Sarah Caudwell - The Sibyl In Her Grave

 

Rating: 5/5

Review:

A delight

This is the fourth and, very sadly, the last in the Hilary Tamar series. I enjoyed it enormously; as before, the chief delight of the story is in the telling.

Julia’s aunt has a minor tax problem on which she consults Julia, and the usual quartet of young-ish barristers plus Hilary are drawn into a strange web of dodgy psychics, insider dealing, possible poisoning and mysterious deaths. I found the plot rather weaker than in the previous books, but I didn’t care at all. Hilary’s narrative voice is as enjoyable as ever, with its wit, pomposity and self-delusion (or at least self-exculpation), and the usual communications by letter of events elsewhere are equally well done. The dialogue is invariably brilliant (I’m a particular devotee of Selena’s searching and acerbic wit) and the whole thing is a delight.

Sarah Caudwell’s books for me stand with those of P.G. Wodehouse, Damon Runyon and Flann O’Brien; the prose in all of them makes me laugh out loud, no matter what the story. I can give them no higher praise and recommend all of them very warmly.

Cara Hunter - Hope To Die

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review: A good, enjoyable episode 

 

I enjoyed Hope To Die. It’s a well-constructed and involving police procedural which also develops the characters in the series nicely.

Fawley’s team are called to a shooting at an isolated house outside Oxford. Quite soon, anomalies begin to appear in the story told by the two elderly occupants and links emerge to a sensational crime of fifteen years earlier which cast doubt on the conviction. The investigation which follows becomes gripping as the team slowly close in on the truth, but Cara Hunter makes it refreshingly unsensational and avoids cheap Shocking Twists.

There is plenty of very familiar stuff here – the re-investigation of a very high-profile crime and conviction, huge press interest and so on – but Hunter handles it well and manages to make it feel quite fresh. She structures the narrative with a number of points of view, transcripts from police interviews and TV programmes, newspaper articles etc., which in other hands can sometime be very wearing but here I found it very effective. The one thing that grates slightly is Fawley’s first-person contributions among the other third-person sections, but it’s a very minor gripe.

One of Hunter’s best achievements is her creation and development of the police team. They are a varied, wholly believable bunch in whose lives I have become quite invested. Fawley himself is actually rather a bland protagonist, but I find I like that as a welcome change from the overblown, melodramatic Complicated Personal Lives of so many fictional detectives. The characters add to the story rather than distract from it, which is a cause for celebration.

This has been a slightly variable series so far, but this is an enjoyable and involving instalment which I can recommend.

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

Francis Iles - Malice Aforethought

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

Good in parts 

 

I enjoyed the beginning and end of Malice Aforethought, but it flagged pretty badly for me in the middle.

This isn’t a conventional murder mystery – we know from the outset who the murderer is – but more of a character study of the murderer. He is Dr. Bickleigh, a GP in a West Country village, who pursues local women in the belief that he is genuinely in love with each...until the next comes along. His stern and overbearing wife becomes an insurmountable obstacle to his supposed happiness and his homicidal plans begin to take shape.

It’s an excellent beginning; Francis Iles (a pseudonym for Anthony Berkeley) writes with real wit and his intimate portrayal of Bickleigh’s internal thoughts and state of mind is shrewd and very well done. He also paints waspish portraits of the village’s other residents, which works well for a while, but seemed a good deal less original to me, in that it’s been done by a good many other writers of that age and since. The parade of sexist – even misogynistic – stereotypes which form his female characters became rather too much for me, as each one is portrayed as having at least one clichéd supposed defect of her gender to make her contemptible in some way: gossipy, bitchy, overbearing, timid, clingy, stand-offish, unintelligent snobbish...and so on. Particularly coupled with a long, slow examination of Bickleigh’s thought processes, I struggled with the middle part of the book.

The later part did pick up very well, though, with a police investigation and some very well done courtroom scenes. I didn’t enjoy this as much as others have done, but it does have its merits and may well be worth a try.

Alan Garner - Treacle Walker

 

Rating: 5/5

Review:

Wonderfully evocative and compelling

 

 I loved Treacle Walker. It is brief, strange, atmospheric and compelling – and extremely hard to describe.

We meet Joe Coppock, a youngish lad alone in an apparently isolated house. From the dialect (and what we know of Alan Garner), it appears to be in the Cheshire area. A rag-and-bone man appears – the eponymous Treacle Walker, who knows Joe’s name...and then a mixture of everyday and strange, mystical things happen as Joe’s “lazy eye” develops a curious kind of vision. An ancient sleeper in a bog awakens, and Joe begins to learn…

It really is rather odd, but there’s a compelling, ultimately rather satisfying narrative even though much is left unsaid. The things Garner has always done so well are well in evidence here: the evocation of the power of ancient myth, the sense of deep, ancient mystery and powers in the landscape and also the brilliant language in his use of local dialect, in old rhymes and sayings and in touches of invented language, too. To me, these things carried echoes of The Owl Service, Red Shift and The Stone Book quartet, which I first read many years ago and have stayed with me ever since. I think Treacle Walker will do the same. I read it almost in one sitting, somehow quite spellbound. I think it’s exceptionally good and is very warmly recommended. (And I hope it wins the Booker, too!)

Jim Crace - eden

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Readable, but rather familiar ideas 

 

I find it quite difficult to review eden. I enjoyed the writing and became quite engaged with the characters, but I wasn’t sure that it added up to all that much in the end.

Set in the Garden Of Eden long, long after Adam and Eve have left, we see a picture closely resembling an oppressive, totalitarian regime. Those remaining in the Garden have eternal life; they do not age nor bear children. The price for being fed and sheltered for eternity is hard daily work tending the Garden and subservience to a hierarchy of angels. These are physically splendid but morally flawed, bird-like creatures without arms and with beaks, who enforce rigid routines and dispense propaganda about the dreadful life lived in the outside world. We see into the minds of a go-between (or snitch) who informs on his fellow “habitants”, of a hard-working, decent orchardman and a rebellious woman who has somehow escaped Eden just before the narrative begins.

Setting such a story in Eden is subversive and clever, and could be read as a satire of organised religion, offering (in this case, literal) eternal life but requiring subservience, labour, adherence to strict ritual and acceptance of hierarchy in the life currently being lived. Habitants also have an unrealistically hubristic view of their own superiority and benevolence, angels are enforcers flawed by pomopsity and arrogance, but as one habitant asks, “What can an angel do without a little help, except expect to be obeyed?”

The thing is, I’m not sure it says anything very fresh or new. There are echoes here of Brave New World, for example, and especially of the conversation between Mustapha Mond and the Savage. There are some rather well-worn ideas about freedom, for example “being free to die is also surely being free to live as well.” The poisonous effect of envy and spite on an ordered community was well done but not terribly original. I enjoyed the prose, the book was atmospheric and quite involving, but in the end I wasn’t sure I’d really got much out of it.

I thought Harvest was an outstanding, original book showing the fragility of an ordered community subjected to disruptive influences. This covers some of the same ground but for me doesn’t have the same depth of insight. I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because it was quite an involving read, but it’s a qualified recommendation.

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

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.