Friday, December 16, 2011

2,523: The Informationist by Taylor Stevens

I was sent a copy of The Informationist by its publisher, Crown Publishing, for which I am very grateful despite feeling a little handicapped in my ability to review it.  You see, the book’s heroine, Vanessa ‘Michael’ Munroe, is being pushed as an alternative Lisbeth Salander from Stieg Larsson’s monster-selling trilogy but, as I haven’t read this, I can’t possibly assess whether the comparison is fair or accurate.

Munroe is an “informationist”, someone who is highly skilled at obtaining information and analysing it.  A traumatic childhood in Africa has left her physically and mentally scarred but has made her a killing machine with an ability to blend into any culture.  She is also a naturally gifted linguist, being apparently able to speak 22 different languages.  

On the advice of Miles Bradford, a mercenary and business associate of Richard Burbank, CEO of Titan Exploration, an American oil company with interests in West Africa, Munroe is hired to investigate the disappearance of Burbank’s daughter, Emily, in southern Africa.

Having accepted the assignment, Munroe follows her own instincts and knowledge to look in a completely different African country for traces of Emily and, in doing so, is forced to face up to her own demons and past.  As the body count mounts, Munroe will stop at nothing to find the truth, which turns out to be completely unexpected and opens up both old and new wounds.

As one would expect from a debut novel, The Informationist is a mix of the good and the bad of thriller writing.  On the positive side, Stevens has come up with a good, solid plot and is strong on action scenes and pacing.  This, together with the frequent twists and turns in the story, makes for a real page-turner and I was continually wanting to know what happened next or, more often, why what things had just happened.

Stevens also conveys a real sense of the African countries in which the majority of the book is set, both in terms of the physical environments and the political and cultural life of those places.  She clearly has a good knowledge of West Africa and, interestingly, makes that part of the world come alive much more than the American and European locations she uses.

Unfortunately, the strengths of Stevens’ plotting and scene-setting aren’t matched by her dialogue.  Although she mostly avoids the trap of having her characters deliver lengthy pieces of exposition, much of the dialogue is pretty wooden and her characters speak indistinguishably from each other so that a Cameroonian document forger does not sound markedly different from an American executive.

If The Informationist was intended to be a stand-alone novel, all this would be fine and I’d be happy to recommend it as an above-average thriller with an unusual setting and premise.  Munroe is, though, intended to be the heroine of a series and this causes me a little concern.  She is depicted as sexy, talented, an invincible fighter, capable of killing without remorse either in cold blood or with a kind of berserker-style rage but, in the next minute, becoming a passionate lover, albeit one who is always in control.  My nearest comparator to her would be Jack Reacher, from Lee Childs’ series which I used to look out for but in which, in recent years, have lost all interest.

The main reason for this is that Reacher is, to all intents and purposes, unbeatable and a little too perfect to make an interesting lead character and I think that there is a risk that Munroe will also fall into this category.  Taylor Stevens, the author of The Informationist, like her heroine, had a traumatic and much-travelled childhood and, without wanting to pretend to be some kind of pop psychologist, I can’t help wondering whether Munroe may be her fantasy alter ego, someone who, from an equally unhappy background, has emerged as a kick-ass, don’t-mess-with-me individual.  Having already faced her demons in this first instalment, I’m not sure that Munroe will stay as interesting as the series progresses.  Steven’s plotting skills will need to be in tip-top condition to make this happen.

Overall, I’d still happily recommend this.  Africa is an under-explored region in thriller-writing, there’s plenty of action for aficionados and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  The sequel, The Innocents, is out later this month in the UK and I will be buying (although probably not until it comes out in paperback).  Only time will tell, though, whether Vanessa ‘Michael Munroe has the metaphorical legs to enter into the pantheon of thriller heroes and heroines.

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: What can I get Santa to deliver to you?

A brief trip into the dark heart of London’s West End at the weekend both indicated to me that the Christmas period is well and truly upon us and provided further evidence of the madness of crowds as the frenzied shopping seemed more reminiscent of the carefree days from before 2008 than today’s age of austerity.  Either people have restricted their spending all year in anticipation of a festive splurge or there are going to be some more households in trouble come the middle of January when the credit card bills drop through the letterbox.  I fear the latter.

The Falaise household is sticking to its pre-planned level of expenditure this year, however, and the vast bulk of the gift shopping has been completed, with only Mrs F and my brother-in-law not yet having been dealt with.  I can, therefore, say with confidence that none of the books that form part of this list of ten books we would most like to give this Christmas, as requested by the Broke and the Bookish, will actually be given by me this Yuletide.  

But, not so fast!  will be giving one of these books away - as a post-Christmas treat to one of you.  Just leave a comment below, stating which book you would like and, on December 31, my trusty Random Number Generator and I will make a pick and, delivery charges and availability permitting, one of you will have a nice literary start to 2012.

I should here point out that I am wilfully disobeying the rules of this Top Ten Tuesday by not specifying to whom I would give these books so as to avoid embarrassment either for me or them.  Instead, it is a list of books I love and would like to se someone else enjoy.  And , as it’s Christmas and people just want to relax, I’ve not included anything too heavy.

1.         The Dark is Rising sequence by Susan Cooper.  I’m not a big reader of children’s/YA books but this series of five novels, themed around Celtic and Arthurian myth is simply brilliant.  I’d happily give it to anyone but especially to imaginative kids.  If you want to suggest this as your giveaway prize, I should point out that the limits of my generosity are such that you will get the first two in the sequence.  You’re on your own after that, I’m afraid.

2.         A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens.  It’s the right time of the year for it, it’s a good read and, as next year is the bicentenary of his birth, it would whet the appetite for the celebrations and events that are planned.  Also, most people are only familiar with the story from TV or film versions so it suits my literary snob side to get someone else to read it.

3.         Ex Libris: Confessions of a Common Reader by Anne Fadiman.  A present for a keen reader, this is a collection of essays about books, language, reading, book collecting and all matters bookish.  It’s a joy to read.

4.         Achtung Schweinehund! by Harry Pearson.  Is there a British middle-aged male in your life?  If so, then this is effectively a user’s guide to said man.  Pearson’s memoir of a childhood of model making, war comics and Action Man has so many echoes of that of me and my friends at the time that I’m not sure whether to be relieved at the ubiquity of the experience or worried at the general immaturity of British manhood!

5.         The Kitchen Diaries by Nigel Slater.  Nigel Slater’s journal of a year in his kitchen is crammed full of tempting recipes that are eminently manageable by even cooks as hopeless as me.  Even if you are not a cook, he writes in a style that makes your mouthwater and it can definitely be read as a book rather than just as a cookbook.

6.         Animal Farm by George Orwell.  The subject matter isn’t at all festive but, as I explained in this post, this book is indelibly associated with Christmas for me.  It’s a perfect little allegorical gem.  Everyone should read it and it would be an ideal gift for a young person just getting into history or politics.

7.         Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie.  Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a bit of Agatha on the TV or to read by the fire.  This is one of the classics and one of my all-time favourites.  I’d give it to an aged relative, except they’ve probably already got it.

8.         Casino Royale by Ian Fleming.  When I were a lad (say this in a broad Yorkshire accent for maximum effect), there was always a Bond movie on TV on Christmas Day afternoon, just after the Queen’s Speech and it was one of the centrepieces of the programming schedules.  What with DVDs and satellite TV, that’s not the case any more but I’d happily give a Fleming novel to someone to read during the afternoon instead.  I’ve picked Casino Royale because I think it is probably the best from a literary point of view but I’d also think about Moonraker for its brilliant gambling scene in M’s London club.  And it’s nothing like the frankly trashy movie version.

9.         The Code of the Woosters by P.G. Wodehouse.  I can’t think of many more enjoyable ways to spend part of Christmas Day than Wodehouse, a glass of claret and some good cheese to nibble on to fill up any corners untouched by turkey and trimmings.   The Code of the Woosters is one of the best Jeeves novels and I defy anyone not to chuckle while reading it.

10.       The Great Railway Bazaar by Paul Theroux.  Probably my favourite piece of travel literature and a book I’d love to give to everyone.  Every time I read it, I just want to jump on a train and start off round the world.

And as a bonus stocking filler, I’d want to make sure everyone on my gift list had a copy of one of the Rumpole books as this great Old Bailey hack barrister is a fictional national treasure, a gently amusing triumph and a comfort in our turbulent world.

Which of these would you like to receive?

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: Some old school tales from back in the day

It’s all gone a bit retro over at the Broke and the Bookish for today’s Top Ten Tuesday.  In a reprise of the first ever Top Ten Tuesday, we’re all going to dust off a few of our childhood favourites.

I don’t suppose it will come as any great surprise that, similarly to all of you, I was a voracious reader as a child, draining my parents’ bank balance and annoying the hell out of our local library.  I can’t possibly rank them so here is a selection of some of the books I enjoyed before I moved on to more adult fare.

1.         The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien.  I have recently bought a gorgeous Folio Society edition of this in hardback for when mini-Falaise is ready for it in about 5 years time (you may call it obsessional, I call it good planning).  An all-time classic and a springboard to The Lord of the Rings.  And if she doesn’t like it, I’ll have the book back!

2.         `Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl.  If I were a betting man, I’d stake a considerable amount of money that this will feature on a large number of lists today and, if it doesn’t, it should.  Neither of the films has done it justice.  Also, the sequel, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, shouldn’t be overlooked.

3.         The Adventure Series by Enid Blyton.  I know she was an old-fashioned racist, sexist, classist so-and-so but I loved her books as a child and can’t help feeling slightly uncomfortable at the various bans and bowdlerisations that have taken place.  I could easily have put down the Famous Five or the Secret Seven instead and do rather like the idea of the Secret Seven’s clubhouse and their lashings of cake and ginger beer.  Mini-Falaise’s great-grandparents have bought her the first four Famous Five books for when she’s older and I will have no problem with her reading them – after all, it’s my job (along with Mrs F) to make sure she grows up with a decent set of attitudes and not Enid’s.

4.         Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green.  I was addicted to mythology as a child and Lancelyn Green, a former Inkling, produced a number of children’s versions of both Greek and Norse myths and versions of the Arthur story and the story of Robin Hood, all of which I devoured.  I don’t know if they are still in print but this one in particular inspired a love of Greek myth that led me on to The Iliad and The Odyssey and eventually on to studying Classical Greek at school and reading the literature in the original.

5.         The Jennings Series by Anthony Buckerdige.  Even before I went to prep school, I loved the Jennings and Darbishire boarding school novels.  I guess the social and maybe even moral attitudes they describe are outdated today but they were fun and there was an innocent subversiveness about them.  They led me on to the more satirical world of Molesworth, who still delights me now.

6.         The Adventure Series by Willard Price.  Another from my apparently extensive back catalogue of childhood favourites with distinctly dodgy cultural undertones.  Price’s heroes were a pair of teenage zoologist brothers, Hal and Roger, who travelled the world getting embroiled in a series of wildlife-related adventures.  I particularly loved the underwater themed ones.  They’ve been recently re-released here in the UK (although, oddly out of sequence) and I have bought a couple for my eldest nephew, aged seven.  Also, and here’s an odd piece of trivia, Price was, allegedly, a CIA agent.

7.         Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome.  Oh, how I loved this tale of children sailing dinghies and camping out on an island in their summer holidays.  It was a world away from my suburban upbringing and seemed so exciting and fun.  Even in the 1970s when I read it, it had a wonderful period feel, something of a time gone by, a more innocent time.  I can’t help feeling that we need books like this even more today, when childhood seems to be a more stressful, pressured and commercialised time than back in my day.

8.         The Professor Branestawm series by Norman Hunter.  I used to wonder at the Renaissance –man qualities of Norman “Bite yer legs” Hunter who apparently combined his role as the hard man of Don Revie’s legendary Leeds United defence with a successful career as a children’s author, until I realised it was a completely different Norman Hunter.  Anyway, despite the shattering of my childhood illusions, Hunter’s stories of the absent-minded professor and the chaos caused by his incredible inventions were favourites of my youth.  I think some may still be in print but they are definitely worth a look.

9.         The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis.  I blame Lewis for encouraging me to climb into every wardrobe I could find at home or in any home I visited for a while, just checking that there was no door to Narnia in there.  I never really got into the sequels, funnily enough, but this one also gave me a life-long love of Turkish Delight.  Yum.

10.       The Dark is Rising Sequence by Susan Cooper.  My list wouldn’t be complete without the inclusion of this series, given that I have banged on about it often in these lists.  Even more excitingly, the Folio Society has begun to publish beautiful editions of these books too, which will be added to mini-Falaise’s growing shelf of classics for when she gets a little older.

I could have gone on forever with this one.  I can’t believe I haven’t found room for books like James and the Giant Peach, Stig of the Dump, the Silver Sword, Paddington, Fantastic Mr Fox, Agaton Sax, Watership Down, Tarka the Otter, the Moomins, Where the Wild Things Are, Mrs Frisby and the Rats of Nimh or The Phantom Talbooth.  Makes me want to be a child again so I would have an excuse to read them and many others again.  Mini-Falaise, watch out, your bedtimes are planned for the next few years!

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

2,524: The Big Red Train Ride by Eric Newby

I’ve always enjoyed long train journeys.  I like the feeling of being close to the country through which you are passing and having the leisure to observe it without having to concentrate as one does whilst driving.  It’s less antiseptic and homogenous than modern air travel, where one airport could be another, and far less strenuous than cycling.  Some of my favourite train journeys have been the overnighter from Moscow to Leningrad I did in 1987, the trip down the East Coast and South of the US I made a decade later and the journey I made from London to the Swedish part of the Arctic Circle I did with Mrs F on our honeymoon a few years ago.

One trip we haven’t made though is the Trans-Siberian (or Trans-Manchurian if you drop Vladivostock and head down through Mongolia to China) Railway and this remains an ambition of ours, a trip we hope to do when and if I finally get to retire.  It’s probably the most famous railway of them all, stretching nearly 6000 miles from Moscow to the Russian Pacific coast and passing through seven time zones.  As Eric Newby described it in The Big Red Train Ride, “The Trans-Siberian is the big train ride.  All the rest are peanuts.”

Newby, the author of many travel books, including the classic A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush, made the journey with his Slovenian wife, Wanda, in 1977.  Back in those days, of course, the Soviet Union still existed and the Communist authorities tightly controlled the travel schedules of those foreigners it permitted to enter the country.  The Newbys were therefore required to travel with Otto, a German photographer, and Mischa, a guide from the official Intourist travel agency, whose role was not only to help them but also to shepherd them and ensure they saw only what the authorities would want them to see.

The Big Red Train Ride is a bit of a curate’s egg.  On the positive side, it is an interesting historical record of the way in which foreign travellers in the Soviet Union were treated during the Communist era and also a picture of life in rural Russia at that time. There are evocative word portraits of the limited availability of food stuffs and consumer products and some amusing vignettes of bizarre official visits arranged for the Newbys and Otto by Intourist.

There are also some entertaining passages detailing life on the train and, in particular, the attitudes of the female train conductors, some of whom appeared to be acting almost as guards, attempting top prevent the Newbys from getting access to the other part of the train where the travellers were Russian.

However, Newby runs into the problem that writers are almost bound to experience when writing about train journeys.  Trains are, by their very nature, closed environments and make finite stops for limited periods of time.  This can make for limited source material for the hopeful author.  Writers such as Paul Theroux gets round this problem either by using a number of train journeys in their books (The Great Railway Bazaar, Riding the Iron Rooster) or by making extended stops along the way (The Old Patagonian Express).  Unfortunately for Newby, he has neither of these opportunities.  The Trans-Siberian is a single train for the length of its journey, with the same passengers for most of the way and, at the time he weas writing, he was only allowed to alight at certain specified stations and then only for eh amount of time Intourist would let him.

It may be that a Paul Theroux could still have made something of this, especially in light of the wonderful descriptions of his travelling companions on the Orient Express in The Great Railway Bazaar but, to be honest, I don’t think Newby is in the same league as Theroux as a writer and, in any event, he was pretty much restricted to being with his wife, Otto and Mischa for much of the journey and there is only so much one can do with such a limited cast.

What this means, though, is that Newby has to pad the book out somewhat with potted histories of not only places he visits but also places the train just happens to be passing and, although some of the information is interesting, there is is just too much of it for a travel book.

Overall, this is a patchy book, worth reading if you are interested in Russia, train travel or the Trans-Siberian itself but eminently skippable if you are not.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

2,525: An Open Secret by Carlos Gamerro

I’ll get the full disclosure bit out of the way up front.  I was sent a review copy of the new English translation of Carlos Gamerro’s 2002 novel, An Open Secret by Pushkin Press, its publisher.  I’m very grateful to them for this as it is not a book that I would probably have come across otherwise and, as such, is an object reminder to me to step outside my usual literary territory once in a while.

During the so-called Argentine “Dirty War” in which the ruling military junta violently repressed political dissidents, trades unionists and other opponents of the regime, thousands of individuals were illegally detained, tortured and often murdered.  Many of them were drugged, loaded onto airplanes, flown out over the South Atlantic and thrown into the ocean to drown.  As there were no dead bodies to evidence their deaths, the junta was able to deny that they had been killed.  They became known as Los Desaparecidos – The Disappeared.  According to the various estimates, between 9,000 and 30,000 Argentineans were disappeared between 1976 and 1983, either in this way or other equally terrible ways.  Pregnant women who were detained by the junta had their newborn children snatched from them at birth to be given to childless couples who supported the military government.

Fortunately, those times have ended and Argentina is now a civilian democracy but the memories live on and the plight of los desaparecidos is a perennially popular topic for Argentine novelists.

In An Open Secret, Carlos Gamerro has chosen to examine those times by focussing on a single (fictional) incident.  His protagonist, Fefe, is a young veteran of the Falklands War (or Las Malvinas, if you are from Argentina or other parts of Latin America).  He has returned to Malihuel, the small town where his grandparents and parents were from and where he spent his childhood summers to investigate a disappearance that took place in 1976, on the same weekend as one Diego Maradona made his debut for Argentina’s national football team.

Ostensibly collecting material for a novel, Fefe interviews many of the town’s notables about the events that led to the disappearance of one Dario Ezcurra, the town lothario and also an activist left wing journalist.  Slowly, a dark, sordid story of complicity and murder emerges from the mass of lies, evasions and self-serving memories that Fefe’s questions reveal until the unpalatable truth of Ezcurra’s “disappearance” is uncovered, as are the secrets of Fefe’s own parents and grandparents.

It would have been easy for Gamerro to portray Ezcurra as a poster-boy for protest journalism but this would have made the story much less textured and thoughtful.  Instead, he paints Ezcurra as a self-obsessed womanizer who leaves a trail of outraged and bitter fathers and (less so) mothers behind him.  In so doing, he shows forensically how the personal grudges of the townsfolk dovetailed with the political forces of the police and government to seal Ezcurra’s fate.  Instead, the people of Malihuel are complicit in his murder.  It is a nuanced characterisation that goes beyond a wish to varnish los desaparecidos as simple heroes but shows a desire to get at the naked truth.  

Complicity is a common theme in many countries where totalitarian repression has taken place.  In both Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Russia, for example, a similar cocktail of personal hatred and fear of the authorities combined to keep the populace not only quiet but also as silent participants in the repression.

This unwillingness to denounce or admit to the crime in their midst is sometimes referred to as a conspiracy of silence but, as Gamerro points out, it is anything but that.  Indeed, the inhabitants of Malihuel are only to happy to admit that, really, they knew what was happening and who was responsible.  Not a conspiracy of silence, more a “conspiracy of chattiness”.  At times, the flood of self-serving claptrap served up to Fefe by the self-justifying locals feels overwhelming, a sensation created in part by Gamerro’s clever, but irritating, decision to omit most punctuation in his characters’ speech.

What the locals also unwittingly reveal is that each and every one of them was more than a scared observer.  Ezcurra’s murder and the subsequent murder of his mother, killed because she wouldn’t stop protesting about his murder, could have been stopped if any of the local notables had objected to the police superintendent.  Yet they didn’t and thus prove the local military commander right when he says that the disappearances are perfect crimes because they are “committed in the sight of everyone—because then there are no witnesses, only accomplices.”

Gamerro also introduces some subtle touches of symbolism – Ezcurra’s body is dumped in the town’s lagoon, an echo of the dumping of victims in the Atlantic, and his mother is the only one to protest his death, an echo of the mothers of los desaparecidos who formed a protest group, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo – and the laconic way in which Fefe reports the self-serving nature of the locals is damming – in particular, there are two paragraphs in which rival hoteliers denounce each other for the same fault where every word other than their names and hotel locations is identical.

An Open Secret is a forceful exposition of the hypocrisy and cowardice that allow things like forced disappearances to occur and the long-term effects that they have.  It is a thought-provoking and powerful read and well worth the effort of getting hold of a copy.

Top Ten Tuesday: What do I want to read this winter?

It’s getting to that time of year already.  I love Christmas time.  Time off from work without people loading up your inbox for your return.  Family.  Good food and drink.  Twinkly lights and decorations.  Over-excited children.  Fantastic.  I’ve surprised myself this year by being pretty well-organised.  The puddings have been made and are maturing away.  The turkey and ham have been ordered in time to get a good price from the butcher.  I’ve already bitten off a big chunk of the present buying and I’ve even managed to get the requisite family feud out of the way early!  So I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself so far.  And with work beginning its seasonal winding down and a manageable number of seasonal lunches, dinners and drinks parties in the calendar, I can look forward to battening down the hatches on Christmas Eve with relative equanimity.

There is one small issue, however, as after Christmas comes the end of the year.  A time to look back and reflect upon the triumphs, failures and general events of the past twelve months.  Although the year has been quite a good one from a personal perspective, the turmoil in the outside world and the uncertain outlook for the global economy and for many people around the world will, I am sure, cast a shadow over the New Year celebrations.  And the good folks at the Broke and the Bookish have decided to kickstart the reflection process by asking us to list our Top Ten books to read from the TBR pile/list for winter.  If I were a glass-half-full kind of guy, I could list ten books I’m really looking forward to reading or ten books that will be coming out soon but, as I’m in a glass-half-empty mood and it’s the look back at 2011 time of year, here are ten books I intended to read in 2011 and never got round to.

1.         A People’s Tragedy by Orlando Figes.  This is a hefty monster of a book, one of the leading histories of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the immediate aftermath, despite the controversies that dog its author.  It’s been sitting in my TBR box for a while and the only thing that has been putting me off is its sheer length.  It’s also appeared in not one, but TWO of my Top Ten Tuesday posts this year as a book I was going to read this year and, guess what.  Haven’t. Even. Opened. It.

2.         The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman.  This is a novel about the lives and dreams of the staff on an English language newspaper in Rome, whose future looks grim.  It was described by the New York Times as a cross between Waugh’s Scoop and Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  I said I was going to read it this year in my New Year’s resolution Top Ten Tuesday.  Still haven’t even bought a copy.

3.         Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka.  A debut novel, published in the UK in June, this novel has cricket as a central element, with the Chinaman of the title being a type of spin bowling.  The book’s protagonist is a retired cricket writer who spends the last months of his life being unpleasant to his family and tracking down a spin bowler who has disappeared and who he considers to be an unsung genius.  The novel is not just about cricket but also about modern Sri Lanka and has been described as “one of the most imaginative works of contemporary Sri Lankan fiction.  I was so excited about this, I pre-ordered the hardback which duly arrived at my office on the day of publication, where it still sits today.

4.         Post Captain by Patrick O’Brian.  This is the second in the Aubrey and Maturin series and, surprisingly, for a naval series, much of the action takes place on land.  O’Brian’s admiration for Jane Austen is often commented on and this particular volume is sometimes said to be his particular tribute to her.  I planned to read this on my summer holiday where, instead, it ended up as just another bit of extra baggage.  I really do want to read this and don’t know why I haven’t done so yet.

5.         A Clockwork Christmas by Various.  This is a collection of four Christmas themed, steampunk tales.  I got an electronic review copy from Netgalley, thinking it would make a good pre-Christmas read as I’m curious to read more steampunk.  The clock is ticking though.  Look out for a review soon.

6.         At Home by Heston Blumenthal.  I’ve got a review copy of Great Britain’s favourite mad scientist chef on my Kindle and I’m just waiting for the apposite moment to read it.  I also promise to cook one of his recipes and blog that as well, to see whether they really do work for your common or garden home cook.

7.         The Fear Index by Robert Harris.  I’ve loved each and every one of his novels so far and this one has been sitting on my Kindle for a while, shouting “read me”.  Soon.  Soon, I promise.

8.         The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien.  When I was younger, I used to re-read it annually but have fallen out of that habit over the past few years.  I noticed it on the shelves at home the other day and suddenly had a hankering to read it again, which I think I might well do during the Christmas break.

9.         Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy.  I have singularly failed in my resolution to crack on with my 1,001 Books challenge and have read pitifully few of them this year.  I want to get this read and An Artist of the Floating World by Kazuo Ishiguro before the end of the year to retain any vestige of self-respect.

10.       The Night Before Christmas by Clement C. Moore.  Slight cheat this one but I am looking forward to reading it again this winter because when I do, it will mean that it is the evening of Christmas Eve, mini-Falaise will be about to go off to bed with visions of reindeer and Father Christmas in her head, the front door will be locked and Christmas will be upon us.  Can’t wait.

Monday, November 28, 2011

2,526: Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr

Prague Fatale is the eighth book in Philip Kerr’s series of novels featuring Berlin detective Bernie Gunther.  The books, although they jump back and forth in Bernie’s timeline, roughly follow his career as, firstly, a Berlin police detective in the 1930s, through his short-lived stints as the hotel detective at the Adlon, one of Berlin’s finest, and private detective, and back to being a police detective, albeit under the Nazis and with a technical commission in the SS.  The novels are an engaging blend of historical fiction and hard-boiled detective fiction, with Bernie as a Germanic Philip Marlowe.

In this new instalment, Bernie is back at his desk in Berlin.  It is 1941.  The Wehrmacht is fighting its way into the Soviet Union and the persecution of Germany’s Jews is reaching its pre-Final Solution zenith.  Bernie is trying to help the two Jewish sisters living in the same block as him by taking them tinned food when he comes upon an attempted rape, which he prevents.  With this being a Bernie Gunther story, the victim turns out to be a wise-cracking beauty with whom he begins an affair.

So far, so good.  But there is a problem just around the problem in the form of Bernie’s ultimate boss, one Reinhard Heydrich.  Recently promoted to Deputy Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, Heydrich is worried both about a group of Czech resistance fighters known as the Three Kings and threats to his own personal safety.  Heydrich makes Bernie an offer he simply can’t refuse (especially given his own known lack of Nazi feelings).  Bernie becomes Heydrich’s personal detective and moves to Prague, along with his new lady friend.

Murder indeed does happen but Heydrich is not the victim.  At a weekend house party at Heydrich’s castle in Prague, one of his adjutants, a homosexual who was sent back from the Eastern Front in disgrace for refusing to take part in the murder of Jews, is found dead in his locked bedroom, both drugged and shot.  Bernie takes charge of the investigation to unmask the killer.

Prague Fatale begins like previous Bernie Gunther novels as a World War II set hard-boiled detective story.  Although over the course of the series, Bernie has moved from being wise-crackingly cynical about the Nazis and Germany’s situation to being a little more melancholic, there is still plenty of fast-talking , a wealth of urban Berlin detail and some nice historical touches, particularly a clever snapshot of Bernie going through Heydrich’s diary and finding an entry scheduling a meeting at Wannsee in Janary 1942.  As World War II aficionados will appreciate, this is a reference to the infamous Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was promulgated and adopted.  It is a nice idea, merely making a throwaway reference to such a significant event and lends added historical authenticity to the book.

About halfway through, though, the entire style seems to change and we shift into an Agatha Christie-esque country house murder, which then morphs further into a classic John Dickson Carr-type locked room mystery.  Now, none of this throws Bernie off his stride, especially as the suspects are all high-ranking SS and SD officers, whom Bernie thoroughly enjoys interrogating.  Our hero unmasks the killer but, being Bernie, there is a typically downbeat ending for him.

I found Prague Fatale both better and worse than its predecessor, .  It has a cleaner, more cohesive story line and avoids both the jumping around in time of Field Grey and some of the internal inconsistencies that it introduced into Bernie’s backstory.  I can appreciate that some Bernie fans will get irritated at the introduction of soft-boiled detective themes into Prague Fatale but I actually quite enjoyed the excursion.  I am also unable to resist the image of Reinhard Heydrich, the Butcher of Prague, as an inveterate fan of Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie’s novels.  I have no idea whether there is any basis in fact for this but it makes for an unsettling, if amusing image.

On the down side, there is less meat to Prague Fatale than any of its predecessors.  Although Field Grey was flawed as a story, it was an interesting examination of Bernie’s character and the nature of the compromises required in the Third Reich.  Prague Fatale has no such depth and is merely a clever detective story.  Bernie is far less complex here, with none of the moral ambiguities of earlier books in the series.

It’s probably fair to say that the original trilogy, published in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s are superior to the later books (and may well have been intended to be a complete series in themselves) and Kerr may well be jumping back and forth in time to fill in gaps and make sure he has squeezed all he can from Gunther but, even so, this is one of my favourite detective series and well worth a look (but start at the beginning, not the middle).


Thursday, November 24, 2011

2,527: Smiley's People by John le Carré

Although I’m a big fan of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels, I can’t help but think that they have done spy novels a tremendous disservice.  Even though they are far less shallow than the films, they still slide over the heart of espionage, skipping over subtleties with a gadget, a fight or a perfectly made cocktail.

Not so with le Carré.  His novels strip away all the illusions we may have about the glamour of spying, exposing the corrosive effects of lives of constant betrayal and suspicion.  Even Smiley, probably one of the drabbest heroes of literature, is not immune to this, suffering from the acid drips of repeated lies, exploitation and treachery.  Like its predecessors in the so-called Karla trilogy, Smiley’s People is an unemotional exploration of the darker side of human nature and the effects on otherwise decent men of being required to live and work on that side.

At the end of The Honourable Schoolboy, Smiley has been outmanoeuvred by the odious Saul Enderby who, together with Sam Collins applies a stiletto to Smiley’s back and replaces him as Head of the Circus.  This state of play continues to exist at the beginning of Smiley’s People, with George in enforced retirement and again deserted by his errant wife, Ann.

But old spies never truly retire and Smiley is pressed back into service, albeit on a totally deniable basis, by Enderby and Lacon, a senior civil servant with no distinguishing virtues.  A relic of the Circus’ past, an Estonian émigré who had once led a spy network controlled by George has turned up dead on Hampstead Heath, having tried to re-establish contact with the Circus.

Although Lacon and Enderby merely want the matter swept under the carpet by George, he begins to investigate and finds a connection to a old Russian woman living in Paris, whose daughter’s identity has been taken by the KGB to use as a “legend” to insert an agent into Western Europe.

Smiley slowly pieces together the puzzle by forcing former colleagues and agents to give him information and himself travelling through Europe to assemble the clues.  It becomes apparent that the “legend” has been used unofficially by Smiley’s nemesis, Karla, to get his illegitimate daughter out of the Soviet Union and into a hospital in Switzerland.

There’s a different feel to Smiley’s People than the other two books in the trilogy.  Although the pace of the story remains deliberate, Smiley is a much more active character, not being content to pull strings from behind the scenes but actually getting out there to find information and manage a sting that enables him finally to make contact with Karla.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy began the trilogy by telling the story of Karla’s greatest victory over Smiley by infiltrating the Circus through Bill Haydon and encouraging Haydon not only to betray Smiley but also to have an affair with Ann, adding a second betrayal.  Smiley’s People, therefore, provides a satisfying conclusion as Smiley uses Karla’s own techniques against him, using the leverage of his knowledge of Karla’s weakness – his daughter – to force him to defect.  At the very end, we see Karla walking across a bridge from East to West Germany.  Symbolically, as he arrives in the West, he drops the cigarette lighter that he had taken from George in Tinker, Tailor, the lighter inscribed from Ann to George and which hinted at George’s weak spot.

Yet Smiley’s revenge is hollow.  He leaves the lighter on the ground and takes no pleasure in his incredible coup.  He is even diminished by his success.  He is less of a man for having lowered himself to Karla’s level by using his daughter against him. I was left with an empty feeling at the end, that there were no winners, only men beaten by the demands of the secret world.  Smiley has served his country faithfully, despite the politics and the treachery within his own service and has been left broken in spirit, an anonymous casualty of the Cold War.

I could leave it here and simply say that Smiley’s People and the Karla trilogy as a whole are supreme examples of the true spy novel, setting a standard that hasn’t yet been matched by any Western writer, although Robert Littell and Alan Furst come quite close, Graham Greene would definitely be up there if one considers some of his books to be spy novels and Charles Cumming is also treading some of the same ground.

But I don’t think that is fair.  Like Greene, le Carré deals with the human condition.  He counterpoints professional treachery and deception with the personal.  Each of the books in the Karla trilogy has his characters suffering on a personal level, with Smiley himself suffering repeatedly from the cheating of his wife.  In Smiley’s people, there is an awkward scene where Lacon takes George for dinner and spends the meal trying to get George to give him relationship advice as he too is facing losing his wife.  Never a strong character, this leaves him looking even more foolish and ineffectual than ever.

In some ways, I think le Carré almost uses the world of espionage as a prism through which to explore these aspects of the human character, to show what happens to people who both perpetrate the lies and are also the victims of hem.  It is notable that all of the former agents and colleagues whom Smiley involves in his investigation in Smiley’s People are somehow damaged or reduced by their involvement with the Circus, from Toby Esterhase, eking out an existence as a shady art dealer to dear old Connie, an alcoholic wreck, living in squalor with her partner.  There’s not a great deal of hope or happiness in le Carré’s writing, just a sense of the futility of it all.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Top Ten Tuesday: Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!

I suppose the honest answer to this week’s Top Ten Tuesday from the Broke and the Bookish would be for me to submit a blank page.  Unfortunately, being British, I won’t be having a Thanksgiving dinner and so have nothing to which I could invite anyone, let alone cool authors.

I've always assumed that Thanksgiving was one of those American things, something culturally specific, like American Football (played using the hands – go figure), and thus to be appreciated by me as an observer rather than as a participant.  What I didn’t realise though was that it isn’t just Americans who celebrate it.  Oh no!  I knew that Canadians do, albeit earlier in the month but I didn’t know that Liberians (as opposed to librarians) do Thanksgiving, as do the inhabitants of Leiden in the Netherlands, apparently to celebrate the raising of the Siege of Leiden in 1574 (God, Wikipedia is good.).  And, of course, we mustn’t forget the good citizens of Norfolk Island, who will be sitting down to whatever feast they have at Thanksgiving on 30th November this year.

So lots of different people have their own versions of Thanksgiving.  But not us Brits.  The closest we get is Harvest Festival, which used to be quite big when I was at primary school but about which I don’t hear much these days.  I do seem to remember it as a day when we all had to collect food to give to the less fortunate.  I’m not sure what the local poor made of the random collection of tinned beans, potatoes and mushy peas that my classmates and I would hand over, supplemented by some more exciting (or dangerous, depending on your views on health and safety) past their sell-by-date items.  Frankly, I wouldn’t want to invite any of my favourite authors to eat our old Harvest Festival comestibles for fear of killing them or, at the very least, giving them indigestion.

But it would be unfair of me to leave you with a blank page to contemplate, as you have been so kind as to come over for a visit so I will assume that my parents had followed through with their plan to leave Merrie Olde England in the early ‘70s and, instead of landing in Canada as intended, had made landfall south of the 49th parallel, thereby ensuring that I ended up with a US passport.  With whom shall I share my turkey and pumpkin pie then?

I’m going to give myself a bit of flexibility.  As I’ve adopted a fantasy nationality and will be sitting at an imaginary table, with unreal food, I’m going to allow myself to invite both the quick and the dead and to provide each of my guests and me with a universal simultaneous translator, to ensure that we can all enjoy ourselves.  So, who has made the cut for my fantasy Thanksgiving dinner?

1.         Dorothy Parker. As a founder member of the Algonquin Round Table and a famous wit, I think Dorothy would be an entertaining dinner guest, especially as she was fond of a drink or three.  Anyone who can write this verse is certainly value for a free meal:

            “Love is a glorious medley of song,
            A medley of extemporanea;
            And love is a thing that can never go wrong;
            And I am Marie of Romania.”

2.         Oscar Wilde.  Decadent, brilliant, witty and with a hell of a back story, what dinner table wouldn’t be enlivened by Oscar?

3.         Colette.  Despite being responsible for the execrable Le Blé en Herbe, which I was required to read for my French A-level, she gets an invite to my turkey supper for probably having a fund of stories about her life of scandalous excess, yet still managing to become the first French woman to be awarded a state funeral.

4.         Evelyn Waugh.  If you’ve ever read his diaries or letters, you’ll know that, as well as being one the great 20th Century British satirists, he was a hilariously malicious gossip.  Assuming he was on good form, he would be an asset to any gossipy dinner party.

5.         Jan Morris.  To my mind, she is one of the very best travel writers of the modern age.  In particular, her book on Venice manages to be an absolutely beautiful read whilst still painting a true picture of the city.  Bellezza at Dolce Bellezza is co-hosting Venice in February and I suggest that, if you haven’t already read this, you sign up for the challenge, if only as an excuse to read it.  Jan gets an invite so she can enthral us with tales of the faraway.

6.         Hunter S Thompson.  So far, my table is looking witty, interesting but relatively civilised.  Every self-respecting dinner party should have at least one token drug-bingeing, drunken lunatic to liven up proceedings and everyone’s favourite gonzo journalist fits that bill nicely.  I just hope he leaves his gun at home.

7.         Mary Shelley. Having written Frankenstein after a house party with Percy Shelley, Byron and Polidori, I wonder what she could come up with after an evening with this lot.  And I bet she’d have some stories to tell.

8.         Stephen Fry.  Now officially a British National Treasure, he is highly amusing, polymathic and even seems to be a nice chap so he gets an invite.  He also once played Oscar Wilde in a film so it would be fun to see their conversation.

9.         Rebecca West.  As a journalist and author, I think her reputation has faded a little unfairly in recent years and certainly since Time magazine called her "indisputably the world's number one woman writer" in 1947.  Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, her combined travel and history work about Yugoslavia in the 1930s was described in the New York Times as “not only the magnification and intensification of the travel book form, but, one may say, its apotheosis."  I also love her memoir of the Nuremberg War Trials, a topic of endless interest to me and so I would love to talk to her about her coverage of the trials over the Thanksgiving repast.

10.       Ernest Hemingway.  My favourite literary wild man, I’d love to see him and Hunter Thompson going head to head over dinner……..even if there’d be a hell of a mess to clear up afterwards.

Sunday, November 20, 2011

It's Stir-up Sunday!


Christmas has officially arrived early at Falaise Towers.  Unofficially, of course, it has been here for a while, with mini-Falaise having been asking about it for a couple of weeks now, especially after being cast as a star on the Christmas tree in her nursery school nativity play.  Although tedious at times, there are some compensations for the constant questions about Santa Claus as the big man is also an excellent disciplinary tool – as in “If you don’t behave, I’ll call Santa and tell him not to come.” Works every time between November and December 25th.

Anyway, on a more official note, today is Stir-up Sunday and we joined with tradition in making our Christmas Pudding this morning.  We all took our turn stirring the beast, youngest first and we all made our wish.  I’ve not made a Christmas Pud before and have gone for Nigella’s recipe, using extravagantly expensive Pedro Ximenez sherry as the alcohol of choice.  To be fair, it is smelling very Christmassy and Nigella has always been a favourite of mine, despite her recent descent into self-parody and the ridiculous mendacity of pretending that her TV studio is really her home and that the demographically perfect gang of renta-mob –extras supplied by her casting agent are really her bosom buddies.

Nevertheless, Nigella is OK with me for the simple reason that her recipes work for me.  I find that I can cook her food, whereas some other writers, such as Saint Delia of Norwich City, just don’t work when I try their dishes.  Rick Stein does, Simon Hopkinson does, Nigella does and Raymond Blanc does.  Unfortunately, neither Delia nor Gordon Ramsay do.   Noone’s fault, just the way it is.

Back to Stir-up Sunday, which always falls on the last Sunday before Advent.  Back in the old days, the 1549 Book of Common Prayer dictated that the Collect for this Sunday began:

“Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people; that they, plenteously bringing forth the fruit of good works, may of thee be plenteously rewarded; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”

This, allegedly, reminded the ladies of the congregation, and their cooks, that it was about time to get the Christmas pudding made so that it would have time to mature before the big day. Consequently, the making of the pudding became associated with this day.

Unsurprisingly, there is a distinct lack of cooks or other domestic staff at Falaise Towers and so it fell to me, assisted (in the loosest sense of the word) by mini-Falaise, to make the pudding. All three of us gave it the traditional East to West stir and made a wish. I have no idea what Mrs F’s is and mine will remain a secret but mini was very keen to explain that she’d wished for a Jessie from Toy Story toy for Christmas. She’s not slow, is our Mini-Falaise. She’s not very subtle either.

Hopefully you too have managed to get your’s done. Here’s a picture of the mixture before it went in the steamer – it looked and smelt a lot better after three hours of steaming!