The Kingdom, by Jo Nesbo.

 

           Jo Nesbo has long been acknowledged among his myriad fans as the master of Scandy Noir, and with logical reason:  there is simply no-one better or more consistent at producing quality thrillers of the genre.  Every time we pick up a new title it is as satisfying – or even better – than the last.

            ‘The Kingdom’ belongs to two brothers.  It’s what their late father called their remote farm above the village of Os in the Norwegian mountains, and Roy Obsgard lives there alone after his younger brother Carl went to the USA to study for an advanced  business degree.  Roy has made an adequate life for himself running the local service station, but in the way of all small communities, Os is riven with gossip (what else is there to do but trash whoever is next in line?), and plenty is said about his determinedly single state now he is in his mid-thirties – he’s queer/gay/weird;  something’s fishy about the death of his parents, whose Cadillac (Dad liked all things American) slid over a precipice fifteen years before, leaving the boys orphaned. 

            But Roy presents a face of complete indifference to the rumour-mongers:  only he knows the truth of what used to happen after the lights went out at night in the Kingdom;  only he knows the real reason his brother fled to America.  And he will never tell:  he will always protect his little brother.

            And he does, as always, when Carl returns unexpectedly from America with his architect wife Shannon, and a get-rich scheme that the whole village can invest in: a luxury hotel and spa built on the brothers’ land, which will rake in tourist kroner for all.  Like everyone else, Roy is dazzled by the scope of Carl’s vision and his plans for putting Os on the map – until cracks start appearing in Carl’s charismatic veneer:  the contractors have been less than reliable;  a road has had to be constructed to the site, taking up a lot of the funds;  there have been weather delays.  And Architect Shannon has objected to her concrete creation having timbers and trolls added.

            Roy will always do his best for his little brother, from comforting him at night to stop the tears, to putting a fatal stop to the reason for them, but history has a way of repeating itself, and he is once again asked to come to his little brother’s rescue, even if it involves murder – this time fuelled by the enormous guilt he also feels for falling in love – with Shannon.

            Jo Nesbo has given us huge, Shakespearian characters in a Nordic setting, and at the novel’s end it’s impossible to know if Carl has really profited from the tragedy he has caused, or if Roy will finally become a man, and stop him.  FIVE STARS

 

Blacktop Wasteland, by S. A. Cosby.

 

 

           This is a story-and-a-half!  I haven’t read anything as raw, explosive and hugely exciting since last year’s collection of stories by the great Don Winslow.  Well, Don now has a worthy rival for the king of Crime Noir, assuming that ‘Blacktop Wasteland’s’ debut is eventually followed by a successor of the same dazzling quality.  Fingers crossed.

            In Virginia, black former Wheelman for various crims Beauregard Montage is feeling overwhelmed:  overwhelmed by debt as he tries to stay away from his former associates where the big, easy money is so that he can look after his beloved wife and children legitimately.  He and his cousin Kelvin have started a repair shop because Beauregard’s talent for car mechanics is legendary (not to mention his driving skills – he has saved so many colleague’s black asses in his disappeared Daddy’s old getaway car that he’s the Go-To man for those considering any kind of heist) but he can’t compete with a new garage that has opened in town and is undercutting him on everything.  Add to that his poisonous old Mama’s bills for her nursing home and Beauregard feels like he’s drowning.  His wife Kia wants him to sell his father’s car which is still worth a lot of money, but it’s all that Beauregard has left of his Daddy – nope, can’t do it. 

            Instead he takes up an offer from white-trash piece-of-shit (No exaggeration!) Ronnie Sessions to be the Wheelman and strategist for a jewellery heist in a mall not too far away, despite the fact that he did another job with Ronnie and it all turned bad, with everyone lucky to escape from the law – and he never got paid.  Ronnie owes him bigtime, and Beauregard is desperate enough to give him another chance.  With the proviso that Ronnie and his mouth-breather brother Reggie will be doomed if they fail him.

            And they do.  In the robbery an innocent man is killed, and it soon becomes abundantly clear that the jewellery store was a front for other, bigger criminal activities – and those bigger crims are now coming for the little ones.  Beauregard has hurled himself straight out of the frying pan and into a huge fire, a fire which threatens not only him, but all his loved ones.

            There are no happy endings in this stunning book, and beneath the bloodshed and violence is Beauregard’s own halting explanation of his divided nature: ‘ ‘It’s a curse, is what it is.  Money can’t fix it and love can’t tame it.  Push it down deep and it rots you from the inside out.  Give in to it and you end up doing five years in some hellhole.  Violence is a Montage family tradition.’ ‘  Well said, Beauregard.  SIX  STARS! 

 

Trio, by William Boyd.

 

 

           It is 1968, and a film crew assembles in the English seaside city of Brighton to start work on a film tentatively entitled ‘Emily Bracegirdle’s Ladder to the Moon’.  Producer Talbot Kydd has assembled an eclectic cast:  luminous, breathtaking new American star Anny Viklund in the title role, with latest pop sensation Troy Blaze as her love interest;  Rodrigo Tipton (‘Please stop calling me Reggie, Talbot,  I have changed my name, birth certificate, passport, everything:  Rodrigo is my NAME.’) will direct, and a host of former celebs will flesh out the minor roles.  All should be well.

            In a perfect world.

            Rodrigo/Reggie comes with baggage in the shape of his wife Elfrida Wing, a once-famous author who has suffered from writer’s block for ten years, and has turned to alcohol for inspiration and comfort:  whilst searching for her lost muse, she takes Brighton’s pubs by storm.

            Beautiful new star Anny has problems, too:  her politically radical ex-husband Cornell Weekes has escaped from an American prison where he was incarcerated for trying to blow up an army base.  He is rumoured by the police and FBI to be attempting to come to England to contact her.  The movie does not need this kind of publicity, and as Producer, Talbot has a lot of troubleshooting to do.

            And Talbot finds that in the new heady, permissive days of 1968, his closeted homosexuality could perhaps have an airing, however timid, for it is no longer an imprisonable offence to love another man.  The fact that he has a wife and two adult children is testament to his Trojan efforts to lead an upright, conventional, admirably British life.  Now, in Brighton, anything could happen.  And does, from film stock going missing (stolen by one of the camera crew to make porno movies on the side) to the potential betrayal by a business partner.

Talbot Kydd is not a happy man, and his attempts to find solutions to insurmountable problems are chronicled with empathetic skill and the usual artistry we expect from William Boyd.  As always, he makes one sentence do the work of ten and, as always, leaves us wishing we could meet his characters again.  FIVE STARS.  

                    

 

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 fiancé, 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.

              

 

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   

 

 

 

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. 

 

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.