Heroes of Olympus: The Lost Hero, by Rick Riordan
Rick Riordan’s five Percy Jackson novels were all phenomenally successful tales of adventure that captivated readers through retelling and modernised reimagining of the Greek myths. Although the Percy Jackson cycle seemed to have been wrapped up nicely, fans were hoping that Riordan would eventually return to the Greeks and the world of the demigods [after having branched out into Egyptian mythology with The Kane Chronicles] and he has now done so in excellent style with The Lost Hero.
Set a few months after the events of The Last Olympian, The Lost Hero begins during a Wilderness School [a sort of educational Last Chance Saloon] fieldtrip to the Grand Canyon. Jason wakes up on the school bus with no memory of why he is there nor, more troublingly, of who he actually is. It’s all particularly strange since everyone else seems convinced that they know him and so Jason has to adapt to apparently having a girlfriend named Piper, a best friend named Leo Valdez and even a disapproving teacher in the form of Coach Gleeson Hedge. Things only get stranger for Jason as the school party are attacked by a group of storm spirits, Coach Hedge is revealed to be a satyr who talks tougher than he fights, and Jason discovers that he’s a pretty nifty swordsman who happens to be able to fly. My school trips were never this exciting.
Pereira Maintains by Antonio Tabucchi
This is the story of a newspaper editor, Dr Pereira, who slowly emerges into consciousness from his life as a semi reclusive who has been living in the past. Set in Portugal in 1938 during the rise of Fascism in Europe and the Civil War in Spain, Pereira Maintains is a third person testimonial, probably a statement from someone in authority, on the series of events in Dr Pereira’s life that lead to his awakening.
Dr Pereira is a widower who spent 30 years as a crime journalist before his present position as editor of the culture page of a minor Lisbon newspaper. He is well educated, loves good literature and unusually given his history in journalism, totally apolitical. Whilst sounding like quite a drab and sad character, the author successfully brings him to life and gives him depth with descriptions of his chats to his dead wife’s photograph, his rather odd eating habits and his constant worries about his heart condition. The author also adds amusing tales such as one where he describes Pereira’s impulse to go for a swim in the sea which involved him squeezing his paunch into an old-fashioned one-piece bathing costume! Read more
Cloak of Dreams: Chinese Fairy Tales, by Bela Belazs, translated by Jack Zipes
At the bottom of the cover is written the key to this anthology, “oddly modern fairy tales”. Jack Zipes, magical fairy godfather to all academic folklorists, has translated these tales into English and written an accompanying foreword for those not familiar with Bela Balazs (probably most of us). Balazs, born Herbert Bauer, was a playwright, poet, and early filmmaker in the first half of the 20th century who worked in Eastern Europe. He had always had an affinity for fairy tales, which can be seen in his best-known works, Bluebeard’s Castle and The Blue Light, but it was at the behest of an illustrator, Mariette Lydis, that we can see how far his interests stretched and what a talented writer he was. Lydis was looking for a writer to compose stories to compliment her already completed drawings and Balazs held the winning ticket.
He banged out these sixteen tales in three weeks to get them to the publisher on time, which makes them all the more remarkable. The stories are imaginative, silly, profound, and fit perfectly with the illustrations they have been built on. They show a deep understanding of Eastern philosophy, but do seem to be viewed from a Western vantage point. Many of the stories refuse to fit into the Western model, as lined out by Propp with his fairy tale functions, such as the story of a man who is killed by his ancestors who want him to fulfill their aspirations. Or the two deaf-mute beggars who find enough money to go to an opium den and end up switching bodies, which no one knows but them. There isn’t a moral or a lesson worn boldly by the tale on its sleeve; Balazs slipped the message of his tale into the subtext, with wit and modern sensibilities that are unusual in a fairy tale.
Here Comes the Night, by Alan Gillis
As with his previous collection, the TS Eliot Prize shortlisted Hawks and Doves, the poems in this new work make direct use of contemporary events whilst also returning to the perennial themes of verse: love, death and beauty. Where Hawks and Doves drew on the language and events of, amongst many other sources, the war on terror and neo-con manoeuvrings, the forebodingly-titled Here Comes the Night turns to the aftermath of the economic crisis. The opening of the first poem deploys familiar web-words, ‘Google’, ‘MySpace, ‘blog’, ‘tweet’ to create an awkward tension in which the reader frets over the appropriateness of such transient brand-deployment, before the verse itself comments ironically on this in the final stanza: “She asks will all this last forever / against the dun of Woolworth’s door.” Another poem, ‘The Debt Collector’, title aside, comments only metaphorically on financial difficulties; instead Alan Gillis builds a moving piece of lyric poetry on the carpe diem theme: “No matter how ripe the fruit in the bowl, / erotic the violets, erratic the stars, / at night empty rooms gather you in their claws.”, concluding “So make the most of your loan”.
It is a truism that poets are more concerned with individual words than writers in almost any other genre, so to point out the lexical range on show in this collection may seem superfluous, yet the sheer delight in diversity is worth noting. Alan Gillis demonstrates throughout his fascination with English’s rich variety, deploying words which, while not ostentatiously learned, are certainly unlikely to be familiar: ‘pudgers’, ‘scuppled’, ‘huzz’, rizarred’ ‘clunter’. Yet, despite their strangeness, it is rarely necessary to reach for the dictionary, such words are rich in suggestive sounds and have obvious linguistic brethren, and their deployment makes their general meaning easily deducible. It is not just unusual words that Gillis shows a love of, there are also regular incantations of proper-nouns, such as ‘Hugo Boss’, ‘Dolce & Gabbana’, ‘Mercedes’, ‘Special Brew’, and at the other end of the spectrum, flora: ‘verbena’, ‘hyacinth, rose, japonica’, ‘windlebrooke and witch-hazel’. This then is a poetry of specifics.
There is extraordinary range on show in Here Comes the Night, in terms of language, subject, form and style. Comic poems mix with tender ones, long-lined free-verse is followed by a sonnet-sequence, some poems feel highly personal, while others, such as the ballad ‘In the Shadow of the Mournes’ are clearly imagined. At times Gillis’ verse can be almost vicious: “You’re a smoker’s lungs. You’re beaten / meat: cleavered, hung. You’re gelatinous / fat on a cold kebab.”, yet even here his poet’s ear remains in evidence, with the assonance and internal rhyme lending beauty to the brutality. His technical mastery at running the rhythm of his sentences against the line breaks is on show throughout, for example in the opening of ‘On a Cold Evening in Edinburgh’:
Night falls, as night will,
out of nowhere and sprawls
black in the thick folds
and pooled gloom
of itself, and crawls
into every knock and cranny
This sentence continues for another stanza-and-a-half, the enjambment giving the verse a tumbling quality that begs to be read out loud. It is this quality of his poetry, the sensitivity to interlocking sound-effects and an exquisite ear for language, that provides the key theme of this collection. Alan Gillis is still far from well-known, but with a collection as strong as Here Comes the Night one would hope that his name will start receiving mention alongside his more lauded contemporaries.
A Lily Of The Field, by John Lawton
Writers of ongoing crime stories develop styles in different ways as their series unfold. Most don’t stray far from the original formula and simply bash out episodes of entertainment. Nothing whatsoever wrong with that as either an aspiration or a way to make a living. Honest artisanship – very underrated.
Others develop too solipsistically far. James Ellroy and David Peace have revolted so far into style and become irretrievably lost up their respective fundaments. Others evolve in less showy but still meaningful ways. Jo Nesbo has built a bigger world to inhabit and explore, while Boris Akunin sees style as a literary game to keep himself and his readers amused.
Others don’t develop, so much develop as polish, essentially writing the same story over and over (and over) again. Alan Furst is the creator of many such Faberge eggs.
And then there is John Lawton, who has developed a new style because his storytelling demands it. Writers like Lawton seem to evolve naturally, getting leaner and more precise with each book, until they wake up one day having cracked this writing lark.
Ancient Worlds: The Search for the Origins of Western Civilization, by Richard Miles
As you might expect, Richard Miles’ book covers the same ground as the BBC television series it accompanies: it is a look at the first few millennia of human civilisation from Mesopotamia to the fall of the Roman Empire. His stated aim is to show the similarities between past civilisations and ourselves, to draw out the origins of the civilisation we are living in now. He presents a picture of civilisations surviving almost in spite of themselves as the majority of human beings seem to have instinctively clumped together, choosing to ‘live among strangers’, despite the obvious problems this arrangement creates. The history of civilisation becomes a history of how we have tried in different ways to accommodate this instinct.
Miles has a good eye for personalities, and for the eccentricities of different civilisations. The book is very close to the narrative of the T.V. series, so watchers of the latter might find it a bit over-familiar. It makes for a very engaging, absorbing read, but following the T.V. script so closely leaves you short of detail. For example, Miles states that the Phonecians invented the alphabet; the reality is a little more complicated. The earliest evidence of the alphabet is found in what is now Lebanon, and once was part of the Phonecian Empire, but at the time the earliest known users of this brilliant new system were Semitic slaves of the Egyptians, using their kind of writing inside a mine. The Phonecian civilisation that developed out of this area took the alphabet and spread it through its trading networks across the Mediterranean world where, as Miles relates, it was taken up by the Greeks and therefore came to us.
A second look at Little Gods, by Anna Richards
Little Gods is the first novel written by the young English writer Anna Richards. It follows approximately the first thirty years of Jean’s life, from an English seaside town in the Second World War, to living in the American desert on the outskirts of 1950s burgeoning Hollywood. However, Jean is no average person; she is built on a significantly larger scale than most, and her extraordinary physicality is a key ingredient to this book.
Born into a small loveless family with a verbally abusive and neglectful mother, it seems early on that there is little hope for Jean, who lives an intensely lonely existence. Reading the one-liners fired from Wisteria, Jean’s awful mother, is an unpleasant experience because of the cruelty, but it drew me in right from the start. A sour taste and empty hole is left following Wisteria’s death when Jean is a teenager, but it re-focuses the reader on the next significant character, Gloria, who is Jean’s only friend. The beautiful daughter of the town’s sweet shop owner, Gloria seems to be everything that Jean is not, so in one way the unlikely friendship is difficult to believe. However, Gloria’s background of previously unsuccessful friendships reveals a desire to rescue the needy and dominate the weak, therefore solidifying the basis of her and Jean. Gloria remains a significant and compelling character throughout the book, and the relationship between the two young women is touching. Read more
Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku
Michio Kaku is a wonderful character and one of my science heroes. His latest book delves into the very edge of our knowledge and what might be in centuries time.
Ordered into classes of impossibility, the list of subjects in Physics of the Impossible make clear Michio Kaku’s and for that matter my TV and film viewing of the last three decades. Star Trek features heavily as do most Philip K Dick derived films. The aim is to say what is flat out impossible, in that it breaks known and almost definitely unbreakable laws of physics, versus something that is impossible to our technology but in the future may well be possible. So we learn, surprisingly that invisibility and teleportation are not actually impossible. Tractor beams in a small way have already been made possible but Perpetual Motion is probably out of reach forever.
Kaku talks a lot about energy use and society, and many of his timescales are based not on time but on energy use. This area I found interesting and enlightening. A society’s technological complexity is based around its energy use. So our hunter gatherer ancestors used only the energy exerted by their own muscles. Later they learnt to harness fire, then later still horse power, wind and water in the form of mills. Now we use energy based on fossil fuels subsidised with a little nuclear and an even smaller fraction of renewable. Our planet-wide energy index is based upon the energy that is used by all of us. Many of the feats as described by Kaku, say invisibility, might require several times more energy than the whole of our energy index. Some alien space hopping race might routinely use this amount too, and will have found some new energy source. Fossil fuels, Kaku says, are not only running out fast but are limiting. Therefore even though time travel is theoretically possible, we lack not only the technology but the energy to make it happen – when Kaku says it is possible he puts a timescale of 200 years of continued scientific breakthroughs.
Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
This novel is never constrained by its title-theme. In fact, it takes a while for the theme to even emerge. Slowly the realisation dawns that freedom is something that binds and stifles people rather than something simple and easily attained. The characters are so very free in their middle class, educated American suburbia that they cannot move or grow or make decisions.
This reversal of common sense helps to make the novel intriguing at every turn. Although it is predominantly a character-driven tale it also encounters politics and environmentalism as its characters become involved in these things. Here again there is not a simple engagement with one point of view. Like the novel, the characters behave in the opposite of common sense, destroying the environment to try and sustain it in the long term. This could seem ridiculous but Franzen handles it in a way that reveals the complexities of modern environmentalism and the difficulties of knowing what is right. Read more
The Girl With Glass Feet, by Ali Shaw
The Girl With Glass Feet by Ali Shaw has an excellent title, based on a striking mental image. However, it is not the story of the eponymous girl, Ida, who has travelled back to St. Hauda’s Land, the island where she first heard about the spreading glass affliction which had taken her feet. This book is the story of Midas, a boy who grew up on St. Hauda’s Land, and while he tries to help her stop the spread of the glass, it is how Ida transforms him from an awkward photographer into a complete, living person. Or rather, it is the story of his transformation as compared to failed transformations of all the men around him.
All of the men in this story are broken and solitary because of their lack of a woman, whether of their accord or hers. It is only by being tied, usually romantically, with these ‘livewire ladies’, all of whom seem warm and full of life, that these stiff, strange men can learn to relax and take part in life. The man most on-track and normal has lost his wife, but has a sage-like seven-year-old daughter who behaves more like a normal adult than any of the men in the book. This juxtaposition appears most obviously in Ida and Midas, she more alive than he, despite her cold, inanimate feet and the terminal spread of glass. Read more
A Russian Novel, by Emmanuel Carrère
A Russian Novel is a tricksy little number. A quick perusal of the cover is enough to give the impression that, especially as it weighs in at a svelt 250 pages, this is a book that you could probably throw quite a lot further than you ought to trust. First up, as the blurb reveals, this isn’t a novel in the conventional sense. It’s a memoir, ‘weaving fact and fiction, travelogue and an erotically charged game of cat-and-mouse’, in which the noted French author and film director Emmanuel Carrère ‘builds fictions from his own life, inflicting his plots on lovers and family on the way’.
This places the reader on unsteady ground – is it meant to be true or isn’t it? – not least because the overriding impression throughout A Russian Novel is that it’s all a bit contrived. Throughout, the meta-radar of the long-suffering reader of postmodern fiction will be on red alert. In a Pirandellian gesture, the book tells the story of Carrère the author/character in search of a plot. Ostensibly this search takes the form of a series of trips to make a documentary film about life in the bleak Siberian town of Kotelnich. However, this is really a smokescreen from behind which Carrère delves into his past – and endures the tribulations of his present – as he searches within his own experiences for the real story that he wishes to tell. That search, ironically enough, becomes the plot of A Russian Novel.
Cheri, by Colette
Set in the bourgeois Belle Époque era of Paris, Cheri, an obscenely beautiful male demimonde is tutored in matters of l’amore by the beautiful but aging courtesan Lea. She has made a fine & lucrative career from being a lover, and he is pompously nonchalant as her beautiful spoiled fop.
For 6 years they indulge in a languorous affair while Lea grooms the shallow and immature youth. Lea is a generous lover, a surrogate mother, a best friend, a refuge, and Cheri her pupil, her pet, the son she never had; yet despite being so much to one another they never concede any depth of feeling for one another, the relationship being at once intensely symbiotic yet frivolous and casual. So when Cheri finally completes his tutelage and marries a patient young bride it comes as a shock to them both to find themselves rocked by the loss and confused by feelings of anguish and regret. Read more
Queer, by William S. Burroughs
At its heart, William Burroughs’ Queer is a tale about the desperation and despair of unrequited love. It begins where Junky left off, with Burroughs’ literary alter ego William Lee skulking around Mexico City in the company of American ex-pats, barflies and dilettante students. Having drastically cut back on the junk, Lee is no longer insulated from his true feelings and becomes obsessed with sex and relationships, eventually fixating his suffocating attention on a young American named Eugene Allerton. Lee pursues Allerton through the bars and backwaters of Mexico City, attempting to enrapture him with a serious of booze-fuelled, increasingly manic sermons on life and truth. Allerton ultimately gives in to Lee’s pursuit and becomes his lover but, without the security provided by a mind clouded by junk, Lee cannot ignore the disinterest and even contempt that Allerton actually feels for him. In a bid to fight off the reality of the situation, Lee takes his reluctant lover to Ecuador on a pilgrimage in search of the legendary hallucinogenic drug Yage.
In his introduction to the 25th anniversary edition, Oliver Harris provides a neat overview of Burroughs oeuvre and of Queer’s place within it. He remarks that, since there are no “straight” books in William Burroughs’ oeuvre – any one of them might be called Queer – his second novel is perversely typical and fulfils the meaning of the title as noun (homosexual – used pejoratively or with pride), adjective (peculiar, false, dubious) and verb (to thwart, unnerve, unsettle). Queer is certainly at times a perplexing novel, no doubt due in no small part to its being the most obviously personal of all Burroughs’ works. While Junky was also a heavily autobiographical novel, both Burroughs the writer and the substitute that he employs in the story were at the height of their narcotics addictions. They were consumed with thoughts of junk and so had very little personality to share. However, in common with the William Lee character, Burroughs was making only limited use of drugs at the time of Queer and so couldn’t hide from his own true feelings and conflicts. His struggle with his own homosexuality is reflected in the thoughts and actions of Lee and so, given the importance of “queerness” in his life at that time, it is no surprise that the title Queer was reserved and best-suited to this second novel.
Empire of Silver (Conqueror 4) by Conn Iggulden
The fourth book in the Conqueror series was always going to be an interesting proposition, given Genghis himself died in the closing chapter of the previous book. Iggulden was also not in the position to leap immediately to the next point in history that people are more aware of, as Kublai was the Great Khan’s grandson so has time to wait yet before he puts his own mark on the Mongol Empire (though no doubt he will appear later in the series).
Given this context I approached Empire of Silver with some trepidation. It was the strength of Genghis’ character that had so successfully pushed the rest of the series forward, pervading every page with his presence and his influence over those around him. Fortunately the generation of Mongol leaders that are the focus of the story go some way to fill the void created by the death of such a powerful figure (doubtless much as they did in life). They are also joined on the page by the brothers and generals of Genghis who remain very much central to the unfolding tale.
The Spirit Eater, by Rachel Aaron
This review will contain some spoilers of the first book in this series, The Spirit Thief. If you haven’t had the chance yet, and don’t want any of the wonderfully entertaining surprises ruined, consider this a wholehearted recommendation for the entire series; the books are fun and well-plotted; the hero of the hour swans through life with casual aplomb, and his team supports the thief in his quest to become the greatest-thief-the-world-has-ever-seen without ever letting him get too impressed with himself. Eli Monpress is the sort of hero whose adventures, both large and small, wreak havoc to the world around him, and this continues on in the third book, The Spirit Eater, with the added bonus of learning more about the mysterious Nico and the spirit and demon filled world that Rachel Aaron has created for her characters.
We begin in the aftermath of a terrible battle. The League of Storms, and the Shaper wizards, have sacrificed untold Spirits and men in an effort to defeat the Daughter of the Dead Mountain, a girl whose mere presence in the world is a terrible danger and frightening indication of the distraction that the Shepherdess has allowed into her realm. For all of those lost and the wreckage of the battle around her, the Daughter still lives, weakened but undefeated, found by the greatest living swordsman, unable to access her past.
This is where we begin, then, with Josef giving Nico the chance she needs to learn how to fight for her soul. Battered, bleeding, and quickly forgetting how she had fallen onto the mountain, Nico struggles to find her place in the team, especially after the events in Gaol saw her demonseed powers locked away from her control and a demon’s voice in her head begins to wear away her hard won independence. It is interesting to see behind the still mask that Nico wore in the first books in the series to the struggles that she goes through to contain her confusion and fear. Read more
The Expelled, etc., by Samuel Beckett
In 1946, half-way through the story that was to become ‘The End’, Beckett stopped writing in English and started writing in French. From then on Beckett wrote almost exclusively in his adopted tongue, translating into English initially in partnership with other translators but eventually undertaking the process on his own. This change of language is as convenient point as any to mark the beginning of his prolific and significant middle-period, during which he produced the works by which he is most widely known: ‘The Trilogy’ (Molly, Mallone Dies, The Unnamable) and Waiting For Godot.
‘The End’ then, is in many ways also a beginning, heralding as it does a new phase in Beckett’s writing in which he found the economical and direct voice for which he is so rightly remembered. Collected along with ‘The Expelled’, ‘The Calmative’ and ‘First Love’ these pieces would be worth reading for literary-historical interest alone, but they also more than pass muster when judged on their own considerable merits.
The Thick of It: The Missing DoSAC Files, by Armando Iannucci et al
Armando Iannucci’s deadpan political satire The Thick of It is, without a doubt, the 21st century’s answer to Jonathan Lynn and Antony Jay’s wonderful Yes, Minister, and like that immortal series it has now spawned a book. The good news is that just like the Yes, Minister diaries, which adapted the scripts and introduced elements of new material, this is not some lazy cash-in but a lovingly crafted, beautifully designed and very cleverly written companion piece to the last days of the government that employs the formidable spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker.
Purporting to be a folder belonging to Tucker which has been lost on the train, this is a dossier of interviews, e-mails, transcripts, letters and other ephemera, liberally peppered with his trademark profanity. As a character, Malcolm Tucker elevates swearing to a new level, and this is not a book for the faint of heart:
Are focus groups helpful? In a word: absolutelyfuckingnot. Fuck no. The problem is that focus groups are made up of members of the public and are therefore intrinsically unreliable / lop-sided / racist / mental. They are also ‘run’ by marketing ‘people’ for ‘the purposes of qualitative research’. In other words it’s the mad leading the mad creating a feedback loop of fizzing shit.
Soulless (Parasol Protectorate), by Gail Carriger
Currently, vampires seem to be synonymous with Twilight, which will polarize readers before they’ve even picked up the first book of Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate. But, it shouldn’t. Soulless details the adventures of Miss Alexia Tarabotti, who classifies herself as a spinster due to a triple-whammy of negativity: her age, her Italian heritage, and the fact that she was born soulless. Miss Tarabotti lives in an alternative universe, one where werewolves and vampires have been integrated into British society. As a preternatural, without a soul, Miss Tarabotti finds herself the diametric opposite of the supernatural werewolves, ghosts, and vampires. This leads her to become a target of interest from multiple parties for a variety of reasons.
The book moves along at a licketty-split pace, the very first scene beginning into Miss Tarabotti killing a vampire who tries to eat her at a party, which alerts our protagonist to the mystery out there, and sets the whole plot into motion. Each scene and event is leanly designed to move the plot forward—until the bodice-ripper parts set in. They are quite chaste scenes overall. It is steampunk Victorian London after all. There’s nothing wrong with the occasional glut of four pages of kissing and Miss Tarabotti fumbling at clothes with a werewolf, except for the way that it all breaks up the momentum of the story, which really is one of its strongest points. I wanted to know what happens, not about the impropriety of making out with a werewolf. Read more
A second look at Tell-All, by Chuck Palahniuk
The first thing that is striking thing about Chuck Palahniuk’s new novel Tell-All is how slender it is. To be fair to Palahniuk, he has managed to produce a new book almost every year for about the last decade, and while that’s no mean feat for a writer, reading Palahniuk always leaves me wanting to read more.
Tell-All is a simple story of Old Hollywood and the life of Katherine Kenton, a cross between Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis, as told through the eyes of Hazie, her personal assistant and ‘surrogate spine’. Kenton falls for Webster Carlton Westward III, a handsome younger man who comes to try for her affections. Seeing her whole life and livelihood under threat, Hazie, creates a fake manuscript that she passes off as the scurrilous hagiography Westward intends to publish after killing her. She then has to be seen to work with her employer to thwart Westward’s diabolical schemes, which in turn drives a wedge between Katherine and Webster, and brings Hazie closer to her employer. This in turn forces Hazie to forge ever-more elaborate plans for Kenton’s demise, which she has to pass off as Westward’s blueprint for fame. Read more
The Batman Vault: a Museum In a Book
Though the ‘Batman’ character has seen a rejuvenation in popularity in the last few years due to Christopher Nolen’s dark and broody re-imagining of the series in film, the franchise in its original comic book form has been going on strong for a very long time, in fact a lot longer than a lot of the movie-goers probably know. From his original ‘Detective Comics’ appearance in 1939 to the recent ‘Batman RIP’ chapters, the comic book version of the winged hero has been through countless storylines, villains and creators and The Batman Vault succeeds in providing just about as much insight into the evolution of the series as can fit in a book of this size.
Rather than attempt to document every major storyline in the history of the character, the book wisely focuses instead on the creation of the series and how these heroes and villains came to be. Many of these tales are accompanied by very rare finds such as a copy of Bill Finger’s original script for Batman #31 and original concept art for the characters. Later on the narrative focuses on the ventures into other media such as the Adam West TV series and the recent movies which all provide a very interesting insight into the development of the character and also the various changes of tone that the series has undergone in it’s various forms over the years. Read more
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Simon Kernick
Simon Kernick is one of Britain’s most exciting new thriller writers. He arrived on the crime writing scene with his highly acclaimed debut novel The Business of Dying, the story of a corrupt cop moonlighting as a hitman. However, Simon’s big breakthrough came with his novel Relentless which was selected by Richard and Judy for [...]
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Five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one of the big film releases of 2011, and to celebrate its release on DVD we have five copies of John le Carré’s Smiley vs Karla Trilogy to be won – consisting of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy and Smiley’s People.
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