MORE GREAT READS FOR SEPTEMBER

Pure, by Timothy Mo

Firstly, apologies for the book cover:  for those who can’t see a thing it is pristinely white, as befits a novel about purity – the irony is that Snooky, its main protagonist and the principal narrator of this complex and brilliant story, is anything but.  She is a tall and strapping Thai ladyboy, drug-addicted, amoral, longing to be a woman but ultimately unwilling to have ‘the operation’.  She (always ‘she’ – the further the reader gets into the story the more her femininity is reinforced) is also a person of strong loyalties and friendships, not only among her ladyboy Sistas but for childhood friends at her local village school in the predominantly Muslim Southern region of Thailand.  She cherishes the friendship of charismatic and wildly popular Jefri, a benison casually bestowed upon her out of sympathy for her situation, she being the family disgrace, an insult to their good and devout name and an object of intense hatred to her older half-brother.  Oh, life was unkind to Snooky and it comes as no surprise that she lit out for the fleshpots of Bangkok as soon as the opportunity arose.

Snooky makes a life for herself;  she learns English well enough to become, of all things, a movie and food critic for a midsize paper – when she is not out clubbing and drugging, whoring and scoring with her trannie friends;  she has a good, close friendship with Avril, a straight Canadian girl, and apart from some new and worrying health problems, life is satisfactorily hedonistic – until.

Until the police raid her flat and take her and the screaming Sistas down to the local station, there to concentrate on beating them all up, but with the object of narrowing the field to Snooky, the real  person of interest.  And the person who is most interested is the sadistic Look Khreung, a Eurasian intelligence officer wishing to infiltrate the Southern Thai Muslim religious schools, or Pondoks, correctly believing that some or all of them are hotbeds of sedition and rebellion.  He needs a spy, a familiar face – suitably roughed-up by his cronies as authentic proof of Thai discrimination against Muslims – to return to the South as a Mole (see, I know my John Le Carré!), especially as the noble Jefri has now excited suspicion for his subversive activities. 

Needless to say, Snooky is not receptive to this suggestion but the alternative is even worse:  twenty years in prison for drug crimes.  What’s a girl to do, except to obey her hated handler who is in turn controlled by an old-school, retired Oxford Don, to whom Snooky is supposed to send encrypted info.

Poor Snooky:  she’s well and truly between a rock and a hard place, and feels even worse when her new Muslim teachers, who despise her otherness, call her Ahmed (her birth-name) and force her to take testosterone so that her beard will grow.  She has reached her nadir – until she realises after a few months of religious study with Shayk, the revered leader of the Pondok, that there can be an alternative to her old life, a just and clean way of living, a purity to her existence and a belonging that she has always yearned for but never previously experienced.  Eventually, the despised ladyboy becomes a valued and resourceful member of the cell.  (She even makes a dreadful propaganda movie!)  For the first time in her life she is truly part of a family – a family bent on the destruction of the infidel.

This book is brilliant:  it’s characters, some of whom have a turn at narrating the story, are masterful creations and Mr Mo gives us a superb overview of South East Asian politics and a deeply disturbing insight into religious fanaticism.  His scholarship is impressive – but daunting:  I have to admit that I floundered amongst the erudite ramblings of Victor Veridian, retired Oxford Don and sometime Spy.  There were references to various world events that flew over my head like sparrows, leaving me feeling more than a little lacking in the smarts department – and the print was so small it made my eyes water.

Regardless, Snooky will remain with me always, that irrepressible, hilarious, doomed and valiant girl, who, despite her worsening illness, decides to arrange a meeting with all her enemies, then go out with a bang – ‘Yah man, because Snooky loves the limelight!’

And rightly so:  she’s unforgettable.

Broken Harbour, by Tana French

Mick Kennedy, one of Dublin’s most successful detectives is assigned to a shocking new murder case:  the killing of an entire family in their recently purchased house at Brianstown, a new seaside estate some distance from the city.  Kennedy is an arrogant man, supremely confident in his ability to ‘get a solve’ because he is so good at what he does – and he is also a straight arrow;  incorruptible:  no easy, manufactured evidence or short-cuts when he’s on the case.

All the signs point to murder/suicide.  The husband lost his job almost as soon as they moved into their dream home;  the dream home turned out to be a jerry-built nightmare amongst many on an estate that quickly ran out of money before all the promises of beautiful new community facilities were met;  the estate was too far to commute to work, should anyone be lucky enough to have a job, for the great Irish recession had wiped out employment like the flick of a dishcloth countrywide – all perfect reasons for the breaking point to be reached and the family to be sent to the hereafter in a last terrible act of togetherness.

Ms French is a powerful writer.  She recounts with effortless ease of the ties of love and loyalty that bind people together – and the awful acts that tear them apart.  As detective Kennedy and his new probationary partner Richie Curran delve deeper into what should have been an open-and-shut case, they find to their dismay that, as with the humble onion, there are many more layers to peel away before they arrive at the awful truth, and many ghosts that must be laid to rest – not least by Mick Kennedy, whose past contains shocking memories of Broken Harbour, now called Brianstown.

This is the third book I have read by Ms French;  once again, she meets the same high standards she sets for herself and that every reader has come to expect in each story:  what a pleasure it is to read her work.  Highly recommended.  

GREAT READS FOR SEPTEMBER, 2012

Black Boy, White School, by Brian F. Walker          Young Adult fiction

Anthony (Ant) Jones is an angry young man:  he is angry that at fourteen he is the youngest of three brothers and has to go shopping for groceries (and worse) for his acid-tongued Momma, simply because Andre and Darnell ‘are too old to be bossed around and too big to hit’;  he’s frightened because East Cleveland, Ohio, the city he lives in, is dying from all the diseases that have disabled so many American cities:  closure of long-established industries and consequent unemployment;  civic mismanagement and the apathy and loss of hope by welfare-dependent inhabitants – what will become of them all? 

Fortunately for Ant (not that he thinks so), a scholarship with free tuition for deprived minority kids is available in a top boarding school in Maine, Belton Academy: Ant’s Momma is determined that he will take this unheard of opportunity to better himself, to make a life for himself that won’t end like his friend Mookie’s, dead at 15 in a drive-by shooting.  He has to stop ‘acting ghetto’, seize this chance for a different life through education, and by God, he’s going to do it if she kills him to make him go to Maine!  When his choices are presented to him in such a way, Ant realises he HAS no choice:  he has to go to Belton, or get his Ass broken big-time by his Momma.  She’s still bigger than him.

His first months in Belton are like living on another planet with friendly but remote aliens:  everyone calls him Tony, even though he has stressed numerous times that his name is Ant;  his room-mate, Brody, is a white stoner with racist parents;  everyone assumes for some inexplicable reason that because Ant is black he is from New York as are the few other black students;  and worst of all, there seems to be an accepted practice called ‘hazing’ of freshmen – bullying by another name:  all new boys are tossed into ‘the brook’ by older students as part of ‘initiation rituals’.  Ant decides immediately that no white dude is going to do that to him, particularly when he finds out that the brook in question is actually a toxic waste spill.  Ant has never heard of hazing.  No-one would do that in East Cleveland – ‘back home, it would get someone shot.’

Ant’s solution to his freshman initiation, and his struggles to become accepted and respected in his white environment is a riveting story told with great empathy by Brian Walker, who has recounted through Ant’s experiences his own difficulties at the same age, when he was sent to a similar prestigious school far from all that was familiar to him, all that was family, and all that was ghetto.  He writes from the heart about Ant’s year at Belton, because it was his year too, and his year to return home to find that he was too scared any more to live in that terrible, hopeless environment, especially when another dear friend is murdered.  His desperation is complete when he HAS to leave Belton, which, for all its alien beginnings has provided him with the tools for a new way of looking at the world, because his Momma can no longer afford to pay for the boarding fees and textbooks for his ‘free’ education.  Where does he go from here?  He knows that white society will never be a comfortable fit, but he is too different now just to blend back into his old, sick neighbourhood:  the choices he makes will be his alone, and Brian Walker, by writing this wonderful book, has proved that the Ants of this world can still make the right, courageous decisions.  This was truly a great read.

Gods and Beasts, by Denise Mina

Detective Sergent Alex Morrow is back again in this taut and clever thriller from premier crime writer Denise Mina.  Ms Mina writes of Glasgow and its mean streets and meaner inhabitants with great assurance and skill, drawing the reader effortlessly into Alex’s Jekyll and Hyde world, introducing new characters and giving the existing ones lesser or greater roles as the plot demands.

Brendan Lyons takes his 4 year-old grandson to the post office to buy Christmas stamps;  while they are standing in the queue a gunman bursts through the door to rob the place.  In an act of tremendous bravery, Brendan passes his grandson to the person behind him (‘He’s yours’) then calmly proceeds to help the robber gather the cash, but when that is accomplished, he is shot to death, riddled with bullets by the gunman.  Even more horrifying is the fact that the robber and he knew each other.

Martin Pavel is the young man charged by Brendan with the safekeeping of his precious grandson.  He is a damaged soul, (as are we all) unsure of his place in the world, an inheritor of great wealth but at a loss to know what to do with it:  DS Morrow and her partner Harris are baffled by his presence in Glasgow, and his reluctance to divulge anything about himself;  in fact, the more they delve into Martin and Brendan and his family’s past, the more confusing and labyrinthine the case becomes – especially when the name of a very well-known local politician surfaces in the course of their investigations.  But DS Morrow is nothing if not dogged, determined to weave all the loose threads into a credible pattern that she can believe in. She presses on, only to find that to her horror, information is being withheld – from within:  by her own department.

Ms Mina can evoke atmosphere and construct characters so believable that her word pictures are indelible and have the reader, however disquieted by her no-frills prose, calling for more:  However, having stated the obvious, I  have to say that ‘Gods and Beasts’ is a bleak story, as bleak as the Glasgow weather at Christmas time – there are no happy endings, just respite and escape from tragedy for some of the characters, and the exposure of others to the criminal and corrupt underbelly of organisations they had thought unassailable to the gangster element.  It may be the city of Glasgow is so corrupt that it is irredeemable, unable to be saved - or forsaken - ‘by those who live with self-sufficiency outside the city walls –be they Gods or Beasts’:  regardless, by the time the reader reaches the explosive conclusion of this fine story it is clear that  Alex’s problems are just beginning, but it is a great consolation to know that once again, DS Morrow has won a battle in a long, frustrating and exhausting war.  Highly recommended.

The Sisters Brothers, by Patrick De Witt

It is 1851, and the Gold Rush has started in California:  previously sane and rational men have been struck by Gold Fever, leaving their loved ones and all they hold dear in order to scrabble about in dirt and streams to find the Mother lode,  presenting themselves as perfect victims to all the opportunists who spring from nowhere to exploit them.

Such a person is the Commodore, so enormously rich that he can afford a staff of hired killers to dispose of those who have not obeyed his orders to relinquish their paltry, new-found wealth – or more importantly inventions to him.  His premier killers are Eli and Charlie Sisters, brothers who are justly feared for their utter ruthlessness in carrying out their master’s instructions:  they are not to be trifled with and  older brother Charlie is proud of their reputation as murderers without peer.  Eli is not so sure;  killing people is not a comfortable fit for him and he wants to get out of ‘the business’, but his loyalty to his brother, his feeling that he must be there to protect him – from himself as much as their foe, creates almost unbearable conflict within him.  He is determined that their latest job will be their last, even though Charlie pours scorn on Eli’s distaste for their occupation – it doesn’t worry him either that their mother has banished them from the family home ‘until they change their murdering ways’.  Charlie has a magnificent unconcern for scruples of any kind:  life is for living until you die, by natural means or otherwise.

Their latest assignment from the Commodore is to track down a prospector who has done him wrong, Hermann Kermit Warm by name:  the brothers must travel from Oregon City to San Francisco to find Warm, then dispatch him to his last reward, returning with a secret formula that is of great interest to the Commodore.

So begins the brothers’ last great adventure, an odyssey peopled with some of the most singular characters in contemporary fiction, narrated by Eli with marvellous empathy and humour, and when the brothers aren’t shooting everything that moves they are either festering with sibling rivalry or banding together in brotherly loyalty, particularly in a tight spot.

This novel was shortlisted for last year’s Man Booker Prize and in this reader’s opinion deserved to win it, not only because the actual winner failed to engage me half as successfully as did Patrick de Witt’s perfect little literary gem, but because of the superb depiction of a particularly lawless, dog-eat-dog time in the Old West, and the underlying themes of great good, great evil, and greater forgiveness.  FIVE STARS.

Harbor Nocturne, by Joseph Wambaugh

Joseph Wambaugh first made his considerable reputation as an author of top class crime novels thirty years ago with ‘The New Centurions’, a story of the Los Angeles Police Department and the men and women who went out every day onto the city’s streets to patrol and protect its citizens. ‘Harbor Nocturne’, his latest story, doesn’t deviate from the same theme but concentrates more on Hollywood and the Los Angeles port of San Pedro for its action.

As always, Joseph Wambaugh has produced a page-turner par excellence, at the same time displaying his intimate knowledge of the job and  the many horrors and dangers faced by LA’s finest, for Mr Wambaugh was himself a policeman until he started to write and he still has strong links to law enforcement - which makes me wonder how many of his excellent characters and situations are based on actual people and events.  In this story we see the return of Flotsam and Jetsam, inseparable police partners and committed surfers in their spare time, even though Jetsam had a serious accident in a previous book which has resulted in the amputation of his foot and the fitting of a prosthesis.  Dude, does this slow him down?  No way:  Flotsam proudly proclaims to a bewildered vice sergeant (who is hoping to enlist Jetsam’s services as an undercover cop to investigate some baddies who have an unhealthy interest in amputees) ‘You should see all the Emmas ogle the robo kahuna with the bionic hoof.  It’s all beer, bubble baths, and blow jobs for him.  Me, I’m happy just to get his leftovers.’

‘He’s always pimping me out at Malibu’, replies Jetsam.  ‘He, like, tries to sell them on sympathy disrobing for a handicapped kahuna.’

Ah, it’s all great stuff, even though I understood about as much of the dialogue as the Vice Sergeant did, but Flotsam and Jetsam are just two of a great cast, not least of whom is Marius Tatarescu, a Romanian-born cop whose heavy accent and winged eyebrows elicit many enquiries as to his origins.  Depending on his mood he ‘is on secondment from KGB’, or on the subject of his bachelorhood: ‘I am fourth-generation vampire from Transylvania.  I suck too much blood from all girls I date, so nobody likes to marry me.’  He also has a few problems mastering American slang – a ‘piece of shit’ becomes ‘you are a slice of turd.’ Fair enough.

Then there is Chester Toles, known among his colleagues as The Unicorn because his knack for skiving off and disappearing was so uncanny that everyone says he is a mythical beast that didn’t exist.  But Chester is 59 years old and his retirement is imminent;  he refuses to do anything that could get him into trouble, let alone injured or God forbid,  KILLED before he can march through the doors of Hollywood Precinct with his pension intact – until he attends a child killing, where the murderer goes off to the local bar for a beer without a backward glance at the two-year old baby he beat to death:  Chester’s tipping point has been reached.  He has had enough and he deals out the vigilante justice the situation demands, then gives the police conduct investigators the Bird when they start screaming Police Brutality:  it’s time to leave and go fishing.

There are several subplots dealing with waterfront corruption at San Pedro and the human trafficking of migrant women into the brothels of Hollywood;  all the storylines are skilfully interwoven to create a very satisfying and credible read.  Mr Wambaugh is that rare storyteller:  he can make his readers laugh out loud, then in the next chapter reduce them to tears.  What a gift.

    

       

GREAT READS FOR AUGUST 2012

Bring up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel

Less than four years after engineering Henry Vlll’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon and remarriage to Anne Boleyn, not to mention the cataclysmic separation of England from the catholic church  – and the dissolution of the monasteries and forfeit of their considerable wealth to the King, Thomas Cromwell, ever Henry’s faithful servant, is again using his brilliance and considerable power to expedite his monarch’s wishes. 

Henry has tired of Anne; she is no longer the sparkling, mercurial young temptress he pursued obsessively for so many years;  her youthful bloom has gone;  she is ill-tempered and shrewish, and worst of all there is no male heir to secure the throne for the Tudors.  She produced a daughter, Elizabeth, and whilst the king professes to love his little girl – and his daughter Mary from Katherine of Aragon, he is becoming more disenchanted with Anne by the day:  where is the son she promised him?

He starts to look elsewhere, and once his gaze settles on Jane Seymour, Anne’s lady-in-waiting, it is Cromwell’s task to procure an annulment of his second marriage by whatever means available – and for a man of Cromwell’s huge intellect and reach, there are many.

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize in 2009 for ‘Wolf Hall’, (see review below) her marvellous account of Henry’s  ardent courtship of Anne and his growing dependence on Thomas Cromwell, a commoner, a nobody guided up through the strata of power by Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the best powerbroker in England and a fitting mentor for an ambitious man:  now, in this riveting sequel, Cromwell must deconstruct the fragile legal framework he built to surround the marriage of Henry and Anne, and find opposite legal reasons as to why that marriage  should end.

And as countless historical records tell us, Cromwell procured witnesses aplenty to testify to Anne’s supposed adultery with several courtiers favoured by the King, and worse still, incest with her brother:  a show trial is conducted in the Tower of London and all the accused are executed;  Anne is beheaded four days later, and Henry is free once again to wed his next love, Jane Seymour.

It gives this reader great pleasure to say that Book two is superb;  Ms Mantel’s characterisations are utterly convincing and she recreates time and place with consummate skill.  Her depictions of the power struggles between Thomas Cromwell –‘a jumped-up nobody’ – and the conniving, treacherous courtiers derisive of his lowly origins (for they are gentlemen all, and he is NOTHING) is masterly:  he exacts revenge in many ingenious ways.  I look forward to Book three – I know there will be a third book;  Ms Mantel cannot leave us in suspense with the story only half told.  Highly recommended.

Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel                   Reviewed October, 2009.

Thomas Cromwell:   Blacksmith, mercenary, international banker, cloth merchant, lawyer, indispensable assistant to the powerful English clergy – and king’s confidante:  at a court full of the powerful and the power-hungry, this layman of uncertain origins came to wield more influence with Henry VIII than all his royal dukes combined.  It was Cromwell who was the main architect in drafting the Reformation laws separating the English church from Rome, enabling the king to claim the wealth of the catholic monasteries and religious houses as his own, and finally abolishing the need for the Pope’s permission for the annulment of Henry’s marriage to Katherine of Aragon.  Brilliant, loyal Cromwell engineered for Henry the king’s heart’s desire:  marriage to Anne Boleyn. 

Hilary Mantel recreates admirably  the pomp, intrigue and hypocrisy of the time and the struggles for European dominance by the rulers of France, Spain and England, but most of all she breathes wonderful life into some of the most famous and notorious characters in history:  their stories have been told many times before but seldom so convincingly, or so well. 

And it has just been announced that Ms. Mantel has won the Man Booker Prize for 2009 for Wolf Hall.  There can be no greater recommendation. 

Inside Out & Back again, by Thanha Lai             Junior fiction

This is the story of one family of refugees from a terrible war, forced to make desperate choices that propel them into a new life and culture that seem as remote and alien as the farthest planet – and the chilling irony in this situation is that exactly the same thing is occurring to tens of thousands of people today:  history repeats itself with horrifying regularity.

 The year is 1975.  Saigon has fallen and the city is roiling with people trying to escape the North Vietnamese.  Ten year-old Ha and her three brothers have previously enjoyed a privileged life with their parents;  their father was a naval officer who has been missing in action for some time, but they all still believe that one day he will return – until the war is lost and the Americans leave everyone to their fate. Fortunately for the family, one of their father’s naval friends manages to smuggle them onto a ship that escapes the bombs and artillery fire, eventually delivering the refugees to Americans who bring them to a refugee camp on the island of Guam;  there they stay until sponsors are found for each family to bring them to the U.S.A.

Now their ‘new life of freedom’ begins:  in the course of the year this story covers the family must deal with racism – they are sent to Alabama in the deep South – must  learn a language that to Ha is ‘full of ‘S’s – did they all want to talk like snakes?’;  must  deal with a new religion, baptism being the ticket to acceptance in their community (Ha-Li-Lu-Da!); must start school and ‘change from smart to dumb’ because of the mysteries of the English language;  must depend on the donated cast-offs of everything from the neighbourhood; (Ha wears a warm flannel dress to school when the weather is cold;  she is unaware that it is a nightgown) and ultimately have to bear the taunts and name-calling that she can soon understand all too well:  ‘Pancake Face’, and BU-DA, BU-DA when she tries to explain about her country’s religion.  No:  some  children are not kind to those who are different, and Ha and her brothers must learn how to defend themselves as best they can.  And they do!  

This is a beautiful little story, written entirely in blank verse, eloquent and powerful in its imagery and a book that should become a modern classic, read by children of ALL ages.

‘Inside Out & Back Again’ is a work of fiction, but Thanha Lai experienced exactly the same culture shock that Ha and her family did, at the same time:  she writes most beautifully from experience, and has produced a story that should make everyone think twice when next they hear of refugees arriving on their shores.  This wonderful little book has already won two prestigious Children’s Literary awards in America;  It deserves more.  Highly recommended.

  

Edge of Dark Water, by Joe R. Lansdale

Depression-Era Texas is a tough place in which to grow up, especially in a tiny settlement in the east.  Work is an impossible dream for most people and food is in short supply – but the local men still seem to find whatever money they need to fill themselves with the poisonous local moonshine and terrorise their families.

Suellen’s Daddy is one such man; he and his Good Ole Boy friends poison fish during the day and drink at night, then Suellen has to lock her bedroom door and sleep with a knife;  she is sixteen now and loathes the way her Daddy looks at her.  Her mother is worse than useless, lying in bed all day in a ‘Cure-All’ stupor.  Life, and the mess she has made of it so far, has utterly defeated her.  Fortunately, Suellen has three good friends, May Lynn, so beautiful she dreams of going to Hollywood to be a movie star, Terry, a pretty boy everyone calls a sissy, and Jinx, a black girl far too sassy for her own good – ‘Don’t that nigger know her place?’.  Their loyalty to each other and vague dreams of a happier future sustain them until May Lynn is found dead in the local pond, tied with wire and weighted down with a sewing machine.

They also discover that May Lynn knew the whereabouts of a secret stash of money that her late brother, a thief, had hidden – oh, this plot is thickening so much the spoon is standing all by itself! – and in their efforts to find the loot, the three friends fall foul of May Lynn’s evil Daddy, not to mention Suellen’s.  It’s time to leave their homes in a hurry – and they do, by hijacking a raft and poling it down the Sabine river, hoping to make the next big town before their pursuers can figure out where – and how – they are travelling.

In true Huck Finn fashion they – and Suellen’s mother, who has found the gumption and requisite willpower to leave her ugly existence – keep moving, stopping here and there to cast themselves on the kindness of various strangers and surviving reasonably well until they hear that May Lynn’s Daddy has enlisted the horrendous services of Skunk, so called because that’s how he smells, to recover the money and despatch them all to the hereafter.

Up until now, none of the locals really believed that there was a Skunk – his reputation and tales of his savagery were so awful that everyone thought he was a ghastly invention of parents to scare their children into being good:  unfortunately for the hapless raft-dwellers, Skunk is all too real, and he is coming for them. 

I have read a number of Mr. Lansdale’s books, and while there is a certain similarity in characters and places, he is always entertaining and savvy enough for the reader to look forward to the next novel. He is a smart and intelligent writer and he has a very nice line in description i.e. ‘Uncle Gene was fat as a hog but without the personality’.  Don’t that all just sum it up! 

Does Skunk lay waste to our fearful, courageous little band or not?  There’s only one way to find out.  Yep, read and enjoy this great little story.

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The Hanging Shed, by Gordon Ferris

  The year is 1946:  Scottish Douglas Brodie is a decorated soldier;  he has fought a hard war and has distinguished himself by bravery on the field.  The trouble is Civvy Street – his Demob clothing doesn’t fit, nor does the reality of postwar London adjust to his expectations.  He is a lost man, trying to sublimate into peacetime all the aggression and hatred that necessarily sustained him for six years, and he is fighting a losing battle – until he receives a phone call from a childhood friend, a friend who betrayed him when they were teenagers by stealing the love of Douglas’s life.  Brodie has never forgotten or forgiven Donovan’s treachery;  therefore it is beyond shocking to hear from a man who is begging for his help – for Donovan is in a Glasgow jail, charged and found guilty of murder, and due to hang in a month’s time ,unless Brodie can magic up a miracle on his behalf, because he is innocent,  innocent of the heinous, unforgivable crime of child rape and murder, even though the evidence is ‘incontrovertible’.

Donovan’s war has been cruel – he was the rear gunner on a bomber that was blown up by the Luftwaffe;  he survived but wishes he hadn’t:  his injuries have made him into a nightmare figure, and the resultant pain has turned him into a junkie.  He doesn’t care if he dies, but he does care that people know that he couldn’t, WOULDN’T commit the crime of which he is accused.

In his pre-war life, Brodie was a Detective with the Glasgow Police Force;  he is ideally qualified to delve into the evidence both real and manufactured that he is presented with by Donovan’s despairing lawyer:  the question is, does he want to do this favour for his old nemesis?  He loathes Donovan for calling on the far-off memories of staunch childhood friendship, and loathes himself even more for not being able to put past treachery behind him.

Unfortunately as the story progresses, Mr. Ferris allows  his story to get away from him like a stampeding horse;  plot twists vary from unbelievable to bizarre to say the least – the villains are so awful they are almost comic-book caricatures, but he is a wonderfully acute observer of his fellow man, and I defy anyone not to recognise thee and me in the utterly authentic characters he creates.  He can set a scene with the best of them and generate enough action to make me feel that I shall be doing a disservice to myself If I don’t check out his other titles.  So many books, so little time!

Pegasus and the Flame, by Kate O’Hearn                                          Junior Fiction

What a lovely s tory - and what a great introduction to the Greek Myths for children who would not otherwise come in contact with these marvellous legends.  Kate O’Hearn is doing more than she can possibly know to stimulate children’s interest in the timeless and ancient tales of the Gods and Heroes of Olympus, and I couldn’t approve more, especially with the amount of excitement she can generate in her plotting and her true blue characters.

Emily Jacobs is 13 years old.  She is trying to deal with the loss of her beloved mother who died of cancer three months before.  Her father is a member of the New York City Police force, and he has to leave Emily alone on a night when a particularly bad storm is raging.  She is not really afraid of being alone;  her grief troubles her more than solitude – until she hears thumping and bumping on the ceiling, and it is even more worrying when the plaster starts to crack and flake!  Now, if that were me I would rush to the bedroom and hide under the bed, but Emily is brave enough to go up onto the roof to find out what – or who – is going to crash through to her level.  (Obviously she is braver than this mere mortal!) And what does she find but a beautiful horse, breathtaking in its magnificence, and even more unbelievable:  it has WINGS.  And it’s badly wounded.  How can she help him, especially when she realises that he is Pegasus, beloved of the Gods, and bearer of Zeus/Jupiter’s thunderbolts.  Pegasus has come to earth to search for ‘The Flame’,  a descendant of Vespa, keeper of the Sacred Flame of Olympus, now extinguished by enemies.  If it is not reignited soon, Olympus and all the Gods will perish.

Ah, this is thrilling, and things get better and better as the plot advances – the characters are positively Olympian in more ways than one;  Ms. O’Hearn has an excellent knowledge of  Greco-Roman mythology and she weaves this brilliantly into her story of young people dealing with grief and loss, not to mention her love of animals, particularly horses – and even better still, the story doesn’t end with this book:  the next title is ‘Pegasus and the Fight for Olympus’.  What a neat treat to look forward to:  can’t wait.

Other People’s Money, by Justin Cartwright

The 2008 financial crash has left everyone reeling, not least the family of Trevelyan-Tubal, patrician investment bankers who have owned and operated their iconic bank, Tubal’s in the City of London, for more than 400 years.  They have taken a huge hit with the failure of one of their hedge funds – ‘but I paid Seven million quid to a Nobel Laureate to tell me that mathematically, our investments couldn’t fail!’ shrieks Julian, current head of the bank in the absence of his older brother, (no banker’s life for him:  he travels the world looking for adventure á la Bear Grylls) and the incapacitation of his father, Sir Harry, by a massive stroke.  Julian is extremely unhappy in his role as default family and business head, and does what he considers he must to prop up the bank until it can be sold (he hopes) to a huge American investment bank owned by Cy Mannheim, a self-made man if ever there was one, and don’t you forget it!  ‘I came from NOTHING on Coney Island – now look at me:  amazing, huh?’  What else must a chap do but agree, especially if he wants Cy to buy the old Firm – so that Julian can pay back all the family and investment trusts he has raided to make the bank look solvent for the scrutiny of due diligence by the various authorities.

Needless to say, the best-laid plans of mice and men go right down the tubes;  a computer hacker does his stuff, steals incriminating evidence of financial wrongdoing, then leaks it to a young blogger for an obscure Cornish newspaper;  various people great and small begin to make enquiries as to why their subsidies from various Tubal charitable trusts are no longer going into their bank accounts; and  Sir Harry’s much younger Trophy wife Fleur is feeling more than a little insecure.  She is astute enough to know that Sir Harry’s sons have never really accepted her into the family, and now, as Sir Harry’s death occurs from a second stroke she is terrified that her affair with Morné, her personal trainer and a hairy, sexually fascinating (to Fleur) South African rugby player will be discovered.  She could end up with nothing at the age of 43 – it doesn’t bear thinking about!  What to do, what to do?

For all Mr. Cartwright’s drollness – and there is much delicious wit in this book;  the dialogue is incisive and sparkling – there is also a strong underlying lesson to be learnt yet again, should anybody bother:  that even the richest, the most lofty in society can be brought down and exposed for the rogues that they have become (however reluctantly, in Julian’s case) by those who still have the honour lacking in their targets – and those who wish they were just like them.

‘In the dealing rooms they would shout ‘OPM’ gleefully as a deal went bad:  Other people’s money.’  Well, it’s not other people’s money now that the Trevelyan-Tubal family are worried about (if they ever did):  it’s their own, not to mention their previously stellar and unsullied reputation .  Justin Cartwright serves up truth most beautifully as fiction.  This was a pleasure to read.         

               

GREAT READS FOR JULY 2012

The Inquisitor, by Mark Allen Smith

                      

Geiger is in the ‘information retrieval’ business, a euphemism for torturing certain people into supplying information – not always with physical cruelty, but by brilliant psychological manipulation of the terrified victim’s worst fears.  He is a master at what he does, his ‘clients’ are very powerful, he employs utmost discretion, and he ALWAYS has a 100% success rate. 

His business is fronted by Harry, a hand-picked computer whiz;  their combined fees are astronomical – but they’re worth it:  no client has ever voiced dissatisfaction or demanded their money back for a job less than well done.  Geiger is at the top of his game – and he is also a terribly damaged man with recurring nightmares and migraines that a lesser mortal would beg release from:  the torturer is tortured from within.

Geiger has only one rule in his fearsome business:  he never deals with children.  Not ever.  So he is horrified to find that, instead being presented with a man accused by the ‘client’ of stealing and hiding a priceless work of art, he is given the man’s son – a mistake, the client’s representative states, but perhaps Geiger could work on the son to reveal the whereabouts of his father?

Until this point I felt little empathy with Geiger and Harry, his P.A.  Despite Mr. Smith’s obvious talents as a writer he failed to connect with me for the first 50 pages – until the appearance of the child Ezra, 12 years old and terrified out of his wits:  the child’s rescue by Geiger and the bond formed between the unlikely pair as they try to escape their ruthless pursuers is the main thrust of the plot.  Geiger is forced by terrible events to face his past, a time so horrific that he had completely blocked it from his consciousness, turning himself into little more than a cipher to do so.  Now he is compelled to confront old demons so that he can conquer the new – and keep Ezra, Harry and himself from being killed.

Mr. Smith has had much experience in film-making and screenwriting and this is his first novel.  He has made an excellent debut into the difficult genre of suspense and thriller writing – so many who tell such stories are distressingly formulaic and predictable, but Mr. Smith has presented us with a different kind of protagonist:  not only can he inflict pain, but he is also capable of bearing it, and despite the moral questions posed by his actions throughout the story it is impossible for the reader to feel that Geiger is anything less than heroic in his intentions.  The novel’s ending is suitably ambiguous, which makes me hope that Geiger and Harry will meet again in the future – fingers crossed!

Talulla Rising, by Glen Duncan

I have been waiting for Glen Duncan to write his sequel to ‘The last Werewolf’ for what seems like ages, but It wasn’t, really :  he has turned out #2 in record time because (he says in a very funny interview in the NYTimes) that he needs the money – presumably to keep the wolf from his door (sorry, sorry!) -  and fair enough, as long as the quality of writing doesn’t suffer.  Well, I’m happy to report that all is well in Mr. Duncan’s anarchic and bloodthirsty world of monsters big and small.  He brings a refreshing literary talent to the relatively new ‘bonk and bite’ book style – there are so many of them these days that very few  break the bounds of boring predictability:  Duncan’s 9 foot killing machines and smelly vampires are a breath of fresh air (if it wasn’t so laden with blood) in what is fast becoming a very tired genre.

Jake Marlowe, The eponymous Last Werewolf, was killed at the end of the first book;  unbeknownst to him, his lover Talulla Demetriou manages to survive the attack that ends his 200 year-old existence – and she is pregnant with his twins.  She is helped to hide from countless enemies by Cloquet, a former enemy and perennial loser who becomes her helpmeet and staunch ‘minder’;  she gives his life the sense of purpose it has always lacked – after all, it’s a big job to find a suitable victim for slaughter every month when the moon rises.  Not everyone can do it!

Unfortunately for Talulla, word of her pregnancy has reached some very unsavoury (and smelly) ears:  it is believed by a certain cult of vampires that the consumption of a werewolf baby at a certain time of the year will give them the ability to march around in daylight, instead of dissolving into an odiferous puddle of ash as soon as the sun hits them.  Talulla is a marked woman/werewolf, captured and completely disabled by the nasties as she is giving birth and forced to watch helplessly as the vampires make off with her little son. Luckily (depending on which way you look at it) the kidnappers were unaware – as was she! – that another child was on its way:  Talulla’s little girl is spared the same fate as her twin.

Thereafter begins a mad pursuit through Europe to try to track down Talulla’s enemies before they destroy her child, and on the way she encounters to her utter astonishment other werewolves,  all new -  it seems Jake was a little careless in his ‘relations’ with a certain prostitute, who in turn managed to infect several other people:  Werewolves rule, Dude!

Mr. Duncan’s plotting is bombproof:  in case the reader wonders where our hairy heroine gets the money to charge around the planet recruiting allies and helpers, well, Jake left her his considerable fortune, amassed over two hundred years, for a start.  No matter how many times I looked for a ‘Yeah, right!’ slipup I never found one;  the action never flags and some great new characters have been added to the mix.  I’m happy to say that this is that rare thing:  a sequel that packs just as much punch as the first, and is just as engaging.  And Glen Duncan can’t end things there because (by his own admission) he needs the money!  All to the good, I say.  Highly recommended.

Peaches for Monsieur le Curé

This is the third of Joanne Harris’s novels about Vianne Rocher, that beautifully eccentric, fey and footloose weaver of magic and maker of superb confections.  We first met her in ‘Chocolat’, Ms. Harris’s 1999 runaway best-seller, where she opens a chocolaterie in French village Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, only to gain the hatred of the local priest, who convinced himself that she was a witch – and he wasn’t entirely wrong. She also finds love with Roux, a gypsy who travels the waterways of France before they both move on to Paris and another chocolaterie in ‘The Lollipop Shoes’.  In that story Vianne and her little family are threatened with great harm but survive to continue charming peoples’ palates and dreams with her wonderful chocolates – until she receives a message from the dead to bring her back to Lansquenet: the curé, father Reynaud, the enemy who drove her on from that village is now in sore need of help – hers.  Not that he would ask.

It has been eight years since Vianne left Lansquenet and much has changed.  New people have arrived to settle in the village:  Muslims.  At first, all was well:  Lansquenet is not intolerant and while not rolling out a brass band welcome to strangers is not shunning the new arrivals either.  Everyone rubs along well enough – until Monsieur le Curé objects to the creation of a minaret in an old water tower:  it breaks local noise regulations, he says, but really he finds it a personal offence to hear that foreign chanting in competition to his church bells.  The priest and the local Muslim leader are on a collision course.

More sinister events occur – the curé finds that his position as village priest is being eroded from within when dissatisfied parishioners feel that they need a ‘21^st century man of God’:  father Reynaud feels the winds of change and they are chilling.

Ms. Harris writes very well of bigotry and racism.  She does not shy away from examining the actions and reactions of one culture as it pits itself against another, and portrays only too clearly the evil that men can perpetrate in the name of religion.  Her countless fans will find this third ‘episode’ in Vianne Rocher’s travels as satisfying as the first two, but I have to say that a very pat and convenient fate for two of the major characters was a disappointment and less than worthy of a writer of Ms. Harris’s talents:  my first thought was that she had grown tired of her story and wanted to give it a quick and tidy ending.  So far I haven’t changed my mind.

Briefs Encountered, by Julian Clary

Happily gay star of stage and TV screen Julian Clary has written his third novel, ‘Briefs Encountered’, in part an homage to Noel Coward, towering icon of 20^th century British theatre, but more a mystery story concerning Coward’s beloved home of thirty years in Kent,’Goldenhurst’ and the influence, pernicious and otherwise, the house had on him and subsequent owners – including Mr. Clary!

Yes, our Julian doesn’t resist making himself one of the characters in the book – being himself of course, one would think, but making himself low-rent enough to cause shudders of disdain amongst his queenly contemporaries in alternating ‘modern’ sections of the story, where he owns ‘Goldenhurst’ for barely a year (re-naming it with a snigger ‘Priest’s Hole House) before selling it with indecent haste for a knockdown price to Richard Stent, a celebrated actor renowned for his uncannily accurate portrayal of Coward in a filmography of the great playwright. 

Stent is initially thrilled with his new purchase;  despite his fame he knows that his career is finite and is fully aware that with approaching age satisfying dramatic roles will eventually dry up, but he gets a huge boost from the fact that he is now living in a house that once belonged to his idol – the trouble is, there seem to be a lot of other occupants as well, Things that go Bump in the Night kinds of occupants:  this house is not a Happy Home!

Unfortunate events start to occur at an alarming rate, as they do in alternating chapters for Noel Coward and his great love American stockbroker Jack Wilson.  ‘Goldenhurst’ has a unique way of showing its disapproval for those it doesn’t like, and Jack is one of them.

So is Jess, Richard’s wonderfully efficient but possessive P.A.  It is patently clear to everyone but Richard, that though he is as gay as a hat (yes, this story is crammed to the gunnels with very merry people!) Jess is unhealthily obsessed with her unsuspecting boss – oh, absolutely everybody can see the writing on the wall:  it’s all going to end in tears.  And it does, but as this is a story about a celebrated actor, playwright, musical star and wit who modestly admitted that he ‘had a talent to amuse’, there are also more delicious one-liners and tart humour than a body can memorise in a bid to pass off as her own at the next dinner potty.  How tarsome, but what a pleasure to read such sparkling dialogue. 

Having said that, I have to say that Julian, the dear boy, will never become a literary Giant:  he needs a better editor than he has – or perhaps this was the best his editor could do with what she was given:  either way, there are some pretty clunky passages in his narrative.  Even so, Mr. Clary manages to move the plot along at a cracking pace;  his characters (except for the villains) are loads of fun, celeb names are dropped like sequins and importantly, comparisons are drawn between sexual morés of the nineteen twenties and thirties when to Mr. Coward’s perpetual fear and dismay, it was illegal for two consenting males to engage in sexual activity, to the present day, where same-sex couples may join together in civil union.  Regardless of its flaws, Mr. Clary’s latest is an entertainment extraordinaire, worth reading for the humour alone. Lashings of fun.

Snowdrops, by A. D. Miller

As everyone knows, snowdrops are those charming white flowers that appear every spring looking like ballet tutus trimmed with green spots:  in Moscow, ‘Snowdrops’ is also a nickname for corpses caught up in frigid winter snowdrifts, not making an appearance until the spring thaw and the smell of corruption herald their last resting place.

A. D. Miller’s superb first novel reveals corruption on many different levels. He spent several years as the Moscow correspondent for The Economist, so is eminently qualified to describe in the most eloquent and brutal terms the loss of Russia’s moral compass  - which has probably been missing in action for generations.

In 21^st century Moscow anything and anybody can be bought for a price, and that ruined, tawdry and fascinating city’s inhabitants have turned confidence trickery and fraud into an art form – and they don’t stop at fleecing gullible foreigners:  their own compatriots are fair game, too.  Everyone is on the make and on the take;  everyone wears a mask of false friendship and bonhomie, especially whenever some poor gullible fool is paying the bill, and reality, when it finally rears its judgmental head, is merciless.

The story is narrated by Nick, a British lawyer approaching forty, sent by his London firm to represent them in Moscow to oversee deals connecting banks to Russian ‘investors’ in oil-rich Siberia:  there is an indecent amount of money to be made by banks lending startup money to finance new oil terminals;  they  are falling over themselves to advance money to the new breed of Russian entrepreneur, and Nick’s firm is there to do the legal work and charge huge fees.  Money for jam, until he and his colleagues start dealing with the Cossack, an oligarch with a shadowy past and a talent for being out of contact in matters of urgency.  They begin arranging the finance for him to construct a new terminal in Murmansk, advancing hundreds of millions of dollars – oh, life is going well, there will be fat bonuses for all, with a possible partnership for Nick, and everyone is just about swimming in all the vodka tossed back in the many toasts to their success.

Nick has also started the romance of his life with Masha, a beautiful damsel in distress that he prevented from being mugged in the Metro;  she has been suitably grateful since and she and her ‘sister’ are his firm friends, especially when they find out that he is a lawyer.  And at that point Nick’s slide into corruption begins – gradually but inexorably, he is involved in a scheme to remove an old lady from her desirable central Moscow apartment, shifting her to a new high-rise flat on the outskirts of the city.  Nick completes all the tedious legal work, even advances a hefty loan himself to expedite matters, all in the name of Love, only to discover eventually, predictably, that he has been conned – out of his money and out of his reputation, and left only with the bitter, guilty realisation that he ignored all the warning signs (and there were many) in a futile bid to hang on to his ephemeral romance.  More unpleasant revelations follow, and life for Nick will never be the same again:  his naiveté has been his downfall.

A.D. Miller has written a superlative modern morality tale, examining venality and abandonment of principle from many angles.  He also peoples his work with great characters, beautifully observed and entirely convincing, and as a bonus – in case the reader will think that the story is an unmitigated tragedy from start to finish – there is a rich vein of humour throughout the novel, and the lasting impression that people the world over will do what they must – and what is easiest – to survive.

And the very last word must go to someone who summed Nick up most succinctly on the Remarks sheet inside the library book:  ‘Naïve fool – shouldn’t be left walking around loose.’

That person stated in a single sentence what has just taken me a whole page!  Ah, it’s a dreadful thing to be a verbal diahrroetic.

The Beginner’s Goodbye, by Anne Tyler

Pulitzer Prizewinning author Anne Tyler has written another little gem:  this writer never fails to be consistently good;  an excellent observer of all the foibles and eccentricities that make us all so different – and so much the same.

Her latest protagonist is Aaron Woolcott, an editor who works in the family business set up by his father, a firm that specialises in Beginner’s Guides to every conceivable thing, and a vanity press for those paying to publish their own work.  He has been handicapped since a childhood illness deformed his right arm and leg and has fought ever since against his overprotective mother and sister for his right to take  care of himself – he truly believes that, though he is living with very big disadvantages in his life, he is still ‘pretty happy’.  And he becomes happier still when he meets Dorothy Rosales, a radiology specialist. (he’s checking out contributors to the Beginner’s Guide to Cancer.  DON’T SPEAK!).  Dorothy views him with suspicion:  she is sure his interest in her is because she would be the ultimate caregiver, given her obvious medical skills and his obvious disabilities.  She is not the least bit interested in that kind of relationship and it takes some time to convince her that he wants her because she DOESN’T wish to take care of him.

Eventually, Aaron prevails and they marry four months after meeting, embarking on a marriage that turns out to be unsatisfactory for both of them – until Dorothy is killed in a freak accident.  Aaron then has to deal with all the stages of grieving, the anger he feels towards her for leaving him, and his own guilt when he realises that there is a yawning gulf between being cared for and cared about.  The reader journeys gladly with him through this big, painful learning curve, for Ms. Tyler fills her pages with lovely minor characters, each trying to help Aaron in their own different ways to survive – the casseroles and advice pile up at an astonishing rate! – and her sure touch for comedy in the most unlikely circumstances increases the reader’s enjoyment in every chapter.  Highly recommended.