Review of The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Samson (Harper Perennial, 2005)

Israel Armstrong has managed to secure a post as a librarian in a small, rural community on the North Antrim coast in Northern Ireland.  Bookish, naïve, social awkward, Jewish and vegetarian, he’s a fish out of water.  When he arrives he finds the library has been closed and he’s been reassigned to drive the mobile library, an old van that has been mothballed for a few years.  To add to his woes, his living quarters is a chicken coup at an isolated farm, his boss is spiky and manipulative, and the previous librarian and mobile van driver are hostile.  To make matters much worse though is the fact that the libraries 15,000 books are missing, but the local authority doesn’t want to tell anyone for fear of ridicule.  Unless he can track them all down without the aid of the police, running any kind of service is going to be all but impossible.  But when you’re in a strange place, with its own odd ways, hunting for stolen loot is anything but straightforward.

The Case of the Missing Books is effectively a cozy set in Northern Ireland.  It has a quirky, awkward, central character as the sleuth and a cast of other colourful characters, and it takes place in a small town where everybody knows everybody else.  The central plot revolves around Armstrong trying to find his feet in a strange place, where the locals are at one level welcoming and, at another, standoffish, whilst he tries to locate the missing books.  It’s one of those books that I’m kind of ambivalent about.  It passed a few pleasant hours, but did not set the world alight.  The plot is relatively straightforward and there is a gentle humour throughout, though no real belly-laughs; a kind of Last of the Summer Wine sitcom/farce vibe.  My one real problem was that I found it difficult to believe in Israel Armstrong as a character.  There were a few things that didn’t add-up.  On the one hand he’s been a compulsive reader since a young child and he knows about books, and yet what’s in those books barely seems to have penetrated his skull.  His bookishness and educational attainment didn’t quite sit right. And in general terms he's blessed with about every negative trait going, with few social skills or powers of deduction, and yet somehow he bumbles through whilst offending just about everybody at some point.  Overall, if you’re a cozy fan then this might appeal.

Bugbears

I'm a few chapters in on 'The Arms Maker of Berlin' by Dan Fesperman.  The plot is good, but not so keen on the writing style.  Fesperman employs a couple of devices that bug me.  The first is unnecessary repetition.  So he'll have a sentence such as 'The woman looked tired and bedraggled.'  Followed by: 'She was a wreck.'  The second sentence is redundant.  Another one is telling the reader what is going to happen later in the story.  For example, stating something like, 'Little did he know that on Friday he'd be sitting on a plane with the woman flying to Switzerland.'  I now know how the story is about to unfold and what is going to be happening in four days time.  I don't need to know this, it serves no purpose, and knowing it detracts from my reading experience.  I can live with the balance of show and tell, though I'd prefer more tell, and the melodrama and stock characters, but the other things bug me (and I'm sure there are aspects of my writing that annoy the hell out of people).  Regardless, what makes the book interesting and enjoyable is the story itself, which has me hooked.  Does plot supercedes everything else ...?

What are your reading bugbears?

Review of Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett (Bantam Press, 2005)

Mitch Turner, a CIA agent, is found dead and dismembered in a Bangkok hotel room.  He’d been taken there by Chanya, the star prostitute at the The Old Man's Club, a venue run by Detective Sonchai Jitpleecheep’s mother and his boss, Colonel Vikorn.  Vikorn’s initial strategy is to make out that Chanya had killed in self-defence.  Once it becomes clear that Turner is a CIA agent in the Muslim south of the country he invents a cover-up pointing at Al Qaeda, planting forensic evidence that can link the scene directly to the terrorist group.  Vikorn also has another agenda to stir into the mix; a long running battle with General Zinna, a corrupt army officer.  Jitpleecheep does his master’s bidding, but he’s increasingly drawn to the charms of Chanya, and the case exerts a strange fascination that tugs at both sides of his genetic inheritance (from his American father and Thai mother).  As he travels to the South and through the sex bars of Bangkok he becomes increasingly obsessed with discovering the truth behind Turner’s death.

For me, Bangkok Tattoo was a book of two halves.  The first half was interesting and entertaining, immersing the reader in the sights and sounds of the seedier side of Bangkok.  The story raced along and had plenty of intrigue and twists and turns.  In the second half the story unravelled and lost focus and direction.  The main plotline of the first half petered out and another thread came to dominate, and the story resorted more and more to show rather than tell, and less and less plausible.  The ending redeemed things a little, but it still felt a little flat and relied on Jitpleecheep forgetting that he had a vital piece of evidence in his possession.  In general, the characterisation is good, and Sonchai Jitpleecheep makes for an interesting central character, caught as he is between the worlds of the police and Bangkok nightlife, and American and Thai society, and the most of the other characters are colourful and engaging.  The exception is the Americans who are stereotypical, dull and by the numbers military types.  The observations of Thai society are informative, though I was somewhat dubious as to how prostitution, and lives and attitudes of the women who practice it, are portrayed.  Whilst I have little doubt that the nature of prostitution in Thailand is different to that in the West, I’m not at all convinced that its quite as Burdett portrays it; that paying for sex is an unproblematic transaction in Thai society where women willing engage with little emotional damage or other consequences.  After so much promise in the first half, it was a shame that the story fizzled out in the second.  That said, I’m still going to check out the first book in the series, Bangkok 8, as it’s clear that Burdett can tell a good yarn, and there’s enough promise here to merit another outing.

Lazy Sunday Service

It's been a writing, editing and kind of political week.  Hopefully, The Map Reader, will go in the post to the publisher in the next few days.  All the introductory pieces have been drafted and the excerpted chapters have been edited.  Just a couple of bits need polishing and tidying up.  I've also drafted two thirds of my short story for Ron Earl Phillips' flash fiction challenge - has to be about receiving an unsolicited box and what's inside - which I'll complete and post sometime in the next five days (deadline is Sept 10th; prize is a copy of Needle).  Also had some discussions with officials in a government department and a semi-state agency, both on condition of confidentiality, which was very interesting but frustrating I can't share!

My posts this week:

TBR panic (abated)
Warm but not red hot
Review of Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell
August reviews
Do we need another airport?
Review of Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett

Review of Guards! Guards! By Terry Pratchett (Corgi, 1989)

The night watch are a sorry bunch - the drunken Captain Vimes, the reticent Sergeant Colon, and shady Corporal Nobbs.  The butt of many jokes they spent their nights trying to avoid trouble.  But trouble is coming as the Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren has stolen a book from the Unseen University and is using it to summon a dragon.  As the Watch try to come to terms with a dragon materialising in the city, they also have to induct Lance-Constable Carrot, a human bought up in dwarf mine who thinks that the law is something to be upheld and enforced, rather than avoided.  Rather than giving the brethren the power they crave, the dragon soon reverses the roles and declares itself king, demanding all the things that dragons desire such as a heap of gold to sleep on and the monthly sacrifice of a maiden.  Desperate to know something about the creature, Vimes meets the formidable Lady Sybil, who has an aristocratic heritage, and breeds small swamp dragons.  Between them - the dragon, Carrot and Lady Sybil - might just be the making of Vimes and the Watch.

Pratchett has a wonderfully inventive mind and a natural storytelling flair.  It’s a powerful combination leads to novels that are highly enjoyable, and yet also make the reader reflect on a particular issue – in this case, desire, power and law and order.  Setting his stories in Discworld frees his parables of certain constraints, allowing him to draw on myths and legends, and to come at things in an oblique angle, meaning its message does not feel contrived or preachy.  The result is a set of books that appeal to a very wide demographic (I'm as hooked now in my forties as I was in my teens).  The plotting and characterisation in Guards! Guards! is generally excellent, the dialogue natural, and there is a constant presence of good humour, with many chuckle and laugh out loud moments.  The story is a little uneven in places and some of the set pieces a little contrived, but it’s a fun read and it was good to tuck into my dog-eared copy fifteen odd years since I last read it.  Time perhaps to dig out Pratchett’s other Night Watch books. 

August reviews

A fairly varied month of reading.  The two stand out books were Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason and Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty.  Two very different books and difficult to decide which one is book of the month, so I'm going with the pair.  Both worth a read.  Which reminds me, I need to get the next book in the McKinty series.  Flip, should have had that in the last order.


Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason *****
Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty *****
Client by Parnell Hall**1/2
The Information Officer by Mark Mills **1/2
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy ****1/2
Point Blank by Richard Stark****
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly ***1/2
Instruments of Darkness by Robert Wlison ***1/2
The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst ***
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block ***

Review of Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell (No Exit Press, 1998)

Sammy Barlach is a loser who's managed to get a job in the dog food factory in West Table, Missouri.  His first Friday payday he ends up in a trailer court getting drunk and high.  Soon its Sunday and trying to impress a girl he breaks into a deserted mansion.  When his companions skedaddle he tucks into a bottle of vodka and settles down for a quick nap in his new found luxury.  He’s woken by the diminutive Jamalee, with her tomato red hair, and beautiful Jason Merridew, a sister and brother dreaming of a better life and practising being rich.  When the police arrive, the three hot foot down to Venus Holler, a ramshackle collection of houses on the wrong side of the tracks.  Next to the place that Jamalee and Jason are housesitting lives their mother, Bev, whose approach to poverty is to turn tricks, look on the bright side of life, and party whenever the opportunity arises.  It’s not a life that Jamalee aspires to and Jason, with his model looks, is her ticket to the American dream.  Having lost his job, Sammy makes himself at home, pursuing the feisty Jamalee whilst taking to the bed of her mother.  When Jason turns up dead in suspicious circumstances, and the cops want to record it as an accident, the three slackers mobilise to seek justice.

Tomato Red reads a bit like a social realist play, with its gritty realism and harsh truths, and small cast of well drawn characters.  The dialogue and interactions between Sammy, Jamalee, Jason and Bev is pitch perfect, and Woodrell does an admirable job of immersing the reader in their world.  As ever, the prose is nicely crafted, and Woodrell has a deft hand for turning expressive phrasing and sharing interesting observations and insights into social relations.  Where the book falls a little short perhaps is with respect to plot, which is quite ponderous at times as if Woodrell is tentatively feeling his way, and the ending felt a little false and rushed.  I’ve become a huge fan of Woodrell’s country noir; Tomato Red didn’t quite match some of his other works, but its still a fine, entertaining read.