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Friday 12th March | |||||||||||
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Reviews and Articles listed A-Z by author >> ReviewsThe Monster In The Box Ruth Rendell If you think the human race is basically kind-hearted, and that we are a perfectible species, then perhaps Ruth Rendell is not the author for you. This supreme practitioner of the crime novel has probably the most dyspeptic view of human nature since her American predecessor Patricia Highsmith. But for those of us who have a more cold-eyed view of life, Rendell's books are singularly bracing confirmations of what we all secretly know: that many of us are capable of the most appalling actions given the right circumstances and the right motivation...Barry Forshaw in The Express BBC Four is showing the second series of Spiral, made in France in 2008, three years after the first (see IT's reaction to that here) and it has a different feel to the first series, while retaining some of the elements, at least at the start, that make it French. Let's just hope BBC4 don't do what they did to the Swedish Wallander series, and stop showing it with just three episodes to go, deciding it was so popular they would make its fans wait until a special holiday showing, and bigger ratings, might be ensured. The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest Stieg Larsson Although Stieg Larsson's Millenium series was projected for ten books (like Maj Sjowall's and Per Wahloo's Martin Beck series) this, the third and final novel which he turned in to his publishers, actually completes a very coherent and self-contained trilogy, as the battle between Lisbeth Salander and her oppressors, powerful men in Swedish society, reaches a courtroom climax Most writers, including crime writers, haven't the nerve to put themselves out there like Algren did, while, at the same time, doing so with all their heart and soul. Not, at any rate, if they intend to sell books or, for that matter, get published. Of course, there are examples of extreme literature, but it's usually pretty sterile stuff in comparison, too ironic or pretending to be tough and in your face... It's interesting that, when Michael Connelly decides to show us Harry Bosch at his most personal, he brings us back closer to the Bosch we originally met many years ago. In Nine Dragons, the kidnapping of Bosch's daughter in Hong Kong drives him into a situation which resembles Bosch's Vietnam War days as a tunnel rat, and takes pains to mention it, for the benefit of newer readers... Get Me Out Of Here Henry Sutton Sutton's new book is something quite unclassifiable. He has forged (in Get Me Out Of Here) a scabrously entertaining essay in excess, with its spleen-filled, self-loathing protagonist Matt Freeman locked in Olympian conflict with a surrealistically rendered (and seriously out of kilter) London On the evidence of the latest Ian Rankin looks as if his new copper will be just as sure-footed a guide to the city of Edinburgh as his grizzled predecessor... Barry Forshaw in The Express on The Complaints Hypothermia Arnauldur Indridason It was Indridason who, in effect, broke the bank with the CWA Daggers; his win instigating a rule change restricting books in translation to their own foreign ghetto. From the Daggers point of view, this was probably a good thing, because Hypothermia is not only Indridason's best novel yet, it is the best one I've read so far this year, and will take some beating... James Bond 007: The Girl Machine Jim Lawrence & Yaroslav Horak Titan Books continue their sterling work in making collections of this intelligently written (and strikingly drawn) strip available for the first time between the covers of a book. Jim Lawrence's remarkable 007 strips, perfectly visualised in the highly stylised illustrations of Yaroslav Horak, remain non-pareil entries in the strip universe The Interrogator Andrew Williams Quibbles regarding The interrogator are small, because the nature of Williams' challenge was huge. He keeps this book involving, suspenseful and fascinating to the end, and it is a remarkable first novel The problem with writing conspiracy novels, even one as gripping as The Dying Light, is that the conspiracy itself is always the strongest point: the ways in which the powerful conspire against you, use the machinery of the state, the inevitable betrayal by someone you trusted, the dark and shrinking corner into which you are inevitably backed. As a result, the weakest bit is often the resolution, the ways in which the intrepid hero/es manage to beat the system, and emerge victorious on the other side... When Donald Westlake died on New Year's Eve, he was as prolific as ever, and Get Real is a fitting coda to his writing career, because it shows Westlake at his comic best, doing what the youngsters would call 'deconstructing' the genre of so-called 'reality' TV while providing the Dortmunder gang with their most laid-back and funny caper in some time... The Tears Of Autumn/the Miernik Dossier Charles Mccarry Described on several occasions as the greatest espionage novel ever written, The Tears of Autumn, Charles McCarry's remarkable study of human duplicity and foreign affairs, was a noted success right from its initial publication. McCarry's subject was the events surrounding the assassination of John F Kennedy; his protagonist, US spook Paul Christopher, proved to be one of the most durable and intriguing characters in the genre Tobias Jones's lacerating non-fiction exposé The Dark Heart of Italy set out his stall as anatomist of Berlusconi's compromised nation. But does Jones have the novelistic smarts to parley his knowledge into a detective series? His strategy is to drop a very Chandlerian private eye into an unnamed Italian town (readers may pick up on references to the local ham), and weave a labyrinthine plot for the detective, Castagnetti, to tackle. Barry Forshaw in The Independent The narrative here is inspired by a real-life kidnapping, but Mina parleys this into something richer and stranger than the real case, taking on board politics, racism and a prickly but basically sympathetic community. The final effect of Still Midnight is both unsettling and exhilarating... Barry Forshaw in The Independent It's easy to persuade people who've never been there that Glasgow is a hellhole, though the mean city has changed a lot since the 1930s. With his latest book – a break from the Aberdeen series – Macbride has leapt forward to the middle of the 21st century, to find Glasgow no better than she ever was (supposedly)... Imagine that your older brother is one of the world's most famous writers of American thrillers – even though he happens to be British. Daunting, perhaps, if you chose to follow a similar career... or a spur to match your sibling's immense success? Fortunately for readers, Andrew Grant appears to have adopted the latter course, and with his remarkable debut novel, Even, he has pulled out all the stops to produce something quite as full-throttle as anything by his brother (who just happens to be Lee Child, author of the Jack Reacher series)... Barry Forshaw in The Express Susanne, out of work and down on her luck, gets a rare job interview – at which she meets a woman who looks quite like her. This woman is richer, more forceful, more successful – yet Susanne initially doesn't care. Getting a job is more important. But things take a surprising turn: having been virtually promised the job, she is turned down. Someone calls at her flat to conduct a 'survey'. And her doppelganger, Nadia, not only insists in maintaining contact but offers her a lot of money if she – you've guessed – will stand in for her... Reading Henning Mankell's Wallander in shorter stories provides an interesting perspective into what makes the detective work—and and more importantly how Manning himself approaches him. This collection includes two long stories: the opener, here titled 'Wallander's First Case', is a novella, and the title story, 'The Pyramid', which ends the book, could have easily been published alone as a short novel... The Lovers, like most of Connolly's books, creates an enormous panoply for his skirmishes between the forces of good and evil with metaphysics and sometimes the supernatural stirred into a very rich stew...Barry Forshaw in The Express on The Lovers Blotto, Twinks And The Ex-king's Daughter Simon Brett Only now can it be revealed that this novel was not written by Simon Brett. It is, surely, the fabled lost collaboration between P G Wodehouse, Agatha Christie and Miss Sayers and based, it is rumoured, on an unpublished scenario by John Buchan and Anthony Hope The Spirit Volume 3 Aragones Et Al Will Eisner's Spirit remains the standard by which all comics should be judged, story-telling that defined the form for generations of writers and artists to come. Eisner's stories were humorous little moral tales, a cross between O. Henry and Issac Bashevis Singer, told in a cinematic style that emphasized the tongue in cheek nature of the masked detective while treating the story-telling very seriously indeed. It remains a difficult combination to imitate. The Resurrectionist Jack O'Connnell The once-despised comic-book genre has now achieved literary gravitas as the graphic novel. Comics scribes such as Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman are routinely compared to the most ambitious "literary" writers. Salman Rushdie has admitted to being an expert on the Justice League of America, though T S Eliot kept quieter about his devotion to Krazy Kat. But this belated embracing of a popular art has gone further; several writers have folded comic-strip concepts into the superstructure of their books: Michael Chabon in The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Jodi Picoult in The Tenth Circle. Perhaps the most radical interpolation of comics into the novel is that by Jack O'Connell in The Resurrectionist...Barry Forshaw in The Independent The days of mystery novels full of cardboard characters, red herrings, and the unlikeliest suspect being guilty are well and truly over. Few crimewriters now follow the old Agatha Christie formula, but Laura Wilson shows precisely how archaic they are. N J Cooper (whose latest novel, No Escape, is published by Simon & Schuster). reviews Laura Wilson's second outing for DI Ted Statton. Roadside Crosses Jeffrey Deaver When it comes to electronic social networking, blogs and twitter, some of us take to such things like ducks to water, while others steer well clear – for as long as they can. If you're of the latter persuasion, Jeffrey Deaver's new novel will be grist to your mill: here, the latest technology (and its obsessive practitioners) can be downright dangerous... Barry Forshaw in The Express on the new Deaver Previous 25 Next 25 |
