Dorothy Gilman - The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very enjoyable

I thoroughly enjoyed The Unexpected Mrs Pollifax – and I wasn’t at all sure that I would. I found it witty, endearing and rather a gripping story, too.

Mrs Pollifax, a 60-something year old, well-to-do, respectable widow decides she needs to give her life meaning and presents herself at the CIA to volunteer as a spy. Through a slightly silly series of events she is recruited to go on a very routine mission to Mexico City to collect a package. No-one knows who she is and her cover as a tourist is perfect, but (needless to say) things do not go as planned and take a very sinister turn. An exciting plot of kidnap and peril ensues, in which Mrs Pollifax remains very much herself, but discovers the value of some of her solid personal qualities.

It could have been dreadful but Dorothy Gilman strikes a lovely, subtle balance of wit and a little farce occasionally with a very decent, exciting plot and some shrewd insights into human nature and the importance of life. It’s very well written and I read it with unalloyed pleasure (although some allowance does need to be made for the political attitudes of 1966 when it was written). I can recommend it warmly and will certainly be reading more in the series.

(My thanks to Farrago Books for an ARC.)

Roddy Doyle - Love

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I’m sorry to say that I gave up on Love around half way through. I like much of Roddy Doyle’s work and thought Smile was very good, but I couldn’t be doing with this one.

Love consists of two old friends meeting after a longish break and getting slowly drunker and drunker as they catch up on their lives and go in for a lot of introspection and analysis of their relationships. Doyle, of course, has brilliant moment of insight and occasionally puts his finger on something important about men – like the sudden transition to adulthood they discover, for example. However, even this went on far too long and I struggled to engage with either of the central characters so their increasingly incoherent dialogue and thoughts went from not very interesting to slightly repellent. The layout doesn’t help: dialogue is marked by a dash rather than quotation marks, and is also punctuated liberally with dashes within sentences, making it hard to know who is speaking much of the time. Eventually I decided that life was too short and, Roddy Doyle or no Roddy Doyle, I bailed out.

Others may well enjoy this more than me, but personally I can’t recommend it.

(My thanks to Jonathan Cape for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Denise Mina - The Less Dead

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not one of Mina's best

Denise Mina is a brilliant writer and I have loved much of her work, but I don’t think The Less Dead is one of her best.

Margo, a Glasgow GP, was adopted at a few days old and has now arranged to meet the sister of her birth mother in order to find out more about her background. This leads Margo into dark territory among Glasgow’s heroin addicts, sex workers and also sparks some very sinister threats to her personally.

Mina, as always, writes very well, but overall I found the book rather unsatisfactory. It opens with a long passage in which Margo, is waiting to meet her birth mother’s siter, who is very late. A lot of pages pass before she finally appears, which rather sets the tone of the book, in which not much happens for pretty long periods. There’s a great deal of atmospheric scene-setting and exploration of Margo’s internal state, which Denise Mina does exceptionally well, of course, and a very good, insightful and compassionate portrait of the life of sex workers and people’s attitudes to them, but it’s all within a structure which didn’t really work for me.

It turns out that Margo’s mother was an addict and a sex worker who was murdered. Gradually it emerges that someone is stalking Margo and that they know a great deal about her mother’s killing. This too is quite well done, but there are so many other fragmented plot strands that the whole thing seemed a bit of a mess to me. There’s an unrelated story about a friend in an abusive relationship, which may be intended to illustrate aspects of the main story but to me just seemed to be a major distraction. There are some red herrings which didn’t really convince at all and, frankly, I found it a bit of a mess.

I’m sorry to be critical of a very fine writer whose work I usually love, but I can only give this one a very qualified recommendation.

(My thanks to Harvill, Secker for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Very enjoyable

I enjoyed The Thursday Murder Club – more than I expected to, to be honest. It’s a decent mystery, it’s genuinely witty in places with some shrewd observation and Richard Osman’s characterisation is very good.

The story is of a group of 70- and 80-year-olds in a comfortable retirement village who meet each week to discuss historical unsolved murders as a hobby, until they are suddenly in the middle of a real murder investigation. It sounds pretty well-worn, and the idea of yet more quirky, fiesty old people wasn’t especially appealing, but Richard Osman writes very well and paints amusing but very believable portraits of all his characters. I especially liked the kindness and humanity he shows toward them, including the two very engaging police officers with whom the Club becomes involved. It is largely told in the third person, but there are also diary entries from Joyce, a member of the Club, who has a delightful and convincing voice. Osman manages to find a good mix of mystery and the everyday preoccupations of his protagonists which works very well and never strays into the twee. I liked little touches like, “...not a single person has ever been late [for the coach]. Except for Malcolm Weekes who, it turned out, had died in the lightbulb aisle of Robert Dyas.” Or “‘Would you like some sherry?’ asks Joyce. ‘It’s only Sainsbury’s, but it’s Taste The Difference.’”

The plot is well-constructed with some neat misdirection; I was prepared to forgive some rather tardy revelations which lead to the solution and it’s a very enjoyable read. Books by celebrities aren’t always a success by any means, but this one certainly is. I hope there will be more from Richard Osman, and I can recommend this warmly.

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

Susie Steiner - Persons Unknown

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another very good Manon novel

I think this is a quite brilliant series. Susie Steiner has created a wonderful, believable character in Manon Bradshaw and her other characters are just as good. The plot here is probably the weakest of the three books so far, but it’s still very good indeed. It would be best to read Missing, Presumed first, but this stands up well on its own.

In Persons Unknown, Manon is pregnant and has returned to Cambridgeshire after a spell with the Met and is now working cold cases. The murder of a City banker is investigated by her old team, and people very close to Manon come under suspicion. It’s a plot which requires considerable suspension of disbelief, with a number of pretty far-fetched coincidences especially, but the chief pleasure of these books is Steiner’s shrewd, humane characterisation. There were times when I felt that Manon’s personal life and struggles was taking rather too much space at the expense of the story (and Susie Steiner plainly hasn’t had a good experience of maternity wards), but its still a delight to read, thoroughly gripping and very involving.

The whole of this series is way above the standard of most contemporary crime fiction and I can recommend this one very warmly.

Susie Steiner - Missing, Presumed

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Terrific

Like almost everyone else, I thought Missing, Presumed was terrific. It’s very well written and has quite brilliant characterisation, especially of Manon herself.

The plot isn’t spectacular but is well done, as a young woman goes missing in suspicious circumstances and the Cambridgeshire Police conduct a major investigation – and, joy of joys, the police actually follow procedure in a believable way. It was certainly enough to draw me in and keep me hooked, but the real pleasure of the book is the superb cast of characters and Susie Steiner’s portrayal of the effect of these events on those involved. Manon herself is a wonderful character; normal, human, flawed and wholly believable.

There is wit sometimes and some really good writing, too. I picked out a couple of tiny examples I liked: “The sky is a fragile blue, very far away, and the sunlight harsh and breakable and thin, sending its glassy shards through the windscreen so they both have to pull their visors down.” Or this, in the House Of Commons: “The perpetual dusk of Central Lobby – its octagon reverberating with self-important shoes.” There is also some understated, almost sly, reference to Manon’s love of poetry in places, like the “unruly sun.” I love the intelligence and the human insight of the whole thing.

This series is something special; it is several cuts above the usual police procedural and I can recommend Missing, resumed very warmly indeed.

Daisy Johnson - Sisters

Rating: 2/5

Review:
Not for me

I didn’t get on well with Sisters. I found it a struggle and eventually became quite irritated by it.

It is impossible to give an outline of the plot without undesirable spoilers, so I won’t try. The book opens with a family arriving in an unwelcoming, quite isolated cottage in Yorkshire, having suffered some kind of serious incident in Oxford where the two girls, named July and September (really?) were at school. Much of the narration is by July, the younger sister who is plainly somewhat traumatised, but by what is not clear...and very little else happens for a long time. There’s lots of Oppressive Atmosphere and Hinting At Dark Things, told in a fractured voice which is intended to sound like a troubled girl, but which sounded to me like an author trying to be clever and actually being mannered and self-conscious.

Things do begin to happen slowly, and past events begin to emerge...and the Big Surprise at the end becomes fairly obvious quite early on. Add to this a lengthy passage from the point of view of the mother, giving a lot of history which, to me, added nothing and served only as a distraction and I began to skim. I reached the end with some relief.

A lot of people have liked Sisters, but I’m afraid I didn’t and can’t recommend it.

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