Carol O'Connell - Flight Of The Stone Angel

 

 Rating: 5/5

Review:

An excellent Mallory instalment

This is the fourth in Carol O’Connell’s brilliant Mallory series. It’s one of the best so far, I think, but not one to start with; you definitely need to have read the previous three to understand the characters and how we got here.

“Here” is Dayborn, Louisiana, a small town in the wetlands of Louisiana where, within a few hours of Mallory’s arrival, there is a murder and an autistic young man has his hands smashed by two locals. They are members of a local “church”, which is a dodgy cult with a charismatic leader. We also meet a selection of other wonderfully drawn characters including the local Sheriff, his rookie Deputy and Augusta, and older, tough and shrewd woman, all of whom take an interest in Mallory – especially when her reason for being in Dayborn begins to emerge.

The plot is fascinating as terrible past events begin to emerge and we learn more about Mallory’s hitherto mysterious origins. There is O’Connell’s usual excellent dialogue and sense of place (even if it is a long way from New York), slowly building tension and menace and some stunning set pieces – including an extraordinary and gripping climax.

My only slight reservation is the rather long and not wholly convincing coda in which some loose ends are tied up – but it’s certainly not enough to subtract a star. This is an immensely enjoyable book with a gripping story and some genuine weight of insight into characters and into the workings of a cult. Warmly recommended.

Anthony Horowitz - The Twist Of A Knife

 

 

 Rating: 4/5

Review:

Entertaining stuff

I have enjoyed the Hawthorne And Horowitz series and this fourth book, The Twist Of A Knife is a good, entertaining addition. It works fine as a stand-alone, but there’s probably more enjoyment of the characters to be had if you’ve read the series from the start.

This time, Anthony has a play opening in the West End, but after the First Night party there is a murder and a vengeful Inspector Cara Grunshaw builds a seemingly solid case against Anthony. He and Hawthorne have just a couple of days to discover the real culprit, and Hawthorne is his usual enigmatic and apparently unsympathetic self…

The clues are fairly laid, but you do need to be a very keen-eyed detective to spot them (I didn’t, for the most part), and Hawthorne’s uncommunicative style leaves us guessing for a long time as the threat mounts. It’s an enjoyable, Christie-like mystery; well written of course, nicely structured and quite involving. The rather hapless persona that Horowitz has created for himself in these books is an engaging and sometimes amusing narrator. (This early little exchange made me laugh, for example when Hawthorne tries to be encouraging about one of Anthony’s plays:

“The Daily Mail said it was splendidly entertaining”

“I don’t read reviews – and that was the Express.”)

It’s worth saying, perhaps, that there is a curious little episode at one point where Anthony and another character have a discussion/argument about cultural appropriation. It’s an important topic and Horowitz plainly wants to air his view, which is fair enough and with which I have a lot of sympathy – but it doesn’t fit well into this book and slightly jarred on me.

That said, it’s otherwise good, clean fun. We learn just a little more about Hawthorne’s background and at the end there’s a set-up for more books in the series, which I shall be reading as they appear. Recommended.

Rudyard Kipling - A Diversity Of Creatures

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Superb prose and varied stories

This is a more varied collection in subject matter and tone than I had remembered from my first reading of it over 30 years ago. The writing is superb throughout; Kipling was a master craftsman and his prose is always a pleasure to read; the stories themselves I found more variable in quality.

Some common and deep-rooted Kipling themes are here, most notably insult revenged (e.g. The Honours of War and The Village That Voted The Earth Was Flat), and the ways of the English countryside “correcting” wayward thinking through their noble folk and ancient pursuits as in Friendly Brook and My Son’s Wife. Sometimes such correction is startlingly brutal and the pursuits include things like hunting, all of which may jar on the modern reader. So will the casual racism (the n-word is used twice in the book) and the anti-Semitism of the time, although these occur rarely and are no more than a reflection of contemporary attitudes; I think in this case they just need to be taken on the chin and accepted as historical fact, however unpleasant. Kipling also shows his deep respect for both Sikh soldiers and those whose families have worked the land for generations (in In The Presence and the poem The Land respectively) and a sympathy for addiction and mental illness in a couple of stories, which is at odds with the stiff-upper-lip atmosphere in which he grew up and which still prevailed.

Some stories are less good, I think. Regulus is a school story which could have been included in Stalky & Co, but doesn’t have the readability of those stories (and includes a long, long passage about translating Virgil in class which means little to most current readers, including me) and the opener, As Easy As A.B.C. is a sci-fi story investigating the meaning of freedom which didn’t really work for me. The closing two tales about the War during which they were written are both rather odd; Swept And Garnished features the ghosts of dead children, an over-sentimental aspect of Kipling I’ve never liked much, and Mary Postgate is a thoroughly ambiguous tale - but a very haunting one. I am still unsure about several aspects of it, but it has stayed with me over decades and it gripped and disturbed me all over again this time.

So...a bit of a mixed bag, but well worth reading is my overall verdict. I would also suggest that if you find you don’t like a story, just leave it and go on to the next; you don’t have to like everything, but I think there’s plenty here to enjoy.

Alan Bradley - As Chimney Sweepers Come To Dust

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Another enjoyable Flavia adventure 

 

I enjoyed this instalment of Flavia’s adventures more than I expected to. It’s not the best of the series by any means, but I still found it involving and a pleasure to read.

Flavia is “banished” to Miss Bodycote’s Female Academy in Toronto to further her education. She is of course devastated to leave Buckshaw, but a mystery and possible murder (or murders) soon engages her attention, while it emerges that Miss Bodycote’s is not an ordinary finishing school.

The exile from Buckshaw does diminish things a bit, and it’s not the same without Daffy, Feely, the marvellous Dogger and others, but the mystery is intriguing and well developed, and Flavia’s narrative voice is as engaging and entertaining as ever. She is also now making some rather shrewd comments about people’s behaviour and I’m enjoying her developing maturity in this way.

It has to be said that there are some oddly unresolved pieces of plot and the solution felt a little rushed, but I still enjoyed the book very much. I’m also delighted to see her heading home and look forward to the next instalment.

Lionel Shriver - Abominations

 

Rating: 4/5

Review:

Intelligent and challenging

 

 Well, this is...stimulating! Abominations is a collection of some of Lionel Shriver’s essays and articles: they are well written, intelligent and thoughtful, and they contain opinions which are a mixture of the subtle, the bombastic, the deliberately provocative and sometimes the just plain wrong.

Many of these pieces challenge my existing views. Although she describes herself as an iconoclast (put more crudely, she’s often a controversialist), Shriver is certainly no Katie Hopkins. I don’t agree with Shriver on a lot of things, but she has the intelligence and the nuanced approach to make me really think about what she’s saying and about what I believe. There is often more than a kernel of truth in what she says – about how someone saying that they “feel” hurt or bullied is often enough to kill any argument, or that no-one has the right not to be offended, for example. In my view she often takes these arguments too far, but she does so in straightforward, readable, often witty prose and with great clarity, so that when I disagree with something I know exactly what I disagree with and have to think carefully about why.

Shriver mainly avoids lazy or disingenuous arguments – but not quite always. She does sometimes employ the controversialist’s trick of representing wacky extremism as mainstream thought, for example, but she also makes some telling points about what some current trends may really mean for literature, free thinking and society in general. She is also, in my view, just wrong at times. For example, she says “Elaborate avoidance of words whose etymology has nothing to do with race, like “blackball” or “blacklist” serve [sic] no purpose beyond preening.” The point though, is not the etymology of the word, but the connotations it has acquired; that words like blackbird, which are simply descriptors of physical colour, may be harmless, but the panoply of words and phrases which use “black” as an indicator of wickedness, danger or similar most certainly are not, no matter what their origin. On the other hand, she has a point when she says that morally superior, blaming attitudes to language may eventually, and counterproductively, annoy people so much that it contributes to the rise of people like Trump. Like I said, it’s nuanced and thought-provoking, whether or not you agree with her.

I had to take these articles in fairly small doses, but I enjoyed reading them because they made me think, and also because I am glad to know what Shriver actually said, rather than hearing just the moral outrage she often provoked. I can recommend Abominations – but only if you don’t mind having your opinions challenged.

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

Georges Simenon - The Yellow Dog

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

An enjoyable early Maigret

 

I enjoyed The Yellow Dog. It’s a very early Maigret, but Simenon is now hitting his stride, I think.

Maigret is called to a small coastal town out of season, where a mysterious shooting has taken place, followed by a number of other curious incidents, including the arrival of the eponymous yellow dog. The mystery is well constructed and involves a number of the town’s prominent citizens – who have a strong idea of their prominence. It is an excellent portrait of small-town politics and social positioning, with quite a frank exposé of some of the sexual mores in that time and place. The characters are very well drawn and we see Maigret’s taciturn and – almost – imperturbable demeanour while listening, thinking and refusing to be influenced by authority. It is a pleasure to read.

These new Penguin translations – this one by Linda Asher – have made all the difference for me when reading Maigret. I found the 50s and 60s translations I first read to be rather stodgy, but these read very well. I am enjoying slowly working my way through the series and I can recommend The Yellow Dog.

Ben MacIntyre - The Spy And The Traitor

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Excellent, after a slow start 

 

After a slow and stodgy beginning, I found The Spy And The Traitor fascinating and gripping.

Ben MacIntyre has done a great deal of research, which he manages to fashion into a very good narrative. He understands both the techniques of espionage and the psychology of those involved. The story of how Oleg Gordievsky came to spy for Britain, having risen to a high rank in the KGB is fascinating – although the rather long and turgid early biographical chapters didn’t grab me at all. Once Oleg becomes an active KGB officer with serious misgivings about the Soviet system, though, it’s completely gripping. The details of espionage tradecraft are very well described, the people involved excellently portrayed and the story of operation PIMLICO, to get Oleg out of Russia once he was suspected, is very exciting and utterly gripping.

I have docked one star because I found the opening section a struggle, but I can recommend this as an excellent, informative and very engrossing read.

Castle Freeman - Go With Me

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

A gem of a book 

This is a little gem of a book. I love Castle Freeman’s writing and this is among his best.

It’s a very simple premise: in rural Vermont, a young woman goes to see the local Sheriff because she is being stalked and threatened by Blackway, a local thug who scares almost everyone. The Sheriff is unable to act without evidence, but advises her to ask some locals for help. Eventually the young and huge Nate The Great and the old, limping but wily Les agree to go with her to “see” Blackway. That’s it, really. Much of the book is the three of them visiting places and asking – in various ways – where Blackway is, and the tension builds as they move toward a confrontation. Intercut with this are conversations between the locals who didn’t go with her. And, as is remarked several times, “Blackway might have picked on the wrong girl this time, it looks like.”

It may sound a bit ordinary but it’s nothing of the sort. Freeman writes beautifully. His evocation of the hills of Vermont and life there is quite brilliant; it is delicate, subtle and almost enveloping in its atmosphere, and includes little gems like this, of a tough bar for drunks: “It was not the kind of bar where you stopped for a drink on your way home from work. It was the kind of bar where you stopped for many drinks on your way to work...”

The dialogue is simply wonderful. The Vermonters often don’t use many words, but say a great deal with them. It is wholly believable and a joy to read.

I can’t recommend this highly enough. I was engrossed, thrilled and delighted by it.

Chris Brookmyre - The Cliff House

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review: 

Not for me 

 

I became heartily fed up with The Cliff House and eventually bailed out, I’m afraid. I have very much enjoyed Chris Brookmyre’s Jack Parlabane series, but I haven’t got on nearly so well with his other work and this was no exception. To be fair, it’s not a genre I’m normally keen on but I tried it because it’s Brookmyre. That was a mistake.

The whole thing felt pretty stale from the start to be honest; a party in a cut-off island location where several people have “history” and the organiser is worried about how everyone will get on...seriously? Again? And then the first part of the book seemed to go on forever as each person arrived and we very slowly learned a bit more about them, their relationship to the others and that each one has a Dark Secret and is worried about That Thing They Did being exposed – without, of course, telling us what the Secret or the Thing is. I got to the eye-rolling stage fairly early on in the book – and it got worse as absurdities and clichéd situations mounted up, so I was muttering “for heaven’s sake” (I paraphrase) pretty regularly until eventually I gave up because life was too short.

I’m sorry to be so critical. The prose is good and others who enjoy this genre may well like the book, but for me it was just a string of stale, implausible characters and situations. I hope that Brookmyre will hive us another Parlabane book, but it seems that his other fiction is really not for me.

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