James Crumley - The Last Good Kiss

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Compelling and very well written

The Last Good Kiss is still a very good novel after 40 years.

C.W. Sughrue is an ex-army man turned to private detective work. It’s not glamorous and, as in this case, often involves finding runaway husbands. Sughrue is on the trail of Abraham Traherne, a well known writer, and becomes bound up in both his rather tangled life and in looking for the daughter of a woman he meets while looking for Traherne. It’s a convoluted but comprehensible plot, there’s a good deal of violence, quite astonishing amounts of drinking and quite a lot of inexplicit sex, but also some quieter, more contemplative passages so the whole thing seemed very well structured and paced to me.

The real strengths of the book are Crumley’s excellently painted characters, his wonderful evocations of different parts of the USA from the seediest bars and clubs to the magnificent landscapes, and the very fine prose he uses to describe them. Sughrue’s narrative voice is tough and world-weary, but he also has a strong moral sense (even if he can’t always follow it) and it is excellently done. I found it involving and very convincing and while it may not be an absolute classic of the genre, it’s very good and I can recommend it warmly.

Graeme Macrae Burnet - His Bloody Project

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Disappointing

I’m afraid I didn’t get on nearly as well with His Bloody Project as many people did and in the end I was disappointed in it.

There are good things about the book: the narrative voice is well done and largely convincing, Graeme Macrae Burnet paints a compelling picture of the hardship and repression of mid-19th-Century crofting life, the landscape is beautifully evoked and so on. However, I found that the slowness which at times seemed almost self-indulgent combined with an unremitting bleakness made it a tough, almost turgid read. I enjoyed the first hundred pages or so, but began to get very bogged down and eventually just slogged my way to the finish.

The quality of the writing and the atmosphere make this worthy of three stars, but for me it was a disappointment.

M.C. Beaton - Agatha Raisin: Beating About The Bush

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m afraid Agatha Raisin and I didn’t get on. This was my first Agatha Raisin and, in spite of all the praise this series has garnered, it will probably be my last.

The plot, for the record, concerns Agatha and her detective partner Toni investigating industrial espionage at a local factory, where all kinds of Odd Things seem to be going on and someone is Out To Get Them. It’s mildly amusing in places, but I found most of the humour clunky and overdone, the characters so caricatured and over-explained as to be tedious clichés rather than witty parodies and the whole thing a bit of a bore, really. After some judicious skimming I didn’t feel I had missed much and I was quite glad to get to the end.

So, it definitely wasn’t for me. Plenty of others, including people whose judgement I respect greatly, find Agatha Raisin very amusing, but personally I can’t recommend Beating About The Bush.

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

Kate Elizabeth Russell - My Dark Vanessa

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Intelligent, thoughtful and readable

I thought My Dark Vanessa was excellent. It is about a difficult subject so it’s not a light read, but it’s extremely well done and I found it compelling and thought-provoking.

The book is narrated in the first person by Vanessa, now in her 30s, who at 15 was groomed and had a sexual relationship with a 45-year-old teacher, Jacob Strane. We see her life now as a lost, isolated soul in an unrewarding job who relies on drink and drugs to get through the evening and night, and in flashback through the beginning of Strane’s grooming, her response to it and the consequences later.

It sounds grim – and the subject matter certainly is – but it drew me in and held me spellbound for much of the time. I was half expecting a bandwagon-jumping #MeToo potboiler beating me over the head with obvious points, but I was completely wrong. This is a book with real intelligence, insight and both emotional and psychological depth. We see how Vanessa, who is socially isolated, a little awkward and unconfident, is utterly overwhelmed and thrilled by the attention and compliments of Strane, how for a long time she denies that there was anything untoward in their relationship and feels a strong loyalty toward him, even though his behaviour made my flesh creep. The complexity of her emotions is superbly portrayed as she argues, for example that “it wasn’t rape rape,” as are the emotional consequences, which are intelligently and compassionately depicted, while never evading the reality. Kate Elizabeth Russell avoids neat, simple conclusions and messages and manages to show how issues may appear simple to outsiders, whereas they are extremely complex to Vanessa.

It’s all done with great skill and excellent judgement; for example, Russell manages to make the sex explicit – as it needs to be – while never the remotest bit titillating, but quite the reverse. The prose is very readable, the whole thing is well structured and there is a welcome dash of hope which never resorts to easy sentimentality.

My Dark Vanessa is an important book which is also an engrossing read. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

(My thanks to 4^th Estate for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Sandi Toksvig - Between The Stops

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A terrific read

I loved Between The Stops. I was a little dubious about the initial premise, which sounded a bit contrived, but in fact it’s a delightful read, full of wit, well argued good sense and extremely interesting oddments about all sorts of things.

The set-up is that Sandi travels regularly on the Number 12 bus from her home in East Dulwich to where she works in central London. She is genuinely fascinated (to the point of geekdom) by the places through which she passes on the journey: snippets of local history, interesting shops and people, the roads and who they are named after and so on. She uses these also as jumping-off points for bits of autobiography, anecdote and opinion – which sounds a bit iffy as a device, but in fact is interesting, thoughtful and very funny in places.

What comes across is that Sandi is humane, intelligent, thoughtful, passionate about injustice and very funny. She achieves an excellent balance between these things and has the judgement to know when to make serious points in a witty way. She is generally kind to people, but isn’t above the occasional wittily waspish remark, like the time she sat between Ken Dodd and Julian Fellowes at a dinner: “Ken was genuinely fascinating and Julian was impressive in the self-belief that he was too.”

In short, this is a terrific read; it’s very enjoyable and with some real substance. I can recommend it very warmly indeed.

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

Dorothy L. Sayers - Gaudy Night

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A fine novel

I thoroughly enjoyed Gaudy Night second time around (after about forty years). Although I’ve been back to the others many times, this was my first re-reading of Gaudy Night. It is principally about Harriet Vane and her return to her old Oxford college to investigate some rather sinister goings on.

I think what made me like the book more this time is that I accepted from the start that it is not primarily a detective story and that Wimsey doesn’t appear until two-thirds of the way through the book. There is a mystery which drives the narrative, but it’s really a novel about sexism and how it relates (or related in the 1930s) to marriage, women in academia and attitudes to women generally. It is also a book about Oxford and Sayers’s love for both the city and the academic rigour for which it stands.

She writes beautifully and penetratingly about all these things, creating very well observed and well painted portraits of her subjects, who are principally the Dons in a women’s college. The mystery forms a backdrop at best and isn’t hugely interesting in comparison with the novel’s setting and with the relationship between Harriet and Peter. Her understanding of people is acute and she gets vital human details exactly right, like the poignancy and mixture of feelings when returning to university for a reunion, for example

I found the whole thing engrossing, witty, exceptionally intelligent and a pleasure pretty well from start to finish. I think it was a little long, with some episodes which could have been left out, and Wimsey remains implausibly accomplished in absolutely everything, but these are minor niggles. This is a fine novel which I can recommend very warmly.

Marcus Berkmann - Rain Men

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Brilliant

Rain Men is brilliant. It is genuinely hilariously funny and also captures the spirit of amateur cricket perfectly.

Now well over 20 years old, this remains one of my favourite books about cricket. It is the true tale of Berkmann’s amateur cricket team who are untalented but enthusiastic, with many reflections on aspects of cricket and the people involved in it and devoted to it. I think you do need to be of a certain age to fully appreciate many of the references – the brilliant description of Jim Laker’s commentary or the question “What is the point of Jack Bannister?” for example – but anyone who has played or loved the game at any level will identify with this book and find it extremely entertaining. This passage from the beginning of Chapter One gives a flavour:

“Non-believers cannot understand how anyone could allow themselves to fall under the spell of a game, and such an intrinsically silly one at that. Their sneers and contempt, not to mention their endless satirical use of the phrase ‘bowling a maiden over’, can undermine the most robust of personalities. What they don’t understand is that we know it’s stupid, but England are 84 for 4, for Christ’s sake. Which, needless to say, answers all their questions in full.”

The whole thing is a joy. I laughed out loud very regularly and literally cried with laughter a few times. It’s also knowledgeable, insightful and rather touching in places. If you have any interest in cricket, I can recommend Rain Men very warmly indeed.

(Oh, and if I ever meet Marcus Berkmann, I shall have just three words to say to him: Little Harry Pilling.)