Karin Slaughter - Girl Forgotten

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

OK but somewhat clichéd 

 

This is (unbelievably) the first Karin Slaughter I have read. I thought it was well written and decently done, but nothing really special.

A prologue recounts the death of eighteen-year-old Emily Vaughn in 1982. We then meet Andrea Oliver in the present day as she is finishing her training to be a US Marshal; she is then assigned to protect Emily’s mother as she approaches retirement as a judge...and to try to prove that Andrea’s own father was responsible for Emily’s murder 40 years before, in order to keep him in prison, because he is a manipulative, dangerous man.

Slaughter gives us an engaging protagonist in Andrea and the background in the US Marshal Service is very interesting. Other characters are pretty convincing and well-drawn, but they did all seem pretty stock thriller characters. I found the cutting between the present day and the period leading up to Emily’s murder rather annoying, to be honest, and the This Time It’s Personal aspect felt silly and clichéd. I ended up skimming some bits and didn’t feel I’d missed an awful lot.

Overall, I’d say this was a competent thriller rather than anything exceptional. It’s probably 3.5-stars, but I’m rounding down rather than up because I really did think the personal involvement aspect was such a badly worn and unnecessary plot device.

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

David Quantick - Ricky's Hand

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:  

Bonkers but fun

I enjoyed Ricky’s Hand. It’s a pretty mad plot, but it’s very well done and I found it an amusing and a gripping read.

Ricky is a sleazy paparazzo in Florida, tracking Scala Jaq, a pop star. He wakes up one morning to find that he now has someone else’s hand...and it eventually transpires that others also have new, different body parts, including Scala. A support group is convened by the mysterious Don...and a weird, rather complex but entertaining story ensues involving time-travel, body appropriation and some major skulduggery.

In the wrong hands this could be terrible, but David Quantick makes it immense fun. His characters are believable and very well drawn, the tension really does build and the dialogue is excellent – as you’d expect from such an experienced screen writer. There’s an excellent balance of humour, sharp observation and exciting plot and although this sort of sci-fi stuff isn’t usually for me, I enjoyed the book very much and I can recommend Ricky’s Hand.

Carl Hiaasen - Star Island

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Not one of Hiaasen's best, but still great fun 

 

Star Island isn’t one of Carl Hiaasen’s best books, but it’s still funny and very readable.

This time the target of Hiaasen’s satirical eye is talentless celebrities and those who work to keep them popular by lying, fabricating and obfuscating. The talentless singer in this case is teenage Cherry Pye, whose parents employ an actress called Ann as a double to stand in as a decoy or fake presence whenever Cherry is too drugged, drunk or otherwise incapable to appear in reality. The plot is the usual Hiaasen mayhem, with sleazy, deluded paparazzi, homicidal bodyguards, kidnappings, fake kidnappings...and, of course, the Captain.

I think my reservations are really that, apart from Ann, there are almost no decent characters to stand against the scumbags and that the Captain is not in his natural element in the swamps, but negotiating the big, bad city, which doesn’t work so well for me.

That said, it’s still great fun. Even Hiaasen not at his very best is still well worth reading and I can recommend Star Island.

Shirley Jackson - The Missing Girl

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

A good introduction 

 

This is a selection of three short stories by Shirley Jackson which show her to be a very fine writer of unsettling pieces.

The Missing Girl recounts the story of a young woman who goes missing from a summer camp and the rather chilling response to her disappearance. Journey With A Lady is more lighthearted with a subversive twist, and Nightmare is a dreamlike story which may be a vision of a dystopian society or – more probably in my reading – a literal nightmare. They are quite varied, but each one very well written, unusual and disturbing in its own way.

For me, this has been a very good introduction to Shirley Jackson and I look forward to reading more of her work.

Raymond Chandler - The Big Sleep

 

 Rating: 5/5

Review:

Still brilliant

 

This is probably the fourth or fifth time I’ve read The Big Sleep and it is still brilliant. It is Chandler’s first full-length novel and establishes him instantly as a very fine writer, as well as being exceptionally readable and enjoyable.

Right from the opening paragraph, Chandler's style and brilliant prose catch the mood, and Marlowe’s laconic narrative voice is a huge pleasure throughout. There are fewer wisecracks than most people think, but some wonderful similes, like orchids with "nasty meaty leaves and stalks like the newly washed fingers of dead men". It's "newly washed" which is so brilliant there, I think. There is also some penetrating (and quietly angry) observation on the state of US local politics in 1939; the political chicanery, the wealthy protected by the police (including wealthy racketeers) and so on. Marlowe is a moral man doing his best to navigate an immoral world with as few compromises as possible, and his thoughtful, sometimes cynical take on things is another pleasure of Chandler’s novels.

One or two aspects have not dated well. The homophobia is hard to take sometimes, for example. I know it was the prevailing attitude in 1939, but it's pretty repellent to modern sensibilities (well, to my sensibilities anyway). Still, we can't pretend attitudes were otherwise; I just took it on the chin, and the rest of the book is just great.

Chandler is as good as his reputation suggests. He is a truly great writer of English, in my view, and he also produced some superbly entertaining books. The Big Sleep is one of them and I can recommend it very warmly.

G.W. Shaw - Dead Rich

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Enjoyable but disposable 

 

Dead Rich is enjoyable enough as a brain-off read, but despite its setting aboard the super-yacht of a super-rich oligarch, it’s a pretty run-of-the-mill, generic thriller.

The set up is probably the best part of the book. It’s a slow build, but a good one; Our Hero, Kai, is adrift in London as his career as a successful music producer and DJ has declined. He has a new relationship with the daughter of a Russian oligarch, and when she is summoned to join her parents on their yacht in the Caribbean, Kai accepts her invitation to join them. However, Sinister Forces are at work and the family are under threat. We also meet Erin, the supremely competent First Mate of the yacht; she and Kai don’t get on at all to begin with…and of course, I wouldn’t dream of giving away any spoilers about that or subsequent developments on the yacht.

It reminded me rather of some old Alistair MacLean thrillers; decent protagonists battling evil, an unlikely but rather obvious romance - plus a little added modern geopolitics. It’s competently written, there’s plenty of action and the aftermath plays out for some time – too long, in my view, so that it got more than a little silly by the end. Nonetheless, it did hold my attention despite having to suspend disbelief, sometimes from a considerable height.

This would make a good beach read in that it’s quite enjoyable but rather readily disposable. 3.5 stars rounded up.

My thanks to Quercus Books for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Nap Lombard - Murder's A Swine

 

 Rating: 4/5

Review:

Enjoyable nonsense

Murder’s A Swine is a light, enjoyable mystery, originally published in 1943. It is well told, has quite engaging protagonists and the early wartime setting is interesting.

The plot...well, it’s pretty silly really. Agnes Kinghof discovers a body in an air-raid shelter and there follow some sinister goings-on involving threats to a neighbour in the form of pig-related apparitions at windows, and so on. Agnes and her husband Andrew are drawn into the investigation, there are some high-jinks and light-hearted badinage and the whole thing is a bit of a romp.

It’s well enough done to carry it off, although some of the husband-and-wife banter isn’t as amusing as it thinks it is and the solution and dénouement are really pretty absurd. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it overall, largely because Agnes is very likeable, some of it is genuinely quite funny and the writing is good. There is the occasional descriptive nugget like this, for example: “The cottages were Tudor, delightful to the tourist, unpleasant for the inhabitant; but the most enthusiastic admirers of rural England do not, as a rule, have to live in it.”

In his interesting introduction, Martin Edwards describes the book as “a cheerful mystery” and says that “To be able to lose oneself in an enjoyable, unserious book is an under-estimated pleasure.” I agree and I can recommend Murder’s A Swine.