Michael Innes - The Weight Of The Evidence

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not one of Innes's best

I have to say that I didn't enjoy The Weight Of The Evidence as much as some Innes novels.  It has his characteristic dry, satirical wit but I do have my reservations.

This, the eighth in the Appleby series, sees him in "Nestfield" University (a scarcely disguised Leeds) investigating the death of an academic who has been killed by a falling meteorite.  It is plainly an act of murder and Innes's trademark cast of wittily satirised suspect characters and a plot which depends intricately upon precise times and the exact placement of buildings and people develops.

Innes's skewering portraits of academics when set in Oxford seem like poking fun at his peers.  Here, I find a tinge of condescension which I don’t like at all.  I know that Innes himself was a lecturer at Leeds and he even has Appleby inwardly condemn one academic as a snob, but there is still a slight air of sneering at provincials who don't do things "properly" in the way that Oxford Colleges do.  As a result it seemed far more self-consciously - perhaps even self-regardingly - highbrow than some of his other books.  This is a personal feeling, and I'm sure it is not what Innes intended, but it still marred my enjoyment in quite a few places.

Others may not agree, and certainly if you like Innes's dry, witty academic banter and rather grumpy take on modern (i.e. 1940s) life there is much here to enjoy.  For me, though, it's not one I'll be going back to.

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

G.D. Abson - Motherland

Rating: 5/5

Review:
An excellent read

I thought Motherland was excellent.  It is well written, has a good story and gives a very convincing picture of present-day Russia.

The main protagonist is Natalya Ivanova, a senior investigator in the equivalent of the St. Petersburg CID.  She is called to investigate the disappearance of the daughter of a Swedish businessman who is very rich and therefore gets police attention to the case.  A complex story of corruption, murder and mafia involvement emerges, which I found to be a gripping tale.  The writing and background are so good that even when the odd familiar trope of the detective thriller crops up, it still rings true in the context.

Although this becomes a very gripping and exciting story, the plot unfolds very slowly to begin with.  I though this was actually a strength of the book because what really makes Motherland stand out is the picture of life in modern Russia, with endemic corruption, mafia bosses and state enforcers acting with near-impunity and so on, while ordinary people try to get through as best they can.  This includes Natalya, whose character and everyday compromises seemed very real to me, as did all the characters in the book.   It's exceptionally well painted and – to this non-expert, at least – thoroughly convincing.  I marked a number of passages, like this neat summation: "That's what happened when old KGB men were put in charge of a country.  News studios pretended propaganda was the truth.  Elections pretended to be fair.  Everyone pretended to be someone else, and nobody knew who they were any more."

I think this is a very impressive debut indeed, and I look forward to more from G.D. Abson.  Warmly recommended.

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

Jon Butterworth - A Map Of The Invisible

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Readable and fascinating

I thought A Map Of The Invisible was very good indeed.  Jon Butterworth is both a fine physicist and a very engaging writer.  The combination produces something rather special here.

Butterworth's aim is to give the non-physicist an insight into the quantum world, from the basic structure of atoms to more recent developments like the discovery of the Higgs boson and also into more arcane theories and theoretical methods and the current directions of thinking in physics.  He does this by an extended analogy in which particles are envisaged as inhabitants of islands with their "geographical" position representing the mass/energy level of the particles and means of transport representing the mediators of the fundamental forces.  This works well – at least as well as any other analogy I have come across.  It can get just a little wearing at times, but as a template in which to anchor so many entities and ideas it gives the book a welcome coherent structure.

Butterworth writes very well.  His prose is readable and direct, with a very welcome absence of gee-whizzery and often a nice humorous undertone.  As a tiny example which may give you a flavour (no quark pun intended), this footnote about wave/particle duality: "The equation which describes these waves is the Schrödinger equation.  Less famous than his cat but much more useful."  I found the style carried me well through some pretty tough intellectual workouts and he strikes a very good balance between providing enough technical and mathematical meat while allowing a non-physicist to keep up.

This requires a good deal of intellectual effort; no amount of analogy or clear writing is going to make quantum physics simple.  I have a background in physics (some time ago, now) and I still found some of it a bit of a struggle - it's just the nature of the beast.  However, this is one of the best, clearest and easiest-to-understand guides I have found to the state of physics in late 2017 and I can recommend it warmly.

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

Sarah Hilary - Come And Find Me

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Well written and gripping

I thought Come And Find Me was a good, gripping read.  It is a police procedural which has the immense merit that police do actually follow procedure, so it's a pretty plausible story and Sarah Hilary writes very well.  It is the fifth in her Marnie Rome series and can be read as a stand-alone, but it's probably best to read at least some of the previous books first.

Marnie, Noah and the team are hunting a dangerous escaped prisoner following a gruesome prison riot which he apparently instigated.  We get a third-person narrative from the point of view of various police officers (principally Marnie and Noah) and also the internal voice of another prisoner in hospital after the riot.  It's a good story whose surprises actually made sense (which is a very welcome change from those books whose "twists" sacrifice all plausibility of story and character in trying to produce a surprise ending).  Hilary develops her characters well and there is some pretty decent psychological insight here, as well as an understanding of the realities of prison life.  I became very gripped by the story and the writing. 

I do think that Sarah Hilary overdoes the psychologising and backstories of her police characters sometimes.  The digressions into the murder of Marnie's parents and Noah's tribulations with his brother - not to mention a lengthy episode involving the dementia of the mother of a minor police character - interrupted the narrative flow.  Hilary creates good, rounded characters without all this slightly overblown stuff which was a distraction rather than an enhancement for me.

This small personal reservation aside, I enjoyed Come And Find Me; I can recommend it as a well-written, thoughtful and gripping story. 

(I received an ARC via NetGalley.)

 

Mick Herron - The List

Rating: 4/5

Review:
An enjoyable diversion

This is a brief story from Mick Herron which takes about an hour to read.  It's not in the same league as his full-length Slough House books, but it's an enjoyable diversion.

In The List, an old agent dies and it emerges that he was up to something a little shady.  His old handler, threatened with destruction by Diana Taverner, attempts to find out what is behind it.  On the way we meet some old friends including J.K. Coe, newly recruited to the Service and Jackson Lamb in a cameo role.  It's a neat, twisty tale, although slightly unsatisfying in that even this small dose of Lamb seems oddly diluted – he answers a knock with "Who the hell's that?", for example.  "Hell?" The Lamb we know and love would have used a considerably more forceful term than that, surely.  Nonetheless, I enjoyed this for what it is.

Mick Herron doesn't write bad books and Slough House addicts like me will certainly want to read The List.  It's a decent read but don’t expect too much.

Terry Pratchett - Carpe Jugulum

Rating: 5/5

Review:
One of Pratchett's best

This is perhaps one of Terry Pratchett's less well-known Discworld novels, but I think it is one of the best – which may be all that need be said, really, but for the record: 

Carpe Jugulum features the Witches, as vampires arrive in Lancre and take over the country.  These are very *modern* vampires who have overcome many of their old vulnerabilities and want to use their immense power to enslave the country so they may exploit and kill people – but in an oh-so-orderly and civilised fashion while convincing everyone that it's in their best interests.  It is, of course up to Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, Magrat (now Queen Magrat) and Agnes Nitt to stop them.  Things don't go as you might expect, and a genuinely thrilling and at times truly scary story develops.

Pratchett manages his usual miraculous combination of a superbly gripping story, real laugh-out-loud humour and important insights.  Carpe Jugulum was published in 1998 but, twenty years on, might arguably be read as an allegory of the behaviour of some current multinational companies.  It certainly celebrates the individual and has plenty of Pratchett's wonderfully clear-eyed and humane insights into more intimate human issues.  The opening scenes, for example, with Granny Weatherwax visiting a difficult birth and what she says about choices are among the most powerful in any of the Discworld books, I think – and yet characters like Igor, the Wee Free Men and Hodgesaargh (not to mention Nanny Ogg) add wonderful humour and wit while quietly making some very serious points.

In short, this is a great read and very, very warmly recommended.

Terry Pratchett - Reaper Man

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A Pratchett gem

A Terry Pratchett book scarcely needs another review from me, but for what it's worth: I have read Reaper Man several times now and I enjoy it immensely every time. It is very funny and also has Pratchett's characteristic wise and insightful view of important human issues.

Here, Death is forcibly retired and goes into the Discworld to live as a mortal farm worker, where he struggles to understand human life in his bemusedly literal-minded way. Meanwhile, his absence means that the life force builds up throughout Discworld with extraordinary consequences. It actually starts rather slowly, but soon becomes a thrilling, funny and thought-provoking story. Beneath the humour Pratchett has serious things to say about, among other things, the importance of friendship, the life-sapping soullessness of shopping malls, care for others, the value of life and, of course, the critical importance of a three-eighths Gripley.

This is among my favourite Discworld books (and contains one of Pratchett's finest lines: "What can the harvest hope for, if not for the care of the reaper man?"). It's a real gem and warmly recommended.