Thursday 28 January 2021

 

Trust, by Chris Hammer.

 


            This is the third novel, after ‘Scrublands' and ‘Silver’, in  Chris Hammer’s series featuring Martin Scarsden, journalist/crime writer, and his beautiful (of course!) lover Mandalay Blonde and, as the title suggests, trust is the virtue most prized – and most elusive – not only between the main protagonists, but the various law-enforcement agencies they are obliged to deal with, starting with Mandy’s  abduction from the home in Port Silver she shares with Martin and her young son, to the final bloodbath in which Martin is trapped in one of Sydney’s most exclusive enclaves.

            Never mind ‘Scandy-Noir’ – this is Aussie Noir at its loud, Ocker, belligerent best:  the plot is labyrinthine;  the reader has to keep their wits about them as there are more characters than are really necessary –but  they are all so well-drawn it is a pleasure to meet them, if only fleetingly in the case of some.  And the teeming metropolis of Sydney has never been so well-portrayed:  it is a rare feat to transport the reader so effortlessly to a city that Mr Hammer obviously loves and he does his home proud, dazzling us with a landscape that fuses city, sea and sky with stark beauty.

            Except for its dirty underbelly.

            Mandy has been kidnapped by a former workmate from her youth who thinks that Mandy has access to millions embezzled from an investment bank by Mandy’s former fiancĂ©, who hasn’t been seen for the last five years;  everyone believes he’s living it up overseas with all his stolen money, and the kidnapper has had to serve a jail sentence – because she was in on his embezzlement, and sleeping with him as well.  Mandy is shattered by his betrayal, and vows never to put her trust in another man, until she meets Martin – but she doesn’t trust him enough to confide in him;  he knows nothing of her former history beyond what she tells him – which is precious little.  And the situation doesn’t change.  Even when she is rescued, and Martin’s former Editor and his sister-in-law are both murdered, she still holds back information and memories that could hinder or help their investigation.

For Martin is, first and foremost, after the story:  while he’s on the scent, nothing is more important than to expose the truth, especially to avenge the killing of his former Editor and friend.  For that is what he’s good at.  That’s his job, like it or not, Mandy.      

            Mr Hammer has done it again – glued us all to every page until we managed to prise ourselves off at the end.  No easy feat!  FOUR STARS.

              

Saturday 23 January 2021

 

One Minute Crying Time, by Barbara Ewing.


            Celebrated New Zealand novelist and actress Barbara Ewing has embarked on the fascinating journey of something different:  her memoirs, covering the first part of her childhood and youth in Wellington, New Zealand’s capital city.  As a twelve-year-old she started keeping a diary, a tiny Collins one to begin with, hardly big enough to contain all the exciting events happening to our sleepy little country at that time - the ascent of Everest by Kiwi Edmund Hilary (the boundless pride we felt as a nation!);  the 1953 Royal Tour by our newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II and her consort Prince Philip (could we believe our eyes?  HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN WAS REALLY HERE!  ON NZ SOIL!!).  And the terrible Christmas Eve tragedy of the Tangiwai train crash in the middle of the North Island, where the Express fell from a weakened bridge into a flooded river, with multiple casualties.

Her Majesty gave her deepest condolences in her Commonwealth Message, and Barbara’s diary entry says what a horrible Christmas some people must be having.

And Barbara starts having so much to say that she switches to proper notebooks, recording her many fights with her mother about the direction she should travel in life, for Barbara’s mum knows  disappointment – considered to have a genius IQ she was enrolled in university as a 15 year-old, studying Science and Mathematics, only to have a complete breakdown which resulted in her becoming a typist.  Barbara has to do better, has to be more focused, but is allowed to attend prestigious acting classes given by illustrious German actress Mme Maria Dronke, a wartime refugee from Hitler’s Germany.

These classes in themselves are a revelation, revealing new worlds of poetry and literature which Barbara soaks up a sponge, but it is not until she starts university, and decides that one of her subjects will be the Maori Language, that real opposition from her mother begins, and all the latent, everyday racism that no-one registers is revealed (in the windows of lodging-houses, signs saying NO CHILDREN, MAORIS OR DOGS.)

Worse is to come when Barbara falls in love with Mikaere, a boy in her language class;  both painfully aware that their romance has no future, they are unable to stay away from each other, until career choices and voyages to distant countries (in Barbara’s case, a government bursary to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London) decide their fates for them.

At this point – 1962 – Ms Ewing’s wonderful reminiscences end, but her starkly honest account of our country’s insularity and refusal, for decades, to welcome or acknowledge any diversity of race or language must be called to account:  I look forward to Book Two.  FIVE STARS   

 

 

Sunday 17 January 2021

 

Olive, Again by Elizabeth Strout.


            For the myriad devoted fans of Ms Strout’s superb Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘Olive Kitteridge’, Christmas will have come early as the last part of Olive’s life is revealed;  that irascible, tactless, forthright and singular woman is now in her 70’s – more by good luck than good management, she thinks, and she is amazed to find that Romance in the shape of wealthy widower Jack Kennison has entered her life:  is God playing a joke on her?

            As always, Olive enjoys/endures a long-distance relationship with her only son Christopher, and finds his family wanting;   (for Heaven’s sake, Chris’s wife has two children by two different fathers, neither of whom married her!), a visit by the family to her home in Crosby, Maine is rather less than successful as a vehicle for meeting the new man in her life, Chris’s prospective stepfather, and it takes an exasperated, belittling lecture from Olive’s despised daughter-in-law to make Chris see reason, by pointing out that she had five children to look after, not four.  Nothing has changed for Chris:  he is still being bullied.   Chris is the ‘Needle in Olive’s Heart’.

            Once again, Ms Strout expertly uses the same short-story format from the first book, introducing various townspeople as characters that Olive influences – or upsets, and they are fascinating as always, from the suddenly orphaned lawyer returning to Crosby after the family home is razed to the ground by a fire started by squatters, a fire that killed her father who lived as a recluse on the top floor:  it is not until she meets with his long-time lawyer to settle the estate that all the shameful family secrets emerge. 

            Or local pillars of the community Fergus and Ethel MacPherson:  he enjoys the annual re-enactment of Civil War Days in the local park, and wears a kilt sometimes in tribute to his Scottish ancestry.  Ethel works in the town hall issuing fishing licenses.  They have been married for forty-two years, but thirty-five of that number have been incommunicado, for Fergus had a fling way back in the day and has never been forgiven, or spoken to since – or divorced.  And   they both expect to live out their days in similar fashion, until their oldest daughter comes home on her annual holiday from New York City with the earth-shattering news that she is ‘starring’ in a documentary.  As a Dominatrix.  Because that is her profession.

            Yes, life proceeds at sometimes breakneck pace in Crosby, Maine:  Olive has a major heart attack in her eighties and enters the last stage of her life in Assisted Living, concluding that ‘I do not have a clue who I have been.  Truthfully, I do not understand a thing’.   Anyone at the rear end of their life may feel the same, but Strout’s brilliant Olive embodies perfectly the person we wish we weren’t, and the person we wish we had become.  SIX STARS. 

Friday 8 January 2021

 

The Searcher, by Tana French.

 


            It’s always a pleasure to look forward to a new book by acclaimed Irish Novelist Tana French, and with ‘The Searcher’, as always, she lives up to her stellar reputation, combining mystery, suspense and starkly realistic characterisations to produce yet another story that leaves us regretful we have come to the end.

            American ex-detective Cal Hooper has come to Ireland for a new start after a failed marriage and early retirement made him long for a release from his problems.  He bought acreage sight unseen (off the Internet – where else!) in Ardnakelty, about as far as one could get from Chicago, scene of all that he felt is wrong with his life:  now, he is employing building and carpentering skills that he thought he’d long forgotten, and he’s enjoying the novelty of village living – which involves searching questions about his origins from absolutely everybody.  No stone is left unturned in the quest for Knowledge Of Cal, and he finds that it’s useless to be offended by everyone’s nosiness – no offense is intended;  they all just want the craic because he’s a stranger who may stay on, or disappear after his first winter.

            Fair enough, Cal thinks, and all is peaceful and predictable until a child turns up on his doorstep (after spying on him for a week) and announces that he wants to hire him to find the child’s 19 year-old brother Brendan.  Because Cal is an ex-cop and should know how to find him. Because the child knows that Brendan would never have left his family, a family that is regarded in the village as occupying the lowest rung of life socially and economically.  Something bad has happened to Brendan, and will Cal take on the job?

            And for various reasons, Cal does decide to investigate, not least because there seems to be a strange reluctance by the locals to freely proffer information.  He finds he has to ask about Brendan in a very roundabout way, as though he were trying to find out about other people entirely, and as he proceeds deeper into his enquiries he finds that far from being a peaceful Sleepy Hollow where crime is barely awake, Ardnakelty has grim and violent undercurrents that reveal themselves all too readily if disturbed.

            Ms French, once again, has introduced us to characters whom we are loath to leave;  they are completely convincing and their problems are instantly familiar, whether they live in a big city or a tiny dot of a village.  We know these people, and it would be great to meet them again.  SIX STARS.