My following reviews were published in the Sunday Star Times this past weekend and are repeated here in case you missed them or are outside the SST circulation area..
BANGKOK HAUNTS
John Burdett - Corgi - $25
The third novel featuring the urbane Sonchai Jitpleecheep, detective with the Royal Thai Police ,who is once again the narrator of another crime and corruption sizzler set in Thailand’s capital city.
Author John Burdett ,an Englishman who practiced law in Hong Kong but is now a fulltime writer, has developed an extraordinary protagonist in Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a devout Bhuddist and the son of a very successful Bangkok Madam and an unfeatured American who fathered him while on leave from Vietnam. With his clever creation Burdett manages to immerse us in a world we could never know or understand, a world that is totally alien and foreign but somehow terribly compelling.
I first came across Burdett’s novels while on a stopover in Thailand last year and was immediately hooked.
Sonchai is funny, intelligent, engaging and altogether most likeable. Although a deeply spiritual Bhuddist, and a cop, he nevertheless helps his mother run her bar, The Old Man’s Club. Recently married to the gorgeous Chanya they are expecting their first child whom they both believe to be the reincarnation of Sonchai’s dead police partner, Pichai.
When the story opens we find Sonchai facing both his past and his uncertain future. He and FBI Agent Kimberley Jones, a regular in Burdett’s novels, are watching a beautifully photographed snuff film featuring Damrong who once worked in The Old Man’s Club, where Sonchai, and almost every other man who visited the brothel, was obsessed with her. In fact she and Sonchai were lovers for a time. Now of course it is painful for him to deal with her murder, especially in the way she died, and he is plagued by erotic dreams in which she demands that her avenge her death.
This story develops into one about the big business that is international pornography and as Sonchai and Kimberley try to trace the makers of the snuff movie much of that business is revealed. Although murder and mayhem, and sex abound, hallmarks of Burdett’s Bangkok novels, there is still much humour and weirdness which along with Sonchai’s Bhuddist calmness make for another cracking crime novel.
THIS NIGHT’S FOUL WORK
Fred Vargas - Harvill Secker - $37
From a feature story in the Sunday Star Times February 24 we know that crime writer Fred Vargas is a woman, a renowned archaeologist,(with a history of academic publishing in this area), a vociferous political campaigner and is a best-selling author not only in her native France but across the English speaking world with her sales exceeding 7 million copies. Just for the record her real name is Frederique Audouin-Rouzeau and she and her twin sister were born in Paris in 1957.
In spite of her fame and reputation this is the first of her books that this crime fiction loving reviewer has read and I must say I was both intrigued and enchanted.
Intrigued because the story starts slowly and one is well into it before it is clear just where the story is going and what the crime actually is. As well there are sub-plots of. French regional rivalries, ghosts, and mediaeval magic.
Enchanted by the entirely different type of characters that Vargas develops as compared to her English language crime writer counterparts. This is a very Baroque bunch from the somewhat vague chief detective Adamsberg to Veyrenc a recent addition to the squad who has the habit of talking in 12 syllable Racinian rhyming couplets, (what a great job the translator Sian Reynolds has done here).
There are really two strands running through the story. Commissaire Adamsberg, our protagonist, has been called in to investigate the death of two men who have had their throats cut on the outskirts of Paris. He follows a lead which takes him to disturbed grave sites. He then involves expert pathologist Ariane Lagard. Meanwhile in the second strand the aforementioned Veyrenc seems to bear a grudge against Adamsberg.
Vargas is a skilled crime writer who keeps the reader guess right to the end. I was impressed with her stylish and vivid prose and enmjoyed her eccentric characters.
I am not surprised to learn she has twice won the CWA Duncan Lawrie International Dagger.
COLD IN HAND
John Harvey - William Heinemann- $37
Some have suggested that Harvey could knock Ian Rankin off his post as best-selling British crime writer. Not sure about that but he is a damn fine, highly respected writer who last year won the coveted Crime Writers Association Diamond Dagger for his “sustained excellence”. (Won this year by Sue Grafton).
He is best known I guess for his novels featuring Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick of which this is the 11th in the series and no one really writes police procedural novels as realistically as Harvey.
Set in Nottingham where Resnick has worked for more than 30 years, (he is nearing retirement but still very active), where he lives with his cats, his huge collection of the great jazz musicians, and for the first time in some years with a woman – Detective Inspector Lynn Kellog.
The book begins with Kellog stopping off at an incident on her way home where she gets caught up in a multi-racial gang fight in which one girl stabs another but then is fatally shot. Our detective also gets shot although her body armour prevents serious injury. The family of the dead girl later claim that DI Kellog used the victim as a shield and trouble develops as the police try to identify the gunman. Kellog recovers and returns to work on the case with Charlie Resnick.
Their investigation leads in several directions including to an enquiry into the illegal importation of guns from Lithuania, to Albanian prostitution trafficking, and through his characters the author has a deal to say about these matters and about the state of policing and criminality in Britain today.
Harvey’s characters are always well drawn and human, his plots believable and fast-moving. Thrilling, unputdownable.
John Burdett - Corgi - $25
The third novel featuring the urbane Sonchai Jitpleecheep, detective with the Royal Thai Police ,who is once again the narrator of another crime and corruption sizzler set in Thailand’s capital city.
Author John Burdett ,an Englishman who practiced law in Hong Kong but is now a fulltime writer, has developed an extraordinary protagonist in Sonchai Jitpleecheep, a devout Bhuddist and the son of a very successful Bangkok Madam and an unfeatured American who fathered him while on leave from Vietnam. With his clever creation Burdett manages to immerse us in a world we could never know or understand, a world that is totally alien and foreign but somehow terribly compelling.
I first came across Burdett’s novels while on a stopover in Thailand last year and was immediately hooked.
Sonchai is funny, intelligent, engaging and altogether most likeable. Although a deeply spiritual Bhuddist, and a cop, he nevertheless helps his mother run her bar, The Old Man’s Club. Recently married to the gorgeous Chanya they are expecting their first child whom they both believe to be the reincarnation of Sonchai’s dead police partner, Pichai.
When the story opens we find Sonchai facing both his past and his uncertain future. He and FBI Agent Kimberley Jones, a regular in Burdett’s novels, are watching a beautifully photographed snuff film featuring Damrong who once worked in The Old Man’s Club, where Sonchai, and almost every other man who visited the brothel, was obsessed with her. In fact she and Sonchai were lovers for a time. Now of course it is painful for him to deal with her murder, especially in the way she died, and he is plagued by erotic dreams in which she demands that her avenge her death.
This story develops into one about the big business that is international pornography and as Sonchai and Kimberley try to trace the makers of the snuff movie much of that business is revealed. Although murder and mayhem, and sex abound, hallmarks of Burdett’s Bangkok novels, there is still much humour and weirdness which along with Sonchai’s Bhuddist calmness make for another cracking crime novel.
THIS NIGHT’S FOUL WORK
Fred Vargas - Harvill Secker - $37
From a feature story in the Sunday Star Times February 24 we know that crime writer Fred Vargas is a woman, a renowned archaeologist,(with a history of academic publishing in this area), a vociferous political campaigner and is a best-selling author not only in her native France but across the English speaking world with her sales exceeding 7 million copies. Just for the record her real name is Frederique Audouin-Rouzeau and she and her twin sister were born in Paris in 1957.
In spite of her fame and reputation this is the first of her books that this crime fiction loving reviewer has read and I must say I was both intrigued and enchanted.
Intrigued because the story starts slowly and one is well into it before it is clear just where the story is going and what the crime actually is. As well there are sub-plots of. French regional rivalries, ghosts, and mediaeval magic.
Enchanted by the entirely different type of characters that Vargas develops as compared to her English language crime writer counterparts. This is a very Baroque bunch from the somewhat vague chief detective Adamsberg to Veyrenc a recent addition to the squad who has the habit of talking in 12 syllable Racinian rhyming couplets, (what a great job the translator Sian Reynolds has done here).
There are really two strands running through the story. Commissaire Adamsberg, our protagonist, has been called in to investigate the death of two men who have had their throats cut on the outskirts of Paris. He follows a lead which takes him to disturbed grave sites. He then involves expert pathologist Ariane Lagard. Meanwhile in the second strand the aforementioned Veyrenc seems to bear a grudge against Adamsberg.
Vargas is a skilled crime writer who keeps the reader guess right to the end. I was impressed with her stylish and vivid prose and enmjoyed her eccentric characters.
I am not surprised to learn she has twice won the CWA Duncan Lawrie International Dagger.
COLD IN HAND
John Harvey - William Heinemann- $37
Some have suggested that Harvey could knock Ian Rankin off his post as best-selling British crime writer. Not sure about that but he is a damn fine, highly respected writer who last year won the coveted Crime Writers Association Diamond Dagger for his “sustained excellence”. (Won this year by Sue Grafton).
He is best known I guess for his novels featuring Detective Inspector Charlie Resnick of which this is the 11th in the series and no one really writes police procedural novels as realistically as Harvey.
Set in Nottingham where Resnick has worked for more than 30 years, (he is nearing retirement but still very active), where he lives with his cats, his huge collection of the great jazz musicians, and for the first time in some years with a woman – Detective Inspector Lynn Kellog.
The book begins with Kellog stopping off at an incident on her way home where she gets caught up in a multi-racial gang fight in which one girl stabs another but then is fatally shot. Our detective also gets shot although her body armour prevents serious injury. The family of the dead girl later claim that DI Kellog used the victim as a shield and trouble develops as the police try to identify the gunman. Kellog recovers and returns to work on the case with Charlie Resnick.
Their investigation leads in several directions including to an enquiry into the illegal importation of guns from Lithuania, to Albanian prostitution trafficking, and through his characters the author has a deal to say about these matters and about the state of policing and criminality in Britain today.
Harvey’s characters are always well drawn and human, his plots believable and fast-moving. Thrilling, unputdownable.
LAST RITUALS
Yrsa Sigurdardottir - Hodder - $39
Here is a writer I have not previously come across. A little research showed me why. She is Icelandic and this is her first adult novel following five novels for children, two of which won her prizes in Iceland.
She is married with two children and is currently the technical manager of a large hydro construction project. When she finds time to write I am not sure. But write she certainly can and one is gripped from the very first pages when the badly mutilated body of a German exchange student is found at a Reyjavik university. His eyes are missing and runes have been carved on his body
It proves to be the body of Harald Guntleib who is the highly unpopular drug abusing ringleader of a bunch of students obsessed with medieval witchcraft and black magic.
The police quickly arrest a young man and charge him with the murder but the victim’s parents do not believe the police have done a thorough job and so they send their own man to investigate. He in turn employs our protagonist, 36 year old, divorced mother of two, lawyer Thora Gudmunsdottir, She is a reluctant participant at first but is offered double her normal fee so agrees to take the case.
Before long the German investigator and his Icelandic lawyer colleague find that the victim was involved in an investigation of his own and as their own relationship develops they learn more about the victim and his relationship with his parents. They also find that his obsession with witchcraft came from his grandfather.
This is a most unusual example of the crime fiction genre but if you can cope with horror along the way, with the occasional dose of humour, and you like to be kept on the edge of your seat then this is one for you.
Translated from Icelandic by Bernard Scudder.
7TH HEAVEN
James Patterson - Century - $37
Patterson intrigues me. He is one of the largest selling authors in the world having sold more than 150 million copies of his books. He is a prolific writer with almost 50 books to his credit but about half of these titles are co-authored with other writers. I have never understood how you can co-write fiction? I assume that he constructs the plots and then leaves it to his collaborator to write the story?
This new title, the seventh in his The Women’s Murder Club series, is co-written with Maxine Paetro who has now collaborated on four titles in the series. The series has been developed into a major tv programme in the U.S. featuring the former Law & Order star, Angie Harmon.
In 7th Heaven San Francisco Police Department Lindsay Boxer is involved with two cases , which along with problems with the men in her life, is pushing her beyond her to the edge.
The first case involves the disappearance without trace of Michael Campion , a much adored playboy son of the popular governor. In the second case a fire has ravaged the home of a wealthy couple leaving them dead. This proves to be only the first in a string of arsons resulting in couples in expensive neighbourhoods being consumed. The Murder Club enter the scene in a race to find the arsonists.
Following up on a tip that Michael Campion was seen entering the home of a hooker, Boxer and her partner Rich Conklin are surprised when the hooker immediately confesses that the missing man died from a heart problem during sex and that she then disposed of the body. It looks like an open and shut case but the trial takes a bizarre turn………
This is a real thriller in the standard Patterson style complete with surprise twist at the end.
No comments:
Post a Comment