Kate Atkinson - Big Sky

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another excellent instalment

I thoroughly enjoyed Big Sky. I confess that I struggle with much of Kate Atkinson’s work, but I love the Jackson Brodie series and this is possibly the best so far.

Jackson is older, still working as an investigator and living on the Yorkshire coast. He becomes embroiled in a police investigation into present-day people smuggling and sex-slavery and another linked investigation into historical child abuse – the second of which features the slightly surprising but very welcome return of a great character from When Will There Be Good News? It features Atkinson’s trademark brilliant character portraits (including Jackson, Julia and their son Nathan) with a poignant comparison of two very different teenagers who turn out not to be so very different beneath their respective facades. It is also a very engrossing story in which Atkinson manages to bring genuine compassion, insight and a fresh feel to topics which have featured very extensively in recent fiction and I was completely engrossed.

There is also a quite extensive coda to the main story, developing Jackson’s life, his relationship with Marlee and other aspect, too. I hope very much that we will get another episode in his saga before too long. The world needs more of Jackson Brodie’s dogged, decent, world-weary but ultimately hopeful brand of justice – and so do I. Warmly recommended.

Paul Flower - The Great American Cheese War

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Enjoyable satire

I enjoyed The Great American Cheese War. It is a clever satire on right-wing conspiracy theorists, the way they may influence gullible politicians and provoke conflict for their own ends,

The story is, in essence, rather familiar from real life but here made absurd because the fabricated “threat” and subsequent conflict is between neighbouring US states and is over cheese. A dim, incompetent governor of Michigan, in post because he is the son of the state’s richest man, is manipulated by a ludicrously absurd conspiracy theory into launching “pre-emptive” attacks on Wisconsin. (As one character says, “It had to be [absurd] or the Tea Party wouldn’t have believed it.”) Private militias and his father’s big private security company become involved as it all spirals out of control.

It is clever, witty, scarily timely and sometimes painfully near the knuckle. I didn’t find it laugh-out-loud funny as some others have done and there are some aspect which I was less happy about – the pantomime farce involving the Police Chief rather blunted the satire, for example – but it’s a very enjoyable read. Recommended.

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

G.D. Abson - Black Wolf

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Good background, so-so story

I enjoyed Black Wolf, but perhaps not as much as its predecessor, Motherland.

Set in contemporary St. Petersburg, Natalya Ivanova is an honest investigator in a deeply political and corrupt police force. As she investigates the death of a woman who is involved in an anti-corruption protest movement, she becomes embroiled in political intrigue and faces the determination of Russia’s super-rich and their protectors within the state to thwart what may be an embarrassment to them, with extreme consequences for her and her family.

The great strength of these books is the portrait of a corrupt society where political and financial interests override any sense of law, justice or fairness. G.D.Abson writes very well and creates an excellent atmosphere of suppression and fear, along with the bone-chilling cold of a Russian winter. The story, though, is a bit average with a lot of familiar clichés among the superior background and the ending became rather silly, with – you’ve guessed it – a stand-off with the killer who explains everything to Ivanova before...etc. etc, plus a bit of a with-one-bound-she-was-free solution to her political problems.

This is a perfectly decent read, but the powerful background isn’t such an original feature second time around and as a police thriller it’s nothing special. Recommended with reservations.

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

Jon McGregor - Reservoir 13

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I couldn’t get on with Reservoir 13 in the end, I’m afraid. There are things about it I like, but overall it just didn’t engage me.

The story is driven by the disappearance of a 13-year-old girl on the moor in an English village. Each chapter begins with the words “At midnight when the year turned...” and we get a sequence of almost snapshot images of events and people through each of the following thirteen years. It’s a curious but clever device, with a strange mixture of a sequence flat, sometimes almost staccato statements but of glimpses of strong emotion through them. There are long, long paragraphs which flit from one event and character to another without warning and for a while I thought it admirable that McGregor conveyed a lot while giving us so little description. The almost hypnotic effect is designed to draw us in, I suspect, but for me it began to pall after 100 pages or so. I found myself slogging through a lot of stuff with which I wasn’t engaged at all, so I gave up.

Plainly a lot of people have found this profound and affecting and I can sort of see why. It didn;t do it for me, though, and personally I can’t recommend it.

Peter Heller - The River

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Exceptionally good

I thought The River was exceptionally good. It’s an excellently written, truly gripping thriller.

The story is of two friends who set off on a wilderness trip in Northern Canada, down a remote river by canoe. They are very competent, well preapared and fit, but the threat of a huge approaching forest fire emerges in the distance, and then sinister events begin to emerge concerning a couple they meet. It’s a simple tale in a way, slightly reminiscent of Deliverance or tales of wilderness survival, but it is far more than that. Peter Heller writes brilliantly of the joy and beauty of the natural world his characters inhabit, he evokes their friendship beautifully and the tension builds remorselessly without ever becoming melodramatic. Some passages (about peril on the river or about the fire, for example) are overwhelmingly powerful and he really does manage to take you into the heart of the experience.

It’s not a long book at under 300 pages, and is all the better for it, I think. There’s nothing wasted and it goes to the heart of what Heller is trying to tell us – about the land, about the fragility of human life, about friendship and other things. I thought it was an excellent book; it’s a thoroughly engrossing story, beautifully told and with important things to say. Very warmly recommended.

Stuart MacBride - Cold Granite

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and atmospheric

I enjoyed Cold Granite, but I did have my reservations.

I have come very late to this series; this is the first Stuart MacBride I have read and overall I’m impressed. He writes very well and creates good characters and very realistic dialogue. He is especially good on the setting, and I cold almost feel the chill and wet of the Aberdeen winter seeping into my bones.

The story is quite well done, of child deaths and the hunt for the killer. It’s grim stuff which MacBride doesn’t flinch from, so there are some very dark, graphic scenes but they are never gratuitously grisly. There are some pretty obvious clues and red herrings, but it’s just about plausible until the inevitable Cornered Killer Climax, which I found rather silly and laboured. And I have to say that at nearly 500 pages the book is too long; tightening it up to nearer 350 pages would have improved it a lot.

Despite my reservations, I thought this was well written and atmospheric enough to encourage me to read more in the series. I won’t be rushing to get hold of them, but I’ll definitely persist and I can recommend this as a good starter.

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

Matt Morgan - Critical

Rating: 3/5

Review: 
Disappointing

I’m afraid I struggled a bit with Critical. Matt Morgan is plainly a good man and a very good doctor, but although the book has a noble aim and deals with important medical and human subjects, I found it difficult to relate to.

I should say first that I can understand all the very enthusiastic reviews form others. There is a lot of very interesting information here about a fascinating topic and I did learn a good deal. However, I had two main problems with the book. The first is that I found its tone a bit patronising in places. I know that it is difficult sometimes to convey complex medical and scientific ideas to non-medics like me, but there really is no need to sound as though you’re addressing a five-year-old, and I did bridle fairly often at the almost childish tone.

My second problem is (and I’m sorry to say this) that Matt Morgan simply isn’t a very good writer. He tries to bring the human stories of his patients to life for us, but they read like a bad novel, full of cliché (“a seventeen year old with the world at his feet,” for example) and over-florid writing which I’m afraid had the opposite effect on me than was intended, in that I couldn’t relate to the stories at all.

It seems churlish to criticise a book on such a subject and with a worthy motive, but the truth is that I was disappointed and although others have plainly enjoyed it very much, I can only give Critical a very qualified recommendation.

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

Kate Atkinson - Started Early, Took My Dog

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but not Atkinson's best

I have enjoyed all of Kate Atkinson’s Jackson Brodie series, but this one perhaps a little less than its predecessors.

As always, Atkinson uses the detective plot largely as a device on which to hang her brilliant character portraits (or case studies). This time, Jackson has been hired to find the real origins of a woman in New Zealand who was adopted in the mid 1970s in Leeds shortly before her adoptive parents emigrated. He becomes involved in a story of ancient malfeasance and murder, tangled up with a present-day imbroglio involving elderly police officers, an abducted child and – almost wholly irrelevantly – and old actress who is succumbing to Alzheimers.

The writing is excellent, of course, and the character studies are again penetrating and exceptionally well drawn. The attitudes of the 1970s are very well portrayed. The continuing arc of Jackson’s story runs through the book as a couple of loose ends from When Will There Be Good News are pursued, of not always tied up. This time, though, the plot wasn’t really sufficiently well done for me and often proved a distraction rather than an asset. There are several characters who feature in the present day and in flashback to 1975 who weren’t sufficiently well-distinguished and became a rather confusing blur to me, and the reliance on coincidence bordered on the absurd at times.

Although Started Early, Took My Dog may not be Kate Atkinson’s best, it is still a good book and significantly better than the vast slew of quite-good thrillers around at the moment and I am still very much looking forward to the next one.

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