slight feel of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood about some of the book – which is high praise.  The atmosphere of 1950s Glasgow is very well evoked, and I found the whole thing an involving, if rather repellent, read.

For me, this didn't quite have the gripping brilliance of some of Mina's previous fiction, but it is still a very good book which I can recommend.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

B.E. Jones - Where She Went

Rating: 4/5

Review
An enjoyable read

This is a decent psychological thriller and I enjoyed most of it.

The story is narrated by Melanie Black.  Within the first few pages it emerges that she is dead.  She comes to in a strange house to find that she is a "g-word" (this is rather amusingly handled).  The story of how she came to die, and why she has ended up in this house with this family emerges skilfully and it's a well told tale.  Melanie was a broadcast journalist when alive, which is the author's profession, too, and there are a lot of shrewd, often quite scathing comments and interludes about TV news.  B.E. Jones creates pretty believable characters, I liked the Swansea setting (although we don't get all that much of it) and it's an enjoyable read.

I have to say that it got a bit silly.  The character back-stories were OK for a while, but lost some credibility as more things emerged.  Nonetheless, I found this a well written and pretty engaging, if disposable read and I can recommend it.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Rose Tremain - The Gustav Sonata

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent book

I thought The Gustav Sonata was excellent.  It is extremely well written and quietly but penetratingly perceptive about a lot of aspects of life and relationships.

The story is of Gustav Perle, who is born in wartime Switzerland.  We get three separate time periods: when he is a young boy growing up, the years before his birth when his parents met and began their life together, and the 1990s as things play out in late middle age.  In fact, there's not much action, but a lot happens, as Gustav befriends Anton, a Jewish boy of his own age whose family, in contrast to his own are well off, and who is encourage to become a professional pianist by his parents.  The meat of the book is an examination of the relationships between parents and children, how even small acts of selfishness or of nobility can have profound, lasting consequences, the nature if fulfilment and so on.

It all sounds rather hard going, but I found it griping and very easy reading.  Rose Tremain has a fine, subtle psychological grasp of how character may be formed, which is  refreshingly far removed from the current lazy fad for "serial-killer's-motivation-explained-by-childhood-abuse."  Here we have clear-eyed views of how poverty, love or the lack of it, misguided parental pressure and so on may affect people, and there are a lot of other very powerful insights.

The prose is excellent.  It is clear and straightforward, but has real power in its apparent simplicity.  In the first section, Gustav's childhood outlook is brilliantly evoked in short, simple, almost childlike sentences, for example.  It felt fresh and drew me in very effectively.  I also liked the subtle, unshowy way that the injunction to Gustav to "master yourself" and show no emotion is mirrored in Switzerland's coldly brutal refusal to admit Jews who are then condemned to die by the Nazis.  It's all done without fuss or melodrama and is all the more effective for it.

This is a book which, in my view, lives up to its hype,  I found it readable, touching and rather haunting, and I can recommend it very warmly.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

P.J. O'Rourke - How The Hell Did This Happen?

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Funny and insightful

This is a collection, with minor subsequent editing, of some of P.J. O'Rourke's journalism and speeches on the 2016 US Presidential election…which pretty much tells you all you need to know.  My politics are most certainly not the same as his, but I always find him both amusing and thought-provoking (and occasionally just provoking).  This is, as usual, full of wit, bile and genuine erudition, and if you like O'Rourke's work, you'll like this. 

There are, of course, plenty of laughs.  He hasn't lost his ability to come up with a scathing one-liner or a crushing put-down.  A couple of examples I liked are:

"…a progressive Republican.  This is a creature something like the pshumi-pullyu in the Dr. Dolittle stories but with two butt ends."  Or the (in context) slightly self-mocking "To me, most popular music sounds like angry potty mouths falling down a flight of stairs while carrying a drum set."  He excoriates pretty well all the candidates, because he thinks that they are a bunch hopelessly unfitted for the office of President, but deluded enough to think they have what it takes.  He is merciless on both Trump and Clinton – but does manage to be very graceful about both Ben Carson (Republican candidate) and Joe Biden (Democrat who didn't stand), which I found very refreshing.

It's not all brilliant; it gets a bit repetitive at times, and there are some longish passges which didn't do much for me (like an extended riff on the wives of past Presidents), but this is an amusing and insightful read which I can recommend.

Margaret Elphinstone - Voyageurs

Rating: 5/5

Review:

I thought Voyageurs was excellent.  I tried it on the recommendation of a friend and I'm very glad I did: it was involving, fascinating, extremely well written and completely gripping.

Set in 1811, the story is narrated by Mark Greenhow, a Quaker farmer in Cumberland whose sister travels to Canada and goes missing in the Canadian wilderness.  Mark travels after her to try to find her, following the fur-trading routes in canoes paddled by the voyageurs of the title.  It is a long, hard but fascinating journey; Margaret Elphinstone paints a remarkably vivid and superbly researched picture of life at the time, with wars, political chicanery, the lives of the native tribes and the perils of frontier life.  She also brings us very believable characters and some exciting adventures, and makes subtle but important points about family ties, friendship, integrity and much else.

It is beautifully written.  I found Marks' voice utterly convincing and a pleasure to read.  It's a very rich book, but one of the things I loved was the way Mark struggled with his feelings and the strict Quaker rules he has always lived by, and how he manages to adapt and sometimes "fall" while never losing his fundamental integrity and principles – and how his reputation as an honest, principled man can sometimes protect him where the threat of violence would not.

I found this gripping, touching and full of thoughtful, readable stuff.  Very warmly recommended.

Magnus Mills - The Forensic Records Society

Rating: 3/5

Review
Very odd

This is a very odd book indeed.  I hadn't read any Magnus Mills before and was looking forward to it, but in the end I was left bemused.

The story is narrated by an unnamed man who, with his friend James starts up a society in the back room of a pub, in which they simply listen "forensically" to records, with "no judgements and no comments."  Internal tensions and rival societies arise, and the exercise of power and fanatical purism are (I think) satirised.

It's readable enough, but I really couldn't make out what the point of it was.  Also, be aware that there are a huge number of musical references; some are to songs by name (but the artist is never given) and some just by lines like "what's all that about leaving a cake out in the rain?"  (That's MacArthur Park, written by Jimmy Webb, just in case you didn't know.)  I'm by no means an encyclopaedic geek, but I do know quite a lot about the music of the last 60 years and a significant proportion of the songs were unknown to me.  If you're not musically knowledgeable, this might be a real problem when reading.

Things happen, but in an almost dreamlike detachment (we learn nothing whatever about any of the characters other than their approach to music and the Society), there are lots of slight weirdnesses, only some of which I could see the point of, and the ending is so bizarre that I wondered whether I'd received a faulty download.  (I don't think I had.)  I find it hard to rate the book; it's well written but very odd and, to me anyway, ultimately rather inconsequential. 

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Joe Ide - IQ

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good

I thought this was really good.  IQ is a very well written, exciting and sometimes funny book which also paints quite a penetrating picture of rapper and gang life in LA.

The IQ of the title is Isaiah Quintabe.  He is a moral, highly intelligent young man who has become a sort of unofficial detective to his community of poor black people in LA.  He also has to deal with very rich rappers and gangsters, and with the gangs which are an endemic part of life in his area.  He deals with a number of cases with his sort-of-sidekick Dodson, who is not moral by any means, creating a great comic tension between them.  Principally, they are engaged to find out who is trying to kill a prominent rapper.  The story is well paced, gripping and neatly intercut with the story from an earlier time which eventually explains how IQ came to be as he is.

The book is very well written, with elements of Sherlock and also of The Sellout, although it's different from both.  The setting and dialogue are exceptionally well done.  I liked this little early exchange, for example, between Isaiah and a young woman he knows, which I found funny and also insightful about attitudes:
"I'm an up-and-comer, you know what I'm sayin'? I was *born* to be a celebrity.  I should have the spotlight all over me."
"Spotlight all over you – for what?" Isaiah said.
"What do you mean for what? That Kardashian girl's booty could fit *inside* my booty and you talking about for what.  You know she made thirty million last year?"

(Do be aware that the language is appropriate to the setting, so the f-word appears frequently as do a lot of other swear words.  I think it's absolutely right in the context, but if you're offended by it, then this won't be for you.)

This looks as if it will be the start of a great series.  I'll be looking out for the next one, and I can recommend IQ very warmly.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Donald Jack - That's Me In The Middle (Bandy Papers 2)

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Another enjoyable episode

I am enjoying the Bandy Papers series.  Like the first volume, I found That's Me In The Middle a bit variable but never less than enjoyable and exceptionally good in places.

Bandy spends the first half of the book as Top Brass in London, giving Jack an opportunity for some well aimed potshots at official incompetence and infighting, treacherous politicians and so on.  There is also the usual smattering of pure farce and Bandy's endearingly hopeless social and romantic escapades.  This part is well written and amusing but nothing that special, I think.  It's very Wodehousian, with some episodes very reminiscent of Sir Roderick Spode and Edwin the Boy Scout, but it didn't really engage me.

As before, it is when Bandy returns to the fighting, with Jack's brilliant balance of humour and the terror of war, that the book really excels.  He manages to make the narrative both funny and exciting, and captures both the chaotic nature of the combat and its genuine horror.  It reminded me a little in tone of the excellent TV drama The Wipers Times and these passages, making up most of the second half of the book, had me completely riveted.

Parts of this are quite outstanding - and if you have more of a taste for farce than I do, you will enjoy all of it very much.  I will certainly be reading Volume Three (It's Me Again), and I can recommend this one.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Marcus Sedgwick - Saint Death

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Hard work

I struggled with Saint Death.  I have enjoyed some of Marcus Sedgwick's books very much, but I didn't think this one worked very well.

This is a story of 24 hours or so in the life of Arturo, a poor man who lives, as so many others do, in a makeshift shack near Juarez on the Mexican side of the border with the USA.  Life is wholly dominated by two factors: drug cartels whose power means that there is effectively no law, so they murder, rob, rape and intimidate as they please, and the factories which produce goods for US corporations, based in Mexico because of low wages and non-existent employment rights.  The corrupting effect on everything is strongly portrayed; Arturo tries to remain honest, but becomes drawn into a darker world through loyalty to a friend in need of help.

It's a tough, bleak read, interspersed with quotations from people like Barack Obama, Noam Chomsky and others about the attitudes and economic forces which produce such places.  There is a story with characters whose fate is charted, but in many ways this is a political polemic as much as a novel, with Sedgwick's stance being largely summed up in this sentence: "Juarez is what happens when greed makes money by passing things across the border dividing poverty and wealth."  He excoriates the cartels, but also the rich people in the USA who keep them powerful by buying the drugs, and the US laws and corporations who exploit the poverty to increase their own wealth. 

Even though I think Sedgwick makes very valid and timely points, as a novel I didn't think this really worked.  It's more of a political cry of rage, really, and I found it pretty hard work to read.  Only a lukewarm recommendation, I'm afraid.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

John Hart - Redemption Road

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good indeed

I thought Redemption Road was very good, and for much of its length I thought it was really excellent. 

It's a tough, often brutal crime novel whose plot, looked at coldly in retrospect, sounds like a million others:  troubled cop has been involved in an incident for which she is under investigation for possible murder; an ex-cop for whom she still has feelings is released from jail after a hideous 14-year stretch for a crime he may not have committed; violence and murder ensue, as do corrupt officials, suspicion of betrayal…and so on.  In fact it is so well done that I was completely gripped much of the time and it felt original and fresh.  It is brilliantly written and structured, with believable, flawed characters and a terrific, oppressive atmosphere and sense of place.  The plot emerges very cleverly and moves at a decent pace but there is also real depth of characterisation and some genuine thought about the nature of guilt and the choices we make.

I did think things got just a bit overwrought and implausible toward the end and the book could perhaps have done with a little trimming, but that's a tiny niggle, really and it's still a 5-star read for me.  This is a very good book indeed, whose style and structure could teach a lot of aspiring crime writers a few things about how to create a gripping story and fine characters without resorting to hyperbole and absurd "twists."  Very warmly recommended.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Boris Akunin - The State Counsellor

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not for me

I didn't get on very well with The State Counsellor.  It's a novel setting for a crime story and it's reasonably well done, but it just didn't ever quite engage me, I'm afraid.

Set in late 19^th Century Tsarist Russia, Fandorin is a state security operative who acts rather like an Imperially appointed Sherlock Holmes.  Here he investigates the murder of a very highly placed official who has received numerous threats from an anarchist group.  Needless to say, the politics of the situation become very involved, but Fandorin is the equal of it all. 

The setting was pretty well done, as was the sense of political skulduggery and shifting factions and the story was decent if rather run-of-the-mill.  Somehow, though, this never took off or involved me much; the characters were all a bit thin, the plot wasn't really enough to hold my attention and the writing was over-wordy and often had a stale, almost clichéd feel – possibly due to the translation rather than the original.  Phrases like "they waited with bated breath", for example, began to get pretty wearisome after a while.

So, this wasn't for me.  It's not actually bad and others have enjoyed it very much, but I can't really recommend it.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Helen Phillips - The Beautiful Bureaucrat

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

The Beautiful Bureaucrat began rather well, but by about half-way through I was very annoyed by it and finished it in a bit of a strop, to be honest.  I read it because of an endorsement from Ursula Le Guin, whom I respect greatly, but I rather wish I hadn't.

The story is weird and dystopian.  Josephine and her husband Joseph move to a nameless city from a nameless "hinterland" and have to live in a series of squalid, very short-term sub-lets.  She, desperate for employment, takes a job in a sinister place where she spends all day in  a windowless office, seeing almost no-one other than a couple of sinister, nightmarish characters and  performing repetitive inputs to the sinister Database.  Her alienation and disorientation grows as the significance of what she is doing gradually dawns on her and we get into somewhat mystical (or possibly sci-fi) realms.

For a while, this was sufficiently atmospheric and intriguing to keep me interested, but I began to tire of it after a while.  There is a lot of frightfully clever writing, darling, which is very keen to show us how clever it is, but I thought it was ultimately pretty facile with some very irritating aspects.  For example, Josephine's deteriorating mental state is portrayed by her continually jumbling words she has just used, like this: "She didn't know whether pomegranates should be selected based on firmness or fragrance or hue.

Poor me granite.

Pagan remote.

Page tame no."

There really is an awful lot of this stuff and it soon began to feel to me less like a picture of a mind in turmoil than a teacher of Creative Writing indulging herself.  (Why was I not surprised to discover than Helen Phillips teaches Creative Writing?)  Later, we get this: "His name a synonym for file.  Correction: his name a synonym for life."  This does have significance in the story, but there is so much high-octane "file-life" writing that I began to think "OK, OK – I get it, but it's just a bit of slightly facile wordplay.  No need to go on!"  And so on, and so on.

I make no claim to exceptional perceptiveness, but I'm not wholly dim and I simply can't see what the book was ultimately trying to say - if anything.  One critic says that it's "a narrative in which the perplexities of work and marriage gradually change their colours to display the perplexities of birth and death".  Well, perhaps.  Personally, I thought it was the sort of self-indulgent book which creates a stir in chattering circles for a while before being forgotten for a new dinner-party fad. 

It would be simple to apply adjectives like Kafka-esque or Orwellian to this book, but that would lazily imply membership of a league to which it certainly doesn't belong.  I'm sorry to be so critical, but I didn't like The Beautiful Bureaucrat at all.  I have given it a slightly generous two stars because the opening was at least intriguing and it has the immense merit of being fairly short, but it really wasn't for me.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Caitlin Moran - Moranifesto

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very insightful and very funny

Rather to my shame, I've not read much of Caitlin Moran's work before so I took the chance to sample some of her work here – and it's brilliant. 

Moran's writing is genuinely funny, genuinely intelligent and genuinely incredibly readable.  Whatever she is writing about, she brings an often laugh-out-loud wit to it but there is real intellectual depth in it, too.  There is a lot of thoughtful and perceptive social and political analysis here and it's a joy to read pieces which often make very serious, important points while remaining readable and engaging enough to really involve you.  And, of course, there are the plain hilarious pieces dealing with such profound subjects as Daft Punk's single Get Lucky.

I expected this to be a book which I would dip into, read a few pieces and then read something else for  a break before returning.  It's the opposite – I enjoyed it so much that I just kept lapping it up and had to tear myself away.   Back in the 80s I used to read P.J. O'Rourke, even though I profoundly disagreed with his politics, because he wrote so well and so funnily and because he made me think.  Caitlin Moran has a similar effect on me – with the added bonus that I agree with her on pretty well everything. 

Quite simply, this book was a slightly unexpected joy for me, and I can recommend it wholeheartedly.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Stephanie Butland - Lost For Words

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and enjoyable

I enjoyed Lost For Words; I found it readable, humane and rather perceptive.

Loveday Cardew is a damaged young woman working in a second-hand bookshop, and she also recounts episodes from her childhood trauma and her relationship with a somewhat sinister ex-boyfriend and so on, all told in a fractured timescale… It sounds very familiar ground with the potential to be pretty dreadful, but it's so well done here that it felt very fresh and involving to me. Loveday's narrative voice is authentic and very engaging and the account of the violent disintegration of a once-loving family is compassionate and believable. The present-day story of her beginning to resolve the scars is well handled; it is intelligent and thoughtful and almost entirely without implausible sentimentality. There is a distinct whiff of a Richard Curtis film about the plot, but it's a well told tale and I was happy to go along with even the rather implausible ending.

You may get a sense of Loveday's voice from these little observations: of a party "..and there's a lot of wine and loads of that food that means you don't stop eating all night but you have to make toast when you get home because you're starving." Or, " 'Fresh start', in case you're wondering, is social worker code for 'your life is now screwed but at least we can do something about the pointing and whispering." I liked it a lot and I found it genuinely funny in places and very touching in others.

Stephanie Butland creates a very credible cast of characters and a decent sense of place in York. She writes well and I found myself very carried along by Loveday's recounting of her story. The references to books are enjoyable and never overdone or show-offy and the whole thing was an engaging and quite gripping read which I can recommend.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)

Thomas Keneally - Crimes of the Father

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good but flawed

Thomas Keneally is a very fine writer and I was expecting this to be excellent.  It was good in many ways, but as a novel I had my reservations about it.

Keneally is from a Catholic family and this is his take on priestly abuse of children (which he states clearly that he never suffered personally, by the way) and the Church's response to it.  Set in 1996, we meet Father Frank Docherty who is returning to Sydney after being sent away by a previous Cardinal for his political views and his refusal to accept orthodoxy uncritically.  He has remained a priest and also become a psychologist and academic in Canada, working on child abuse in the Church.  On his return he becomes embroiled in old abuse cases and we see him wrestling with matters of conscience, honesty, care for victims and so on and how those involved respond.  All this is very well done; these parts of the book make an involving, readable story and Keneally shows his typical intelligently insightful examination of his characters and the moral issues involved.

However, interspersed with this we also get a lot of history: how Frank developed into the man he is; the youthful spiritual struggle of one of the people affected; a good deal of discussion of the Church's attitudes to celibacy, birth control and sexuality generally and so on.  For me, although it's important stuff, here its effect was to water down and interfere with the crucial central story and its subject, so the book became something of a slog in some sections.  As things reach a head, the narrative becomes very gripping – although I did think that the outcomes were a little too conveniently neat to quite ring true.

I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because it's very well written and has some important things to say, but I can only give this a somewhat qualified recommendation.

(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)