The River of Shadows, by Robert V.S. Redick
River of Shadows is the third volume in Robert Redick’s planned trilogy, after The Red Wolf Conspiracy and The Rats and The Ruling Sea – but, as other writers have discovered, it can be difficult to wrestle a long story arc in to submission, and the series will now conclude with a fourth volume. Another trilogy bites the dust, but be that as it may, how does River of Shadows stack up?
Pretty well, as it happens. Redick’s brand of fantasy is still very enjoyable – characterisation is a strong point, with Felthrup, the sentient rat, being a particular high point, not to mention the deranged captain of the Chathrand, Nilus Rose, haunted by ghosts only he can see, and the ultimate man of duty, Hercol Stannapeth. Redick writes well too, and the storyline flows seamlessly on from the previous volumes, suggesting a plot that’s been planned in meticulous detail (though a precis of the previous book is missing, and would not be unwelcome).
The Terror of Living, by Urban Waite
Follow the story of Hunt, an ex-convict of 20 years with troubles that have been nurtured by his loving wife and a life caring for magnificent horses. But caring for such sturdy beasts costs money; the amount of money not always easy to find. To gain enough money quickly involves risks.
Meet Drake, the local sheriff whose father was also a sheriff until imprisoned after he got caught up in drug smuggling. Drake’s out on a mission to stop the drug smuggling practice in the mountains and somehow make up for his father’s indiscretions; unwittingly trying to purge himself of the hollow, shameful feelings he carries around as a result. He’s onto Hunt, but his initial failed stake out leads to a chain of enthralling events as the drug dealers want what’s theirs…
I’ve no doubt that Waite will become a bestselling author. His debut novel is fast, rich in suspense, and enjoyably gruesome as it follows the fall out of a drugs run gone bad. Whilst some good people do bad things, there are bad people who relish doing bad things. This book contains both types of characters, giving it a meaty, textured story with plenty of bite. Dive in and enjoy.
Britain’s War Machine, by David Edgerton
Edgerton is a man on a mission. He has spent the last 20 years in academia trying to dispel some of the myths that have cropped up about the Second World War and grown over the last 60 years.
The myth: That we Brits have fixated on the idea of a lone island who against all odds fought the might of the Axis powers, bankrupting itself in the process. That we played a minor part in the war effort and were rescued economically and militarily by the USA and to a lesser extent Russia – they fed us, created better equipment and gave us the knowledge to win. The whole of the above epitomised by Churchill’s bulldog “We Shall Never Surrender” speech.
Edgerton angrily dispels this myth. Britain out produced Germany many times over in terms of tanks, bombs and materiel. It out-invented and created superior machines. It’s Navy at the beginning of the war was superior to all. The USA’s ship building started from pretty much scratch using British expertise and British blueprints. Britain had ample wealth to take on Germany and from the beginning took the long-game approach. Most importantly throughout the war Britain was never alone – its Empire and trading partners were there to keep imports and exports more or less at pre-war levels, even if the locations and types of imports changed (Wood and Bacon from the USA rather than Scandinavia, Meat from South America rather than Europe).
Blitz, by Ken Bruen
First appearing in 2002, Blitz is back, re-released by Transworld to coincide with the film adaptation hitting the nation’s cinemas. Fortunately for Transworld and author Ken Bruen, the nine years since it first arrived on the scene have done nothing to erode Blitz’s power or originality.
It follows, or perhaps more appropriately, madly dashes after, an investigation into a London cop killer, a sociopathic maniac named Weiss, AKA “Blitz.” While something of an ensemble piece, the leading character is DS Tom Brant, himself no stranger to sociopathy or rule breaking.
Family Values, by Wendy Cope
Despite the fact that the Modernist movement in literature is over 100 years old, there are still those who believe that the free-verse style which came to define it is the standard mode of contemporary poetry; bemoaning the lack of proper rhymes in today’s poetry they yearn for a vague golden-age somewhere in a past. Whilst there are still many writers working in a Modernist style, the predicted end of metre and rhyme has far from materialised: Armitage, Duffy, and Paterson, to name just three highly prominent British poets, are all adept formalists. Wendy Cope, now on her fourth collection, remains as definitely formal as she has always been.
The opening poem of a collection will always carry extra weight as a result of its prominent position and ‘A Christmas Song’, which opens Family Values unashamedly embraces its form and will leave the reader in no doubt about Cope’s approach to poetics. The lines are syntactically end-stopped, the rhymes are full and the rhythm is almost sing-song:
For all the men and women
Whose love affairs went wrong,
Who try their best at merriment
When Christmas comes along,
This plain and direct style is not unusual for Cope, but it in this collection it may be serving the additional purpose of invoking the voice of childhood, for many of these poems look back to that period in Cope’s life. Cope considers a possible explanation for her unadorned writing in a poem concerning her time at boarding school: “…some of the girls decided / That I used too many long words. // I soon learned not to. Look at how I write.”
The light style of the poems belies an often painful core and a subject matter that is anything but light, particularly in the opening suite of poems which detail the narrator’s difficult relationship with her mother: “If Mummy is upset, you must be bad / It’s no good saying sorry. You must pay.” There are many unresolved tensions in these pieces, with Cope only able to “begin / To imagine to forgive her”. However, there are some poems that seem to lack depth, and even the saving-grace of comedy. The triolet ‘Sixty-one’ may tackle a genuine concern, but it is hard to muster much concern or interest: “Sixty-one and on a diet. / Will I end up thin or fat?” At the other end of the scale there are beautiful and thoughtful poems that address the realities of ageing, such as ‘April’ which contrasts an appreciation of natural beauty, with the poignant refrain: “I want to stay in this lovely world forever”.
Family Values is a highly enjoyable collection, combining approachability and formal ease with deeply felt emotion. It is unlikely to challenge the reader, but this never feels like the book’s or the author’s goal so to criticise it for its failure in that area would be churlish. Cope is one of those rare thing: a popular and successful poet. This book will only increase that reputation.
How I Lost the War, by Filippo Bologna
How I Lost the War is the first, prize-winning novel by screenwriter Filippo Bologna. Originally written in Italian, it has been translated for English readers by Howard Curtis. The story centres around a young man named Federico, a descendant of the noble Cremona family. He lives in an idyllic Tuscan village which is famous for its thermal baths. However, the day to day life of the village inhabitants is disrupted with the arrival of Ottone Gattai, a greedy, ruthless businessman who plans to revive the renowned spa.
Federico is against his family’s role in the modernisation of their countryside village so with his girlfriend Lea by his side he decides to take action, to let Gattai know the villagers will not stand for this. It becomes clear that their peaceful protest is not producing the desired results and war breaks out between villagers and spa owners.
The Enterprise of Death, by Jesse Bullington
One of the best experiences of reading a book is recommending it to others, insisting that this plot or that character will really appeal, carefully giving out just enough detail to entice without giving away the pleasure found in discovery. Every so often, though, a book comes along that is so indescribable that all that can be said is “Seriously, read this book”. Jesse Bullington’s The Enterprise of Death is one of those books–nearly indescribable (though I will do my best) and certainly unique; it spans myth, fantasy, war, love, friendship, an inquisition, and, uh, necromancy combined with some extra macabre habits.
See? Difficult to describe. What can be said, though, is that Bullington weaves an impressively vast story, full of characters that repel and fascinate in equal measure, and a plot that seamlessly melds the fighting of the Inquisition with the purpose of art, the search for salvation with brothels, and the importance of friendship with the impermanence of any sort of relationship in a world where violence and struggle are a way of life. Read more
The Redeemed, by M. R. Hall
The Redeemed is the third in M. R. Hall’s Jenny Cooper series. A success to date, Jenny Cooper’s exploits have seen her creator garner much praise, in addition to a nomination for a CWA Dagger in 2009. Hall’s heroine inhabits an oft-overlooked role in crime fiction, that of Coroner.
This is a wise choice on the author’s part. While televised crime fiction has led a generation to mistakenly believe that lab technicians and Crime Scene Investigators also serve as gumshoes, interviewing officers and clerks, the role of Coroner actually does enjoy a broad enough remit for Hall to remain factually accurate while not stunting the scope of Cooper’s investigations. Read more
Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke
In his own introduction to the Letters to a Young Poet, Franz Kappus describes how, in 1902, he was a young man struggling to reconcile his artistic ambitions with his impending military career. After learning from a favourite professor of his at the Military Academy of Vienna that Rainer Maria Rilke had once been a student at the same institution, Kappus wrote to Rilke, enclosing some of his own poems, in the belief that the poet would understand his moral and artistic dilemma. A couple of months later, Rilke wrote back and so began a period of correspondence that lasted some five years. Following the poet’s death in 1929, Kappus published the ten letters he received from Rilke, wisely omitting his own side of the correspondence, as Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of thoughtful advice and kindly inspiration that still resonates more than a century after the letters were originally written.
Rilke’s letters to Kappus provide a marvellous window into the thoughts of one of the most important European poets of the modern age at a time when Rilke was just beginning to develop his signature style and accept that he must continue to write even though his talent was no guarantee of the financial success and respectability that he had been socially conditioned to seek. Although the Letters now speak to a wide audience, they were originally written to Kappus alone and this sense of the individual nature of Rilke’s advice is a great part of the book’s appeal. Perhaps remembering his own struggles with determining the course of his life, Rilke offers powerful advice for Kappus and every aspiring artist:
Go into yourself and test the deeps in which your life takes rise; at its source you will find the answer to the question whether you must create. Accept it, just as it sounds, without inquiring into it. Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist.
Anatomy of Ghosts, Andrew Taylor
An intelligent, layered, historical novel set in beautiful 18th Century Cambridge. Although essentially a crime novel, it takes you on a well crafted journey, with complex characters amongst a lot of smoke and mirrors. The rhythm within which it is written, allows you to enjoy it without losing flow or pace.
It follows the story of a grieving bookseller John Holdsworth, who haunted by his own ghosts after the death of his wife, when hit by hard times is coerced into investigating the circumstances surrounding the influential Lady Oldershaw’s son, Frank. Frank is in Cambridge held in a mental institution against his will because he has suggested that he has seen the ghost of Sylvia, the wife of the head of the Holy Ghost Club. Is it delusion, a hoax or more? The circumstances surrounding the bizarre goings on within the campus begin to unfold. These include the initiation ceremony of the Holy Ghost Club, the death of a virgin and the circumstances surrounding the death of the Sylvia.
Dead End, by Leigh Russell
Dead End is the third book from Middlesex secondary school teacher and crime novelist Leigh Russell. Her first two offerings, Cut Short and Road Closed, were received favourably by critics and audiences alike; Cut Short in particular sold out on more than one occasion, and earned Russell a 2010 CWA Dagger nomination. Despite these lofty achievements, however, this reviewer must confess Dead End is the first of Russell’s works to find its way into his possession.
The heroine of Russell’s work is Geraldine Steel, a DI in a provincial police force in South East England. Steel is disarmingly atypical. In a genre populated by extraordinary characters, Steel has a charming ordinariness which gives her immense credibility. While many of her male counterparts in crime fiction spend their free time wallowing in alcohol and self-destruction, Steel instead wrestles with her personal troubles, goes for coffee with friends and struggles to find a good work/life balance. Her problems will be familiar, and endear her to an audience that does not spend its time immersed in a world of criminality. She is a sensitively and deftly drawn heroine. Read more
Giles Kristian on his love of historical fiction
As part of his current blog tour, Giles Kristian, author of the Raven Trilogy, shares his influences and inspirations in an exclusive article for Bookgeeks.
I have always been drawn to the past. Everywhere I go and in everything I do I am confronted with the past and with an almost overwhelming sense of history. I catch glimpses of it in a thatched roof. I smell it in the smoke of a wood fire. I hear it in the languid sigh of waves on the shore and I touch it when I lay a flat hand on a rock at the fjord’s edge. I get enormously frustrated that I cannot go deeper, that I will never experience the past as it truly was and can only interpret it from a great distance. This is why I love historical fiction. A good historical fiction novel is a time machine, or the closest thing to one.
The other thing I’ve always been drawn to is conflict. To make war is all wrapped up in what it is to be human and will always be. I’m fascinated by it, horrified by it, and utterly compelled by it. In historical terms, I’m intrigued by warriors and great leaders, men who inspired thousands to fight and die for their cause; men like Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Napoleon, Nelson, even Hitler to an extent. These men must have had such force of personality. I imagine you would have felt the charisma coming off them. These characters also make great subjects for historical fiction authors. Velerio Massimo Manfredi’s trilogy on Alexander the Great is superb. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to read him since he changed his translator, which just shows how important that person is to your international success.
I loved David Anthony Durham’s Hannibal: Pride of Carthage. It’s a beast of a book but drew me in completely and I’ve always admired Hannibal Barca. Anyone who could unite disparate peoples and give Rome a good hiding must have been something special. Watch out for the fabulous Ben Kane’s Hannibal: Enemy of Rome, which will be out in June. Stephen Pressfield is another author who writes conflict brilliantly. He knows how warriors think. He has the knack of showing how, although the way in which wars are fought has changed beyond recognition, the mind of the fighting man has not. Perhaps somewhat predictably though, my favourite author is Bernard Cornwell (and not just because he was kind enough to read my first and say good things about it) because in my opinion he is a craftsman who has mastered his art. His stories flow effortlessly and he weaves in rich historical detail with the lightest of touches. His latest, The Fort, is not what you might call a typical Cornwell novel, but it is brilliant nonetheless. He makes the principal characters so human (in fact, most of them really lived) that you recognize them instantly. They are brave, selfish, impetuous, ambitious, stubborn, crafty – in other words they are flawed like all of us and as a reader you identify with them. There are no obvious ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys, just real people caught up in conflict. Plus, I admire Cornwell for having the bottle to ‘re-visit’ the American hero Paul Revere the way he does in this book. You’ll see what I mean when you read it.
When I began writing I would keep in mind my favourite novels and what I liked about them. I’m a sucker for the battles and the fights, so I fill my books with them. I enjoy writing fight scenes that make the reader wince. I want you to feel the blood slap your face. I want you smell it and taste it and feel the fear writhing like a serpent in your gut.
I read the The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell sixteen years ago. Along with the other two in the Arthur series it has lingered in my mind ever since. I hope one day that someone says the same about one of my books.
The Loft, by Marlen Haushofer
Being the keen historian that I am, I have to admit that it was the words ‘War’ and ‘Nazism’ in the blurb of this book that initially grabbed my interest. However, this is not an historical novel by any means; the war barely gets a mention in 170-odd pages of this beautifully written book.
The war’s impact on Austrian society in the aftermath of the war is what is really represented here. Set in the 1960’s, an Austrian housewife (who remains nameless throughout) is the focus of the story. Her post-wartime experiences provide an explanation for her disjointed and peculiar personality, and her relationships with other people.
The Inspector and Silence, by Håkan Nesser
As publishers continue to scour the Scandinavian landscape for the next Stieg Larsson, Pan Macmillan bring us The Inspector and Silence, the fifth English translation of Håkan Nesser’s books. Nesser, an urbane Swede currently living in London, has won Sweden’s coveted Best Swedish Crime Novel award on three occasions, a feat unmatched even by Larsson himself or Henning Mankell. Following this and the widespread critical acclaim for Nesser’s previous output, The Inspector and Silence has much to live up to.
It follows Nesser’s ageing protagonist, Chief Inspector Van Veeteren, and an investigation into the disappearance of a young girl from an eccentric and potentially dangerous cult known as The Pure Life. Van Veeteren is a highly introspective character, and he spends much of the novel in solitude, sharing with the reader his own thoughts, on society, the value of religion, and more directly on the case at hand. In a case where witnesses remain resolutely silent and few clues are forthcoming, Van Veeteren falls back on his remarkable powers of intuition. Indeed, at one point during the case he retreats deep within the forest around The Pure Life to ruminate on the case, in a manner reminiscent of René Descartes’ own meditations. Read more
Chinaman, by Shehan Karunatilaka
Sri Lanka is not a place one necessarily associates with contemporary literature, but this former Dutch and then British colony is well known for its cricketing heritage, having become a significant power in the game since its team won the World Cup in 1996 (and recently lost out in the World Cup final for the second time in a row). Chinaman is the debut publication of Sri Lankan writer Shehan Karunatilaka, and it uses cricket as a means to explore Sri Lankan society: the Tamil insurgency, political corruption, racial and sexual politics and the country’s colonial past all come under consideration, in the guise of a quest for an elusive invented figure, that of the greatest cricketer to walk the earth, the mysterious spinner Pradeep S. Matthew.
According to dipsomaniac cricket journalist W.G. Karunasena, Matthew is one of the greats of the game, a criminally under-appreciated spin bowler who, due to a combination of improbable circumstances and having made too many enemies, was robbed of many chances to play for his country, and whose remarkable records have been expunged from history. When W.G. and his pals are offered the chance to make a series of TV documentaries about Sri Lankan players, he insists Matthew is included – and the process of tracking him down reveals a host of stories, legends and myths that become increasingly bizarre. Matthew is dead; Mathew defrauded the cricket board of hundreds of thousands of dollars; Matthew encouraged Muralitharan not to change his action, inspired Jayasuria to hit over the top in one day cricket, taught the Sri Lankan cricket team how to sledge the Australians. Karunatilaka has woven the legend of Matthew in to the fabric of Sri Lankan cricketing folklore with great skill and thoughtfulness, keeping the recognisable thrust of their cricketing history intact.
The Set-Up, by Felix Riley
The Set-Up is the first book by former company owner and economic commentator Felix Riley. Having spent the years prior to the financial crisis building up his own business, and the moments immediately prior to the financial crisis selling it on, Riley has adhered to that old maxim, “write about what you know.” Despite this, the book is by no means a dry text on economics, but instead a pedal-to-the-metal thriller, dealing with one man’s attempt to unmask those who framed him for a quadruple murder.
That man is former US Secret Service Agent Mike Byrne, and his framing is just the beginning of his problems. Spending much of the novel on the run from the Secret Service, the NYPD and a host of equally dangerous pursuers, Byrne has just three days to prevent a global catastrophe. Read more
Howard Linskey
Howard Linskey is a former newspaper and magazine journalist and was once the marketing manager for a celebrity chef. Originally from Ferryhill in County Durham, he now lives in Hertfordshire with his family. The Drop is Howard’s first novel and he is currently working on his second book, The Damage, to be published by No Exit in 2012.
The Pink Hotel, by Anna Stothard
Anna Stothard’s The Pink Hotel is a grimy world, of dirty scabs, dingy walls, and one hot sweaty L.A. summer. The protagonist is an unnamed seventeen-year-old girl who flies to Los Angeles for her unknown mother’s funeral. Her mother, Lily, owned the titular hotel, and our girl steals a suitcase of Lily’s clothes and letters at the wake, following the hints and pictures she finds in it to track people from her mother’s life, and so get to know Lily. The story is moved by Lily, but she isn’t the focal point, it’s her daughter’s coming-of-age. Read more
The Eyre Affair (Thursday Next), by Jasper Fforde
This amazing book is difficult to describe, even its author and publishers admit that. It is basically a book geek’s fantasy. Set in an alternative 1980s, the reader is thrown into a world where literature is so important that they need a special police force (be it a little underfunded) to control book crime and theories on the real identity of Shakespeare are punted door-to-door by overzealous Baconians.
There are unavoidable spoilers in this review from this point onwards. Feel free to go and read the book and then return to the review and see if I got it right….. or do you need a little more tempting?
The Drop, by Howard Linskey
The Drop is the debut novel from County Durham’s own Howard Linskey. It focuses on a panic-stricken investigation by white collar gangster David Blake, as he scours Newcastle for clues as to the whereabouts of “the drop,” a gangland payoff gone astray. Blake has just 72 hours to find the money and those responsible for its disappearance, or he faces an early and rather grim death.
To add to his woes, Blake is surrounded by genuine hard-men who revel in the misfortune of the man they see as a precocious upstart, and the further he gets in his investigation, the more serious his situation, and that of his criminal associates, becomes. Read more
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The Bookgeeks Interview
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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