Jonathan Pinnock - A Question Of Trust

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very entertaining

I thoroughly enjoyed A Question Of Trust. It follows on from The Truth About Archie And Pye, which it is probably best to read first, although this does work as a stand-alone book. It’s also better, as Jonathan Pinnock has hit his stride here, I think.

The plot is...well...bonkers, really. But that’s fine, because it’s meant to be and it makes a good story which is also very funny. Tom the hapless narrator, is again caught up in complex machinations which are well beyond his understanding as this time he is in the sights of a group of cyber-currency scammers and amoral master-criminals. There isn’t much point in trying to explain further, but it’s a very enjoyable story which is part farce, part a sort of e-James-Bond, but with a bit of an idiot as its hero. There are witty riffs on bitcoins, Hooray Henrys and other things, and I smiled a lot and laughed out loud several times.

I think Jonathan Pinnock is developing into a very good comic writer. I thought this was hugely entertaining and I can recommend it warmly.

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

Lionel Shriver - Property

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good indeed

I thought Property was very good indeed. I don’t always get on very well with short stories but I found this collection to be beautifully written, insightful and thought-provoking.

The supposed binding theme of property is pretty tenuous, to be honest; the stories are about far more than that, with an aspect of property and ownership being just one theme of each story, but that didn’t matter at all to me. These are primarily character studies and feature what Lionel Shriver does so well, which is to get right inside a character and illustrate brilliantly the sometimes contradictory elements which go to make up a person and how they can determine major aspects of our lives. The two novellas which begin and end the collection are especially good at this; just as a small example, I liked this little passage from The Standing Chandelier:

“He recognized something in her, too – a difficulty in figuring out just how to be with people. When he saw this awkwardness in someone else, he could see how attractive it was when you didn’t like artifice, and would rather be genuinely uncomfortable than insincerely at ease.”

Don’t look for fast-paced action and plot here, but I found The Standing Chandelier as involving as any thriller and the other stories were very good in their way. Property is a pleasure to read and a thoroughly rewarding book. Warmly recommended.

Ragnar Jonasson - The Island

Rating: 2/5

Review
Not for me

I couldn’t get on at all with The Island. It sounded intriguing and I like the idea of a mystery set in “Hidden Iceland” but I found it very hard going indeed.

The story is OK, but I found it swamped by plodding descriptions and rather unconvincing characterisation. Hulda is a potentially interesting protagonist, but beset by cliché and overdone Personal Issues. My main problem, though, is the writing, which I found turgid, ridiculously padded with unnecessary detail and plagued by insultingly unnecessary explanation the whole time. The tone is set by a tediously and unnecessarily over-described little incident as a prelude which just felt...well, amateurish to me. Or take this little exchange, early on:

“ ‘I don’t believe in...” He didn’t finish.

‘That’s because you don’t know the whole story, Benni,’ she said softly, her tone hinting at something chilling left unsaid.

‘The whole story?’ he repeated helplessly. “

Every time someone speaks we have to be told more; really good dialogue speaks for itself without incessant explanation. The internal monologues didn’t convince me at all…

Enough. I didn’t like it. I’m sorry to be critical, but The Island didn’t engage or convince me at all and I can’t recommend it.

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

Peter Hanington - A Single Source

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Rather disappointing

I was rather disappointed in A Single Source. I enjoyed A Dying Breed very much, but I didn’t think this was nearly so well done.

Patrick Hanington uses his two protagonists, an old-school BBC radio reporter and his young producer, to illustrate some of what happened in the Arab Spring in 2011 and also to analyse what the refugee/migrant “crisis” really means for those making their dangerous, sometimes horrific journeys. He writes from the heart and with genuine knowledge, and these are very important matters – but I’m afraid it doesn’t make a very good novel.

I found the fractured structure of the book rather irritating as it cuts between two stories and then between viewpoints within the stories, which broke up any sense of flow or development. To make this worse, Hanington’s style is a bit plodding, with rather stolidly described characters and situations. He also does what he managed largely to avoid in his first book, which is to go in for too much worthy journalistic exposition at the expense of the story. There is a balance to be struck between these things and for me he doesn’t get it right here. It’s a hazard for journalists, even very good journalists, when they write novels; I felt the same about Holly Watt’s To The Lions, for example. Others manage it very well (Terry Stiastny springs to mind) and so did Hanington last time, but this was a struggle for me and I can’t really recommend it.

(My thanks to John Murray for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Mark Haddon - The Porpoise

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Brilliant but oddly structured

I thought The Porpoise was very good in many ways, but I did have some reservations.

It is, at heart, a re-telling of the story of Pericles, Prince of Tyre. However, it begins in the present day when a very rich man’s newborn daughter, Angelica, is the sole survivor of a plane crash which kills his wife. We get the story of Angelica’s growing up in the shadow of her father’s obsession with her...which then morphs into the tale of Pericles in ancient times with occasional brief cuts back to Angelica’s story. It’s not clear whether this is all in Angelica’s head, but it’s an odd device, made even odder by a chilling but strange and rather out of place episode of the ghosts of Shakespeare and his co-author Gower in 17th-Century London.

The individual stories are compellingly told and I was very gripped by much of the book. Mark Haddon is exceptionally good at portraying the internal experience of his characters, so for example we get what it might really mean to be taken for dead at sea and thrown overboard in a sealed coffin in terrifyingly chilling detail. All of this is truly excellent and makes a thoroughly gripping read, but the oddness of the structure and the weirdness of the transition from the present to the time of Pericles sat uncomfortably with me. It made me wonder whether Mark Haddon was trying to put two books together which didn’t really go.

Overall I enjoyed The Porpoise and found some parts quite brilliant, but my recommendation is slightly qualified.

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

Joanne Harris - The Strawberry Thief

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m afraid this wasn’t for me. I recognise that it’s a matter of taste and not that it’s a bad book, but I really couldn’t get on with The Strawberry Thief.

Part of the problem may be that I haven’t read any of its predecessors, so picking the story up when it is so far advanced is likely to be difficult, but I also found the style twee and rather cloying. I read as much as I could take, but I gave up as I wasn’t enjoying it at all.

I have given this three stars even though I didn’t like it because I recognise that it is well written in its way, so less would be rather unfair but personally I can’t recommend it.

William Shaw - Deadland

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very good

I thought Deadland was very good. I’ve read a couple of William Shaw’s Breen and Tozer series which I didn’t like quite as much as many people, but this present-day book is better, I think.

Set in Kent, this features DS Alex Cupidi in a story of two seemingly unrelated crimes; the discovery of a human arm in a prestigious art exhibit and two young lads stealing the wrong mobile phone and finding themselves relentlessly pursued by its murderous owner. It’s a clever, well told tale which had me hooked pretty well from the start and which I enjoyed very much. Cupidi is a good protagonist with her own issues (of course) and a fairly typically difficult teenage daughter, but these don’t intrude too much into the narrative and Shaw’s characters in general are well painted and convincing. The story is also a good deal more plausible than many, and even the obligatory climax is reasonably believable (and doesn’t, thank heavens, involve the killer laboriously explaining everything to a helpless captive before...etc, etc, etc).

Shaw writes very well in readable unobtrusive prose and avoids the clichés of the genre very well – so that it really stands out when we get a clunkily unnecessary “It would only take five minutes. What could go wrong in that time?” It’s a minor aberration in an otherwise very enjoyable read.

In summary, I thought his was a very decent crime novel, which made a refreshing change after reading quite a few disappointing thrillers recently. It’s not an unmissable classic, but it’s a cut above much of the rest. Recommended.

Ambrose Parry - The Way Of All Flesh

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Disappointingly unconvncing

I’m afraid I didn’t really get on with The Way Of All Flesh. I like Chris Brookmyre’s Jack Parlabane novels very much, but this, co-written by him and his wife Marisa Haetzman who is an anaesthetist, isn’t anything like as good.

Set in Edinburgh in 1850, Will Raven is an impoverished medical student (with a dark secret in his past, of course) who begins as an apprentice to the renowned Dr Simpson. There is a series of unexplained deaths (of women, naturally) which Raven and the housemaid Sarah begin to investigate.

There are some good things about the book. The medical history is very well researched and graphically and unflinchingly portrayed, for example. However, I found the whole thing a rather turgid read and pretty much a familiar set of stale clichés with an attempt at a historical setting which for me didn’t really convince. For example, Sarah is – you’ve guessed it – a spirited, intelligent young woman with ideas and attitudes imported straight from the early 21^st Century. (Not again!) Raven begins to learn a few life lessons, while also being dragged into something which looks suspiciously like the Rebus/Big Ger Cafferty relationship...and so on. The language didn’t convince, either; it’s largely modern prose and the characters tend to speak in a non-Victorian way (the book closes with someone saying the two-word sentence, “Your choice.” for example) while the odd slightly archaic word or phrase just sticks out and sounds wrong. For example, a carriage pulls up drawn by two “lively steeds.” Apart from the jarring occurrence of the archaic word “steed” in modern prose, it’s incorrectly used; a “steed” is a horse being ridden or available for riding, not one drawing a carriage.

I’m sorry if I appear to nitpick, but all of this meant that I got no real sense of place or period and I found the story and characters rather stale and unconvincing. I had hoped for better from Brookmyre; I’ll wait for his next Parlabane book but in the meantime I can’t recommend this.

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

John le Carré - A Delicate Truth

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Not one of le Carré's best

John le Carré doesn’t write bad books, but I don’t think this is one of his best.

A Delicate Truth is le Carré’s take on Extraordinary Rendition and the increasing involvement of private contractors in national security in the late days of the New Labour government in 2008. It deals with an operation in Gibraltar to exfiltrate a terror suspect which, it emerges later, has gone badly wrong. Much of the book is concerned with the activities and fate of two Foreign Office officials who try to act as whistle-blowers.

It’s a decent story and the last sections are quite tense and exciting, but as a book it’s not in the same league as the great Smiley novels, for example, or the recent, excellent A Legacy Of Spies. Part of the problem, I think, is that le Carré is plainly (and rightly) outraged by what he describes and his indignation affects his style. The calm, measured tone which gives the great novels such impact is replaced by a more frenetic feel, including the modern fad for a fractured timescale. Both these things diminished the book for me.

This is still well worth reading, but my recommendation does come with reservations.

Sadie Jones - The Snakes

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstandingly good

I thought The Snakes was excellent.

Bea and her husband Dan, who are scraping by financially as she works as a psychotherapist and he as a not-very-successful estate agent, decide to take a break and drive their old car to the continent, stopping briefly to see Bea’s brother Alex at the hotel which he runs. It turns out that Bea has refused to accept money from her father, who is rich enough to own a private jet, and that her brother’s hotel is a gift from the father but not really operating, as Alex isn’t wholly mentally stable. There is a death and there are significant developments in all the relationships, plus a deepening and increasingly sinister mystery.

This is really a book about money and its effect. It sounds a little dry and worthy but Sadie Jones writes unflashily but brilliantly and I was very caught up in it. She captures the power and expectations of the very rich, Bea’s rebellion and social conscience and the money’s seductive power over Dan, who was the son of a struggling single mother. There are other layers here too, not least about class and race, all subtly but forensically analysed.

The characters and relationships are very well done and the dialogue is excellent. Jones understands how to show character through speech and action without belabouring us with the points she is making, which makes them all the more powerful. Just as a small example, I thought this was a brilliant description of how it is after a stunning tragedy:

'They had seen chaos but there was no matching response, only the ordinary, and the flimsy boundaries of time. At eight o’clock, eat. At ten o’clock, go to bed. In the landscape of catastrophe there was the brushing of teeth and toilet paper.'

I found The Snakes very readable, utterly engrossing, thoughtful, intelligent and ultimately courageous in its eschewing of easy resolution and convention. I would hope to see it as a contender for major awards this year and I can recommend it very warmly.

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