Virginia Reeves - The Behaviour Of Love

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Engaging and thoughtful

I enjoyed The Behaviour Of Love. Virginia Reeves is a fine writer and she creates a profound portrait of her two principal characters here.

This isn’t an easy book to review because the real meat of it comes in the second half and to reveal what happens would be a huge spoiler. Principally, though, this is a very intimate portrait of a marriage, of two rather different people and of love under strain. Set in the 1970s, we follow Ed and Laura Malinowski as Ed, a psychologist, becomes head of an institution in Montana for people with a variety of mental health issues, including – shockingly to a modern reader – epilepsy. Ed is a passionate and compassionate doctor, which leads him to overwork and neglect his wife and family. He is also charismatic, attractive and sexually somewhat promiscuous which leads to other problems, including in his relationship with a pretty young patient. Laura, a talented artist, finds herself isolated and neglected but determined to make a life she finds fulfilling. As the book shows us episodes over about 10 years we see how things work out (or don’t) for both Ed and Laura, with sections told from both their points of view.

It’s very well done, with the 70s background of casual sexism and widespread lack of understanding of and sympathy for metal health also very well drawn. Reeves writes very well and I found her characters engaging (if not always likeable) and very convincing.

I thought Work Like Any Other was exceptionally good. The Behaviour of Love is good, too, but perhaps not in quite the same league. Nonetheless, I can recommend it as an engaging and rewarding read.

(My thanks to Simon and Schuster for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Victor Canning - Mr. Finchley Takes The Road

Rating: 3/5

Review
A little too much of a good thing

I enjoyed the first of this trilogy (Mr Finchley Discovers His England) but I have run into diminishing returns in the later two books.

In Mr Finchley Takes The Road, the engaging and ultimately redoubtable Mr F. has a dramatic change in domestic circumstances and tours Kent in a horse-drawn caravan. It’s fine in its way and if you’ve read Mr Finchley Discovers His England you’ll know pretty much what to expect: loving descriptions of the English countryside, amusing and eccentric characters, malfeasance vanquished...and so on. It’s enjoyable, gentle stuff and an easy read, but for me one book of it was sufficient, so while there’s nothing wrong with this one, it all felt a little familiar and it didn’t quite hold my interest.

Other readers plainly don’t agree and found Mr Finchley Takes The Road as enjoyable as the first two books so don’t let me put you off, but personally I can only give it a rather qualified recommendation.

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

Trevor Eve - Lomita For Ever

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Original but hard going

I am not surprised to see that people seem either to have loved or hated Lomita For Ever. In some ways, I did both; there’s a lot that’s good about it in that it has an original style and deals with some tough issues pretty well, but in the end I couldn’t really get on with it.

The book deals with Ever (short for Everett) whose mind seems to be coming apart following the death of his father and some shocking revelations leading to his separation from his wife and son. Frankly, for a good deal of the book, it’s not easy to say what the plot is; Ever has revenge of a kind in mind on someone whom he thinks destroyed his father but meets the very aged but still beautiful Lomita which throws everything into turmoil.

It’s an odd plot written in an odd style, and it was the style which eventually threw me out of the book. It is original and in some ways brilliant, but it’s also very hard to understand at times and began to get unbearably mannered. As a small but typical example, Chapter 13 begins:

“The firing range.

Did not require ear defenders with the Maxim 9...”

That weird fragmentation of sentences happens a lot and while it is atmospheric, it got me down in the end, especially when it made it very hard to know who had said what. I quite enjoyed the first 20% or so, slogged through another few chapters and then began to skim, I’m afraid.

On the one hand I admire Trevor Eve for his originality and courageous avoidance of a generic celebrity-author’s thriller, but on the other the book became a real chore after a while. Others have plainly enjoyed this far more than I did and you may too, but personally I can’t recommend it.

(My thanks to Unbound Digital for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Mick Herron - Joe Country

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another cracker from Mick Herron

Joe Country is the sixth in Mick Herron’s Slough House series and it’s well up to standard – meaning that it’s terrific.

A note for new readers: do not start here. You need to read the previous books to have any real idea of what is going on in Joe Country. (Be assured that reading them will be an unalleviated pleasure.) For those of us who know and love the series, this is an excellent instalment. The plot involves several of the Slow Horses ending up on a potentially deadly chase in snowbound Wales, more sneaky and convoluted chicanery by Diana Taverner, the return of Frank Harkness among other threads, while the characters we know (and sort-of love) develop – or at least continue to be their well-drawn, entertaining selves. Meanwhile, Jackson Lamb continues to be repellently wonderful and often laugh-out-loud funny. He really is one of the great creations of 21st-Century fiction and remains on excellent form here.

Herron manages to combine humour with a genuinely exciting story from which, as always, we really don’t know which characters will emerge alive. He writes and structures it extremely well and I was hooked pretty well from page 1. In short, this is a really good Slough House book; probably no more really need be said. Very warmly recommended.

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

Emily Maitlis - Airhead

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Interesting and readable

I enjoyed Airhead. It’s more of a collection of vignettes that a full memoir, which means that I tended to dip in and out of it, but a few sections at a time make very good reading. Each section describes a memorable interview or event which Emily Maitlis reported on, with background detail and some personal reflections.

This isn’t really an autobiography or even a memoir. We get personal details of Maitlis’s life and career only as they impinge on the story she’s covering at the time – like the Grenfell Tower disaster, because she lives close by and spent the day working as a volunteer there – and I could have done with a little more background. Nonetheless, she is quite self-critical and examines her motives and actions in some depth at times; she gives a very good flavour of some of the ethical dilemmas faced by reporters and doesn’t always conclude that she did the right thing. I found this aspect of the book very interesting and rather admirable.

The book is well structured and prose is very readable, although (perhaps inevitably) there is sometimes a little too much journalistic punchiness for my taste. You know the sort of thing: talking of Hungary, “The eyes of the world are once more upon it. But not in the way of old.” That trick of a full stop and new, verbless sentence, rather than a comma can get a bit wearing after a while. She doesn’t overdo it too badly, but it did grate on me a bit.

Maitlis emerges from the book as thoughtful, intelligent and perceptive with a surprisingly deep vein of self-doubt – which probably contributes to those qualities. There are some amusing moments, too, which always helps and I can recommend this as a readable, interesting and insightful book.

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

Patrick McGuinness - Throw Me To The Wolves

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Outstandingly good

I thought that Throw Me To The Wolves was outstandingly good. It’s ostensibly a crime novel, in that it is centred around two police officers investigating the murder of a teenage girl in a Kent town, but it is really a profound book about childhood, class, school, difference and the way people respond to it, herd mentality and many other things.

The book is narrated by Ander, an Anglo-Dutch police officer who, with his partner Gary, investigates the murder in which an old teacher of his at a posh local school is the prime suspect. Ander is a quiet, thoughtful, reflective man and Gary has his own, differently expressed insights. There is a lot of reflection on all sorts of matters, all of it insightful, acutely observed and beautifully expressed. I think it is significant that we don’t learn the full names and ranks of the two officers (who are beautifully painted) until very late in the book, not because they form any kind of a “twist,” but because the book is about so much more than them.

As the case progresses, parallels with Christopher Jeffries in Bristol emerge (but are not overtly mentioned) and we get an exceptionally intelligent analysis of what are often just clichés in a crime novel: scurrilous press behaviour, exploitative people lying for attention, self-preservation or money, appalling behaviour on social media and so on. It is almost poetic at times and full of real insight and understanding. I highlighted dozens of pithy insights, witty thoughts and lovely passages. Here are a couple of brief ones to give you a flavour:

“He has a scholarship, so falls exactly into that zone - intellectually superior, socially inferior – that makes the English upper-middle-class uneasy.”

Or, of the murdered girl, “Her Twitter account is still there, and hundreds of people have already DM’d her to tell her how sorry they are that she’s dead.”

I found this an excellent, wholly involving read which is profound, thought-provoking and beautifully written. Very warmly recommended.

Kate Atkinson - When Will There Be Good News?

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Terrific

I love the Jackson Brodie series. As detective thrillers they may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this, like the others, thoughtful, engrossing and immensely enjoyable.

In When Will There Be Good News, a thoroughly unlikely series of events takes Brodie back to Edinburgh where we are introduced to a group of variously connected characters, a historic murder whose perpetrator is being released after 30 years and, of course, Louise Monroe (now a DCI) who is as gloriously spiky as ever and in a superficially perfect marriage to a charming and cultured surgeon. It is Kate Atkinson’s portrayal of these characters which makes the books so brilliant; her writing is pitch perfect and rich, recognisable pictures of real people rise from the page to involve you in their lives. There are crimes, some exciting action scenes and so on, but on the whole the action is at a very measured pace. I love that and found myself completely gripped, so that I had no trouble in overlooking the rather large number of coincidences in the plot.

In short, I thought this was terrific. It’s a very fine novel of character while being a thoroughly readable and enjoyable detective story. Very warmly recommended.

Victor Canning - Mr Finchley Goes To Paris

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not quite as good as its predecessor

I enjoyed Mr Finchley Discovers His England. This, the second book of the series, didn’t have quite the same appeal for me.

Mr Finchley Goes To Paris is amiable and pleasant enough, as Our Hero is despatched to Paris on business and then finds his stay unexpectedly prolonged, allowing mild, improbable adventures. Canning’s eye for interesting characters and delight in detail is still there, but of course it lacks that deep love for England and its vagaries which made the first book so enjoyable. Here, I found a slight air of “Oh, those funny foreigners and their amusing ways” at times, which I wasn’t keen on, and although Mr Finchley remains an engaging character, and I wasn’t nearly so taken with this instalment.

This is a perfectly decent read but I can only give it a qualified recommendation.

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

Denise Mina - Conviction

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent

I loved Conviction; it is gripping, insightful and witty. It is also an enjoyable change of direction from the very good but unremittingly grim The Long Drop.

One of the book’s great features is the narrative voice of Anna, a damaged, often angry woman whose marriage to a wealthy lawyer in Glasgow implodes, revealing that she is not who everyone thinks she is and that her old identity has become public. Details of the death of someone she knew and liked appear on a podcast and there begins a thrilling chase where she and a very famous, complex companion are both on the run and looking for answers to the mystery of the death.

In may ways it’s familiar stuff, but Denise Mina does it so well that it feels fresh. Anna’s voice is wonderfully convincing, the plot is plausible (although suspension of disbelief is a bit of an effort at the end) and Mina offers some very shrewd but wholly un-laboured insights into aspects of fame, the effects of social media both good and bad, attitudes to rape and other important matters which she incorporates into the narrative with a very deft touch. I found it completely compelling with some very welcome smiles and laughs in places.

There is a huge amount of crime fiction around at the moment; much of it is at best pretty average, some of it is good and just a few books are excellent. I’d put this in the excellent bracket, with its combination of a really good story, a great voice some real intellectual content and a fine leaven of wit. Denise Mina is a terrific writer and this is an example of why she is so highly regarded. Very warmly recommended.

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

Fred Vargas - The Chalk Circle Man

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Interesting

This is a slightly odd book. I liked it but I have my reservations.

Fred Vargas introduces us to Commissaire Jean-Baptiste Adamsberg, a successful provincial policeman who is transferred to Paris and is confronted with a rather bizarre series of events which culminate in murder. We are slowly introduced to Vargas’s main characters, especially Adamsberg himself, who is an introspective, intuitive man to whom normal logical deductive methods are a bit of a mystery. As a result, the book is digressive, quirky and actually rather endearing, and the crime aspects of the novel take second place to character and to Adamsberg’s unusual way of looking at things.

I quite enjoyed it, but I found it a little too digressive and “philosophical”. It was also hard to shake off the ghost of Maigret as a taciturn, inward-looking Police Inspector roams the streets of Paris and interviews people in a very individual way. It was good enough to make it worth trying another in the series, though, so I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4. Cautiously recommended.

Bill Bryson - The Road To Little Dribbling

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A gem

We all know that you just can’t go wrong with Bill Bryson. I loved Notes From A Small Island all those years ago and The Road To Little Dribbling is just as good. I has all those Bryson hallmarks: he’s very funny, he’s humane, he notices and values all those intangibles which are so often lost through greed, ignorance or neglect and, above all, he has a delightful willingness to be pleased with what he finds. When he isn’t pleased, he says so – often very funnily – but Bryson always looks to find pleasure and enjoyment in things, people and places and can bring that pleasure vividly to life for us.

This scarcely needs another recommendation from me, but it has one anyway. It’s a gem of a book.

Mark Billingham - Their Little Secret

Rating: 3/5

Review:
OK but not great

I thought Their Little Secret was OK, but no more than that. It’s my first Mark Billington so it won’t be helped by my not having read the previous books in the series, but even so I had my reservations.

Tom Thorne, an inspector in a serious crime unit, is called to an obvious suicide on London’s Underground but feels compelled to look further into the circumstances. (Really?) He is soon on the trail of a murderous couple, whose point of view we also get, intercut with the police narrative. It’s well enough done, but I found the psychologising and supposed parallels with Brady and Hindley a bit thin, as was the obligatory Personal Story of Thorne himself. Somehow, it all just clunked a bit for me so that although Billington avoids quite a lot of the clichés of the genre and generally writes pretty well, it never quite engaged me.

Overall, I found this competent rather than great. It would make a decent beach read, but I won’t be rushing to read another in the series.

(My thanks to Little, Brown for an ARC via NetGalley.)