John le Carré - A Legacy Of Spies

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Vintage le Carré

I thought A Legacy Of Spies was excellent.  I've not been all that keen on much of le Carré's post-Cold War output (with a couple of notable exceptions) but this sees him back to his best I think.

Here, Peter Guillam is called back to account for his and others' behaviour in a Cold War-era operation as Twenty-First Century standards are applied by those who were affected and by politicians.  It helps to have read both The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy in order to understand fully what has happened here.  Guillam narrates an account of the questioning, his reviewing of documents and his memories of the time, and I found it riveting.  There is care over tradecraft, genuine humanity and believable characters, all done in le Carré's beautiful, calm and poised prose.  There are no high-speed chases, nor one-to-one stand-offs in a deserted location or any other of the standard clichés of the genre, but there is an atmosphere of real threat and some genuine nerve-tingling suspense.

I see that some other reviewers have found this sub-standard, but I disagree.  I think this compares with le Carré's best, and he still has the gift of compassionate human insight.  For example, he says of one old torture victim, "The tortured are a class apart.  You can imagine – just – where they have been, but never what they've brought back."  That is of the highest class, I think, and there's plenty of a similar standard here.  I found this profound and gripping and it's very warmly recommended.

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

Colin Watson - Charity Ends At Home

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another little Flaxborough gem

Charity Ends At Home is another hugely enjoyable Flaxborough mystery.  The plot revolves around the murder of an indefatigable charity committee-sitter, from which elements of rivalry, adultery, genteel jiggery-pokery and out-and-out farce develop. 

As always, it's a neatly crafted mystery distilled into fewer than 200 pages and superbly written.  Watson's style is, as ever, wry and witty and he uses it to pierce the hypocrisies and self-importance of many his small-town characters.  The estimable Inspector Purbright and his colleagues are on fine form and the wonderful Miss Lucy Teatime reappears after her triumphant entry in Lonelyheart 4122.  There are, of course, plenty of lovely phrases, descriptions and dialogue to enjoy; as a small example, as the fire brigade pump water out of a crime scene, "…the last of the water disappeared with a noise like German political oratory."

This whole series is a delight.  This is the fifth; it is fine as a stand-alone book, but I am reading them in order and enjoying them all the more for doing so.  Whether you start at the beginning or just read  this one, I can recommend it very warmly.

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

John Harvey - Body & Soul

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Slow and rather silly

I'm afraid I struggled to about half way in Body and Soul and then gave up.  It's been some time since I read and enjoyed some of John Harvey's Resnick novels and I'm sorry to have to say this, but this really isn't a patch on them.

Harvey can still write well and create a good atmosphere and sense of place.  However, his ability to present a believable  plot with people who behave at least semi-plausibly seems to have deserted him.  I just found the whole thing a slog through a slow, slow set-up, a lot of extraneous detail, pretty far-fetched events and psychology and so on.  I diligently read on until a wholly ridiculous extra twist was thrown into the mix around half way and decided life was too short.

I am very sad to be so critical of an author I have liked in the past, but I found Body and Soul a real disappointment and can't recommend it.

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

Graham Simsion & Anne Buist - Two Steps Forward

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good in parts

I enjoyed some of Two Steps Forward, but I had some pretty serious reservations.

This is an older-person's love story, set on the Camino, the pilgrims' way to Santiago de Compostella.  It read to me a little like Bill Bryson's A Walk In The Woods with a somewhat cloying Richard Curtis film script imposed on it.  Two middle-aged characters with recently ended marriages coincidentally begin the 2000km walk at the same time and for very different reasons.  She is a Californian, he is a buttoned-up English engineer; the first time they meet there is hostility, and as things progress…you get the idea.  And as they walk they both learn Important Life Lessons.

It's better than I make it sound; the writing is good, I found both the central characters pretty believable and reasonably interesting, and for the first half of the book I was quite enjoyably involved in an OK-I'll-go-along-with-this sort of way.  I found the second half an increasing struggle as the plot relied on more and more unlikely coincidences, implausible misunderstandings and sudden interruptions at critical moments which prevented people saying something important.  One or two of these are inevitable in a book like this, but it really did get absurd.  I did find the final section of the walk quite touching (it would be a spoiler to say why), but overall the Important Life Lessons which every single character learns seemed rather pat and trite in the end.

Like everyone else, I thought The Rosie Project was brilliant and tried Two Steps Forward on the strength of it; this isn't in the same league, I'm afraid.  I've rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 (just) because I did enjoy aspects of this, but I can only give it a qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Two Roads for an ARC via NetGalley.)

The Secret Barrister

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent, timely book

This is excellent.  It's very readable and often witty in style, but its message is stark and worrying: we have a serious problem in the criminal justice system which is getting worse.

Written by an (understandably) anonymous barrister, The Secret Barrister is an account from the inside of the realities of the English and Welsh legal system.  It is interesting and very clear about how we came to have the current system, its undoubted strengths, its true aims and the terrible mess which so often prevents those aims of fairness to all being achieved.  The author puts his case with genuine passion, but also with humanity and clear-sighted, lucid argument.  Some of the problems are structural (I was astonished to learn the detail of how Magistrates are selected and "trained", for example) but a great deal of it is because the system is being appallingly overloaded while being starved of the resources to do the job by a state "arrogant in the assumption that those hardest hit are those for whom public sympathy will never register on opinion polls."

It's easy to read in that the prose and style are excellent, but the content is a very tough read indeed.  We all need to be aware of the issues, though, because the very fairness of our society depends on a decent, fair criminal justice system which the author currently characterises (fairly, as far as I can see) as in the main, "getting numbers through the door and out again as inexpensively and swiftly as possible.  It's roulette framed as justice…" 

I was surprised and impressed by how fascinating and involving I found The Secret Barrister, and I can recommend it very warmly.

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

Michael Farris Smith - The Fighter

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent

This is an excellent, powerful and affecting book.  As in the outstanding Desperation Road, Michael Farris Smith is in the Mississippi Delta examining lives of both desperation and hope.

The central protagonist is Jack Boucher, and ageing cage fighter suffering the effects of multiple injuries and concussions and dependent on painkillers and alcohol simply to survive the day.  He returns to his old home town where his loved foster-mother is dying and where debt and brutal circumstance threaten to force him to fight once more. 

It doesn't sound very alluring on the surface, but Farris Smith creates a powerful, gripping atmosphere of the struggle for redemption among the threat and violence, and also a convincing, moving portrait of the history of both brutality and humanity which brought Jack to this point.  He writes wonderfully, in an almost poetic style at times which both conveys the humanity and pity in Jack's life and also looks unflinchingly at the cruelty and violence.  Just as a small example, I liked this fragment: "…the only thing he knew was that he had once been a boy and then he had become a hitchhiker in his own life."

This isn't a light read, but it's utterly absorbing and shows a rare humanity and insight.  Very warmly recommended.

(My thanks to No Exit Press for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Terry Pratchett - Hogfather

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Good, but not one of his best

Hogfather is good, but I don't think it's one of Pratchett's best.  It is his take on Christmas and the nature of belief, as the Hogfather (the Discworld equivalent of Father Christmas) mysteriously disappears and Death takes his place dispensing good cheer and delivering presents.  Sinister events unfold as we slowly learn what is going on and Susan Sto Helit (in fine form, as always) takes a hand.

There is plenty of fun here with the Wizards, anthropomorphic personifications, Death as always not quite Getting It and so on, and also Pratchett's typically thoughtful insights into the nature and importance of belief, but for me it doesn't quite have the gripping narrative drive and laugh-out-loud moments of his very best.  That means that it's still very good, just not quite as brilliant as some.  Still recommended, but if you're looking for somewhere to start I'd recommend Mort, Going Postal or Feet of Clay, for example, before Hogfather.