Sunnie's Book Blog

Review: The Devil's Double

2011-09-19T14:31:00.002+10:00

Title: Devil’s Double
Author: Latif Yahia
Publisher: Arrow Books
ISBN: 0099465558

We’ve all read and heard stories about the brutality and excesses of Saddam Hussein and his regime. His eldest son, Uday , in particular had the reputation for being as bad as, if not worse than his father.

The author, Latif Yahia was the son of a well-to-do Baghdad businessman who attended school with Uday Hussein. They were born within days of each other and bore a strong resemblance to one another. In 1987 while Yahia was serving in the army he was plucked from the front line and taken to meet Uday Hussein where he was told he was being afforded a great honour; an honour he couldn’t refuse. He was to become Uday’s “fiday”, his serf and double. Yahia underwent painful plastic and dental surgery and spent months being forced to copy and perfect Uday’sspeech patterns and every gesture.

THE DEVIL’SDOUBLE bears witness to some of the things that went on inside the heavily guarded compound in which Saddam and his family spent much of their time.

Uday was taken to see his first execution at the age of six and watched people being tortured at age ten. His unrestrained appetite for sex and violence appears to have been the inevitable consequence of a life led without any boundaries or consequences whatsoever. Is it any wonder he became such a monster?

It’s a little difficult to know what to make of Latif Yahia and his story. He claims to have witnessed some dreadfu latrocities, which appear to have been a part of every day life for the Hussein clan, and much of the book is devoted toYahia registering his disgust at the things he saw. However, there does appear to be a great deal of self-justification going on. Yahia describes the invasion of Kuwait and how the Husseins used that invasion to loot as much as they could. He tells of Uday assembling three teams of twenty men each assigned to ransack the country. One team was responsible for “requisitioning”as many up-market European cars as they could, another electrical goods and athird was to take over villas and large houses for use of the new “government”in Kuwait. This little enterprise garnered Uday $125 million from the sale of cars alone. Yahia condemns this , but at the same time admits to having taken some cars himself to line his own pockets.

The book itself is not particularly well written. At times there seems to be a slight overuse of adjectives that don’t always fit. I felt it could have benefited from tighter editing. However, that weakness is over-ridden by the stories Yahia has to tell. Some of them almost defy belief.

If Uday saw something he wanted he’d just take it. Everything from cars to women. There is one horrifying story about him seeing a pair of newly weds and deciding he wanted the wife. The husband, an officer in the Iraqi army who had served for ten years was on leave from the front. They had been married just one day. The husband was restrained and beaten, the wife dragged screaming to Uday’s hotel room. When she resisted his advances he beat her until she was bleeding badly and then raped her. He left the room and the woman feeling too shamed to live, committed suicide by jumping from the sixth floor window. The husband, beside himself with grief tried to attack Uday in the hotel foyer. He was arrested, charged with “insulting the president”and executed a few days later. Just another day in the life of Uday Hussein.

Uday owned hundreds of cars and thousands of suits. He even banned the importation of Ferraris into Iraq so that he would bethe only person to own them. Such wasthe power of the Husseins in Iraq that not even witnesses held back Uday. At a party one day his father’sofficial food taster incurred his wrath so he killed him with an electricknife, in front of tall the guests, including wife of the President of Egypt.

Yahir escaped the country to tell his tale.To be honest, this particular yarn seems a little too far-fetched nto be plausible. It did damage his Yahia's credibility somewhat for me. Just how much of it is completely true is perhaps open for debate but there is no doubt that THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE is jaw-dropping at times.

THE DEVIL’S DOUBLE has been recently made into a movie, starring Dominic Cooper as both Uday and Latif Yahir and Philip Quast as Saddam.

Links: The DevilsDouble – book

Devil’s Double movie website

Review: THE DARK SIDE - Roger Rogerson

2010-01-21T12:38:00.002+11:00

Roger Rogerson is probably one of Australia's best known and notorious police officers. Presented with a medal for his services to the police force in 1980, just a few short years later he found himself facing charges of corruption and attempted murder which despite acquittal, ended his career in the police force.

THE DARK SIDE is Rogerson's own version of events. Not surprisingly it doesn't dwell on the events that made him a house-hold name. He focuses more on cases he worked on over his long career in the police force.

Reading the autobiography of someone who has become notorious for whatever reason is always a little difficult; especially if there has been past misdeeds or alleged crimes. Just how much of the truth are you really getting? After all you're only getting their side of the story and there's nothing in the way of critical analysis of that story.

I doubt that Rogerson was telling "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth." There is little or no mention about the events that made him so notorious although his accounts of cases he worked on are interesting enough. You get the picture of what would be called an old time traditional detective who isn't averse to bending the rules to achieve and outcome. Just how far those rules were bent is left to the individual to decide.

Top Gear and Richard Hammond

2010-01-20T17:15:00.008+11:00

If you are any sort of Petrol-head and even if you aren't chances are you have encountered the juggernaut that it BBC tvs TOP GEAR in some form or other. The show, the books, the merchandise; they're everywhere.

I have to admit I'm a huge fan of the show. It's not about the cars; it's about the British knack for taking diverse personalities and creating some sort of special magic that can entertain millions.

That's why I love Top Gear. Clarkson, May and Hammond, when let off the leash are hysterically funny. They are allowed to fully indulge their schoolboy sense of humour and are probably laughing all the way to the bank. All of them have had books published.

Everyone who watches the show will have their favourite. Mine is Richard Hammond. His boyish good looks and his self-deprecating sense of humour are somehow endearing. So when I hit a reading slump just before Christmas I decided I needed something light and entertaining to get over it. Richard Hammond's books were the perfect antidote.

ON THE EDGE by Richard Hammond tells the story of the now famous crash which nearly killed him and resulted in him suffering brain damage. It's told from the point of view of both Hammond (his memories up to the crash) and his wife (afterwards and his rehabilitation)

Then there's OR IT IS JUST ME? A collection of ancedotes about the antics, expeditions and races Hammond has experienced on Top Gear.

AS YOU DO tells the story of the Top Gear Race to the North Pole from Hammond's perspective. While Clarkson and May were in a custom built car, Hammond was trotting along behind a dog sled. You have to be fit and highly motivated to accomplish that.

Also in the book is Hammond's account of their race across Bostwana and his meeting of his childhood idol, Evel Kneivel.

So while, no one by any stretch of the imagination could call Hammond's writing literature it is entertaining and pulled me out of my reading slump.

So thank you Richard Hammond.

Review: DARK MIRROR - Barry Maitland

2010-01-19T19:50:00.004+11:00

Marion Summers, a university student dies one day in a library. When an autopsy reveals she died from arsenic poisoning DI Kathy Kolla and DCI David Brock are called in.

Marion's life is a mystery. No one seems to know her well at all. She has moved from her last known address and none of the people the detectives talk to seem to know where she went.

Marion was doing research into the lives of the pre-Raphaelites in which arsenic figured quite heavily. Before they can find out who murdered Marion, Brock and Kolla have to first find out about the woman herself, which proves no easy task.

DARK MIRROR is a first rate police procedural. The author plays fair with the reader. The clues are all there, it's up to you to sort out which are red herrings and which are genuine. He also strikes a nice balanace between the private lives of the characters and their work.

A good police procedural is one of my favourite types of books. If it's done properly it keeps you reading compulsively to find out if your theory is correct. I did manage to figure it out in the end, but not before I ran trough a number of suspects and changed my mind several times.

If police procedurals are you thing then DARK MIRROR is one you should have on your bookshelf.

DARK MIRROR is the tenth book in the Brock and Kolla series.

Review: COLD JUSTICE - Katherine Howell

2010-01-12T13:38:00.002+11:00

Publisher: Pan Macmillan Australia
Published: February, 2010
ISBN: 9781405039277
Format: Trade paperback
336 Pages
RRP $25.00 (Aus)

When Georgie Riley was a teenager she stumbled upon the body of seventeen-year-old Tim Pieterson who had been murdered. Georgie is now a paramedic and finds herself teamed up with an old school friend. Freya was Georgie’s best friend who departed with her family without a word after Tim’s death. Why did Freya leave town so abruptly? What is she hiding?

Nineteen years later, the case is still open. Tim’s younger cousin, Callum is now a politician and has agitated to have the case reviewed. Detective Ella Marconi is returning to work after recovering from injuries. It is decided that the best way to ease her back into the job is to assign her to the Unsolved Cases Unit. In his welcoming speech her boss tells her “the past haunts the present” and in this case it proves to be true. Ella’s investigation opens up old wounds for the family and puts pressure on her relationship with Wayne who seems to want to dictate how and when Ella works. Wayne is also becoming way too cosy with Ella’s family for comfort.

“Write what you know” aspiring writers are often told. Katherine Howell has done that to good effect. She worked as a paramedic for many years and her detailed knowledge of both the job and the physical and emotional toll it takes are vividly portrayed.

COLD JUSTICE is Katherine’s third book (the previous two are Frantic and The Darkest Hour) and her writing seems to get better and better . COLD JUSTICE not only has the fast pace of a thriller, it also has multiple threads which are gradually pulled together. Katherine is also a dab hand at knowing exactly when to change threads in the plot to leave the reader in suspense.

I was lucky to receive a copy of the book in advance of its publication. COLD JUSTICE is due in book shops on 1^st February 2010. I recommend you be in line on that date to get a copy. You won’t regret it.

Best and worst of 2009

2010-01-05T22:15:00.002+11:00

It's been a funny old year for me. The 2nd half was particularly chaotic and not a lot of reading done in the past 3 months or so. My record keeping was also abysmal.. So this is what i've managed to cobble together from what records I do have.

Interestingly one author made it onto both my lists.

1. DEVIL'S PEAK - Deon Meyer (South Africa)
Plot
DEVIL’S PEAK begins with a prostitute telling her story to a clergyman. On her lap is a shoe box. What’s in the box?

Inspector Benny Giessel has just been thrown out of the house by his wife. She has given him an ultimatum. Choose either the booze or his family. He has six months to get sober and stay that way or he won’t see his kids again. Benny is a veteran of the South African police. He is one of the very few left from the days of apartheid. In a force where the majority are young and inexperienced, a wise Superintendant realises the the value of a talented and experienced detective. With the support of his boss, Benny begins the slow, painful process of getting sober and staying that way.
Someone is killing people with an Assegai (tribal spear). Many on the police force aren’t that bothered because the victims are child killers. Benny is assigned to lead the investigation. Realising this may well be his last chance to save his career as well as his marriage, Benny puts everything into finding out the identity of the killer.

My thoughts
The alcoholic detective is something of a staple in crime fiction; to the extent that it frequently becomes a cliché. Not so Benny. Meyer writes about Benny’s struggle , self-recrimination and the realisation of the full impact of his drinking on his life, his family and his colleagues with a great deal of sensitivity . We feel Benny’s pain, guilt and despair as struggles through “one day at a time.”

Full review: http://sunniesbookblog.blogspot.com/2009/01/sunday-salon-fine-south-african-crime.html

2. A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE - Malla Nunn ( African born writer, living in Australia, set in South Africa)
Plot
South Africa in 1952 is not a comfortable place to live. Apartheid laws have been introduced just a few years earlier and the National Party are tightening their stranglehold on the country with their vision of what South Africa should be. The security forces are being granted more powers and are exercising them freely.

When an Afrikaner police officer is murdered in the small town of Jakob’s Rest, Detective Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate. The dead man Willem Pretorious is from a prominent family in the district . As an English South African, Cooper is regarded with hostility and suspicion. Cooper’s task is made more difficult and dangerous when the Security Branch decides to take over the case. They have no interest in finding out who was responsible for Pretorious’ death; certainly not if the killer is white. They just want to link the murder to the Communist party and they don’t care how they go about it.
My thoughts
A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE is a book that paints a vivid picture of life under apartheid in the early 1950s. And that picture isn’t pretty. Suspicion and hatred, fear and paranoia are never far from the surface and racially motivated violence ever-present. One wrong move; a look in the wrong direction can cost a life.

my thoughts
The author, Malla Nunn manages to infuse the book with with a strong sense of what it must have been like to live under racial segregation laws without sacrificing plot. As crime fiction it works beautifully. As a commentary of the time it pulls no punches and spares no feelings in portraying supporters of Apartheid as arrogant with a sense of entitlement that they were born to rule. A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE is impressive on every level, particularly more so when you realise this is Nunn’s first novel

3. THE BAD POLICEMAN - Helen Hodgman
Plot
Constable Blainey is a uniformed police officer stationed in a town 100 kilometres West of Sydney (i.e. The Blue Mountains). He is divorced, lives alone and isn’t close to his only (grown up) son. Blainey is a poet in his spare time. He has had a small book of verse published, but he’s a bit self-conscious about that. He regards his partner, Steve as his only real friend.

THE BAD POLICEMAN is Blainey’s own inner dialogue with himself. The people he meets, the things he witnesses, decisions he makes all pile on top of each other to bring him to where we meet him in the book. He sees corruption around him, both small and large. He debates with himself which he can act on and which he can’t. This leads to even more inner turmoil. We see Blainey as he sees himself, stripped bare of all pretence or facade. What Blainey sees in himself he doesn’t like. A number of things happen that effect his life which leads him to a crisis point.
Blainey takes us through his days from his own point of view. At times his thoughts are confused and confusing; almost stream of consciousness. The book is many things, often funny, sometimes heartbreakingly tragic but it is never dull. THE BAD POLICEMAN poses the obvious question. Is Blainey a bad policeman, a bad man, both or neither? The reader must make up their own mind.

My Thoughts
The unexpected surprise of the year. THE BAD POLICEMAN is a short, obscure book, published a number of years ago without fanfare. It probably only sold a few copies - most of which probably reside in libraries. It would be very hard to get, but if you get the chance read it..
Full Review http://sunniesbookblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/sunday-salon-review-bad-policeman.html

4. THE PREACHER - Camilla Lackberg
Plot
Twenty years ago two holiday makers disappeared from the tourist town of Fjällbacka. Now a young boy has discovered the bodies along with a third which seems to be fresh.

Detective Patrik Hedstrom is on vacation. His partner, Erica is expecting their first child in less than a month. Fjällbacka is experiencing a heatwave and Erica is restless and short-tempered so when Patrik receives a phone call cutting short his holiday he isn’t too upset.

Attention focuses on the Hult family. A family divided by the suicide of one member who was the prime suspect in the disappearance of the holiday makers. It is also a family divided by wealth: one branch inherited the estate and has prospered, the other lives in poverty. This is a family of misfits, religious fanatics and criminals. A rich vein of suspects in anyone’s book.

Patrik also has to deal with Erica and the unwanted visitors who keep turning up on their doorstep wanting to take advantage of their hospitality for a cheap holiday during the summer season.wenty years ago two holiday makers disappeared from the tourist town of Fjällbacka. Now a young boy has discovered the bodies along with a third which seems to be fresh.

Detective Patrik Hedstrom is on vacation. His partner, Erica is expecting their first child in less than a month. Fjällbacka is experiencing a heatwave and Erica is restless and short-tempered so when Patrik receives a phone call cutting short his holiday he isn’t too upset.

Attention focuses on the Hult family. A family divided by the suicide of one member who was the prime suspect in the disappearance of the holiday makers. It is also a family divided by wealth: one branch inherited the estate and has prospered, the other lives in poverty. This is a family of misfits, religious fanatics and criminals. A rich vein of suspects in anyone’s book.

Patrik also has to deal with Erica and the unwanted visitors who keep turning up on their doorstep wanting to take advantage of their hospitality for a cheap holiday during the summer season.

My thoughts:
These days translated books are things of quality; it’s seamless. If it wasn’t for the name of the translator in the book you’d never know it wasn’t originally written in English The other upside of translated books is that rarely do the publishers go to the extra cost of hiring a translator if the book is a dud.

THE PREACHER is a first rate detective novel. The mystery really sucks you in, there are clues and red herrings scattered everywhere. I changed my mind about the murderer a number of times while reading the book. I’d think I had it nailed and Lackberg would throw in another twist. I figured it out about the same time as the author revealed whodunit.

5. ONCE WERE COPS - Ken Bruen
Plot

Michael O’Shea is a Guard (Irish police officer) in Northern Ireland. He is known simply as Shea, Shea is seen as a good cop, but he is hiding a secret. A very dark secret. Shea has a black heart and a taste for violence and death; especially young women with swan-like necks.

Northern Ireland and New York City have a police officer exchange programme. Shea feels like his dream has come true when he is selected to spend a year on the streets of New York City. The big apple. Or in Shea’s case The Rotten Apple. Shea finds himself teamed with Kebar, an officer whose name comes from the fact that he likes to mete out justice with short metal stick called a K-bar. Kebar is corrupt and unstable. The murder of his beloved sister puts him over the edge.

My thoughts:
No one could ever in their wildest dreams describe Bruen’s writing as cozy. Bruen is contemporary noir. Midnight noir.. His writing is to the point and punchy in every sense of the word. Pick up a Ken Bruen novel and you’re hooked. I guarantee your bath-water will be ice-cold before you know it.

6. SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Kel Robertson. The 2nd in the Bradman Chen series.
Brad Chen is a member of the AFP (Australian Federal Police). He is Chinese Australian.
Joint winner of the 2009 Ned Kelly Award for best Australian crime fiction.

Plot
Brad is recovering from injuries he received in the first book (DEAD SET) and is persuaded to return to work part time by his friend and superior officer, "Talkative". A retired politician from the 1970's Whitlam Government has been found murdered with his editor. He has been working on a book which he claims will reveal all about the inside story of the Whitlam Government's controversial dismissal by the Governor General in 1972.

When Brad starts to dig deeper some nasty characters begin to emerge from the woodwork, all of them seemingly determined to inflict major physical harm on him.

Why are the Russian mafia interested in a book about 1970s Austrlaian politics? And who the heck hired a bunch of South African mercenaries to dash about the landscape ambushing people and sometimes bumping them off?

My thoughts
Brad Chen is a cyncial, wise-cracking police officer who operates according to his own conscience. His new offsider is a tall skinny red-head with the surname of Filipowski who is very close-mouthed about his private life.

What I enjoyed about DEAD SET was the banter between Brad and Filipowski. Very entertaining stuff. There is a fun little diversion when Brad meets up with a journalist acquaintance who is in trouble after writing an editorial for his blog after a choof and a drink too many one night. It's about George W. Bush's reasons for invading Iraq which is politically incorrect in the extreme and very very funny.

There's quite a bit of action as well as an entertaining mystery. And then there are the nickames: Talkative, Voodoo, Baby's Arm (don't ask.)

7. FEVER OF THE BONE - Val McDermid (A Tony Hill/Carol Jordan mystery)
Plot
Someone is luring teenagers to their deaths; killing them quickly and then and mutilating them in the most horrifying manner. Someone who spends weeks online grooming them for their fate. Someone who knows what teens like.

Carol Jordan's team has been set up for this very type of case. However, just when they need profiler Tony Hill the most, Carol's new commander has placed a ban on him being used; budget cuts have to begin somewhere.

Meanwhile Tony is working on a case in a nearby county. One that he begins to suspect might be linked to Carol's.

In order to catch the killer the police have to work out how these kids are being selected and Tony Hill is just the man to do the job, but can he convince the powers that be to allow him back into Carol's case?

My thoughts
There are reasons why Val McDermid is one of the best in the business when it comes to writing crime fiction and they are all contained in FEVER OF THE BONE.

Tony, Carol and her team are all familiar but evolving characters. Characters you care about. Several different threads of the plot weave in and out of each other, changing emphasis at just the right time for maximum suspense.

FEVER OF THE BONE differs from many books featuring serial killers in that McDermid doesn't take you inside the killer's head and doesn't describe graphic violence.
It is a police procedural and one of the best I've read in a long time.

8. HALFHEAD - Stuart MacBride
Plot
They're called Halfheads. They are the convicted violent criminals of society: the murderers and rapists. They are lobotomised and surgically mutilated ("halfheaded") and sent to do society's most menial tasks. If you're convicted and sentenced to halfheading there's no way back for you. No one notices halfheads. The are little more than sexless zombies, incapable of independent thought.

Will Hunter is a high ranking officer with the tech-crimes and police actions unit. Part of their job is investigating murders. Will and his team are called out to a particularly grisly murder scene in one of Glasgow's vast connurb blocks. When more than a quarter of a million people are crammed into a vast high rise complex in one of the most deprived areas of the city, is it any wonder things can and do explode?

However, there's more to this murder than meets the eye and Will's determination to find out what is really going on despite orders to the contrary lead him to a very dark conspiracy.

My thoughts
MacBride's vision of the future is a dystopian nightmare. It seems to be a combination the worst of Soviet Union dysfunction and a high technology, uncaring big-brother state. And it is a totally compelling one.

Make no mistake, HALFHEAD is very violent and bloody, but MacBride's ability to create characters with both humanity and humour transcend the bleakness of the violence.

If the book has a flaw it is that in the latter stages, Will and his team seem to get bogged down in hunting for a killer who is right under their noses all the time.

Despite that I found HALFHEAD very difficult to put down. The imagery of the halfheads will haunt me for quite some time I imagine.

9. THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE - Alan Bradley
Plot
It's the beginning of a lazy summer in 1950 at the sleepy English village of Bishop's Lacey. Up at the great house of Buckshaw, aspiring chemist Flavia de Luce passes the time tinkering in the laboratory she's inherited from her deceased mother and an eccentric great uncle. When Flavia discovers a murdered stranger in the cucumber patch outside her bedroom window early one morning, she decides to leave aside her flasks and Bunsen burners to solve the crime herself, much to the chagrin of the local authorities. But who can blame her? What else does an eleven-year-old science prodigy have to do when left to her own devices? With her widowed father and two older sisters far too preoccupied with their own pursuits and passions—stamp collecting,

My thoughts
This book is delightfully and quintessentially English. It is set in a time that has passed and is funny and moving with deliiciously dotty English characters. One of the most charming books I've ever read. I look forward to meeting the fiercely intelligent, yet oddly naive Flavia again.

10 I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER - Dan Wells (Young adult fiction)
Plot
ohn is a fifteen year old sociopath. His mother and aunt own one of the town mortuaries. John is obsessed with serial killers but is afraid that one day he may become one himself. In order to keep “the monster in the wall” John has set up an elaborate set of rules to live by. If a person interests him he will follow them around, but only for a week; to do so any longer would be dangerous.

John wants to please his mother and be a “normal” person and he does not want to do any harm, but the monster in the wall makes it difficult. He discovers he’s not the only “monster” in town when the mutilated corpses of some of the townsfolk begin to appear. In order to understand the killer and perhaps gain greater insights into himself, John starts investigating. What he discovers is something far more strange and chilling than he could ever imagine. The dilemma John finds himself facing is should he unleash the monster within to stop the killing or will the monster in him become worse than the one currently causing such mayhem?

My thoughts
The adolescent voice of John and his desperate efforts to appear “normal” and fit in with society will resonate with teenagers. I can imagine many parents may have a problem with the violence in the book. I have two sons who are both now in their mid 20’s. Would I have allowed my sons to read this book when they were teens? Yes, without hesitation. The other themes in the book such as the need to fit in with perceived norms of society, facing moral dilemmas, loss and grief, family and relationships are far more important. Violence is part of the human condition. We see it every day in the media. We can protect our kids to some degree but we cannot lock them away from such things and pretend they don’t happen.

Bottoms..
Mercifully few this year. None of them are what I'd call stinkers, but they were books for varying reasons I either disliked or couldn't finish.

DEAD OF WINTER - Rennie Airth
It ‘s not often that I don’t finish a review book. I feel obligated to read the entire book in order to do justice to the review.
Sadly, I had to give up on THE DEAD OF WINTER. Not because it was a necessarily a poorly written book. I don’t think it is. I have read worse and finished them. So why did I give up at page 197 of a 408 page book? I ran headlong into one of my pet peeves. This particular peeve is when the author pauses the plot to give the back story of a character. It’s all very fine and dandy for a couple of major characters but when the reader is being told the history of minor characters it becomes a major distraction. That’s what happened in this case. Do we really need to know the history of the relationship between the main character and the local village bobby, who up until i stopped reading the book had a very minor role. If this had been a movie it would have been with half a dozen lines.It ‘s not often that I don’t finish a review book. I feel obligated to read the entire book in order to do justice to the review.

FLESH AND BONE - Jefferson Bass
I'm always excited when I read a book that is first in a new series that I enjoy. A few weeks ago I reviewed Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass, the first in the Body Farm series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. So it was with some anticipation I picked up FLESH AND BONE; the 2nd in the series.

Sadly, FLESH AND BONE didn't live up to my expectations. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Dr Bill Brockton being framed for the murder of a close friend. There is also a secondary thread of the murder of a man who had been dressed as a woman. Are they connected?

What worked so well in the first book seems be lacklustre in this one. There are so many cliches that I don't know where to begin. The first is the hero being framed for murder by someone with a grudge. It was patently obvious to me who it was almost from the word go. I could see only one suspect. Then there is the transgender "southern belle" nightclub singer with a heart of gold. Oh pu-leaze. And let's not forget the defence lawyer who is a shark; up until he defends the hero, whereupon he sees the light and stops taking on cases where he knows the accused is guilty. This is where the book almost hit my bedroom wall with great velocity; if it hadn't been a library book it might have. And what cliche wouldn't be complete without a gathering of the book's characters at the end to pay tribute to one of their fallen colleagues. Yes, folks that was thrown in there too.

Dr Bill Brockton is painted as a good man, who is uncomplicated and does a difficult job. Now that's all very fine when the book focuses on the job. You like the guy and the job is fascinating, but when that uncomplicated man is in a relationship that is the focus of the book, it falls down completely. Romances involving uncomplicated characters just aren't interesting.

BROKEN SKIN - Stuart MacBride
BROKEN SKIN is Stuart MacBride’s third Logan Macrae novel. The first, COLD GRANITE had him working with DI Insch. In the second, DYING LIGHT, DI Steele was the officer in charge. In BROKEN SKIN, MacBride seems to have gone for a bet each way and had Macrae working for both at the same time. It’s a plot idea that does not seem to work terribly well. Rather than concentrating on a single investigation, Macrae is pushed from pillar to post, grumbling all the while and becoming impatient himself. Macrae and his colleagues moan, groan and whinge their way through the book. We know this because these adjectives are used often; to the point of annoyance on my part.

The issue of the over-used adjectives aside, BROKEN SKIN is entertaining enough. However after the wonderful debut novelCOLD GRANITE, BROKEN SKIN is a bit of a disappointment. I only hope this was a glitch and subsequent novels will be of the standard of MacBride’s first.

Review: HALFHEAD - Stuart MacBride

2009-12-06T11:33:00.003+11:00

They're called Halfheads. They are the convicted violent criminals of society: the murderers and rapists. They are lobotomised and surgically mutilated ("halfheaded") and sent to do society's most menial tasks. If you're convicted and sentenced to halfheading there's no way back for you. No one notices halfheads. The are little more than sexless zombies, incapable of independent thought.

Will Hunter is a high ranking officer with the tech-crimes and police actions unit. Part of their job is investigating murders. Will and his team are called out to a particularly grisly murder scene in one of Gaslgow's vast connurb blocks. When more than a quarter of a million people are crammed into a vast high rise complex in one of the most deprived areas of the city, is it any wonder things can and do explode?

However, there's more to this murder than meets the eye and Will's determination to find out what is really going on despite orders to the contrary lead him to a very dark conspiracy.

MacBride's vision of the future is a dystopian nightmare. It seems to be a combination the worst of Soviet Union dysfunction and a high technology, uncaring big-brother state. And it is a totally compelling one.

Make no mistake, HALFHEAD is very violent and bloody, but MacBride's ability to create characters with both humanity and humour transcend the bleakness of the violence.

If the book has a flaw it is that in the latter stages, Will and his team seem to get bogged down in hunting for a killer who is right under their noses all the time.

Despite that I found HALFHEAD very difficult to put down. The imagery of the halfheads will haunt me for quite some time I imagine.

A novel idea for a novel.

2009-12-01T16:32:00.001+11:00

Australian crime fiction writerP .D Martin has come up with a good idea for a new novel. This one is audience participation.

Phillipa is writing a new Sophie Anderson book but what she's doing this time is asking the readers what they'd like to see happen next. She gives a number of options and then readers vote - the one with the most votes wins. At the end of the exercise the book will be made available as a free download e-book.

http://www.pdmartin.com.au/ebook/?page_id=8

You can follow what's happening and have your say in what happens next.

Hypothermia: Arnuldur Indridason

2009-11-21T12:31:00.001+11:00

A woman wanting to get away from it all borrows her friend's cottage. It's a cold autumn night and she arrives to discover her friend hanging from a beam. Everyone believes it's suicide. The dead woman had been depressed since the death of her mother two years earlier. However the friend doesn't believe it and approaches Detective Erlandur.

Erlandur is interested enough to begin an unofficial investigation. At the same time he is haunted by the mysterious disappearance of two young people over thirty years earlier.

There is something very disconnected about HYPOTERHMIA which didn't quite work for me. For a start all Erlandur's investigations are unofficial. He isn't on vacation; so how is he allowed to take all this time to persue private interests? His colleagues make only the briefest of appearances at the beginning of the book and take no further part. In fact they aren't even mentioned.

Erlandur's daughter, Eva Lind then begins to nag Erlandur to meet up with his ex-wife and talk to her. He asks her why but she doesn't really give any answer. When they do meet there are recriminations on both sides. Nothing is really achieved. The thread is then dropped. It doesn't relate to anything else in the book; it just hangs there on its own without any resolution at all.

There is also a thread about Erlandur's childhood trauma of being lost in the snow with his father and brother. His brother was never found. Again it seems to be a thread hanging there and not connected to anything else at all.

The whole family is somewhat dysfuncational and Erlandur in particular has great difficulty communnicating. It can make for frustrating reading.

While the plot of HYPOTHERMIA is interesting enough, the disconnection of the plot threads and Erlandur from everyone around him, make the book less than satisfying.

Apologies to those who have left comments on my site recently.

2009-11-21T12:12:00.000+11:00

I only just discovered a bunch of comments. It appears the comments notification gizmo isn't working and I haven't been getting emails when someone has left a comment. Off to find out why.

Review: ICE COLD - Andrea Maria Schenkel

2009-11-08T13:30:00.005+11:00

Andrea Maria Schenkel's first novel, THE MURDER FARM won considerable acclaim for its clever orginality. While it's not exactly factual, it's not entirely fiction either. Rather it's the fictionalised story of a real case cleverly interwoven with witness statements taken at the time of the murder.

Schenkel's second novel ICE COLD does something very similar with the rape/murders of a number of young women in Munich just months before the outbreak of World War II.

The main focus of the book is Kathie. A young country girl who comes to Munich wanting to get away from the restrictions of her life with her family. She discovers getting a job is harder than she thought and finds herself in a somewhat sleazy world of late night bars, casual sex and occasional prostitution.

Kathie's story is the thread that ties the narrative together. In between learning Kathie's story is a series of witness statements taken from people who knew or had contact with other young woman who were murdered at the same time as Kathie is making her way in Munich.

Somehow the format that worked so well in "The Murder Farm" doesn't seem to have quite the same impact in ICE COLD. Whether it's because of the story of that the novelty of the unusual format isn't as fresh, I'm not sure.

Perhaps it was the blurb on the book jacket which asked the question, "but is he really guilty?" It is a question that maybe leads to false expections about the ending. I found myself none the wiser at the end of the book than I did when I first opened it. It could be more the fault of the publicists and powers that be who decide what goes on the blurbs, than the writer's. Whatever the reason I was left feeling quite unsatisifed by the ending of ICE COLD which wasn't present in "The Murder Farm".

Review: MEANER THAN FICTION - edited by Lindy Cameron

2009-11-05T11:39:00.003+11:00

The law is there to protect us, right? To bring justice to victims; to punish the wrong-diers. WRONG!

MEANER THAN FICTION is a series of pieces written by crime writers, lawyers, academics and those involved in the legal/justice system that demonstrates that the legal system doesn't always dispense justice.

Lindy Cameron writes about the doctor who was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a man who felt he was wronged by the medical profession, unable to find the doctor he was seeking, decided to take out his anger on the nearest medical professional. He was shot several times and the perpetrator spent less than two years in prison. Compensation for being a victim of crime, came too little, too late for the doctor whose subsequent ill-health and the long legal procedings took a high toll on his practice.

Or how about Shelly Robertson, the forensic pathologist, who is constantly being frustrated by constraints on her testimony? Her thoughts are that the oath should be changed from "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" to "the truth, those bits of it I'm allowed to give and nothing but the truth.". She claims that after the lawyers have finished, what the jury hears is far from the whole truth.

Leigh Redhead tells the story of her younger sister's encounter with a peeping tom/hidden camera pervert.

Robin Bowles recounts the long fight by Bernard Munro against bureaucracy to try and have the authorities reopen the inquest into his daughter's death. He encountered brick walls and backside covering.

Kerry Greenwood delves into the past and finds several instances of injustices done and the tenacious souls who worked tirelessly to right wrongs.

All these pieces add up to a compelling, if slightly depressing examination of the flaws in our legal system.

The title of the book, MEANER THAN FICTION is an apt one. If these stories had been crime fiction, readers would have been up in arms about unresolved plots and untidy endings. For many of the people in the book there is no happy ending, because this is life and it is MEANER THAN FICTION.

Review: FEVER OF THE BONE - Val McDermid

2009-10-17T16:07:00.005+11:00

A Tony Hill/Carol Jordan Wire in the Blood mystery
Published: 2009

Someone is luring teenagers to their deaths; killing them quickly and then and mutilating them in the most horrifying manner. Someone who spends weeks online grooming them for their fate. Someone who knows what teens like.

Carol Jordan's team has been set up for this very type of case. However, just when they need profiler Tony Hill the most, Carol's new commander has placed a ban on him being used; budget cuts have to begin somewhere.

Meanwhile Tony is working on a case in a nearby county. One that he begins to suspect might be linked to Carol's.

In order to catch the killer the police have to work out how these kids are being selected and Tony Hill is just the man to do the job, but can he convince the powers that be to allow him back into Carol's case?

There are reasons why Val McDermid is one of the best in the business when it comes to writing crime fiction and they are all contained in FEVER OF THE BONE.

Tony, Carol and her team are all familiar but evolving characters. Characters you care about. Several different threads of the plot weave in and out of each other, changing emphasis at just the right time for maximum suspense.

FEVER OF THE BONE differs from many books featuring serial killers in that McDermid doesn't take you inside the killer's head and doesn't describe graphic violence.
It is a police procedural and one of the best I've read in a long time.

FEVER OF THE BONE is one of my top books of 2009 to date. It would take something very, very special to knock it off that list. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Review - Born or Bred?: Martin Bryant - the making of a mass murderer

2009-10-11T11:46:00.005+11:00

authors: Robert Wainwright and Paola Totaro
Publisher: Fairfax Books, 2009
ISBN: 978 1 921486 09 8
RRP $34.99 (Aus)

All Austrailans know who Martin Bryant is. Overseas readers may find the name familiar but not be certain where they have heard it. Martin Bryant holds the dubious record for being the person to kill the most number of people as a lone gunman on a killing spree.

On the lovely sunny day of 28 April, 1996, Bryant loaded his car with a sports bag and drove to the Port Arthur historic penal settlement site in Tasmania and gave the place another reason to go down in infamy.

Bryant took his bag out of his car, pulled out a gun and began shooting. At the end of his rampage 35 people lay dead and many wounded.

Men, women, children; Bryant didn't discriminate. The question that has been asked since that day is why did he do it?

BORN OR BRED? began life as a book to tell Bryant's mother's story. However, unhappy at what the authors wanted to do, Carleen Bryant quickly pulled out of the project. By that time Wainwright and Totaro had become fascinated into trying to find if there was something in Bryant's past that would explain in inexplicable.

They spoke to neighbours, friends, family, teachers; anyone who knew Bryant and his family willing to talk, trying to shed light on the man.

All are interesting; some are revelatory. Probably the people who come closest to giving us an understanding are Bryant's defence lawyer, John Avery and forensic psychiatrist Paul Mullen.

No one really knows why Martin Bryant went on that killing spree, with the exception of Bryant, and if he knows, he's not telling. Chances are the man with an assessed IQ of a child of 10 or 11 and an emotional age of 2 doesn't know himself.

What does emerge from the book is a picture of a tragically pathetic man who, while he did the unforgiveable, just didn't have the skills to fit into society and is more to be pitied than despised.

Review: DEAD OF WINTER - Rennie Airth

2009-10-06T13:39:00.003+11:00

Title: The Dead of Winter
Author: Rennie Airth
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2008
ISBN: 978 0 230 73696 2
RRP $32.99 (Aus)
THE DEAD OF WINTER is the third in the the John Madden series. The first novel, River of Darkness took place in England just after World War I.
DEAD OF WINTER is set in London in 1944 when a young Polish woman is garroted on the streets of a darkened city street. She is on her way to visit her aunt. Police begin investigating. John Madden, recently retired from the police force becomes involved because the young woman was living and working on his farm.
The young woman was universally liked and no one can figure out a motive for her death. She wasn’t robbed, she wasn’t sexually assaulted. The case becomes more complex when a prostitute who saw the girl tells the police she thought a man was following her. The prostitute is later found murdered in the same manner.
It ‘s not often that I don’t finish a review book. I feel obligated to read the entire book in order to do justice to the review.
Sadly, I had to give up on THE DEAD OF WINTER. Not because it was a necessarily a poorly written book. I don’t think it is. I have read worse and finished them. So why did I give up at page 197 of a 408 page book? I ran headlong into one of my pet peeves. This particular peeve is when the author pauses the plot to give the back story of a character. It’s all very fine and dandy for a couple of major characters but when the reader is being told the history of minor characters it becomes a major distraction. That’s what happened in this case. Do we really need to know the history of the relationship between the main character and the local village bobby, who up until i stopped reading the book had a very minor role. If this had been a movie it would have been with half a dozen lines.
When that was all I was noticing I decided to call it quits. This may be unfair to the author, but everyone has their quirks and Rennie Airth ran into one of mine.
For a less biased perspective perhaps read Michael Ripley's review on Eurocrime (http://www.eurocrime.co.uk/reviews/TDoW.jpg) or Nick Hay’s review on Reviewing the Evidence http://www.reviewingtheevidence.com/review.html?id=8155

Review: SMOKE AND MIRRORS - Kel Robertson

2009-09-14T20:07:00.003+10:00

SMOKE AND MIRRORS by Kel Robertson. The 2nd in the Bradman Chen series.
Brad Chen is a member of the AFP (Australian Federal Police). He is Chinese Australian.

In SMOKE ND MIRRORS Brad is recovering from injuries he received in the first book (DEAD SET) and is persuaded to return to work part time by his friend and superior officer, "Talkative". A retired politician from the 1970's Whitlam Government has been found murdered with his editor. He has been working on a book which he claims will reveal all about the inside story of the Whitlam Government's controversial dismissal by the Governor General in 1972.

When Brad starts to dig deeper some nasty characters begin to emerge from the woodwork, all of them seemingly determined to inflict major physical harm on him.

Why are the Russian mafia interested in a book about 1970s Austrlaian politics? And who the heck hired a bunch of South African mercenaries to dash about the landscape ambushing people and sometimes bumping them off?

Smoke and Mirrors was one of the joint winners of the 2009 Ned Kelly Award and deservedly so. Brad Chen is a cyncial, wise-cracking police officer who operates according to his own conscience. His new offsider is a tall skinny red-head with the surname of Filipowski who is very close-mouthed about his private life.

What I enjoyed about DEAD SET was the banter between Brad and Filipowski. Very entertaining stuff. There is a fun little diversion when Brad meets up with a journalist acquaintance who is in trouble after writing an editorial for his blog after a choof and a drink too many one night. It's about George W. Bush's reasons for invading Iraq which is politically incorrect in the extreme and very very funny.

There's quite a bit of action as well as an entertaining mystery. And then there are the nickames: Talkative, Voodoo, Baby's Arm (don't ask.)

I'm not sure how well SMOKE AND MIRRORS would travel outside Australia. It requires a knowledge of the events of 1972 in Australian politics and the various conspiracy theories that surrounded it. If you know about this stuff or are prepared to do your homework prior to picking up the book, then it is going to be worth it.

The sad thing about Smoke and Mirrors is that after having his first book DEAD SET taken up by an Australian publisher, the author, Kel Robertson, had to finance the publishing of SMOKE AND MIRRORS himself. I hope the Ned Kelly win will mean he won't have similar problems in the future - he deserves better.

SMOKE AND MIRRORS is available from the publisher's website at a cost of $22.00 plus postage

http://www.ginninderrapress.com.au/page2/fiction.html
Scroll about 2/3 way down the page asnd click on BUY NOW .

Comes with 2 subwoofers

2009-09-02T15:28:00.003+10:00

My friend Sally sent me this and I found it too cute not to share.

Review: Debut novel by Dan wells about someone who claims he does not go about bumping people off

2009-09-02T14:19:00.003+10:00

Author: Dan Wells
Publisher: Headline
ISBN: 9780755348817
This edition published: July, 2009
$16.99 (Aus)

YA Novel

Most books are easy to review. You give a rundown of the plot and then share your thoughts. I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER is not that simple because to tell you much about the plot would be to give away twists that would spoil it for you.

John is a fifteen year old sociopath. His mother and aunt own one of the town mortuaries. John is obsessed with serial killers but is afraid that one day he may become one himself. In order to keep “the monster in the wall” John has set up an elaborate set of rules to live by. If a person interests him he will follow them around, but only for a week; to do so any longer would be dangerous.

John wants to please his mother and be a “normal” person and he does not want to do any harm, but the monster in the wall makes it difficult. He discovers he’s not the only “monster” in town when the mutilated corpses of some of the townsfolk begin to appear. In order to understand the killer and perhaps gain greater insights into himself, John starts investigating. What he discovers is something far more strange and chilling than he could ever imagine. The dilemma John finds himself facing is should he unleash the monster within to stop the killing or will the monster in him become worse than the one currently causing such mayhem?

I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER is not a book that can be easily put into a category. Initially the reader could be forgiven for feeling that the subtitle of this book might well be Dexter: The Early Years, because there are similarities. Young Dexter as conceived by Stephen King might be more to the point. However you describe it, first-time author, Dan Wells has come up with a novel idea (if you’ll pardon the appalling pun). In John he has created a character that will find the reader with conflicting emotions at every turn.

In researching I AM NOT A SERIAL KILLER prior to writing this review I found it was listed in a number of places as a Young Adult novel. I think the adolescent voice of John and his desperate efforts to appear “normal” and fit in with society will resonate with teenagers. I can imagine many parents may have a problem with the violence in the book. I have two sons who are both now in their mid 20’s. Would I have allowed my sons to read this book when they were teens? Yes, without hesitation. The other themes in the book such as the need to fit in with perceived norms of society, facing moral dilemmas, loss and grief, family and relationships are far more important. Violence is part of the human condition. We see it every day in the media. We can protect our kids to some degree but we cannot lock them away from such things and pretend they don’t happen.

Dan Wells has a Bachelors in English from Brigham Young University where he was the editor at The Leading Edge Magazine. He now runs http://www.timewastersguide.com./

Review: FAN MAIL - P. D. Martin

2009-07-20T14:01:00.001+10:00

I heard that FAN MAIL by P.D. Martin has been published in both the UK and the US. So here is a re-post of the review I wrote when the book was published in Australia early last year.
Sunnie

FAN MAIL
P.D. Martin
Pan Macmillan.

Australian FBI profiler Sophie Anderson is given an easy job on her last day at Quantico. She is to give a guided tour of the FBI facility to a crime novelist and brief her on profiling. Sophie doesn’t warm to Loretta Black whom she finds rude and aloof.

One of the first things Sophie learns on arrival in Los Angeles to begin her new posting is that Black has been murdered. This obviously wasn’t a random act of violence. Black has been killed and her body posed in a manner that exactly duplicates her newly released novel. Feeling that she can give some insights Sophie contacts the detective investigating and offers to help. Among the fan mail Loretta Black has received is one signed simply “a fan”. It criticises the violence in Black’s book and seems to contain a thinly veiled threat warning her to stop. When another author is found murdered in the same way as the book she has written, Sophie and Detective Dave Sorrell believe they have found a serial killer who has perhaps killed before and will almost certainly kill again.

FAN MAIL is P. D. Martin’s third in the Sophie Anderson series and her strongest to date. Martin follows Sophie and Detective Sorrell as they conduct the investigation. So many detective novels are linear; we start at point A, go to point B and end at point C. No so FAN MAIL. It twists and turns; sometimes at breakneck speed, other times almost stalled as they hit dead ends. There is backtracking to re-question witnesses and suspects and frequent revisiting of evidence in light of new information. Gradually the detectives build up a picture of the crimes and the person responsible which enables them to solve the case.

Martin has also managed to pull off something that I don't think too many can do successfully. That is to write in the first person, present tense. Too often when an author does this, it feels awkward and contrived but in the case of FAN MAIL it works very well.

There quite a few references to Martin’s previous novel, THE MURDERERS’ CLUB, and a resolution of some loose ends that were left in that book. So if you are new to P.D. Martin’s writing, I recommend you read them in order.

Martin seems to be getting better and better with each book and I have become an unashamed fan of her work. I eagerly await her next offering.

2008 review originally published on Murder and Mayhem

A plea to authors - easy on the adjectives. I beg you.

2009-07-01T13:56:00.010+10:00

*Sunnie drags out her soapbox, climbs onto it, clears her throat and begins her rant*

I'm afraid it's one of my pet peeves: the overuse of adjectives.

I seem to be coming across it more and more these days and it annoys me no end.

It's all very well to say a man is short, but do we need subsequent paragraphs to also describe him as "compact" and "dwarfish"? I get the idea already. I don't need it to be rammed home with the subtlety of a sledgehammer on my noggin.

This passage ensured the book I was reading was a DNF for me as the author had indulged in similar adjectival overuse prior to this.

Another recent instance of adjectival abuse I came across was an author seemingly addicted to one particular adjective. I lost track of the number of times the word "whinge" was used (for those not familiar with this one - the wiktionary definition of whinge is to complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner). There seemed to be an entire squad of detectives all whingeing their way through the story. In the end it became a distraction.

I'll close my rant with my favourite example of adjective overload from a book by an author who shall remain nameless.

"She took two of the upturned glasses standing on the crisp white
towel on the black marble counter and poured them both a drink before
gliding across the room, extending her long slender arm and handing him
his water."

The above was a very minor detail. She gave him a glass of water
would have sufficed.

Yes, I know that's probably at the extreme end of the spectrum with the overuse of adjectives, but you get the point. Less truly is more.

What I want to know is why? Why the need for over description and why do editors let it go through to the keeper?

Kill City?

2009-06-19T15:05:00.004+10:00

The following link was posted to rec.arts.mystery newsgroup by Ian.
It's a graphic map of the homicides committed in New York City between 2003 - 2009. They number 3,402; an average of 540 a year.

For someone like me who comes from a small place with a population of about 70,000 which has a homicide rate you could count on the fingers of one hand each year, this is just mind-boggling.

You can mouse-over the map and read the statistics of each homicide. The age and ethnicity of the victim and perpetrator, the motive and the weapon used.
http://projects.nytimes.com/crime/homicides/map?hp

Some times they just don't think it through do they?

2009-06-18T15:04:00.003+10:00

This turned up on one of my newsgroups and it so tickled my sense of humour I just had to share.

From the New Scotsman.

"...However, one pensioner who also found fame on Britain's Got Talent as
a breakdancer has found the downside of celebrity after part of his
disability benefits were stopped when he was seen by government
officials on the show.

Fred Bowers, 73, from Leicestershire, was an instant hit when he
performed the act, honed on dance floors seven days a week, in front
of millions of viewers."

When truth truly is stranger than fiction

2009-06-17T13:45:00.004+10:00

Australians with even a passing interest in crime and crime fiction will be familiar with the Melbourne gangland wars and the demise of the Moran family. Everyone thought that saga was over, but no. More developments this week.

Yet another member of the family has been gunned down. Desmond Moran, brother of Lewis Moran (murdered), uncle to brothers Jason and Mark Moran (both murdered). Desmond was widely regarded as a pretty minor player in the Melbourne underworld.

Now his sister-in-law, the larger-than-life Judy Moran has been arrested for being an accessory after the fact of his murder as well as Suzie Kane, sister-in-law of her murdered son Jason . Kane's boyfriend (both of whom were living with Judy) has been charged with the murder of Desmond.

If you wrote a soap opera about all this, no one would believe it. It would be dismissed as being too fanciful.

If you want to find out more about this fascinating saga visit
http://www.melbournecrime.bizhosting.com/moran.family.htm for a potted family history
and
http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-case-of-judy-moran-all-will-be-dealt-with-20090616-cgky.html
for comprehensive coverage.

Do you follow true crime stories like this and if so which ones have sparked your interest?

Review; THE PREACHER - Camilla Lackberg

2009-06-11T19:33:00.001+10:00

Puhblisher: Harper Collins
This edition published: 2008
ISBN: 978 0 00 725395 1

Twenty years ago two holiday makers disappeared from the tourist town of Fjällbacka. Now a young boy has discovered the bodies along with a third which seems to be fresh.

Detective Patrik Hedstrom is on vacation. His partner, Erica is expecting their first child in less than a month. Fjällbacka is experiencing a heatwave and Erica is restless and short-tempered so when Patrik receives a phone call cutting short his holiday he isn’t too upset.

Attention focuses on the Hult family. A family divided by the suicide of one member who was the prime suspect in the disappearance of the holiday makers. It is also a family divided by wealth: one branch inherited the estate and has prospered, the other lives in poverty. This is a family of misfits, religious fanatics and criminals. A rich vein of suspects in anyone’s book.

Patrik also has to deal with Erica and the unwanted visitors who keep turning up on their doorstep wanting to take advantage of their hospitality for a cheap holiday during the summer season.

These days translated books are things of quality; it’s seamless. If it wasn’t for the name of the translator in the book you’d never know it wasn’t originally written in English The other upside of translated books is that rarely do the publishers go to the extra cost of hiring a translator if the book is a dud.

THE PREACHER is a first rate detective novel. The mystery really sucks you in, there are clues and red herrings scattered everywhere. I changed my mind about the murderer a number of times while reading the book. I’d think I had it nailed and Lackberg would throw in another twist. I figured it out about the same time as the author revealed whodunit.

Review: ONCE WERE COPS

2009-06-11T12:10:00.003+10:00

Author: Ken Bruen
Publisher: St Martin’s Minotaur
Published: 2008
isbn: 978 0 312 38440 1

WOW!! A wow book. What is a wow book? A wow book is a book that has you glued to the pages, resenting every interruption. A wow book sees your hubby putting his head around the bedroom door saying, “aren’t you getting up today?” A wow book finds you lying in the bathtub and realising with a jolt you’ve been in there so long reading this book that the water has nearly gone cold.

ONCE WERE COPS by Ken Bruen is a WOW book.

Michael O’Shea is a Guard (Irish police officer) in Northern Ireland. He is known simply as Shea, Shea is seen as a good cop, but he is hiding a secret. A very dark secret. Shea has a black heart and a taste for violence and death; especially young women with swan-like necks.

Northern Ireland and New York City have a police officer exchange programme. Shea feels like his dream has come true when he is selected to spend a year on the streets of New York City. The big apple. Or in Shea’s case The Rotten Apple. Shea finds himself teamed with Kebar, an officer whose name comes from the fact that he likes to mete out justice with short metal stick called a K-bar. Kebar is corrupt and unstable. The murder of his beloved sister puts him over the edge.

No one could ever in their wildest dreams describe Bruen’s writing as cozy. Bruen is contemporary noir. Midnight noir.. His writing is to the point and punchy in every sense of the word. Pick up a Ken Bruen novel and you’re hooked. I guarantee your bath-water will be ice-cold before you know it.

Review: FLESH AND BONE by Jefferson Bass

2009-06-09T12:32:00.004+10:00

Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2007
ISBN: 978 1 84724 280 8

I'm always excited when I read a book that is first in a new series that I enjoy. A few weeks ago I reviewed Carved in Bone by Jefferson Bass, the first in the Body Farm series, which I thoroughly enjoyed. So it was with some anticipation I picked up FLESH AND BONE; the 2nd in the series.

Sadly, FLESH AND BONE didn't live up to my expectations. The plot revolves around the protagonist, Dr Bill Brockton being framed for the murder of a close friend. There is also a secondary thread of the murder of a man who had been dressed as a woman. Are they connected?

What worked so well in the first book seems be lacklustre in this one. There are so many cliches that I don't know where to begin. The first is the hero being framed for murder by someone with a grudge. It was patently obvious to me who it was almost from the word go. I could see only one suspect. Then there is the transgender "southern belle" nightclub singer with a heart of gold. Oh pu-leaze. And let's not forget the defence lawyer who is a shark; up until he defends the hero, whereupon he sees the light and stops taking on cases where he knows the accused is guilty. This is where the book almost hit my bedroom wall with great velocity; if it hadn't been a library book it might have. And what cliche wouldn't be complete without a gathering of the book's characters at the end to pay tribute to one of their fallen colleagues. Yes, folks that was thrown in there too.

Dr Bill Brockton is painted as a good man, who is uncomplicated and does a difficult job. Now that's all very fine when the book f0cuses on the job. You like the guy and the job is fascinating, but when that uncomplicated man is in a relationship that is the focus of the book, it falls down completely. Romances involving uncomplicated characters just aren't interesting.

After such a good debut, I'm prepared to give Bass another chance but it will be a while before I try another of his books.

A copule of mini-reviews.

2009-05-24T11:51:00.003+10:00

My reading has slowed a little of late. Perhaps it's my frame of mind or perhaps it's the demands of life intruding. Or it could be after a spectacular reading month in April, May's offerings haven't held me glued to the page as much.

PLAY DEAD
Richard Montanari
Publisher: William Heinemann
Published:2008
ISBN: 9780434016020

Philadelphia homicide detectives Kevin Byrne and Jessica Balzano are on the trail of a serial killer. He murders young women and leaves clues for the police to find. Solve the clues and they might just save another victim. He also dumps his bodies in very specific locations. The detectives also have to try and work out the reasoning behind the locations to unlock the riddle of the killer.

PLAY DEAD is about riddles, puzzles and magic tricks. At least for the killer that's what it's about. For Bryne and Balzano it's about catching him before there are too many more victims.

We know who the killer is pretty early on in the book. We also know something of the reasoning of the killer. It's up to the detectives to find out what it's all about.

I enjoyed PLAY DEAD while I was reading it but when it came to writing this review I had to pick up the book to remind myself of the plot and the characters. There were parts of the plot that I didn't particularly like. The connection with a murdered colleague seemed just a bit too coincidental.

My verdict: Fairly quick and entertaining read, but details will soon fade.

DEATH'S ACRE - Dr Bill Bass (with Jon Jefferson)
Bass and Jefferson write crime fiction under the name of Jefferson Bass. The protagonist in their fiction seemed to me to be very closely based on Bill Bass himself. This opinion was confirmed when I read DEATH'S ACRE which is the story of Bass' professional career, how he came to established the now famous "body farm" and some of his landmark cases which have led to advances in the science of forensic anthropology.

The book is packed with fascinating facts and details of the work done by Bass and his colleagues at the Body Farm. He relates this information in a cheerfully conversational manner that cuts down the "ewwww" factor considerably.

My verdict: Anyone who is even vaguely interested in how the experts can find out so much about how, when and why a person died will find DEATH'S ACRE informative and entertaining.

Review: BORDERLANDS by Brian McGilloway

2009-05-14T11:00:00.002+10:00

This edition published: 2007
ISBN: 978023002006 (HB)

Winter 2002. The body of a teenage girl is found murdered on the border between North and South of Ireland in an area known as Borderlands.

Garda Inspector Benedict Devlin is given the case. The only clues are a rather expensive looking gold ring on the girl's finger and an old photo left where she died.

Another teenager is murdered. Devlin finds a link between these killings and the disappearance of a prostitute twenty five years ago. The trail leads Devlin not only to people with links to "the troubles" but also, to his mounting horror, a suspect who is one of his colleagues.

A well written police procedural is one of the reasons I'm so addicted to crime fiction. A good police procedural will introduce you to the police,take you by the land and lead you through their investigation as they unearth clues by interviewing people, sifting the evidence and following leads. There will be a careful balance of detecting and learning about the lives of the detectives. If the author has done the job properly s/he doesn't deliberately hold back clues or have the the detectives catch the culprit in the act, just two pages before the end.

In his first novel, BORDERLANDS, Brian McGilloway has succeeded in all of the above. He has also avoided producing a door stop of a book. At just 227 pages, BORDERLAND doesn't muck about. You're straight into the story with no unnecessary padding. It's something I wish more authors would try to achieve.

If, like me, you enjoy police procedurals, you can't go wrong with BORDERLANDS. I look forward to reading more of McGilloways' writing.

SUNDA SALON: Guilty Pleasures.

2009-05-10T13:39:00.002+10:00

You know it's rubbish, you know it has little merit, but despite that you enjoy it anyway. You might be reluctant to tell others you enjoy it because they'll laugh. But we all have them.

Perhaps it's a series of books, or some movies or a tv show. Some come on 'fess up. What's your guilty pleasure(s)

I shall admit to an addiction to the tv show NCIS. The plots are trite and predicitable. The characters aren't believable, but I love their quirkiness and hubby and I eagerly await the slap in the back of the head each week. We are on the edge of our seats. Who will be be the slapper this week? Who will be the slapee? One week there was no slap at all.

I also have to confess to always giggling at Dude, Where's My Car? and Wayne's World. So there, I've bared all with my guilty pleasures. What are yours?

Review: THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE : a real curate's egg.

2009-05-08T12:07:00.003+10:00

Title: The Girl Who Played with Fire
Author: Stieg Larsson
Publisher: Quercus
This edition published: 2009
ISBN: 9781847245564
569 pages

Lisbeth’s friend, Blomqvist is working on a major story for his magazine Millennium. They are about to blow wide open the details of human trafficking for prostitution in Sweden. They are going to name names. The couple working on to story are gunned down in their apartment and Salander’s prints are on the gun left behind. A country-wide hunt for the girl with the violent past ensues; most think she’s guilty but when the investigating officer begins to question the people in Salander’s life, he gets a very different picture of the woman described in official records.

I’ve heard the expression “curates egg” and know what it means but I’ve often wondered where that expression came from. I found a nice explanation of its origin on the Phrase Finder website.

THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE fits that definition exactly. Good in parts but annoying and exasperating in others. The book begins with a recap of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO and a very detailed account on the minutiae of the life of Lisbeth Salander. In fact these elements are so detailed that its past page 150 before the meat of the story even begins. I nearly gave up on the book, but a number of people urged me to keep going because it was worth it. I did persevere and I’m glad I did. But there were other things in the book that I struggled with: overlong-fight scenes with a minor character that was almost invincible which might have worked in an action movie but seemed silly and out of place in the book and a scene with Salander in danger towards the end that had me rolling my eyes.
My reaction to the book had me asking questions about the accolades the book has received. Does it truly merit this or is there the “Marilyn Monroe” effect happening? Would the books have been as universally acclaimed if the author hadn’t died tragically young before the books were published? How much editing was done on THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE? Was there a sense of “we mustn’t’ touch this work”? Would the publishers have allowed nearly 150 pages of back story and Salander’s daily life to stand as it does if Larsson had lived?
Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH FIRE, but I enjoyed it with reservations which not many seem to have expressed. Am I alone? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Review: BROKEN SKIN Stuart MacBride

2009-05-06T16:19:00.003+10:00

Publisher: Harper Collins
This edition published: 2007
ISBN: 9780007193172

There’s a rapist on the streets of Aberdeen and the violence of the attacks is escalating. Police fear sooner rather than later one of the victims will die. While Detective Sergeant Logan Macrae’s girlfriend is acting as bait, Macrae is working on finding out who is responsible for inflicting the wounds on a body dumped outside the hospital.

Some films are discovered; bondage and discipline featuring the dead man, police begin to wonder if the man was the victim of a session gone wrong or if someone out there has developed a taste for inflicting serious damage. The investigation takes Macrae into the twilight world of the BDSM scene with some unexpected and reluctant help from one of the uniformed constables who has some unusual interests.

BROKEN SKIN is Stuart MacBride’s third Logan Macrae novel. The first, COLD GRANITE had him working with DI Insch. In the second, DYING LIGHT, DI Steele was the officer in charge. In BROKEN SKIN, MacBride seems to have gone for a bet each way and had Macrae working for both at the same time. It’s a plot idea that does not seem to work terribly well. Rather than concentrating on a single investigation, Macrae is pushed from pillar to post, grumbling all the while and becoming impatient himself. Macrae and his colleagues moan, groan and whinge their way through the book. We know this because these adjectives are used often; to the point of annoyance on my part.

The issue of the over-used adjectives aside, BROKEN SKIN is entertaining enough. However after the wonderful debut novelCOLD GRANITE, BROKEN SKIN is a bit of a disappointment. I only hope this was a glitch and subsequent novels will be of the standard of MacBride’s first.

Sunday Salon: Ever wanted to write your own crime story? Here's your chance.

2009-05-03T16:25:00.004+10:00

Have you ever been to a progressive dinner? You know the type of thing. You have a different course at each house.

Well, my friend Kerrie over at Mysteries in Paradise has set up a progressive crime story.

Each person has just 140 characters to make their mark. You can contribute as many times as you want. It's great fun. It's like watching a bunch of lunatics trying to wrest control of the steering wheel of a runaway bus.

To check out the story so far and to add your own piece of madness, go to http://paradise-mysteries.blogspot.com/2009/04/story-updated.html

Sunday Salon: 15 books. you've been tagged

2009-05-03T13:17:00.003+10:00

This has been doing the rounds of Facebook recently. I thought it was worth a blog entry.

The name of the game is to list 15 books that will always stick with you and do it within a 15 minute time frame. Pass it on to 15 friends and see what they come up with.

Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graham

Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

Ten Little N*ggers (yes, that's what it was called way back when dinosaurs roamed) - Agatha Christie.I found this on my grandmother's bookshelf when I was a teenager and it introduced me into the world of crime fiction.

To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

Christine - Stephen King (my first horror book and it gave me the heebie jeebies)

Needful Things - Stephen King (it was supposed to be horror but I laughed all the way through - it made me realise I had a taste for sick puppy humour)

all of the Dalziel and Pascoe novels by Reginald Hill

Riotous Assembly - Tom Sharpe - political commentary in the form of farce - glorious.

The Colour of Night - Terry Pratchett (audio book narrated by Nigel Planer - introduced me to Pratchett's beautifully odd disc world)

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency - Alexander McCall Smith

Be My Enemy (aka F*ck This for a Game of Soldiers) - Christopher Brookmyre - Mad, bad, tacky, tasteless, politically incorrect, hysterically funny and the best ranter in the business

Underbelly - John Silvester & Andrew Rule - hooked me on Australian true crime

The Body Farm- Patricia Cornwell - my first encounter with the forensic side of crime - that fascination has stayed with me even though Cornwell hasn't. I've long since given up reading her books.

Diamond Dove - Adrian Hyland - so many themes in this book combined with aboriginal spirituality

A Beautiful Place to Die - Malla Nunn - I've just read it and it truly was a WOW book. Set in 1952 South Africa, the fear and paranoia that apartheid laws brought is all through this book.

Review: A Beautiful Place to Die

2009-04-27T18:22:00.002+10:00

Author: Malla Nunn
Publisher: Pan Macmillan (Aust)
This edition published 2008
ISBN: 9781405038775
399 pages

South Africa in 1952 is not a comfortable place to live. Apartheid laws have been introduced just a few years earlier and the National Party are tightening their stranglehold on the country with their vision of what South Africa should be. The security forces are being granted more powers and are exercising them freely.

When an Afrikaner police officer is murdered in the small town of Jakob’s Rest, Detective Emmanuel Cooper is sent to investigate. The dead man Willem Pretorious is from a prominent family in the district . As an English South African, Cooper is regarded with hostility and suspicion. Cooper’s task is made more difficult and dangerous when the Security Branch decides to take over the case. They have no interest in finding out who was responsible for Pretorious’ death; certainly not if the killer is white. They just want to link the murder to the Communist party and they don’t care how they go about it.

Cooper is out of place in South Africa. He is a man of principle who doesn’t see skin colour and hates the apartheid laws; an attitude that endangers his life as the sons of Pretorious attempt to take the law into their own hands assisted by the Security Branch.

A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE is a book that paints a vivid picture of life under apartheid in the early 1950s. And that picture isn’t pretty. Suspicion and hatred, fear and paranoia are never far from the surface and racially motivated violence ever-present. One wrong move; a look in the wrong direction can cost a life.

The author, Malla Nunn manages to infuse the book with with a strong sense of what it must have been like to live under racial segregation laws without sacrificing plot. As crime fiction it works beautifully. As a commentary of the time it pulls no punches and spares no feelings in portraying supporters of Apartheid as arrogant with a sense of entitlement that they were born to rule. A BEAUTIFUL PLACE TO DIE is impressive on every level, particularly more so when you realise this is Nunn’s first novel. I can’t wait to read more.

Malla Nunn was born in Swaziland, Southern Africa, and currently lives in Sydney, Australia. She is a filmmaker with three award-winning films to her credit and is currently at work on her second novel.

Review: THE CORONER - M. R. Hall

2009-04-24T19:01:00.001+10:00

Publisher: Pan Macmillan (Aust)
This edition published: March, 2009
ISBN: 9780230709843
422 pages

Jenny Cooper is recovering from a bitter divorce. Her husband has custody of their teenage son and Jenny suffered a breakdown. For fifteen years she worked as a lawyer in family court; a job that was emotionally and physically draining. When she is offered the position of coroner for the Severn Vale, she jumps at the chance. A job where she can remain detached and not become emotionally involved is just what she needs.

On her first day, Jenny discovers that her predecessor, who died suddenly of a heart attack, seems to have been less than diligent in two cases. There is a teenage girl dead of an apparent overdose and a fourteen-year-old boy who appears to have hanged himself in a juvenile detention centre. No one seems to have bothered to dig deeper. The pathologist’s report is so brief as to be almost negligent. The boy’s mother insists her warnings to the authorities about her son’s state of mind were all ignored. When Jenny decides to re-open the inquest she is met with hostility and aggression from many quarters. Are they just trying to cover-up that they didn’t do a thorough job or are there more sinister motives?

How do you find books to read? For many, it’s the tried and true. Authors you’ve enjoyed in the past. For those of us active in online reading groups, new authors are frequently discovered by word of mouth. It isn’t very often that a new author comes my way about whom I know nothing at all. Usually if they are good, there is a buzz about them. People start talking about the book they’ve just read and others pick up on it. I hadn’t heard a word about M.R. Hall’s, THE CORONER so I had no real expectations that this was anything other than just another run-of-the-mill crime novel. You know the type of thing. You read it and a couple of weeks later you’ve forgotten most of the plot. I am happy to admit that this time my expectations were entirely wrong.

THE CORONER is an impressive debut novel. Hall’s portrayal of Jenny; a middle-aged woman struggling with life and career is engaging. She is a very flawed individual who makes mistakes but you can’t help but be on her side. The book is long: 420 pages, but there is enough substance and pace in the plot to sustain that length. There is also some social commentary. Some of the comments about the privatisation of detention centres leave the reader in little doubt about the author’s feelings on the subject.

If, like me, you haven’t heard of M.R. Hall before, don’t let that put you off. Do try it. I read THE CORONER in just two afternoons. I couldn’t put it down. I just had to know what was going to happen next. I can’t think of a higher recommendation than that.

MR Hall is a screenwriter and producer and former criminal barrister, a profession he left due to a constitutional inability to prosecute. The Coroner is his first novel. Educated at Hereford Cathedral School and Worcester College, Oxford, he lives in the Wye Valley in Monmouthshire with his wife, journalist Patricia Carswell, and two sons.

Review: GREASING THE PINATA - Tim Maleeny

2009-04-22T13:52:00.002+10:00

Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
This edition published: 2008
ISBN: 9781590585665
334 pages

Cape Weathers is a P.I. He is hired by the daughter of a former senator to find both her father and her wayward brother who have both gone missing. Cape doesn’t really want to take the case; he has no time for politicians, former or otherwise. But he can never resist a pretty face.

Along with his companion Sally, a Hong Kong Triad trained martial arts expert, Cape journeys to Mexico where the body of the Senator is found eaten by a alligator at a golf course. Now that really is putting the hazard into water hazard.

While investigating what happened to the senator our hero manages to be kidnapped, alienate the local police, become entangled with drug dealers, and steal from the mafia. Not exactly a quiet day at the office.

The author, Tim Maleeny has chosen to go down the wise-cracking PI route and it does serve him pretty well. What doesn’t is a plot that is a little too long on action and short on depth. There are only so many times Cape can fall into the hands of the bad guys and be rescued by Sally before it begins to become a little stale.
GREASING THE PINATA does have some genuinely humourous moments, However, the fight scenes and action sequences overshadow them. My opinion is coloured because I’m not really an action fan. It’s fine on the movie screen, but for the most part I find it tedious in books.

If you’re looking for a quick pacey read, then GREASING THE PINATA might work for you. If you want something with more substance and credibility you may find yourself disappointed.

Review: CARVED IN BONE Jefferson Bass

2009-04-22T13:17:00.003+10:00

Publisher: Harper Collins
This edition published: 2006
ISBN: 9780060759810
343 pages

On the campus of the University of Tennessee there is a research facility that is unique. It is surrounded by a high fence to keep out the public. The faculty of the university prefer not to park near the fence. When the wind blows in the wrong direction they can smell the research. The facility is the University of Tennessee Anthropology Research Facility, better known as The Body Farm. This facility researches body decay. This is the setting for Jefferson Bass’ first novel, CARVED IN BONE.

Bill Brockton is a senior anthropologist at The Body farm. He divides his time between lecturing and consulting with law enforcement and legal agencies. Bill is in the field testing the theory behind the stabbing of a murder victim when he is approached by a Deputy Sheriff from Cooke County. They have found a body in a cave and they want help. Brockton readily agrees and finds himself in a remote Appalachian Mountains community confronted with hillbilly characters deeply distrustful of both outsiders and the law. The Sheriff isn’t very co-operative either.

Jefferson Bass is the nom de plume for two writers: Jon Jefferson, a journalist, writer and documentary film maker and Dr Bill Bass, the founder of the Body Farm. Bass’ expert knowledge of his subject shines through in every page. Have you ever wondered how bones are de-fleshed* for examination? Bass will tell you in detail. You will either find it macabre, grisly and deeply unsettling or macabre, grisly and totally fascinating. I happily admit to falling into the latter category.
Forensic based crime fiction has become very popular in recent years. CARVED IN BONE is a worthy entrant in this sub-genre. Not only is it chock full of scientific details of forensic anthropology in easily understandable terms, it is also one terrific yarn. The characters have depth and the setting is so well described it is easy to visualise.

I loved the book and found myself reading aloud passages that describe some of the forensic procedures, much to the chagrin of some of my family.

If you’ve read similar books in the past and have found them wanting in some areas, give CARVED IN BONE a try. With the immensely likeable but flawed Dr Bill Brockton and his associates, CARVED IN BONE puts authors like Cornwell and Reichs in the shade. I enjoyed the book so much I have taken steps to get hold of their second Brockton novel, FLESH AND BONE.

Jefferson Bass has an official website, http://www.jeffersonbass.com/ where you can not only find the other books in the series, but also the individual works of both authors and a tour of The Body Farm.

*For the record. To de-flesh bones, you boil them, adding a dash of bleach (to help mask the smell) and a liberal sprinkle of Adolf’s Meat Tenderizer to speed up the process.

Interview with Michael Stanley author(s) of A CARRION DEATH

2009-04-13T18:50:00.014+10:00

I was lucky enough to interview one half of the team of Michael Sears and Stanley Trollip who created Detective “Kubu” in A CARRION DEATH and the soon-to-be-released A DEADLY TRADE

Michael Stanley, welcome and thank you for your time.
Co-writing a novel is not very common. How did that come about?

Stan and I met in Johannesburg about 25 years ago, but we became good friends in Minneapolis where Stan was working and I spent time on sabbatical from my university in Johannesburg. We shared a love of Africa’s wild areas. Stan is a pilot and we took several fly-in trips into such parts. The premise for the “perfect” murder was that you can completely destroy a body by feeding it to hyenas – no body, no case. I once saw a pack of twelve hyenas convert a small wildebeest to nothing but horns and upper skull in one night. We needed a setting which was wild and isolated yet not part of a controlled area such as a national park. Botswana still has many areas like that. We chatted about writing a novel together over many years – while we were writing academic and non-fiction works jointly with other people.

How about writing as a team? How does that work? Do you each have set tasks or is it a process of to-ing and fro-ing and refining?

It’s very much the latter. When we started, it seemed a natural thing to do and we just worked it out as we went along. Now we’ve developed a team strategy which we think works quite well. Upfront, we work out a map of the plot, a synopsis, and the timelines. We try to get together to do that, and it takes a considerable amount of time. After that, it seems there are usually areas where one of us has a particular interest or a mental picture of what’s going to happen. He’ll write a first draft, and that is the starting point for multiple iterations. This phase we do by email interspersed with long internet telephone conversations. Eventually we go through each section independently to make sure it’s smooth, stylistically coherent, and that the characters’ behaviors are consistent from one place to another. Perhaps surprisingly it seems to work! People tell us they can’t discern any changes of style as they read.

Did you find that also?

I found the writing totally seamless. In fact, I didn't become aware until after finishing the book that it actually had two authors and I was surprised to learn that. I read a book written by two authors the other year and I did notice one or two tiny inconsistencies. One was a dog described as having a stumpy tail and in a subsequent chapter the dog's tail is swishing. I found none at all in A Carrion Death. Then again if a book grabs you sufficiently into its world, you are totally immersed and don't spend any time looking for anything like that.

Ah, I missed the swishing tail! We’ve had our examples. When Kubu landed at the farmhouse and told the pilot to keep the helicopter going, we had a piece about the dead stillness of the desert. One proof reader commented dryly: “Quiet Chopper!”

Let's talk about A CARRION DEATH. Where did you find Detective Kubu? He's a very gentle man, was that a conscious decision you made?

Kubu is very interesting to us. He wasn’t even meant to be the protagonist. That was going to be the ecologist – Bongani. But we obviously needed the police involved, and someone had to investigate. Kubu just clambered into his Land Rover and set off singing into the Kalahari. He wasn’t planned; he just developed along what seemed a natural path for him. And he firmly shouldered Bongani out of the lead role! One of our reviewers has suggested that he has developed much more in the second novel. He is gentle but, like his namesake, he can become dangerous...

When you wrote A CARRION DEATH did you envisage it would become a series?

We loved Kubu, and we discovered that others – such as our agent and people we persuaded to read drafts of the book – loved him too. So much seemed to be behind and ahead of him, it seemed we needed to explore it more fully. Our publisher agreed, giving us a contract for two Kubu books at the outset. We’re now busy on the third. In some ways it’s a darker book exploring the fault line between different population groups in Botswana – specifically the issue of the Bushman people. But it’s still a murder mystery, and Kubu – and, we hope, the reader – is kept guessing!

I found two titles for your next book. “A Deadly Trade” and “The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu” Is there a reason for that?

Actually, The Second Death of Goodluck Tinubu was our original title, and Harper Collins liked it. Headline in the UK felt it sounded too like a McCall Smith book, perhaps too ‘cozy’. So after a few hundred attempts we came up with one everyone liked. But Harper was adamant that they wanted to go with the old title. So there it is...

Can you tell us about the plot for your next book a A DEADLY TRADE?

Kubu has the lead role of course, although out of his usual environment. The scene is a small tourist camp set in the lush riverine forest along the border between Botswana and Namibia, packed with elephants and bird life. The camp is called Jackalberry after the huge lush trees of that name which grow in the area. One morning the guests wake up to discover one of their number viciously murdered and two others missing. The murdered man's name is Goodluck Tinubu, and it turns out that he has "died" before - in the Rhodesian war twenty years before. (Hence the US title for the book.) Kubu has a new sidekick up on the Linyanti - a tall, thin man who is finding his feet in the CID. He learns from Kubu and stands on his own two feet. When he's on dry land that is... Of course Mabaku is around and he also has problems of his own.

Joy plays a much bigger role when the baddies have a go at Kubu. She has to do some sleuthing of her own. There are the guests at the camp, who aren't as innocent as they seem, the camp owner and her sidekick, the cook at the camp with a tame go-away bird, and a lady shop owner in Gaborone with eclectic selling habits, some nasties operating from Zimbabwe... No wonder
the book got long!

Placing the camp was not easy. Much of the area is national park, and some of it is quite open rather than the way we described it. We have some very knowledgeable friends who guide trips in Botswana - Peter and Salome. When they read the setting, they immediately said they knew the spot. Salome took us there. After a long, rough trip for several days off the beaten track in
an open Land Rover, we saw that they had been correct. The river worked its way lazily between reeded banks, birds were in abundance, as were crocodiles and hippos. We were stunned by how closely it resembled the imaginary location of our camp.
"Well," I said, trying to be clever, "yes, okay, but where are the Jackalberry trees?" Salome looked pained. "You're standing under one," she commented,pointing to a gorgeous, lush Example spreading above us...

Over the past year or so there seems to have been an upsurge of crime novels set in Africa. Do you think this is pure coincidence or does the success of writers like Alexander McCall Smith act as a spur for other writers to do something similar?
Are there many African crime writers emerging (as opposed to those who set their books there)? I read Deon Meyer's DEVIL'S PEAK earlier in the year and loved the depth of his writing. Are African crime writers finding their voice do you think? Are there any you've read and enjoyed?.

The question about African writers is a very good one. I think the answer is: yes, definitely. I think Deon Meyer is an excellent crime writer (an opinion shared by Michael Connelly by the way). ( He actually wrote the book in Afrikaans where it had another title.) I think that the resurgence of good mystery fiction writing in South Africa has come from the relief of getting past the Apartheid and past-Apartheid era where any “serious” writer had to address those issues. Last month a collection of mystery stories by 17 SA writers (including Michael Stanley) was published by Macmillan under the title “Bad Company”. The stories range from urban slum crime to rural Botswana. It’s a who’s who of SA crime writers (and good reading to boot!) Unfortunately I doubt it is available in Australia. You’d need to order from an internet bookstore like http://www.kalahari.net/books/

Having said that, I believe that there was a surge of interest in novels set outside the US (within the US) around 9/11 for a variety of reasons that we could only speculate on. We had good offers from two publishers there and interest from a third when our agent offered A Carrion Death.

Do you read much crime fiction yourselves and if so who are your favourites

Finally, yes, both Stan and I read a lot of crime fiction and try to follow all our SA colleagues as well as a variety of other writers. My first choice is John Le Carre. But we’re pretty catholic. William Kent Kruger, Fred Vargas, Larsen, PD James, Louise Penny. I’d put Deon Meyer in that company too!

You can keep up with the doings of Detective Kubu and his creators at Detective Kubu's website at http://www.detectivekubu.com/

A DEADLY TRADE is due to be published in Australia and the U.K. in May, 2009. The authors will be visiting Australia very soon, so keep an eye out for them. I for one am looking foward to reading A DEADLY TRADE. Review to come.

The authors hard at work in the Chobe area.

Sunday Salon: Review: THE BAD POLICEMAN

2009-04-13T12:55:00.002+10:00

by Helen Hodgman
Allen & Unwin
ISBN: : 18650843502

How do you describe a book that doesn’t fit? How do you say this is a book where nothing momentous happens, yet it does? How do you describe a tragedy that is as funny as it is tragic? How do you nail jelly to a wall?

Constable Blainey is a uniformed police officer stationed in a town 100 kilometres West of Sydney (i.e. The Blue Mountains). He is divorced, lives alone and isn’t close to his only (grown up) son. Blainey is a poet in his spare time. He has had a small book of verse published, but he’s a bit self-conscious about that. He regards his partner, Steve as his only real friend.

THE BAD POLICEMAN is Blainey’s own inner dialogue with himself. The people he meets, the things he witnesses, decisions he makes all pile on top of each other to bring him to where we meet him in the book. He sees corruption around him, both small and large. He debates with himself which he can act on and which he can’t. This leads to even more inner turmoil. We see Blainey as he sees himself, stripped bare of all pretence or facade. What Blainey sees in himself he doesn’t like. A number of things happen that effect his life which leads him to a crisis point.
Blainey takes us through his days from his own point of view. At times his thoughts are confused and confusing; almost stream of consciousness. The book is many things, often funny, sometimes heartbreakingly tragic but it is never dull. THE BAD POLICEMAN poses the obvious question. Is Blainey a bad policeman, a bad man, both or neither? The reader must make up their own mind.

At just 173 pages THE BAD POLICEMAN isn’t a long book, but what it lacks in length it sure makes up for in substance. I found it

SUNDAY SALON: When you read a knock-your-socks-off book.

2009-04-13T12:43:00.003+10:00

It doesn't happen very often, but when it does; WOWEE. One of those unexpected books. You have it sitting there. Perhaps you don't even know how you came to have it. What brought you to buy/borrow this book? There are other books pressing, ones by authors you know you always enjoy,the ever-growing pile of review books, but this little book by the author you have never heard of sits, waiting patiently.

It's not a thick book, so you decide, what the heck. It's due back next week so why not dip into it to see what it was that called to you in the first place.

And there is it. You're hit between the eyes. This little book has something. Something you can't describe. But it gets you where you live. It knocks your socks off.

I've just finished reading one such book. It's an obscure little offering by an author previously unknown to me. It's called THE BAD POLICEMAN by Helen Hodgman.

Isn't it a joy when you find an unexpected treasure like this. What was your most recent knock-your-socks-off book? Please share.
(review to follow)

Addendum to Bait.

2009-04-10T12:24:00.002+10:00

Nick Brownlee informs me that the follow-up to Bait, entitled BURN is due out in the UK late June and that he is currently working on a 3rd in the series, MACHETE.

Something to look forward to.

SUNDAY SALON: Review BAIT - Nick Brownlee

2009-04-08T14:59:00.008+10:00

Publisher: Piatkus, 2009
ISBN: 9780749940591

As a boy, George Malewe had gutted thousands of fish for the white men who came to catch game off the coast of Mombasa. But, as he plunged the blade of his favourite teak-handled filleting knife into the soft underbelly and eased it upwards through the stomach wall with a smooth, practised sawing movement, it struck him that he had never before gutted a white man.

With an opening paragraph like that you know you’re not going to be in for a quiet comfort read.

Jake Moore is an ex-Flying squad police officer. After being badly wounded in London he gave it all up and used his compensation money to buy into a tourist fishing partnership in Mombasa, Kenya. Things aren’t going to well though. The recent political unrest and violence in Kenya has impacted on the tourist trade, especially at the lower end of the market.

The boat of another fishing boat captain blows up at sea resulting in the loss of lives of both the captain and its bait boy; the brother of Jake’s own bait boy. The body of a violent, petty street criminal is then found washed up on shore. Something nasty is obviously going on, but that’s not unusual in a country with as much corruption as Kenya. Jake figures it’s none of his business. That changes when he is approached by Detective Jouma who is probably one of the few genuinely honest police officers in Mombasa. Jake’s old copper instincts can’t resist the challenge and he finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy that is far darker and spreads so much further than Jake ever anticipated.

BAIT is the first novel by Nick Brownlee and it’s a ripper of a debut novel. Take one honest detective with a dash of street gangster, vigorously beat in a plenty of psychotic South African ex-army officer with a penchant for inflicting slow, violent death and add the beautiful daughter of a murder victim and you have a recipe for a grab-you-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck thrill ride that will leave you wanting more.

Nick Brownlee is a former journalist who now runs a small news and feature agency in Cumbria, England. On the success of Bait, Nick has been commissioned to write three more Jake and Jouma novels and I’ll be eagerly awaiting each one.

Nick Brownlee’s official website is http://www.nickbrownlee.com

Sunday Salon: Review- ARCTIC CHILL by Arnaldur Indridason

2009-04-05T11:35:00.003+10:00

Translated from the Icelandic by Bernard Scudder and Victoria Cribbb
Publisher: Harvill Secker
ISBN: 9781846550652
2008
344 Pages

On a cold January day the Reykjavik police are called to the scene of a crime. A nine year old boy of Asian descent lies dead; frozen to the ground in a pool of his own blood. He has been stabbed in the stomach. The boy’s Thai mother and his fifteen- year-old half brother are both devastated by his death. Has racism reared its ugly head and caused the death of this young innocent?

It is up to Inspector Erlendur and his team, Elinborg and Sirgurdur Oli to find out who would want to kill a little boy in such a brutal fashion. They all hope that racism hasn’t reared its ugly head and been the reason for the death of this young innocent.

What is it about Northern European countries that is churning out so many fine crime writers? Is it the long cold winters that keeps people indoors and fires their imagination? Or is there something darker in their souls? Whatever it is, add Iceland to the list of countries producing top-flight writers.

In ARCTIC CHILL, Indridason was written a very solid police procedural indeed. But he has done much more than that. He also explores the issues of immigration and racism. Indridason also strikes a nice balance between the work of the detectives and their lives outside of their work. In particular, the reader learns more about Erlendur and his childhood which helps explain more about the man.

I do admit to some initial confusion with the names. Why are Erlendur and Elinborg just referred to by single names (I’m assuming surnames) and why is Sirgurdur Oli always given two names? The same thing arises with Erlendur’s children. If anyone knows the answer I’d be interested to know. It’d save me considerable googling time. I’m afraid I can offer no prizes other than the inner glow of satisfaction you’d get from enlightening me and my grateful thanks. So if that floats your boat, feel free.

Review: THE KILLING HANDS by P. D. Martin

2009-04-02T11:22:00.000+11:00

FBI profiler Sophie Anderson has settled into her job in Los Angeles. She has established a name for herself and made contacts. Her latest case is something new to her. It looks as though the victim has had his throat ripped out but exactly how is a mystery. The man is identified as a member of the infamous Yakuza who has been presumed dead these past fifteen years.
Sophie finds herself working with a new set of people: a task force consisting of a number of law enforcement agencies who specialise in gang-related crime. But it is believed that there is an informer within the task force so Sophie has to tread very carefully. This latest case will not only pose a threat to Sophie’s life, but it will pit her against one of the most ruthless and calculated killers she has encountered.

THE KILLING HANDS doesn’t quite have the pace and suspense of P.D. Martin’s previous books. Because Sophie is working with a gang task-force, it is necessary for the author to give the reader an overview of the structure and remit of the various agencies that investigate gang-related crime in L.A. This does slow down the plot a little. However, Martin’s usual thorough research and attention to detail do make for informative reading.

In THE KILLING HANDS we meet Sophie’s parents who visit her and there is an interesting development in her private life as well. But we will have to wait for the next book to discover where that will take her. By doing this Martin has deftly avoided one of the biggest pitfalls of a series; a character who never moves on from where they started in book one.
P.D. Martin has become one of my favourite Australian crime fiction writers and THE KILLING HANDS has done nothing to change my opinion.

As long as they dont' scare the horses.

2009-02-14T13:21:00.002+11:00

Which I suspect my blog photo might well do. It sure as hell scares me when I see it. I really should change it . I have something more acceptable (definition of acceptable: I dont' cringe when I see it).

February has been a total write off as far as reading is concerned. I don't think I've finished a single book. I'll blame it on a combination of a succession of books that I couldn't become interested in and the heatwave. Also the fact I'm in an ever increasing state of frenzied excitement over my upcoming trip to Left Coast Crime Hawaii. Now just 18 days away. It will be my first trip out of the country in over 30 years and probably the only one I'm likely to get.

So many things to get together, so many tough decisions to make. I'll be getting books at the convention so the toughest decision is how many books to take on the long flight over and which ones? I should probably rule out hardcovers. Dithering about that one.

So veteran travellers - What is your rule of thumb in making your reading choices for long-haul flights?

Sunday Salon: Fine South African Crime fiction

2009-01-11T16:12:00.002+11:00

Do you belong to reading groups? Either internet or face to face? I do. And isn't it fun when a book sparks more than just the usual standard debate. One such book this past week is Deon Meyer's DEVIL'S PEAK.
Here's my review.

Devil’s Peak
Author: Deon Meyer (translated from Afrikaans by K. L. Seegers)
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton
ISBN: 9780340822654 (hardcover)
Published: 2007
408 pages

What makes a book special for you? For me it’s when the characters and the story stays with you after you’ve closed the book. All too often once the book is finished, The details begin to fade almost immediately. Not so with DEVIL’S PEAK by Deon Meyer.

DEVIL’S PEAK begins with a prostitute telling her story to a clergyman. On her lap is a shoe box. What’s in the box?

Inspector Benny Giessel has just been thrown out of the house by his wife. She has given him an ultimatum. Choose either the booze or his family. He has six months to get sober and stay that way or he won’t see his kids again. Benny is a veteran of the South African police. He is one of the very few left from the days of apartheid. In a force where the majority are young and inexperienced, a wise Superintendant realises the the value of a talented and experienced detective. With the support of his boss, Benny begins the slow, painful process of getting sober and staying that way.
Someone is killing people with an Assegai (tribal spear). Many on the police force aren’t that bothered because the victims are child killers. Benny is assigned to lead the investigation. Realising this may well be his last chance to save his career as well as his marriage, Benny puts everything into finding out the identity of the killer.

The alcoholic detective is something of a staple in crime fiction; to the extent that it frequently becomes a cliché. Not so Benny. Meyer writes about Benny’s struggle , self-recrimination and the realisation of the full impact of his drinking on his life, his family and his colleagues with a great deal of sensitivity . We feel Benny’s pain, guilt and despair as struggles through “one day at a time.”
DEVIL’S PEAK was written in Afrikaans and translated by K.L. Seegers. Not only is the translation spot on, but Seegers has retained enough of the Afrikaans slang and dialect for the reader to easily imagine an Afrikaans accent.

The sense of place and culture are also very strong. There is no way this book could be set anywhere but South Africa. DEVIL’S PEAK is not only well written with a nicely honed plot, but the author has also seamlessly incorporated a history lesson, a clear idea of diverse cultures and characters you won’t forget in a hurry. These all combine to make DEVIL’S PEAK a memorable read on many levels.
The second week of 2009 isn’t over yet and already I feel I’ve read one of my top books for 2009.

SUNDAY SALON: Six things I want in my fiction

2009-01-04T15:07:00.004+11:00

Kerrie at Mysteries in Paradise kicked it off. Barbara's Scandanavian Crime Fiction picked up the ball and ran with it. The challenge was also taken up by Uriah's Crime Scraps

What six things do I want in my crime fiction? (this could apply to any other type of fiction).

Here are mine.

1. No Femjep. You know the type of thing. Our heroine (usually amateur) has been threatened. She hears a noise coming from the basement. The electricity has been turned off, so she totters downstairs in her short, tight skirt and stilletos without either a weapon or a flashlight and gets donged on the head ... Oh pulease.

2. A mystery where the clues aren't bleeding obvious to everyone but the investigator.

3. Authors who know less is often more. Peter Temple is a prime example of saying a great deal with a few words.

4. Authors who are happy to be crime writers and don't have pretensions to be "literary" at the expense of this little thing we crime readers like which is called a plot.

5. Characters that I can become engaged with. I'm not a huge fan of the short "puzzle mystery" where the characters are merely the vehicle to deliver that puzzle. I like to get to know my characters.

6. A story that keeps me guessing. I hate working out very early on whodunit and then spending the rest of the book waiting for the protagonist to catch up with me. I love twists in the tale at the end as well.

So there are my six . What are yours?

Sunday Salon: Best and worst of 2008

2009-01-04T13:06:00.002+11:00

I read some very fine books in 2008. Many of which were Australian. I
read my way thorugh a good percentage of the Ned Kelly long list
nominations.
Here are some of my tops

MY BOOK OF THE YEAR.
*drumroll*

SHATTER - Michael Robotham
Winner of the 2008 Ned Kelly Award.
See Barfly's accidently posted review.
Fabulous edge of seat stuff. Couldn't put it down.

Other tops of the year.

EXIT MUSIC - Ian Rankin 5 stars
Possibly the last in the Inspector Rebus novels. A Russian dissident
poet is found beaten to death just days before Rebus' retirement.
Siobhan Clark is put in charge of the case.
Rebus is advising. He uses his last few days on the job to try and
finally put "Big Ger" McCafferty behind bars.

FAN MAIL. P.D. Martin
One of Sophie Anderson's last jobs before leaving Quantico for the field
office in Los Angeles is to give a guided tour of the facility of a
popular crime fiction writer.
When the writer is found murdered in a gruesome manner which mirrors the
method used in her yet-to-be published latest book, Sophie realises
there are only a limited number of suspects.
I always enjoy Phillip's books. Enjoyable cross between Medium and
police procedural.

A CURE FOR ALL DISEASES - Reginald Hill
It's Reginald Hill. It's Dalziel and Pascoe. Is there anything else that
needs to be said to explain why it's on my tops list?
Dalziel is in a convalescent home recovering from injuries sustained in
a bomb blast. Part of his therapy involves him recording his thoughts
into a mini-recorder which he names Muriel.
A murder happens in the seaside town where the home is. Peter Pascoe is
in charge, but with an increasingly tetchy Dalziel straining at the
leash to become involved, Peter is feeling the pressure.

VODKA DOESN'T FREEZE - Leah Giarratano
Leah Giarratano is a trauma psychologist based in Sydney. Among her
clients have been victims of sexual abuse and men serving sentences for
child abuse. VODKA DOESN’T FREEZE is her first novel. I had the good
fortune to hear Giarratano speak last year. She talked about the book
being cathartic for her. She regarded it as an exercise to purge herself
of bottled up emotions. She never expected a publisher to accept it.
It isn’t an easy book. It is a very dark subject Giarratano writes
about. A subject that is difficult to explore. However, the reader who
can make it through is rewarded. It offers some insights in ways perhaps
not expected by the author or the reader. Yes, it does demonstrate how
different people deal with being sexually abused, but what I found was
that perhaps inadvertently the author has shown something of the
emotional toll taken on professionals who deal with sex offenders in
their working life.

A CARRION DEATH - Michael Stanley
Set in Botswana, the book introduces superintendent David Bengu of the
Botswana Police Department whose nickame is Kubu (hippopotamus). As the
name implies Kubu is very overweight.
He's a delightful man (He reminds me a bit of Colin Cotterill's Dr. Siri
Paiboun) .

WHITE NIGHTS - Ann Cleeves
The 2nd in the Jimmy Perez Shetland series. Jimmy's girlfriend is having
her first art exhibition and there is an unexpectedly poor turnout.
One of the visitors to the exhibition stands in front of one of her
paintings, head in hands and begins sobbing. He later races off. Next
day he is found murdered.
Cleeves writes about a small isolated community beautifully. Strong
sense of place and a protagonist you can't help but like.

True Crime
KILLING JODIE - Janet Fife-Yeomans
About the disappearance of a part-time prostitute, Jodie Larcombe and
the determination of the detectives to bring to justice her killer. They
knew who he was, but just couldn't gather enough evidence to prove it in
court. Their investigation spanned a decade .

LIVES OF CRIME - Tippet & Munro
A series of chapters looking at the lives of people whose lives are
touched by crime. Victims, perpetrators, police, lawyers, judges,
paramedics and a host of others.

INTO THE DARKLANDS - Nigel Latta.
Latta is a psychologist who specialises in treating sex offenders and
their victims. Latta is a no-nonsense man, with a wicked sense of humour
and a talent for using profanity
"I swear because I like it and it get's their attention". Fascinating
and unexpectedly entertaining journey into the minds of some very nasty
people.

WORST
I read a few that were so-so that didn't really grab me. This year
there weren't many at all that I thought were really awful.

There are just 3 this year that I would put on my bottoms list.
In order of awfulness from worst to least worst.

GOSPEL - Sydney Bauer.

Tom Bradshaw is the perfect Vice-Presidential candidate. He had a
difficult time in college, but overcame drug addiction and now leads the
fight against illegal drugs. The nation is stunned when he is found dead
in a hotel room of an apparent self-administered drug overdose after
being clean for over twenty years. Just as the public is coming to
terms with the death of the much-respected politician, it is announced
that it wasn't an accidental death, but murder.

There is a chief suspect who is the stereotype of chief suspects. He's
arrogant and unpleasant, and widely disliked. His wife happens to be
the hero's ex. She left him for the richer doctor, thereby establishing
that she is shallow and not worthy of him. There's a conspiracy at a
high level and a lot of characters introduced in the first chapters
which is confusing and takes forever to sort out.

A large part of the ending involved a dramatic overblown court scene.
"'Cavanaugh is a liar,' he yelled, his voice rising over an astonished
crowd. 'A simple-minded show pony who, in his desperation to win
exoneration for his murderous client, has rallied this group of
geriatrics, has-beens, teenagers and drug addicts in a pathetic attempt
to sully my good name,'*". S*peeches like this abounded and I felt that
any resemblance to a real courtroom situation was purely coincidental.

It is blurbed as a fast-paced thriller but the author's excessive use of
adjectives and long-winded descriptions slowed the whole thing down .
"She took two of the upturned glasses standing on the crisp white
towel on the black marble counter and poured them both a drink before
gliding across the room, extending her long slender arm and handing him
his water.' It was a very minor detail. She gave him a glass of water
would have sufficed.
The book was 487 pages. Way too long.
There was a clever twist but it came too late to save this one from my
bottoms list.

Also ran bottoms
Biggest disappointment.

UNDER ORDERS - Dick Francis
A Sid Halley novel. There were a couple of things about this one that
failed to endear itself to me.
There seemed to be a great deal of over-explaining which slowed the pace
down. There was a lot of detail about the racing industry and online
betting; more than I felt I needed to know. Nor was it really necessary
to know the detailed back-story of nearly every major character who
appeared in the book.. There was also much made of the fact that Sid
has an artificial arm. We were told the history of how he lost his arm
and his battle to come to terms with it. Not needed in light of the
fact that it was the 5th or 6th in the series. There was also quite a
bit of Sid's opinions on things that we didn't really need for the plot.
It had been a while since I read any of his books and I don't know if
I've become much more picky or if this one wasn't quite as good as the
others. Either way,it was a major disappointment.

Most cliched:

AMERICAN GANGSTER - Max Allan Collins
The book based on the movie of the same name. The movie was based on an
article that appeared in New Yorker magazine yonks ago. Based on real
people and events. Set in the 70's it tells the story about an honest
cop who makes an arrest and discovers 1 million in the back of the car
and turns it in.This makes him a pariah among many of his colleagues. He
is then seconded to the DA Department to do an investigation into the
drug scene. He discovers a hitherto drug lord who has flown under the
radar because he imports his own heroin from Vietnam .

If you are interested in this at all, either read the original article
or see the movie, which wasn't too bad actually. I suspect the writer of
this book was told to write the book using only the script as a
reference. It was totally predictible and had every cliche going. The
movie had the saving grace of Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe to
flesh out the characters and make them interesting. The book didn't. I
put off seeing the movie for a long time because of the experience I had
with the book.

Review: The Watcher in the Woods - Gillian Maisey-Jackson

2008-12-27T13:49:00.001+11:00

When Kathleen Ashley’s husband died leaving a failed business behind, Kathleen was forced to take work as a live in carer to make ends meet. Her current job is with the elderly, irascible Cedric. Cedric is very difficult but Kathleen is fairly happy in her job. She likes the little village and the people in it.

Kathleen’s orderly world is thrown into turmoil when she receives an anonymous poison pen letter accusing her of immorality with her employer. She reports it to the police who go through the motions until they discover that a murder victim some months earlier had a similar letter in her possession.

Sergeant Awders and Inspector Brent discover that there are a number of murders over a fifteen year period that could be connected. As they begin to question the people of the village, they uncover the gossip and jealousies beneath the surface.
Reading THE WATCHER IN THE WOOD is like watching a one hour mystery on TV. The setting is a place with a finite number of suspects; in this case a small village. We are introduced to the characters and then one or more of them are murdered. Enter the police who question everyone and solve the crime.

THE WATCHER IN THE WOOD is a puzzle piece. At just 138 pages the reader isn’t really given the opportunity to fully engage with any of the characters. I guessed the identity of the killer before the author chose to share it with me. The book is written well enough, but I felt it lacked substance. It does the job of a light read for the holidays but nothing more.

Sunday Salon: Merry Christmas everyone

2008-12-17T13:12:00.003+11:00

This is a You Tube Video of one of my favourite fun Christmas songs. I hope you all enjoy it.

Book Review: SAWBONES

2008-12-03T21:33:00.003+11:00

Author: Stuart MacBride
Publisher: Barrington Stoke
ISBN: 9781842995297
This edition published: 2008
114 pages

Stuart MacBride is a relative newcomer to the crime fiction scene. His first novel, COLD GRANITE, featuring DI Logan Macrae, burst onto the scene to much acclaim in 2006. Since then there have been four other Logan Macrae novels, with a sixth in the pipeline.

SAWBONES is a different kettle of fish. It is set in the USA for a start and is a road trip no one would ever want to undertake. There are three gangsters in a car, a teenage boy who has recently had his “frank and beans” cut off and a dead FBI agent in the boot. They are on the trail of a serial killer who kidnaps young blonde women and cuts off their limbs while they are still alive. This time the killer has picked the wrong victim. He has taken Laura, the sixteen year old daughter of a New York crime boss.

Police throughout the country are making enquiries, but the gang boss doesn’t trust them. His minions are making their own. Their interviewing techniques aren’t what you’d call subtle. After being questioned by this lot, a witness is just relieved to still be alive, let alone still have all their original body parts.

SAWBONES is very violent and definitely NOT for readers of cosies. It could very easily be very grim indeed, but underlying all this blood and gore lurks MacBride’s humour. And that is the attraction for me. While one of the more psychotic members of the gang is wreaking havoc on the most innocent of bystanders, the narrator of the story (another member of the gang ) is standing back admonishing “never poke a bear”.

More a novella than a novel ,SAWBONES is just 114 pages long. But those pages are action-packed with never a dull moment. If you think you can handle the violence, then give SAWBONES a try. I loved it.

Book review: BEFRIEND AND BETRAY

2008-12-03T19:41:00.001+11:00

Author: Alex Caine
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
ISBN: 9781405038997
This edition published: October, 2008
Price: $32.99 (Aust)
287 pages
Non-fiction

Aaah, America. Land of the free, home of the.....free-market economy? Who knew that there are people out there who earn their livings by hiring themselves out to law enforcement agencies, to gather intelligence by infiltrating gangs and organisations? We’re not talking about under cover cops here. These are civilians.
One such civilian is Alex Caine. Caine few up in Canada and had a tumultuous childhood, frequently skating around the fringes of the law. In the late 1960s, looking for something more adventurous he travelled to the USA , enlisted in the army and spent time fighting in Vietnam. On his return he found it difficult to settle down.

Caine was and is a martial arts aficionado. One day while attending a competition he was befriended by a fellow practitioner who was a member of The Bandidos motorcycle gang. In the course of conversation, Caine was asked if he was interested in helping to make a large drug buy. Disconcerted, Caine gave a non-committal answer. He later told his wife who encouraged him to report this offer to the authorities, which he duly did. Not long after, he was approached by the Mounties and asked if he was interested in accepting the offer and infiltrating the gang. So began Caine’s new career.

Over a period of twenty or so years Caine infiltrated gangs such as the Bandidos, the Hells Angels, and even the KKK. He also made contacts with and supplied information on Asian Triads, Russian mobsters and corrupt cops.

BEFRIEND AND BETRAY is an insider’s story of this complex and murky world where you can trust no one. Not only did Caine have to be wary of the gang he was infiltrating, but he also had to be circumspect about who he trusted in law enforcement. His is a story of creating alternative identities and living on his wits, often for months at a time. It makes compelling reading.

Just how such people live, how they maintain their own identity and the effects on their relationships outside their work is as fascinating as the details of the work itself. In some instances Caine’s story raises as many questions as it answers. Just how effective are these types of operations? The biggest success of his career, Caine feels is his first, the infiltration of the Bandidos. It resulted in dozens of arrests across the USA, Canada and internationally, but ultimately it didn’t put a stop to the gang’s drug-dealing activities. It just slowed it down for a while.

I thought BEFRIEND AND BETRAY said as much about the character of Alex Caine as it did about the gangs he was infiltrating. Caine’s seemingly burning need for danger and excitement appeared to come before anything else. With a trail of failed marriages and estranged children behind him , Caine has finally given up this work. At least that’s what he claims in his book. The author blurb tells us that Alex Caine now works as an advisor on motorcycle gang investigations and is a frequent guest speaker at police conferences. He is a certified fifth-degree black belt martial artist. One does wonder about the ultimate cost of his unconventional life. Will he be alone in his old age or will his desire for living on the edge once more take control and lead him back to old life and ultimately cost him his?

Review: ANGELS UNAWARE - Mike Ripley

2008-11-22T11:05:00.000+11:00

Publisher: Allison and Busby
This edition published: 2008
ISBN: 9780749080839
398 pages

Roy Angel is a Private Investigator. He is the token male at an all female agency. His wife, a successful fashion designer, has recently given birth to their first child.. But there’s a fly in Angel’s blissful ointment. The Agency is insisting he is not entitled to extended paternity leave and his mother has descended upon them to “help” with the baby. Angel’s mum is a bit eccentric. She’s a hippy with a penchant for trouble and has the maternal instincts of a doorknob.

Angel takes on the job of searching for a missing script writer. The bank financing the film is getting jumpy because the final draft of the script is past due and the writer hasn’t been seen in nearly two weeks. The investigation takes Angel out of his comfort zone of London into the wilds of Yorkshire. He is aided by fellow PI Ossie Oesterlein, a very large man with an even larger appetite, who lives at home with his mum and is into line dancing in a big way.

So just how does a search for a missing man end in a murder hunt with Angel staring down the barrel of a loaded gun contemplating his own death? And what does a Polish porn star have to do with it?The story is told from Angel’s perspective. As the narrator, Angel’s voice is highly amusing; particularly the banter between himself and Ossie. These two are about an unlikely a pair as you’ll ever come across. His wife’s increasing exasperation and annoyance at Angel’s extended absence from the martial home is also very entertaining, as is his mother’s antics.

The author, Mike Ripley, deftly changes both the tempo and mood of the plot as what begins as a routine missing person case and a jaunt to the north becomes a matter of life and death for Angel. ANGELS UNAWARE is a light-hearted detective yarn with a somewhat dark centre.

I was surprised to learn that ANGELS UNAWARE is the fifteenth in the Angel series. I must look out for more. Mike Ripley’s Roy Angel has slipped under my radar until now. Don’t let it slip under yours.

SUNDAY SALON; Crime fiction book review ANGELS UNAWARE by Mike Ripley

2008-11-16T19:37:00.002+11:00

ISBN: : 9780749080839
Publisher: Allison & Busby
398 pages
Roy Angel is a Private Investigator. He is the token male at an all female agency. His wife, a successful fashion designer, has recently given birth to their first child.. But there’s a fly in Angel’s blissful ointment. The Agency is insisting he is not entitled to extended paternity leave and his mother has descended upon them to “help” with the baby. Angel’s mum is a bit eccentric. She’s a hippy with a penchant for trouble and has the maternal instincts of a doorknob.

Angel takes on the job of searching for a missing script writer. The bank financing the film is getting jumpy because the final draft the script is past due and the writer hasn’t been seen in nearly two weeks.

The investigation takes Angel out of his comfort zone of London into the wilds of Yorkshire. He is aided by fellow PI Ossie Oesterlein, a very large man with an even larger appetite, who lives at home with his mum and is into line dancing in a big way.

So just how does a search for a missing man end in a murder hunt with Angel staring down the barrel of a loaded gun contemplating his own death? And what does a Polish porn star have to do with it?

The story is told from Angel’s perspective. As the narrator, Angel’s voice is highly amusing; particularly the banter between himself and Ossie. These two are an unlikely a pair as you’ll ever come across. His wife’s increasing exasperation and annoyance at Angel’s extended absence from the martial home is also very entertaining, as are his mother’s antics.

The author, Mike Ripley deftly changes both the tempo and mood of the plot as what begins as a routine missing person case and a jaunt to the north becomes a matter of life and death for Angel. ANGELS UNAWARE is a light-hearted detective yarn with a somewhat dark centre.

I was surprised to learn that ANGELS UNAWARE is the fifteenth in the Angel series. I must look out for more. Mike Ripley’s Roy Angel has slipped under my radar until now. Don’t let it slip under yours.

A comment on my previous comments post.

2008-10-06T19:05:00.004+11:00

Well, that's odd. It appears my comments option reappeared with my previous post about comments not appearing.

So, if you want to comment on a previous post, then just add your comment here and I'll see it, I promise.

This stuff can send you insane very quickly.

Here's a great video of your typical tech support (always assuming you can get through to an actual living, breathing person.

Comments not working for some reason.

2008-10-06T18:59:00.002+11:00

My apologies for not having comments enabled. It is not of my doing, I assure you. I have spent the last hour going round and round in circles trying to find out how to fix it.

Everything in my settings appears to be in order, yet the comments option just isn't there. If anyone knows of a fix for this I'd be your friend for life and 10 days.

There appears to be no way of contacting a sentient life form at blogger unless there is abuse or some such. I've had to post to a help news group, but not holding out much hope as there are pleas for help going back a number of days that appears to have been unanswered.

I hope the comments will be back up and running again soon, so please check back.

Review: WHITE NIGHTS - Ann Cleeves

2008-10-06T17:46:00.003+11:00

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2008-10-05
2nd in the Shetland Quartet series

WHITE NIGHTS is the second in Ann Cleeves’ Shetland quartet. In her first, Raven Black, we met Jimmy Perez, a detective sergeant born and raised in the Shetland Isles. We followed Jimmy as he solved a murder and met Fran, a divorcee with a daughter.

In WHITE NIGHTS Jimmy and Fran are on the brink of taking their friendship one step further. It is mid-summer, that time of the year when the sun never quite sets in the Shetlands. It can disturb sleep patterns and they reckon it can send people a little bit mad.

Fran is having her first art exhibition with Bella. Bella is a local woman with an international reputation, so Fran is thrilled to be sharing the limelight with her. On the big night, the turnout is disappointingly small and is also marred by the presence of a stranger; a man who stands in front of one of Fran’s paintings, head in hands and begins to sob. Jimmy steps in to try and help. He takes the stranger into the kitchen and leaves briefly. When he returns the stranger is gone. He is found the next morning, hanging in a fishing shed. The marks on his neck quickly establish it wasn’t suicide and Jimmy begins the investigation.
Reading Ann Cleeves is a little like being an addict. You very quickly become hooked as Cleeves
drip-feeds background information of her characters in very measured doses. And you have to pay attention. Miss one piece of this information and you might miss a vital clue.

The protagonist, Jimmy Perez is a quiet thoughtful man, familiar with the Islands and the people. His boss D.I. Taylor, who flies in from Aberdeen for major cases is the opposite. He is unable to sit still and has a bull-at-a-gate approach. They work well as a team and have developed a solid working relationship. It’s a fine line Jimmy has to walk in his investigations. He has to find out who committed the crime, yet he has to live with these people.

The characters, the island and its culture are all beautifully described. I’ve never visited the Shetlands but I feel as if I am there when reading these books. I have loved both books in the Shetland series and my regret is that Cleeves has stated she is only writing four. Each book represents a season of the year. We’ve had Winter and Summer. I can’t wait to read the other two seasons.

WHITE NIGHTS is one of my WOW books for 2008. Do yourself a favour and get hold of a copy. I’m sure it will be one of yours.

Cleeves' website at hhttp://www.anncleeves.com/ gives details of the third in the series scheduled for publication early in 2009.

Getting Stuff done

2008-10-05T12:58:00.002+11:00

You tube video found on These Aye Mean Streets blog by Russell D. McLean

I just had to add this before I went back to my school assignment. Well, I'll do that after I've finished reading my emails, washing the lunch dishes, checking my Facebook. You know....

Sunday Salon: Can we please lose some adjectives?

2008-10-01T17:48:00.005+10:00

I have just finished a doorstop of a book. 487 pages to be exact.
I won't bore you with the problems I had with the plot or the court room ending that simply wasn't credible.

What I want to talk about today is why this book was over-long. It's something that seems to be occuring more often recently.

The over-use of adjectives. An example from the book I read recently:
She took two of the upturned glasses standing on the crisp white towel on the black marble counter and poured them both a drink before gliding across the room, extendingher long slender arm and handing him his water."

Oh pu-lease. It was such an inconsequential bit of trivia in the book, yet the author made a 3 course meal out of it. She handed him a glass of water would have sufficed.

So why are is this happening in books? Is it an attempt to make them thick and seem like value for money for the reader (new paperbacks in Australia cost in the region of $33)?

Is it the fault of the writer, who doesn't know when to stop?
Or the publishers and the editors who let the books be published without asking for cuts?
Or is it an uncritical buying public who seem to go on buying and buying ?
There are a few authors who are huge these days whose work seems to have gone downhill, yet their books keep selling.

Any thoughts on this phenomenom?

Sunday Salon: Reading review books to the bitter end.

2008-09-21T13:06:00.003+10:00

I am regularly given books to review. They cost me nothing, which is quite a saving when you consider the cost of books here in Australia.

There is a dilemma though. What is the right thing to do when you don't like the book? Do you struggle on and finish it or do you stop when you know it's not going to work for you?

I'm in the former camp. I have been given a copy and in order to do it justice I feel I should read it right though. There is one friend who wrote a review saying she was simply unable to finish it.
That hasn't happened to me yet.

So which is better? Write a review saying you couldn't finish it because you didn't like it? Or read it all and perhaps colour your opinion of it even more?

There is a school of thought that feels if you can't write a positive review, don't write anything at all, but I think that's being dishonest to a degree. I'd much prefer to read a negative review of a book than none at all. I think that negative reviews are just as useful, if not more so than positive ones. At least you know the reviewer is probably being honest.

What do others think?

Review: GOSPEL by Sydney Bauer

2008-09-18T15:52:00.002+10:00

Publisher: Pan Macmillan
This edition published: July 2007
ISBN: 978140503802
Price: $32.95 (Aust)
487 pages
Tom Bradshaw is the perfect Vice-Presidential candidate. He had a difficult time in college, but overcame drug addiction and now leads the fight against illegal drugs. The nation is stunned when he is found dead in a hotel room of an apparent self-administered drug overdose after being clean for over twenty years. Just as the public is coming to terms with the death of the much-respected politician, it is announced that it wasn’t an accidental death, but murder.

Police very quickly charge Stuart Montgomery with Bradshaw’s murder. Montgomery is Bradshaw’s doctor and is touted as one of the front-runners for Surgeon General should there be a change of administration in the upcoming election. The pair have had a falling out and the evidence points to Montgomery. Attorney David Cavanaugh has never liked Montgomery. He is arrogant and pompous and more than that, he is the reason David’s ex-wife left him all those years ago. When Cavanaugh is asked to represent Montgomery at his murder trial, he hesitates. He doesn’t want to have emotions of the past dredged up again, and there is his current partner, Sara to consider. Despite his misgivings Cavanaugh accepts and quickly discovers that there is a lot more going on than meets the eye. He begins to uncovers a conspiracy that reaches far and wide in the halls of power, putting his life and those around him in danger.

Sydney Bauer’s first book, UNDERTOW was a fast paced thriller and GOSPEL is promoted in the same way. It doesn’t seem to have quite the same pace and I think it suffers for that. The first couple of chapters introduce a so many characters that I found it confusing for quite a while. Bauer’s use of adjectives seemed at times a little unnecessary: ‘She took two of the upturned glasses standing on the crisp white towel on the black marble counter and poured them both a drink before gliding across the room, extending her long slender arm and handing him his water.’ It was a very minor detail. She gave him a glass of water would have sufficed. I found numerous examples of this. These unnecessary descriptions detracted from the pace of the book considerably. When a book is 487 pages long, details like this can become annoying.

Most of the plot was predictable. There were a few very clever little twists, but they didn’t arrive until after 400 pages and seemed to come too late. A large part of the ending involved a dramatic overblown court scene. “’Cavanaugh is a liar,’ he yelled, his voice rising over an astonished crowd. ‘A simple-minded show pony who, in his desperation to win exoneration for his murderous client, has rallied this group of geriatrics, has-beens, teenagers and drug addicts in a pathetic attempt to sully my good name,’”. Speeches like this abounded and I felt that any resemblance to a real courtroom situation was purely coincidental.

It’s a shame that GOSPEL was so overdone because there was a good idea in the basic plot premise.

EXECUTION LULLABY - Nigel Latta

2008-09-08T13:56:00.001+10:00

My review

rating: 5 of 5 stars
Simon Chase is on death row for the murder of seven teenage girls. Execution Lullaby is told from his point of view. It quickly become apparent that Simon didn't murder the girls, but he is complicit.

The story follows Simon's blissfully happy marriage to his wife, until he discovers a terrible secret.

The blurb for the book asks the question "how far would you go for the one you love?" and gives Simon's answer.

Nigel Latta is a clinical psychologist who specialises in assessing and treating sex offenders. It's dark place he has to visit on a regular basis and EXECUTION LULLABY reflects that. It's a compelling read if you have the stomach for it, with a very clever twist at the end. I found EXECUTION LULLABY unputdownable.

Christopher Brookmyre talking about his upcoming book A Snowball in Hell

2008-08-04T16:59:00.003+10:00

Sunday Salon: Re-reading classic crime.

2008-08-03T17:49:00.004+10:00

I realised with horror that I haven't actually added anything to this blog all week.
Now that school is back I'm finding I just don't have the energy for much beyond the basics. Back on the iron tablets in case it's that.

Anyway, I re-read a crime class this past week. RAFFLES: THE AMATEUR CRACKSMAN by E.W. Hornung - first published in 1899. I'd read these books in the 1970's when I was in my early 20's. I hadn't revisited them since.

I had fond memories of them. I'm not sure if my tastes have changed of if I've become more sophisticated in my analysis of what I'm reading. I found Raffles not to be the raffish but likeable crook of my memory but in fact a fairly self-centred character who appeared to treat his friend and confidante, Bunny Manders with a certain degree of disdain.

The book is written from Bunny's point of view and it seems that he portrays himself as being something of a bunny. Everytime something went wrong it seemed Bunny blamed himself.
I put it down not so much to Bunny's naivete but to Raffles not informing him what was going on.

What also raised questions for me that never occurred to me 30 years ago was the relationship between Raffles and Bunny. Bunny makes reference to Raffles' success with women once or twice in the book, but apart from one story, there is an almost complete absence of females. The one time one does appear, Bunny writes about her as being of no consequence. In fact, it seems as if Bunny is jealous. Hmmmm.. Could it be. The friendship from Bunny's perspective is more than mere admiration? Is Raffles selfishness in not keeping Bunny completely informed the act of a loner not used to working with someone or an attempt to keep him at arm's length?

Raffles was first published in 1899 and apparently E. W. Hornung was the brother-in-law of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Was this portayal of Raffles and Bunny a genuine relection of a friendship in more innocent times issues of sexuality weren't questioned? Was it perhaps a sly, subtle glimpse inside a hidden world? Or could it have been an equally sly satire of Holmes and Doyle from a less successful writer?

Around the world in crime fiction.

2008-07-28T11:21:00.003+10:00

Em (from L.A.) found this article on the UK Guardian website.
Around the World in 80 Sleuths
by Jonathan Gibbs
begins
"Holmes and Watson would be proud. Crime fiction is booming as never before - and with dozens of new titles translated into English for the first time, there’s a detective for every holiday destination. Jonathan Gibbs tracks down 80 of the best sleuths to escape with this summer.... "

and goes on to list 80 authors with characters from all over the workld

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/crime-fiction-around-the-world-in-80-sleuths-873660.html

or easier still try the tiny URL link. http://tinyurl.com/5m9xkz

How many have you read?

Crime and Justice Festival pt.2

2008-07-28T10:11:00.003+10:00

Gee, life and school did catch up with me in a big way this last week.
Only now getting around to part 2 of the C & J Festival.

A Conversation with Peter Temple

What a great way to kick off the 2nd day of the Festival. Peter Temple is modest and his humour largely self-deprecating. He talked about his writing process. Not for him 17 drafts. He couldn't understand that. He writes and re-writes and does it again until he's happy with it. Somehow I got the impression that he's probably never really happy with it and perhaps the manuscript has to be wrenched from his fingers to cries of "wait, I haven't finished with it yet."

He spoke about getting published - his first Jack Irish novel. In it he had Irish learning cabinet making,he loves football and has a fondness for horse racing. His first experience was being told that they loved the book, but perhaps remove the cabinet making, the football and the horse racing. Fortunately wiser heads prevailed and Jack was allowed to keep these interests.

He was asked about writing for television. Recently the tv movie VALENTINE'S DAY was screened. Temple's experience with this wasn't a particularly happy one. He was wined and dined and fussed over and his screenplay raved over.... but.... just a few minor changes herfe and there. He claimed there isn't much left of his original work.

I'm not so sure. I saw Temple's hand in the emotionally closed off and uncommunicative character of Ben Valentine. Regardless of how Temple feels about the end product. I enjoyed it a great deal.

Matters of Procedure
P.D. Martin, Garry Disher and Barry Maitland, with participating chair, Marshall Browne discussed researching and writing police procedurals. Phillipa spoke about getting started in this genre and brought along some books she found valuable in her research (I was furiously making notes at this stage). She also talked about a forensic text book she purchased from the U.S.A. She had tried to gain permission to witness an autopsy but failed. After seeing the images in the text book, she professed to be somewhat relieved that she didn't succeed. She said it gave her new sympathy for the victims and their families.

Garry Disher lives in a small community and knows the police officers who police that community so he said for him, it's a matter of a trip to the pub and buying a few beers, asking questions and perhaps organising a tour of this or that police station. Barry Maitland told a similar story.

Writing From Life
Crime writers - like any other writer - often use elements of their own life and the lives of
those around them in their fictionLeigh Redhead, Angela Savage, Dorothy Johnston ; discussed borrowing from life and the blurred line that divides fact from fiction .

It turned out to be a highly entertaining panel discussion as both Leigh Redhead and Dorothy Johnston had both worked in the sex industry at some stage. Leigh admitted that the character of Chloe in her book is her best friend. Her friend often rings her and says "So what's Chloe up to today." She also claims her friend only reads the bits of the book with Chloe in them.
Redhead also spoke of the different atmospheres in brothels in different states. Terms like "massage with hand relief" were used. The most difficult she claimed was a two person massage with hand relief. She said the most important thing is not to catch the eye of the other girl. Otherwise you're gone in fits of giggles.

Angela Savage's life experiences are very different - yet in some ways similar. Angela works for the United Nations and Non-Government Agencies in setting up Aids/HIV awareness and treatment programmse in Asian countries. She is currently living in Vietnam (as is Leigh Redhead)

It would be difficult to pick 3 more interesting authors to discuss writing from life experiences than these.

Nigel Latta's Darklands

The true surprise of the festival. I chose it because I wasn't really interested in the session the others had booked into. I didn't fancy waiting around in the cold outside and this sounded like it might be of some interest. Boy was I wrong. It was fascinating. The rest of the group ended up in this session as well when the other one was cancelled.

Nigel Latta is a clinical psychologist - a New Zealander who specialises in treating sex offenders and victims. Nigel is outspoken, profane ("I swear because I enjoy it and it get's my guys' attention"). and hugely entertaining. Surprising when you consider the subject matter.
His book INTO THE DARKLANDS is a fascanating read and Nigel has made a documentary series based around the book. We learned that apparently this series has been bought by an Australian tv network. (Fingers crossed that it is not shown in the wee small hours in some unpublicised time slot).

Trivia Quiz
A large box of books was on offer. And we were the only ones who signed up for the quiz. We did offer Simon the opportunity to cancel the quiz given there were only 4 of us but he insisted we go ahead anyway. What was odd was that at the end of the day Helen, Karen and I all ended up on the same number of points - I thank knowing the theme tune to Bergerac for that piece of good fortune and we all shared the booty when we got home.

We all left very happy and vowed to make the Crime and Justice Festival our number 1 priority next year.

Not much reading and fantastic news.

2008-07-25T15:18:00.004+10:00

I'm back at school now with 4 new classes and attendant assignments, so not much reading being done the last few days.

I got sidetracked from reading Jarad Henry's wonderful BLOOD SUNSET into RAFFLES: AMATEUR CRACKSMAN by E. W. Hornung. A classic first published in 1899. It is the group discussion on Oz-Mystery Readers classic month and I put my hand up to ask the questions as I nominated the book and it won the vote. It's been many years since I read the book and I'm quite enjoying it, even though my mind isn't really in reading mode right now - it keeps wandering off to the assignment on Web 2.0 tools. However, now that I've broken the back of some of it, hopefully I'll be able to concentrate.

Now for the news. Wednesday was Allan's (hitherto known as The Childe) birthday. His 23rd. We organised to go out to a Smokey Joe's a local Cajun/Creole restaurant. The food was delicious as usual. However that's not the news.

Now when The Childe left school he didn't have a clue what he wanted to do. As luck would have it an apprenticeship at a bakery just across the road from us came up and he went for the interview and got the job. He's now been there nearly 5 years and is the only one who started his apprenticeship there at the time who actually stayed the distance.

When he qualified his boss wanted him to take on a Franchise Management course with a view to perhaps taking over the bakery when he'd finished. Well he applied to do the course and in doing so, learned the other day that he is one of 4 in the COUNTRY to win a scholarship. All his costs paid for by the company - in excess of $1000, PLUS he gets to attend the company's annual conference in October - all expenses paid. In Cairns in far North Queensland. Nice work if you can get it. when he learned about this hubby's reaction was "do they know just how much The Childe eats?"

Anyway, that's my news for the past few days..

Oh yes, and I am fully aware that I have yet to complete my diary of the Crime and Justice Festival.

Crime and Justice make for great Festivals

2008-07-22T11:36:00.003+10:00

I'm back from the inaugural Crime and Justice Festival held at the Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne over the weekend. And what a wonderful weekend it was. All crime, all the time. Nirvana for a crime fiction addict like me. The atmosphere was so informal and friendly. Unlike bigger events, author's werent' whisked away for signings, publicity etc. yes, there were signings, but if you missed an author then, chances were you'd see them later on.

Which brings me to Robert Gott. Poor man. Everytime he turned a corner, there we were in our usual hunting pack configuration (books under arms, glass or something red or white in hand or perhaps a coffee).

The one major problem with the Crime and Justice Festival was the decision making. Leave it to the professionals with Robert Gott, Sydney Bauer and Dorothy Johnston; Crime and Reason - Forensic Psychologist Nigel Latta, Kerry Greenwood & Liz Porter talk about crime motivation or perhaps Leigh Redhead, Garry Disher and Jarad Henry on keeping it local? This is just one example of the agonising choices we had to make with clashing events. Truly spoilt for choice (for the record we went with keeping it local). But isn't that a wonderful problem to have. But enough of that. You want details (or perhaps you don't, but you're going to get them anyway)

KEEPING IT LOCAL
All three authors on this panel have set their books in the areas they work and/or live. Jarad Henry spoke about St. Kilda at night and how the weather can affect what people do. Blood Sunset (the title of his second book, which you must read it's fabulous) is a term the police use when the sun sets on a hot summer day and turns the sky red. It often augers a hot night when people come out and drink more than they should. The heat frays tempers more than usual and that's when blood is shed. Beware the blood sunset Jarad writes when signing his books.

Garry Disher spoke about the changes in the demographics of the Mornington Peninsula over the years, the increasing difference between the haves and the have nots and how that has changed crime patterns. His observations of life in the area very much inform his writing.

Leigh Redhead has been a sex worker. That's where her books are set. As part of her research Leigh did a Private Investigator's course. She stressedn upon her audience in her own inimitable way the vital importance of taking a funnel on stake outs.

Crime and Verse with Dorothy Porter
Dorothy talked about the two crime novels she has writen in verse. Monkey Mask and El Dorado. She also spoke about how the way kids are taught poetry in school often turns them away from it. What's wrong, she mused, about starting kids off with song lyrics. After all, aren't some of them poetry? She's got a point. Anything would be better than having to learn off by heart "I wond'red lonely as a cloud" in grade 3 as I did. Do they still inflict that on kids? Poetry should be taught by people who have a passion for it is Dorothy's thinking and I suspect she's probably right.

Colonel Mustard in the Library
Kerry Greenwood and Robert Gott have both written books with settings that pre-date sophisticated forensic testing. Robert Gott confessed to having chosen World War II as his setting our of sheer laziness. Police procedurals? Have to learn about it. Legal Thriller? Would have to be up on law. That'd require hard work. Forensics? Too much reserach involved. I don't believe Robert for a minute. But his stated reasoning was as entertaining as his books. If you've read A Good Murder then you'll know that the opening of the book has a dead woman floating in the town's water supply for over a week. Robert grew up in Maryborough in Queensland and said this actually happened. Although they didn't have Australia's most incompetent Shakesperean actor investaging (at least one hopes not).
End of part 1. Part 2 to follow

Review: Trick or Treat

2008-07-17T18:46:00.004+10:00

Author: Kerry Greenwood
ISBN:1741750003
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
2007

Life is going well for Corinna Chapman. Her bakery is going gangbusters. Her apprentice, Jason, has revealed himself to be a talented baker, his muffins in particular are to die for. And her lover, Daniel shows all the signs of being blissfully happy.

When a cut-price bakery opens just down the road, it gives Corrina a few nightmares. She hopes the novelty of the cheap bakery will wear off quickly and people will return to her because of the quality of her goods.

Another fly in her otherwise sweetly perfumed ointment is the sudden appearance on the scene of Georgiana, one of Daniel's ex-girlfriends. Georgiana is tall, slim, blonde and incredibly glamourous. How can Corinna compete.

The inner city always sees its fair share of drug overdoses and attendant odd behaviour, but there is something that is sending people mad and causing deaths. Corinna is shocked to find her bakery is one of the suspects in the source of the drug.

TRICK OR TREAT is the third in the Corinna Chapman series and my first meeting with her. I liked Corinna enormously. Hers was a world I want to inhabit. Inner city living in a beautiful old building with what appears to be affordable costs with a group of lovely people. Lots of wonderful food and fine wine. I want that life!!! It's probably just as well I don't have it. I'd be the size of a house rather than the commodious garden shed that I am now.

There were a couple of tiny things that didn't quite work for me. The presence of cats in the bakery being one. My son is a baker and there's no way they'd be allowed to trade with felines on the premises. And the sheer hard physical labour involved in the job is glossed over. But that's understandable. Trick or Treat is as much a fantasy as it is a crime fiction. It is an idealised life. In that respect TRICK OR TREAT reminded me of The Darling Buds of May with the lavish and loving descriptions of meals eaten. And that was my main problem with the book. While reading these descriptions it was difficult to resist the almost overpowering urge to go and rummage in the fridge for a snack.

TRICK OR TREAT is a real treat, but not one I'd recommend to anyone trying to diet!!

Another one bites the dust & having a "ball"

2008-07-17T13:32:00.002+10:00

Finished another book last night. TRICK OR TREAT by Kerry Greenwood. Will write the review later today.

Horrible cold day here today. One of those gloomy days when the sun doesn't bother to put in an appearance. I'm having toasted muffins with melted cheese and salami for lunch. Just the thing for a cold day.

Last night I watched one of my favourite tv shows. It's called Spicks and Specks and it's a music quiz show. It's hilarious.

Comedian Frank Woodley was guest last night as was the woman who played Little Nell in the Rocky Horror Movie. For reasons which will become apparent in the film clip I'm about to link Frank was in a woman's one piece bathing suit. The result cracked everyone up completely.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-MRk_BKYFI

Lunch, test results and a new movie.

2008-07-15T13:06:00.001+10:00

I went out to lunch with the TAFE crowd again yesterday. Well, perhaps crowd is overstating it a bit. There were just 3 of us. One is farm-sitting and no one had his number, another was sick with the lurgi and a third couldn't come because she was home alone and had forgotten the security code for the house alarm. Now that's the sort of thing that happens to me. Very reassuring to know I'm not the only one.

Shared a pizza with Kelly. Delish. One of those thin, crispy crusts that, when done properly are wonderful (not like the franchise chains) with a chicken, brie and spinach topping.

When I got home I found an email waiting to tell me I had passed the test for the module about using catalogue tools. A very pleasant surprise because I really thought I'd tanked it and would have to sit it again.It was the punctuation that caused me the headahces.

Another interesting piece of news. Chris Nyst,author and the writer of the screenplay GETTIN' SQUARE - one of my all time favourite movies and one I don't think has seen the light of day outside Australia is about to release another movie.

This one is called CROOKED BUSINESS. I love the publicity strategy they have used. They showed a preview to Mick Gatto - one of the major players in Melbourne's underworld - and asked him to review it. Since the UNDERBELLY tv series, interest in the Melbourne Gangland is sky-high and as Gatto has given the movie his seal of approval "Sensational: Underbelly with a sense of humour", then hopefully it will have a good audience

I'm not confident that it will make the movie screens here in Launeston any time soon. The disappointment is that it is scheuled for theatre release just 4 days after I return from Melbourne where I would have had a strong chance of seeing it. I'll just have to wait.. and wait.. and wait I guess.

Open File by Peter Corris

2008-07-14T15:57:00.002+10:00

Allen & Unwin
ISBN:9781741754179
2008
205 Pages

Cliff Hardy is cleaning out his office after losing his Private Investigator's licence. He comes across a folder with the paperwork for a missing person's case going back to 1988, Australia's Bi-centennial year.

OPEN FILE is a look back at how Cliff did his job twenty years ago. It is remarkable to note just how much technology has changed our lives in the twenty years since that landmark year in Australia's history. It was an era before the common use of mobile phones - when you could still find a public phone booth and put a coin in the slot. There was no internet to use as a reference to find people and information. These things have become so much a part of our daily lives that we forget what life was like before we had them.

Peter Corris' writing style is to the point. He gets straight to the story and doesn't waste words. He also manages to evoke a very strong sense of Sydney. Corris knows these streets, he's had a beer at the pubs and a cup of coffee at the coffee shops. There is a reason why Corris is referred to as the "godfather of Australian crime fiction" and if you are wondering why, then one of his Cliff Hardy books will answer the question.

Review: BYE BYE BABY by Lauren Crow

2008-07-11T18:10:00.001+10:00

Publisher:Harper Collins

ISBN:0732284457

Pages:506

Price:$32.95

Rating:6

Thirty years ago there was a victim. A victim of unbearably cruel actions who never saw justice. Now there's a serial killer on the loose.

DCI Jack Hawksworth doesn't know any of this when he is assigned the case. Jack is young for his rank and good-looking which makes him interesting to the media. He's also the subject of considerable interest and speculation amongst his female colleagues which doesn't help.

As if that's not enough, there's an officer in the "Ghost Squad" who seems intent on re-opening an old complaint against him.

Review:

BYE BYE BABY is a very thick book. At just over 500 pages, perhaps too thick.

The basic plot is pretty good, but there seems to be just a little too much window dressing. Jack is attractive to women, his past problems demonstrate that. His deputy, DI Kate Carter has a crush on him and is extremely jealous of attention he pays to any other female, despite the fact she is engaged to be married. I didn't like this particular plot thread, I felt it detracted from the story and made a character central to the book unlikeable when she didn't need to be. And perhaps its a sign of the author's inexperience with the crime fiction genre that many plot developments are telegraphed to the reader long before the police discover the clues. At times I felt like shouting at them not to be so dopey.

That aside, BYE BYE BABY differs from many books dealing with serial killers. There are shades of grey in this book which are missing from most other books with a similar theme.

Lauren Crow is a nom de plume for Fantasy author Fiona Macintosh who is making her first foray into crime fiction.

Musings on Doorstops.

2008-07-11T11:18:00.003+10:00

What is is with authors these days that they seem to feel the need to write mighty tomes that you need a system of pulleys to read in bed without causing yourself injury?

Remember when a book that was more than 350 pages was considered thick? When the average was around 250 pages?

I've just finished reading a doorstop. It's was over 500 pages long. It could have been less than 400 pages and not really suffered. Sometimes it feels as if the author has thrown a bit of everything (including the kitchen sink) in effort to be worthy of the price the reader has to pay for the book. Sometimes more isn't more.

Even established writers who have developed a loyal following seem to be producing thicker and thicker books these days. Admittedly sometimes I don't mind: Reginald Hill recently wrote a 500 page plus book and I devoured every word, but he's rather exceptional.

Fortunately for me my next choice is just over 200 pages. Peter Corris' OPEN FILE. Not a spare word in sight. Every one of them used to tell the story and advance the plot.
What bliss.

So why authors writing longer books these days? Any and all theories welcome.

Another day another lunch.

2008-07-08T14:57:00.002+10:00

Well, 2 lunches actually. Trip into town yesterday to have lunch with my fellow TAFE students (semester break at the moment). Local food hall. Won't go there again in a hurry. Walked bravely past the burger and steak sandwich place and went to the place that has heathly looking food. Chose a piece of pumpkin, spinach and feta quiche. It looked ok, but the pumpkin had almost no taste and the outside of it was overcooked. One of the others had a spinach and feta muffin and said it tasted as though it had been through the dishwasher.

Oh the point of all this is I ended up calling into my favourite book shop and buying THE BLOOD DETECTIVE by Dan Waddell, who is one of thre minds behind the tv series "Who Do You Think You Are?". That wasn't what swayed me in this impluse by, it was the positive comments on the cover by Mark Billingham and Reginald Hill.

Went walking with my walking group today. The Wobbly Women Walkers. Ended up having nice lunch at the local Museum coffee shop. No books acquired. A small victory there, not that there was anything to buy but still... I stayed away from all things books.

Not much else has been going on around here. The photo with the dogs is proving an attaction as they look so unbearably cute. Looks are deceiving though and right now Jirrah is outside with her battered frisby with lots of mud on her legs. At least it's stopped raining.

Still sloggon on with Bye Bye Baby and enjoying it more and more. I did promise myself a long session of reading it this afternoon, but the time is just slipping away......

Hawaii, here I come!!

2008-07-06T15:28:00.003+10:00

I nearly forgot. After several months of prevarication and faffing about, I finally bit the bullet on my guilt and booked a flight to Hawaii!!

I'm going to Left Coast Crime in Hawaii in March next year!! The guilt comes from the fact that for health and stress reasons I gave up my job and enrolled in a full time course at TAFE. At the end of 2 years I'll be a qualified library technician. But because I've stopped working we're now down to one fairly meagre income. At least I had the airfare saved before I stopped working.

On the upside and the reason I finally booked my flights was that I found a site that offered student discounts on the flights I wanted - and with QANTAS. I save about $200 all up. Which aint bad. No more procrastinating. I'm probably not going to get a better deal and fuel prices are only going to continue to rise.

Quiet, cold Sunday.

2008-07-06T14:37:00.003+10:00

The weather here continues to be mostly awful. We're getting our fair share of frosty mornings, the trouble is that the one thing that makes those frosty starts bearable is missing. Most days when it starts out this cold, the sun is out and we end up with a beautiful sunny but cold winter day. Lately though, soon after the frost, cloud has descended and the rest of the day is spend under dreary, grey skies which means the place doesn't warm up at all. Even the wood heater going doesn't seem to take much of the edge off the cold at the moment.

Reading-wise, not much to report. Making progress with Bye, Bye Baby by Lauren Crow. It's a doorstop of a book at just over 500 pages and perhaps could have done with a little paring down.

My aim to read all the Ned Kelly nominee long-list before the awards in late August is starting to look a bit shaky. I do hope not too many of the nominated books are as fat as this one.

Mind you, after a rocky start - I really did think I was going to struggle with holding my interest, it's starting to pick up, although I could live without the romance elements. If I wanted to read romance I'd read romance books. But that's my quirk.

Will anyone read my ramblings apart from me I wonder?

Well, here I am.

2008-06-30T16:42:00.000+10:00

At last, just what the entire world has been waiting for. My very own blog.
To be honest, I've never thought that anyone other than me would have any interest in my thoughts and ramblings so I've never bothered before. But I have to set up a blog as part of my TAFE course so here we are.

I have no idea what this blog is going to contain as I haven't been given a topic yet, so we shall see. If I had my way I'd choose a subject like Australian crime writers.

NOTE TO SELF: For goodness sake don't forget to bookmark this page otherwise you'll forget where it is!