The Ice Harvest - book and movie

Last week I read Scott Phillips The Ice Harvest (review later this week). I thought I'd watch the movie over the weekend to see how it translated to the big screen. It was somewhat of a disconcerting experience. The book and the movie are quite different; the movie being a strange echo of the book. The Billy Bob Thornton character in the movie only has a couple of pages in the book, and whilst some of the scenes mirrored the book, most of the plot had been altered to some degree, including the relationships between the characters, and just about all the dialogue had been re-written. Even the scene in the book where Charlie Arglist's brother-in-law crawls across the ice to be sick in the car's footwell - a scene that had me in a fit of giggles - had been reworked and lost just about all it's impact. I'm kind of baffled by this as the movie would have worked just as well, if not better, if it had followed the book. And as for the movie ending - the book nearly flew at the television! The book is pure noir - let's just say the film was heading that way until it bottled the end and went all Hollywood. The movie wasn't bad, but in my view it was a shame it didn't follow the book more faithfully.

Lazy Sunday Service

Kerrie's review of The Rule Book over on Mysteries in Paradise has given a lift to what has been a busy few days in which I taught an entire twelve week course (usually two hours a week) over four days, whilst trying to do all the usual stuff. Always nice to get a positive review. Hopefully, Ghostland, the third McEvoy book will see the light of day at some point - it's stuck in submission limbo at the minute. I've been making good progress on Good Cop/Bad Cop over the past six weeks and only have four more chapters to write to finish the book off. Talking of which I better get back to it.

My posts this week:
Life sized virtual doubles
Review of Black Diamond by Martin Walker
A last attempt to keep allied lobby groups and voters on side?
Montreal/Quebec crime fiction
Code/Space book cover
Review of Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein

Life sized virtual doubles

In an effort to speed up security clearance at Manchester Airport from next week they are using full sized holograms of staff to prepare travellers as they enter the security zone (see story here). The idea seems to be that passengers are more likely to take notice of a person than a tannoy announcement or a television screen and the virtual self takes some of the work away from their real counterparts. The holograms are realistic enough that some passengers are fooled into trying to hand them their travel documents. I'm sure there are all kinds of plots that could be linked to such holograms, with witnesses being fooled into seeing a hologram rather than the real person, thus providing an alibi, etc. Kind of like virtual twins. If it works, it'll be interesting to see if the world starts to be populated with very helpful virtual doubles.

Review of Black Diamond by Martin Walker (Quercus, 2010)

In the Perigord region of France, Captain Bruno Courreges keeps the peace in the small town of St Denis. Tension is high in the town with the forced closing of the saw mill due to a rivalry between father and son, there are reports that a scam is operating in the local truffle market, and a tit-for-tat war between Chinese and Vietnamese food vendors has broken out. Not long after Courreges starts to investigate the latter two crimes, one of his close friends, Hercule is found brutally murdered. Hercule has a shady past in the French foreign service and his death attracts the attention of specialist services in Paris. As the feud between father and son, and the Chinese and Vietnamese escalates, Courreges tries to solve the murder and dissipate the building tension.

It took me a while to warm to Black Diamond, and even then my interest waxed and waned as I progressed through the story. What saved the novel from the did not finish pile was the character of Captain Bruno Courreges and the contextual framing with respect to France’s bloody colonial exits from Vietnam and Algeria. Courreges is a complex, multi-layered character who’s likeable and enjoyable company. Where I struggled with the book was the somewhat lifeless prose – though occasionally it sparks into life, especially around scenes with food – the uneven pacing, with several pages devoted to relatively inconsequential events and other scenes dealt with quite quickly, and especially the dialogue which is wooden and formal, with all characters speaking through the same voice. The plot is relatively straightforward and became more interesting as the story unfolded. Overall, a book with some merits – especially the character of Courreges, but the unevenness of the prose and pacing, and the weak dialogue, let the reading experience down for me. That said, it has some very good reviews elsewhere, for example, this review in the Independent.

Montreal/Quebec crime fiction?

I'm off to Montreal in mid-March for a week. We've been doing some work on Canada and potential diaspora strategies and they're flying us over to present the findings and discuss them more fully. I like to try and read crime fiction set in the places I visit, but I'm not really aware of novels set in Montreal or Quebec more broadly. Since I probably need to think about ordering books now if I'm to have them in good time for when I travel, I thought I'd post to see if anyone had any recommendations? I'm interested in any crime sub-genre.

Update:
My review of The Main by Trevanian is here.
My review of Still Life by Lousie Penny is here.

Code/Space book cover

The designer at MIT Press has just emailed through the cover design for our forthcoming Code/Space book. What do you think? Good? Needs tweaks? Hopefully should be out March/April time.

Review of Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein (2005, Carroll and Graf)

Part-time summer cop, Danny Boyle, and his mentor, Iraqi veteran, John Ceepak are having breakfast in Sea Haven, New Jersey, when a blood soaked girl stumbles up to the Pancake Palace. The girl and her father had sneaked into Sunnyside Playland at dawn to sit on the tilt-a-whirl before the amusement park opened for business. There a crazed gunman has shot her father dead. It turns out that he’s Reginald Hart, a billionaire developer with his fingers in many pies and a list of enemies a mile long. Ceepak vows to the girl that he’ll protect her and capture the man that killed her father, and he’s a man of his word, living by what he calls his ‘code’. With the town in a panic, a small police force stretched to the limit, and various vested interests circling the case, it’s a vow that he’s going to find difficult to fulfil.

In Tilt-a-Whirl Grabenstein creates an authentic feeling seasonal seaside town with its tourist shops, local haunts, and ragbag collection of characters ranging from homeless bums to entrepreneurial mayor. The characterization is generally good, if a little clichéd, and the writing engaging and lightly amusing, with a good pace. The telling is kind of a mix between a cosy and a police procedural, told through the first person narrative of twenty four year old, rookie part-time cop, Danny Boyle. Where I felt the story was a little stretched was in relation to the plotting. It had its twists and turns, and it tugged the reader along, but it felt a bit lightweight in places due, I think, to the levity in Grabenstein’s writing. Also, for some reason I sensed very early on who the killer was, and the ending felt kind of clunky and not fully worked through. Overall, I enjoyed Boyle and Ceepak’s first outing, and feel that Grabenstein is onto a good thing with these characters and the setting of Sea Haven, but felt a little let down in that this had the potential to be my first five star review of the year. I’ll be keeping an eye out for other books in the series.

Lazy Sunday Service

Never has the saying 'a week is a long time in politics' been more apt than the last seven days in Ireland. Under enormous pressure in the wake of revelations of socialising with leading bankers ahead of the bank guarantee that has bought the country to its knees, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Brian Cowen, last weekend announced that he would be holding a motion of confidence in himself on Tuesday evening as leader of his party (not as Taoiseach). He won this motion, but on Wednesday took the decision to undertake a cabinet reshuffle, asking those ministers retiring at the next general election to stand down to make way for new members. It was a badly judged move as the government's coalition partners - the Green Party - not only blocked the move but insisted on a date being set for a general election. Chaos broke out on Thursday as it became clear that ministers had resigned but were not going to be replaced, meaning that the remaining ministers had to double up offices. Then yesterday, Brian Cowen resigned as leader of his party, but not as the Taoiseach, which means that between now and the 11th March, we'll have a leader of the country who is not leader of his political party, and several ministeries with only part-time ministers. It's a farcical end to the probably the worst government in the history of the state - first they got us into the mess and then they managed to make things even worse by how they handled the crisis. I was in government buildings on Wednesday afternoon meeting the Housing Minister and the heads of a couple of government agencies. I thought that since Cowen had won his motion of confidence it was back to business as usual, unaware of the plot about to unfold - and I'm fairly certain nobody in the room knew either as some government business due to go through the Dail in the next few weeks was briefly discussed. It would have been interesting to have been there the next morning as all hell broke loose. It's looking increasingly likely the government will collapse in the next couple of days and the election will be sometime in February. Thank God.

My posts this week
What difference will voice recognition software make to writing fiction?
Should local authorities be temporarily be relieved of their decision making power?
Mapbacks
Draft guidance manual for managing and resolving unfinished housing developments
Review of Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler
Review of The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
A bargain haul

A bargain haul

We discovered a tiny little secondhand bookshop this morning and picked up a few bargains. For the modest sum of 18 euro we got seven Agatha Christie's, a Dorothy Sayers, James Lee Burke, Mark Billingham and Stephen Ambrose. Added to the existing TBR, these should keep the household quiet for a little while. I've already made a start into one of them.

Review of The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (1952, Orion)

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a well liked and respected member of Central City’s community. He’s known for being good with problem prisoners, able to talk them round, and being somewhat over-friendly with the public. But it’s all part of Ford’s strategy to manage his ‘sickness’ after the death of his father and his adopted brother, Mike, killed on a construction site owned by Chester Conway. Mike had been sent to reform school for sexually assaulting a young girl, taking the rap for Ford, and his death was no accident. Ford has a score to settle Conway just as soon as the right opportunity arises. And that opportunity is Joyce Lakeland. Only Joyce has reawakened his sickness – his brutal dark side. Their violent first encounter drives a wedge between Ford and fiancée and sets in train a spate of murders in Central City. Ford thinks he’s covered his tracks, but now his inner demon has re-emerged he finds himself slowly becoming the attention of suspicion.

The Killer Inside Me is a curious read in that it manages to maintain its suspense throughout despite the unfolding of the story holding few surprises. Ford is a sociopath in the sense that at one level he appears normal and he’s self-aware of his ‘sickness’, but he’s manipulative and deceitful, has shallow emotions, lacks empathy and remorse, and can flip into extreme violence. Thompson does a great job of exploring Ford’s complex personality as he uses all of his sociopathic traits to exercise his revenge and cover up his trail through deception and calculated violence. The writing is tight, all tell and no show, and plotting and characterization is excellent. Where it excels is in exploring Ford’s warped mind and world, without resorting to excessive description and back story, and yet being dotted with nuanced insight. I was slightly disappointed by the end, but it fitted with the rest of the narrative, and the plotting was a little forced at times. I was expecting the book to be uber-violent, but actually it’s reasonably run of the mill by today’s standards and is certainly not excessive. Overall, a great character driven read that’s very thought-provoking. I've another Thompson already lined up; looking forward to it.

Review of Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler (Dell, 2001)

Charlie Swift is a gun monkey for the mobster running Orlando. Mostly he hangs around the back room of O’Malley’s playing monopoly with his fellow enforcers. Every now and then he puts on a pair of knuckle dusters and reminds folk of their obligations. And if they fail to deliver he makes them disappear. Forever. Occasionally, Stan hires him out, which is why he finds himself with the inept Blade Sanchez and the headless body of Rollo Kramer in the car’s trunk. Rollo has been skimming off the top of Beggar Johnson’s take. The only plus in the hit is that Swift gets to meet Marcie, Rollo’s ex-wife. A short time later, Beggar wants another hit, this time in Orlando. Everything seems to be going to plan until he realises he’s just shot dead the wrong people, inherited some very hot books, and his colleagues are dropping dead. With Beggar moving in on Stan’s territory and the FBI on his tail, Swift is desperately trying to stay one step of those that want the books and him dead, whilst protecting his family and sorting out the mess.

There’s a rich sub-genre of Florida comic crime capers by the likes of Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, Laurence Shames, James Hall, Elmore Leonard, Randy Wade White, John MacDonald and Charles Willeford. Breaking into that set is a tough ask. Gischler makes a pretty good stab at it. The real strength of the book is the pace and action. It never lets up, rattling along a terrific speed. And the writing, characterization and plotting is solid. The book has a great opening, with some nice comic touches. As the book progresses the comic elements lessen, being replaced with more violent set pieces. Swift is meant to be an anti-hero – the bad guy with the redeeming side and conscience. This gets stretched to breaking point, however, given his cold blooded massacre of just about everybody he meets and the body count by the end of the book is in war movie territory. As a consequence, my connection to him waned as the book progressed. There were also a couple of plotlines that also didn’t amount to much, such as that with New Guy. Overall, an enjoyable first novel that made enough of an impression that I’ll take a read of Gischler’s subsequent novels.

Mapbacks

Bernadette over at Reactions to Reading has consistently praised Chris Grabenstein's Sea Haven mysteries involving Iraq veteran John Ceepak, so I thought I'd give them a go. I'm half way through Tilt A Whirl and it's living up to expectation. On his site, Grabenstein helpfully provides a map (warning this is a big file - click right for a larger lower res image) of his fictional resort of Sea Haven, reviving the old tradition of supplying maps to help readers place the story. This used to be a lot more common, for example, the Dell Mapbacks, where a map was provided on the inside cover. These ran from #5 to #550 in the series (1943-1951 before petering out). Perhaps its tradition that might be worth reviving? What do you think - would mapbacks be of use to you as a reader?

What difference will voice recognition software make to writing fiction?

I've just had a PhD student successfully defend her thesis. It was nearly all written using voice recognition software. It actually made very little different to the style of the text, but then there are pretty rigid conventions about how a thesis should be written. It's got me thinking though as to whether 'writing' a novel by talking it out aloud, rather than typing it in, or writing it down, would make a difference to the prose, narrative, style, etc? Would it push the style to tell rather than show? Would it increase the amount of dialogue, or even the quality of the dialogue? Would it lead to narratives that are more like verbal storytelling? Sometimes when I read a novel, the quality of the voice is so good, I think that the writer must have read it into a dictaphone and then transcribed it. I've no idea whether they did or not, or whether they were just very good at capturing the cadence, pauses, half-sentences, etc, of verbal storytelling. Would it lead to shorter, tighter stories? I'm not sure how I'd get on composing a story entirely through the spoken word. I reckon I need to think and type. I think I'd also feel pretty odd sitting in a room talking to myself! Anybody got any views or experience? How would talking to compose a story affect the story?

Lazy Sunday Service

I'm reading Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler at moment. A kind of madcap, crime caper novel that has a few chuckles in it. Here's a typical gag that made me laugh.

"We might as well cash it in," Bob said. "He's got the yellow ones, the green ones and now the blue ones."

As far as Bob was concerned, nothing had a proper name. Everything was the blue one or the green one or the lumpy one or the wet one or the one that smelled like cheese. He'd been married nine years before his wife had caught him with her sister. When I asked which sister, he'd said, "The easy one."

My posts this week:
Rewriting history? Crime fiction meets true crime
Post seasonal splurge
Review of Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
New buildings, but what's their status in the market?
Future framework for higher education: Regional clusters
Review of Orchid Blue by Eoin McNamee
How 'economically free' do we want Ireland to be?
Atkinson inverted

Atkinson inverted

I've just finished Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. I haven't enough time to write a review for the forgotten Friday slot, so I'll just share one observation. Earlier in the week I reviewed Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, a story I felt was pretty verbose, with a lot of show at the expense of tell, and which could have lost a hundred pages and the story be unaffected. Thompson's writing is almost the complete opposite - all show and little tell and as tight as a drum. Here's how he sets the scene:

Our standards of conduct aren't the same, say, as they are in the east or middle-west. Out here you say yes ma'am and no ma'am to anything with skirts on; anything white, that is. Out here, if you catch a man with his pants down, you apologize ... even if you have to arrest him afterwards. Out here you're a man, a man and a gentleman, or you aren't anything. And God help you if you're not.

I don't know about you, but I have a pretty good idea about this place and its social norms. Five sentences then straight back into the dialogue and action. Great stuff.

Review of Orchid Blue by Eoin McNamee (Faber, 2010)

January 1961 and Pearl Gamble never makes it home from a dance at the local Orange Hall in Newry, Northern Ireland. The next morning she is found beaten, stabbed and strangled. The focus of the police investigation immediate hones in on local man Robert McGladdery, even though Pearl left the dance with another man, and returned to her neighbourhood with four others. McGladdery is a local wide boy, a natty dresser having returned from cosmopolitan London, who has a ready smile and quick humour, but somewhat of an outsider because of his illegitimate upbringing. He had been drinking most of the day before the dance, and seemed to be attracted to Pearl, taking three dances with her. Inspector Eddie McCrink has also returned from London and he is immediately uncomfortable with the investigation. It seems the local team have decided McGladdery is guilty and they’re prepared to make the evidence fit their case. And the town seems determined that he will hang for the crime. As do the authorities – the Attorney General and also the trial judge, Lord Justice Curran, who lost his own nineteen year old daughter to murder nine years previously and who has his eye on promotion to Privy Counsel.

The synopsis above sounds like a pretty good premise for a story. As I detailed earlier in the week, this is not straight fiction however. Rather it is a fictionalised version of the real Gamble/McGladdery case. Ultimately McGladdery was found guilty of Gamble’s death and he was the last person hung in Northern Ireland in 1961. McNamee then is exploring some troubling elements of the case through a fictional lens. The problem for the reader is that it’s not at all clear which elements are based on fact, which elements of the case are being challenged, and which bits are entirely fictional and imagined. Somewhat disconcertingly, large portions of the story are written in the style of a true crime book, with a dispassionate, distant and timeless voice, although in a much more sophisticated prose than in most true crime. For me, this style had the effect of leaving me outside the story, instead of being immersed in it. As a result, I struggled through a good portion of the book, though I did begin to feel more hooked in in the last third. Overall, I found this quite a difficult book to get into and I found the read quite disconcerting for the reasons above. Nevertheless, the case is an interesting one.

Review of Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (Black Swan, 2004)

1970 and Olivia and her older sister, Amelia, camp out on the lawn of their parent's house in Cambridge. The next morning Olivia has disappeared into thin air. 1994 and teenage Laura is stabbed to death for no apparent reason in the offices of her father’s law firm whilst temping for him. 1979 and young teenage mother, Michelle, snaps and plants an axe into her husband’s head when he wakes the baby. Three separate crimes linked by seemingly little more than the fact that they have surfaced in Jackson Brodie’s life at the same time. Brodie is a former police inspector turned private eye. On the death of their father, Amelia and her sister, Julia, discover Olivia’s toy in his desk and want Brodie to find out what happened to the young girl. Overweight father, Theo, can’t shake his obsession with Laura’s slaying and wants her killer found. Shirley wants to track down her niece, who was taken into care when her mother was jailed. And along with his wife running off with another man, taking his daughter with her, Brodie has his own case histories to contend with – the death of his sister, snatched, raped and dumped into the canal on her way home from the bus stop and the fate of his brother. Dealing with other people’s cases is proven a burden, especially when somebody seems to be trying to kill him.

Case Histories is a rich and layered book. The various case histories swirl around and entwine with each other through the central figure of Jackson Brodie. The prose is excellent and the characterization well developed. Brodie, in particular, is a complex and appealing investigator, with his own foibles and faults, but a decent sense of right. Atkinson’s style is to provide an enormous amount of back story and descriptive narrative, some of which ploughs the same ground repeatedly. With respect to personal taste it’s not my preferred mode of storytelling – I favour more tell and less show, and the prose to be much tighter. For my money, a hundred pages could be edited from the book and the story itself would be little affected. I have the same feeling when I read Tana French. That said, I appreciate that this is a style issue and Atkinson does this form of storytelling very well. This raises the problem of whether to judge the book on its merits or my enjoyment. If on its merits, and if this is your kind of thing, then it’s probably a 4.5 star book, but based on my taste it’s a 3.5. Interestingly, I’ve warmed to the book post-read, as the various layers and intersections condense with reflection, but at the time of reading I found the overly long and repetitive description tiresome. Overall, an enjoyable, but overly long, story with an interesting central character.

Post seasonal splurge

A nice box from Amazon turned up this morning with 8 books for the TBR pile. There are 4 more on their way. This will take the pile up to the 25ish mark - the highest it's been for a long time. On last year's reading about 3 months worth, so I'm feeling secure that I'm not going to run out of any quality reading material any time soon. I usually try and keep the pile between 5 and 12 and I aim to read all my purchases. If it gets down to five I usually get jittery. Anyway, here's some of the reviews you can expect over the next 3 to 6 months.

Rewriting history? True crime meets crime fiction

I’m about two thirds of the way through Eoin McNamee’s Orchid Blue. I’ve been struggling with it a bit. The voice is kind of strange, telling the story in a somewhat detached manner from a variety of viewpoints that leaves the reader (well this reader in any case) outside the story, instead of being immersed in it. This isn’t helped by knowing from the start the final outcome or the timing which flits around the case, even moving up to the present day through an unknown narrator’s voice. The thing that I’m trying to make my mind up about, however, is the fictionalisation of a real world event. Robery McGladdery was convicted of murdering Pearl Gamble and was the last man hanged in Northern Ireland in 1961. It’s not at all clear to me as a reader how much of the story is fiction, speculation and fact, and whether the story is underpinned by research and new evidence unearthed by McNamee. His version of events seems to run counter to the story as told in official accounts and Cold Blooded Murder by Patrick Greg in which McGladdery is clearly identified as the murderer, a verdict that McNamee throws into serious doubt.

Neither true crime nor pure fiction, I am left wondering the extent to which fiction should rewrite recent history, whilst providing no documentary evidence to justify or back-up such a playing with history? And I’m not sure where the boundaries are here. I don’t really have a problem, for example, with Philip Kerr dropping real life people from history into his stories (where it is clear he is using them in an entirely fictional capacity), or fictional characters being dropped into real life events when the history of the event is little altered. McNamee seems to be doing neither however – it is a fictional rewriting of an historical event. It’s neither true crime nor fiction. I’m going to think about this a little more, but if anyone has any views on the lines between history and fiction I’d be interested to hear them.

Lazy Sunday Service

This week flew by as work kicked back in at a hundred miles an hour. A slow reading week and a slow writing week. Admin, politics and nonsense seemed to be the order of the day. I hope that's not a sign of the year to come. January is certainly looking that way.

My posts this week:
My blogs of the year
Best reads of 2010
All 2010 reviews
This has to be the year of job creation
Where are we at with house and land prices?
Around the world in 365 days
Dead of missing forever?
Review of Peeler by Kevin McCarthy

Review of Peeler by Kevin McCarthy (Mercier Press, 2010)

It’s November 1920 in West Cork and Acting Sergeant Sean O’Keefe of the Royal Irish Constabulary is caught between the forces of the Crown and the IRA. O’Keefe was away fighting in the First World War when the 1916 rising took place and as an Irishman in the RIC he is charged with keeping the peace and suppressing the activities of those who want an independent Ireland, making him the enemy of his fellow countrymen. His police station has been turned into a fortified barracks and everywhere he goes he’s accompanied by British soldiers for protection. It’s a difficult state of affairs and the murder of a young woman, her mutilated body left in a field, a sign around her neck denouncing her as a traitor, is not going to make his life any easier. Very few people are prepared to talk to peelers for fear of retribution. O’Keefe’s superiors want the killer caught, but only if it serves their interests, and Dublin Castle sends their own detective to help. The IRA, understanding the potential propaganda if the killer is revealed to be from their ranks, are also on the trail. Dogged in his pursuit of truth and justice, O’Keefe tries to negotiate a path between Crown and Rebels in order to catch his killer.

There is much to like about Peeler. It’s well researched, with a great deal of attention to historical accuracy and recreating the social and political landscape of County Cork in 1920, and it’s well written with a decent plot and good characterization. Sean O’Keefe, in particular, is a well drawn and complex character caught as he is between two worlds. Indeed, I hope McCarthy has another O’Keefe book in the works as he’s somebody I’d like to spend a bit more time discovering. Another strength of the story is that it doesn't fall into the trap of a simplistic rendering of the Irish war of independence, instead providing a multifaceted and nuanced portrayal of the complex web of professional, familial and community loyalties and obligations. To my taste, the book though is a little too rich in historical detail – my preference is to front the story and let the context come through telling, as with Philip Kerr or Alan Furst, rather than to explicitly provide a lot of contextual scaffolding through extended description. This would have also had the benefit of slimming the book by removing or trimming some passages that had little to do with the plot directly. I would have also preferred a bit more balance in the O’Keefe and Farrell (the IRA man) threads. That said, this is a very good and entertaining read and if you like historical crime fiction then this comes recommended.

Dead or missing forever?

I'm reading Kate Atkinson's Case Histories at the minute. In the space of one paragraph she asks two interesting but difficult questions.

The first one. If you had to chose with respect to your child either dead or missing forever, which would you pick?

The second one. What do you do when the worst thing that could happen to you has already happened (i.e. your child is dead or missing forever)? Do you continue on? Do you seek answers? Or do quit and cash in your chips?

In relation to the first one, I think I'd go with missing forever. I know this has no resolution and it would plague me forever as to what had happened, probably driving me mad in the process, but there is the hope that he/she might have a good life. In relation to the second, I think I'd have to continue on for the sake of everyone else, but it would be damned hard work.

There're no easy answers here and I suspect if I was to discuss and debate this when I'd got a few drinks in me, my views on them might become a bit fluid. And if I'd got the drink in me after my kid died/disappeared heaven knows where that might lead.

How about you? Dead or missing forever?

Around the world in 365 days

One of my aims in 2010 was to further internationalize my reading. Below are all my reviews organized by the country in which they were set (not by the nationality of the author). I managed to get a decent spread of reading, visiting 21 countries (more if you count the 5 books set in multiple locations). The USA, however, was still the country that dominated my reading, with 37 of the stories set there. Still, at least I did a bit of travelling.

The split was:
37: USA
7: Ireland
5: Australia, Italy
4: France, Scotland
3: England (a bit of a surprise this one)
2: Iceland, Palestine, Brazil
1: South Africa, Botswana, Laos, Argentina, Sweden, Thailand, Poland, Spain, Cuba, Malta, Japan

1 book was fantasy, 5 were set in more than one country, and 13 were non-fiction.

USA
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston *****
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain *****
Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman *****
The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell *****
Vanilla Ride by Joe Lansdale *****
Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski *****
Killer by Dave Zeltserman *****
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett *****
Isle of Joy by Don Winslow ****
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley ****
Halo in Blood by John Evans/Howard Browne ****
South of no North by Charles Bukowski ****
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy ****.5
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett ****
Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell ****
Tonight I Said Goodbye by Michael Koryta ****
Damnation Street by Andrew Klavan ****
Then Came The Evening by Brian Hart ****
Point Blank by Richard Stark****
Devil's Food by Anthony Bruno ****
The Song is You by Megan Abbott ****
Leather Maiden by Joe Lansdale ****
A Firing Offense by George Pelecanos ****
Grift Sense by James Swain ****
I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane***.5
Smoked by Patrick Quinlan ***.5
The Green Ripper by John D. Macdonald ***.5
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly ***.5
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block ***
Cogan's Trade by George V Higgins ***
Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan ***
Fury by G.M. Ford ***
The Devil's Garden by Ace Atkins ***
Motor City Blue by Loren Estleman ***
The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald Westlake ***
Client by Parnell Hall**.5
Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard **

Ireland
Collusion by Stuart Neville ****.5
The Big O by Declan Burke ****
The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman ****
Gallows Lane by Brian McGilloway ***.5
The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Samson ***
Hand in the Fire by Hugo Hamilton ***
The American Envoy by Garbhan Downey ***

Australia
Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland *****
Vodka Doesn't Freeze by Liah Giarrantano ****
Dead Set by Kel Robertson ****
Truth by Peter Temple ****
Blood Moon by Gary Disher **

Italy
The Goodbye Kiss by Massimo Carlotto ****
Via Delle Oche by Carlo Lucarelli ****
Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli ***.5
Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi ***
And Then You Die by Michael Dibdin **.5

France
Brodeck's Report by Phillipe Claudel *****
The Good Thief's Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan ****
Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista ***
Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas ***

Scotland
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves ****.5
The Complaints by Ian Rankin ****
Old Dogs by Donna Moore ****
Paying For It by Tony Black ***

England
London Boulevard by Ken Bruen ****
Saturday's Child by Ray Banks****
Old Flames by John Lawton ***

Iceland
Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason *****
Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason ***

Palenstine
The Grave in Gaza by Matt Beynon Rees *****
The Samaritan's Secret by Matt Beynon Rees ***.5

Brazil
Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage ****.5
The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza ****

South Africa
Killer Country by Mike Nicols ***.5

Botswana
A Deadly Trade by Michael Stanley ***

Laos
The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Coterill ****.5

Argentina
Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo ****

Sweden
Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Pers Wahloo ****

Thailand
Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett ***

Poland
The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst ***

Spain
Water-Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar ***

Cuba
Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura ***

Malta
The Information Officer by Mark Mills **.5

Japan
Shinjuku Shark by Arimasa Osawa **

More than one country
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler ****
Instruments of Darkness by Robert Wlison ***.5
Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty *****
The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesperman ***
Trail of Blood by S.J. Rozan ***

Fantasy
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett****.5

Non-fiction
A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey ****
Ten Days to D-Day by David Stafford ****
We Die Alone by David Howarth *****
Enough is Enough by Fintan O'Toole ****
Love, Sex and War by John Cosgrove ****.5
The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas ****
Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre ****
Chickenhawk by Robert Mason ****
Breakfast with Anglo by Simon Kelly ***.5
Wasters by Shane Ross and Nick Webb ***
GUBU Nation by Damian Corless ***
Kamikazi by Raymond Lamont-Brown ***
Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie **

All 2010 reviews

Here are all my reviews of 2010 ordered by the rating I gave books. Reflecting the quality of the books I read, the reviews are skewed towards the top end (I introduced the half star about halfway through the year and certainly some of the 4* books would have been 3.5 star if I'd had the system in place beforehand). Of the 101 books I read, 58 were 4 stars or above and 43 3.5 stars or below.

5* - 14; 4.5* - 7; 4* – 37; 3.5* - 10; 3* - 26; 2.5* - 3; 2* - 4

The general quality is to a large degree because my reading has been shaped somewhat by either prior experiences of an author's work or I've read good reviews elsewhere. Certainly, the quality of my reading has improved no end since I starting blogging, which is a compelling reason to continue.

Brodeck's Report by Phillipe Claudel *****
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston *****
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain *****
Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman *****
The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell *****
Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland *****
Vanilla Ride by Joe Lansdale *****
Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski *****
Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty *****
Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason *****
We Die Alone by David Howarth *****
The Grave in Gaza by Matt Beynon Rees *****
Killer by Dave Zeltserman *****
The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett *****

Collusion by Stuart Neville ****.5
Raven Black by Ann Cleeves ****.5
Blood of the Wicked by Leighton Gage ****.5
The Coroner's Lunch by Colin Coterill ****.5
Love, Sex and War by John Cosgrove ****.5
No Country for Old Men by Cormac McCarthy ****.5
Guards! Guards! by Terry Pratchett****.5

Isle of Joy by Don Winslow ****
The Last Good Kiss by James Crumley ****
London Boulevard by Ken Bruen ****
A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey ****
Ten Days to D-Day by David Stafford ****
The Mask of Dimitrios by Eric Ambler ****
Enough is Enough by Fintan O'Toole ****
Halo in Blood by John Evans/Howard Browne ****
Needle in a Haystack by Ernesto Mallo ****
South of no North by Charles Bukowski ****
Saturday's Child by Ray Banks****
The Thin Man by Dashiell Hammett ****
Tomato Red by Daniel Woodrell ****
Tonight I Said Goodbye by Michael Koryta ****
Damnation Street by Andrew Klavan ****
Then Came The Evening by Brian Hart ****
The Big O by Declan Burke ****
Vodka Doesn't Freeze by Liah Giarrantano ****
The Day of the Jack Russell by Colin Bateman ****
Roseanna by Maj Sjowall and Pers Wahloo ****
The People's Manifesto by Mark Thomas ****
Point Blank by Richard Stark****
The Silence of the Rain by Luiz Alfredo Garcia-Roza ****
The Good Thief's Guide to Paris by Chris Ewan ****
Devil's Food by Anthony Bruno ****
Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre ****
The Complaints by Ian Rankin ****
The Song is You by Megan Abbott ****
The Goodbye Kiss by Massimo Carlotto ****
Leather Maiden by Joe Lansdale ****
Via Delle Oche by Carlo Lucarelli ****
A Firing Offense by George Pelecanos ****
Grift Sense by James Swain ****
Dead Set by Kel Robertson ****
Truth by Peter Temple ****
Chickenhawk by Robert Mason ****
Old Dogs by Donna Moore ****

Breakfast with Anglo by Simon Kelly ***.5
The Samaritan's Secret by Matt Beynon Rees ***.5
I, The Jury by Mickey Spillane***.5
Killer Country by Mike Nicols ***.5
Smoked by Patrick Quinlan ***.5
The Green Ripper by John D. Macdonald ***.5
The Scarecrow by Michael Connelly ***.5
Instruments of Darkness by Robert Wlison ***.5
Gallows Lane by Brian McGilloway ***.5
Almost Blue by Carlo Lucarelli ***.5

Operation Napoleon by Arnaldur Indridason ***
Wasters by Shane Ross and Nick Webb ***
The Arms Maker of Berlin by Dan Fesperman ***
Bangkok Tattoo by John Burdett ***
The Case of the Missing Books by Ian Samson ***
The Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst ***
The Burglar Who Studied Spinoza by Lawrence Block ***
Cogan's Trade by George V Higgins ***
Water-Blue Eyes by Domingo Villar ***
Badfellas by Tonino Benacquista ***
GUBU Nation by Damian Corless ***
Bad Things Happen by Harry Dolan ***
Fury by G.M. Ford ***
Hand in the Fire by Hugo Hamilton ***
A Deadly Trade by Michael Stanley ***
The Devil's Garden by Ace Atkins ***
Trail of Blood by S.J. Rozan ***
The American Envoy by Garbhan Downey ***
Motor City Blue by Loren Estleman ***
Paying For It by Tony Black ***
Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi ***
Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas ***
Kamikazi by Raymond Lamont-Brown ***
Havana Fever by Leonardo Padura ***
Old Flames by John Lawton ***
The Fugitive Pigeon by Donald Westlake ***

Client by Parnell Hall**.5
The Information Officer by Mark Mills **.5
And Then You Die by Michael Dibdin **.5

Shinjuku Shark by Arimasa Osawa **
Pies and Prejudice by Stuart Maconie **
Up in Honey's Room by Elmore Leonard **
Blood Moon by Gary Disher **

Best reads of 2010

2010 was a very good year of reading. I just scraped over the 100 mark, having completed and reviewed 101 books during the year. I read some stellar books, but here is my top ten reads, only two of which were published in 2010. My number one pick is Brodeck's Report by Phillipe Claudel - a beautifully written, superbly plotted book that will leave you reflecting on its story and the questions it raises long after the last page is turned.

Best crime reads
Brodeck's Report by Phillipe Claudel (2007/09)
The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston (2009)
The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M Cain (1934)
Small Crimes by Dave Zeltserman (2008)
The Ones You Do by Daniel Woodrell (1992)
Gunshot Road by Adrian Hyland (2010)
Vanilla Ride by Joe Lansdale (2009)
Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski (2010)
Dead I May Well Be by Adrian McKinty (2003)
Hypothermia by Arnaldur Indridason (2007/09)

The book I didn't give a five star rating to, but has rattled around inside my head the most:
Then Came The Evening by Brian Hart (2010)

Best non-fiction book
We Die Alone by David Howarth (1955)