Review of The Forgotten 500 by Gregory A Freeman (NAL Calibre, 2007)

From 1942 on the Allies started to systematically bomb the Romanian oil fields at Ploesti flying first from North Africa and then Italy.  Given their vital strategic value to the Axis the refineries were heavily defended by flak defences and fighter squadrons and the attrition rate on Allied bombers and crews was high.  Many of the crews bailed out over Yugoslavia, occupied by German and Italian troops and divided by complex internal divisions: the Fascist Ustase, collaborating with the Axis, and the Communist Partisans led by Tito and Royalist Chetniks led by Mihailović.  The latter two had a different approach to fighting the Axis, the Partisans being more pro-active, the Chetniks biding time until an Allied invasion to avoid severe civilian reprisals, and were engaged in a civil war for control of Yugoslavia post war.  From 1943 onwards, the Allies position was to back the more active Partisans and the advice given to airmen was if they bailed out to try and avoid the Chetniks, who were suspected of collaboration. 

The Forgotten 500 tells the story of the airmen who landed into Chetnik hands and were subsequently rescued by a daring mission organised by OSS and the American Air Force.  Despite the warnings given to them, the several hundred airmen who ended up in Chetnik hands were treated as heroes, extended warm hospitality and offered sanctuary.  Nevertheless, many were injured, all were hungry, and their presence threatened the lives of local villagers.  After a lot of in-fighting amongst the Allies, Operation Halyard was formulated by the OSS to extract them.  Three agents were parachuted in and along with the Chetniks and airmen constructed a short runway at Pranjane in the mountains.  On August 9th and 10th 272 men were picked up by C-47 transport planes are flown back to Italy.  Over the next few months more airmen were extracted bringing the total up to 512 rescued.

Freeman’s account of the rescue mission seeks to balance the story of the American airmen in Yugoslavia, with the efforts of the OSS to organize their rescue, and the wider political landscape of Yugoslavia and the Allies relationship to its two main anti-Axis factions: the Partisans and Chetniks.  His telling is heavily weighted towards the first two using extended personal stories of a handful of survivors to tell the tale.  Some of this material whilst interesting is largely extraneous to the story.  On the other hand, the wider framing of the Yugoslav arena and its internal conflicts is quite cursorily dealt with, as is the Communist ring that influenced the Allied position vis-a-vis its engagement with different factions.  The latter part of the book deals with events after the war.  The victorious Partisans put Mihailović on trial for treason.  Those rescued by Operation Halyard petitioned to be able to attend the trial as witnesses for the defence, and even after his execution continued to campaign to clear his name.  However, for political reasons the rescue mission was largely kept a secret and little attempt was made to set the historical record straight.  Overall, it’s an interesting book, but in my view could have done with a bit of an edit to avoid repetition and redundancy and to frame the mission a bit more firmly in the wider political landscape.  The inclusion of some maps (e.g., the flight path to Ploesti, the strongholds of Partisans and Chetniks, a local map of where the rescue took place) would have also been useful.

Review of Villain by Shuichi Yoshida (Vintage, 2010; Japanese 2007)

Yoshino Ishibashi works as an insurance sales agent, lives in a company apartment, hangs around and bitches with her friends Mako and Sari, and dates men she meets on internet sites while pretending to have a rich boyfriend, Keigo.  After a night out with her girlfriends she leaves them to head to Higashi Park telling them she is going to meet Keigo, but is really going to rendezvous with Yuichi, a quite, serious young construction worker who has travelled over the sinister Mitsuse Pass, that connects Nagasaki with Fukuoka City, to meet her.  The next morning she is found dead on the Pass having been strangled, Keigo has disappeared, and the police launch a murder investigation.  They quickly unravel Yoshino’s double life, but their search for the murderer moves more slowly. 

Villain is a thoughtful and thought-provoking read that could have easily been titled ‘Victim’, since the two roles are thoroughly entwined in Yoshida’s absorbing tale of the murder of a young insurance sales agent.  The great strength of the story is its telling, characterisation, contextualisation, atmosphere and plotting.  While keeping the temporal structure linear, Yoshida tells the tale from multiple perspectives using both third and first person voices to detail the relationships between characters and their interactions.  It’s a technique that works surprisingly well, I suspect because Yoshida’s narrative has an understated style, avoiding any melodrama, and yet captures the subtleties of emotion and human relations.  He does a particularly nice job of detailing the relationships between friends and family members and their petty jealousies, awkward moments, lonely reflections, secret fantasies and encounters.  These are nicely contextualised with respect to the social relations of Japanese society.  The result is a layered, nuanced and interesting tapestry of views that thorough unsettles and blurs any notion of villain and victim, and a compelling plot that charts the aftermath of the murder and how the case unfolds to a resolution, but never from the perspective of the police.  In this sense it’s a kind of police-less procedural.  I especially like the denouement that threw up as many questions as it answered, creating closure but leaving the reader pondering the tale.  In my view an excellent piece of literary crime fiction.

Review of Salty by Mark Haskell Smith (2007, Black Cat)

Turk Henry, former bass player with the biggest rock band on the planet - Metal Assassin - and recovering sex addict, and his supermodel wife, Sheila, are on holiday in Thailand.  Turk is in a funk, unsure what to do now that the band has split, and just wants to sit on the beach and drink beer.  Sheila wants to explore and to take an elephant ride.  Heading into the jungle without Turk she gets more excitement than she anticipated when the group she is with is kidnapped by pirates.  Turk is quite happy to pay the million dollar ransom, but a neurotic Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent has other ideas, seeing the kidnapping as a way to fast-track his career and to get him reassigned somewhere cooler and more hygienic.  Meanwhile, Turk’s manager is plotting his rock star’s triumphant come-back after heroically saving his wife.  What should have been a straightforward transfer of cash, soon turns into trial for Turk, who for the past twenty years has had his life organised for him, but now has to take charge of his own destiny.

Salty is a darkly comic crime caper set in Phuket and Bangkok in Thailand that follows the travails of Turk Henry, a washed-up former rock star and recovering sex addict, as he tries to save his supermodel wife, an ex-drug addict whom he met in rehab, from a group of Thai pirates.  The set-up is relatively straightforward, putting the interests of different parties -- Turk, Sheila, an American government representative, the pirates, Turk’s manager and assistant, MaryBeth -- into conflict or tension and riffing on the interplay and character development as each has a small epiphany that helps them come to see themselves for who they really are.  For the latter to work, the characters have to be somewhat tarnished and a little unlikeable at the start and it takes some time to warm to some of them (and a few stay unlikeable).  The narrative is also full of cliches and cultural and country stereotypes, which are barely worked against.  As a result, I was never really firmly hooked into the story until near the end.  What kept me reading was the workable setup and the story moving at a relatively quick clip.  Overall, an enjoyable enough yarn that never quite kicked into a higher gear.

Review of The Spellman Files by Lisa Lutz (2007, Simon and Schuster)

Isabel Spellman is 28, lives in San Francisco, and has worked for her parent’s PI company, Spellman Investigations since she was 12.  In contrast to her near-perfect older brother, Izzy was a rebellious teenager, in trouble with the law several times, and a constant headache for her parents.  She still ploughs her own furrow, constantly battling with her family, especially her mother and younger sister, Rae, and cycles through boyfriends on a fairly regular basis.  Knowing how to snoop into someone’s life, to tail them covertly, and to pick locks and to break and enter has its positives and negatives.  Living in a family with the same skills, who also possess devious and manipulative streaks, can be a nightmare.  Izzy has finally reached the end of the line - she wants out of the family house and business.  Her parents reluctantly agree, but will only provide a reference if she solves one last case; the most difficult one on their books. 

I ordered The Spellman Files as it had been described to me fitting into the ‘tart noir’ sub-genre.  When the book arrived the cover conveyed ‘chick-lit’ and I wasn’t at sure the book would be to my taste.  Thankfully the cover is somewhat misleading, especially since the main character, Izzy, is more likely to dress like a Nirvana fan than a lead character in Sex in the City.  That said, The Spellman Files is kind-of Bridget Jones as private investigator.  The result is a humorous tale of family in-fighting, failed romances, and a difficult cold case.  The real strength of the book is the characterisation of idiosyncratic and somewhat dysfunctional Spellman family, who run a detective agency and know all manner of spying and tracking tricks, and their various interactions and escapades.  The cold case Izzy is working on is interesting and has a nice resolution, and to provide context, Lutz slots in a lot of back story via a series of entertaining side tales.  Overall, an enjoyable, well told story that is more than a chick-lit foray into crime fiction.

Review of Crooked Little Vein by Warren Ellis (Harper, 2007)

Since leaving Pinkerton’s to venture out on his own, Michael McGill’s career as a private investigator has been spiralling downward.  He shares his office, located in a pre-revanchist district of Manhattan, with an indestructible rat.  When he is visited covertly by the White House Chief of Staff and offered a whole heap of money to find a missing book, things start to look up - for a very brief moment.  The book in question contains the real US constitution, written by the Founding Fathers to rescue society if it descended into grave crisis.  In the view of the Chief of Staff such a situation has now been reached given the levels of debauchery and violence, lack of civility and general godlessness.  The book disappeared decades previously and is rumoured to be swapping hands for favours, blackmail and very large sums of money.  All McGill has to do is descend into the dark underbelly of America, follow the trail, and retrieve it.

Warren Ellis freely admits that Crooked Little Vein is designed to offend its readers.  He submitted the first ten thousand words to his agent in the hope that she’d take the hint and leave him alone.  Instead she sold the book and asked for the rest of the manuscript.  The result is an oddly compelling read that is at times both hilarious and repugnant. The hook is to send the self-destructive private investigator Michael McGill on a dark journey through America’s sexual and political underbelly.  He’s accompanied on the journey by Trix, a researcher who’s writing a thesis on the extremes of self-inflicted human experience and is a self-confessed nymphomaniac.  The prose is engaging, the pace high, and the plot just about credible enough to keep the reader hooked.  The progression of the story, however, is a little too linear and straightforward (making one wonder why McGill was needed at all) and the tale starts to run out of steam as it nears the end.  Overall, a fun and funny read, but not for those who are easily offended.

Review of The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black (Picador, 2007)

In the late 1950s, two years after his fateful investigation into the death of Christine Falls, pathologist Quirke is still working in a Dublin hospital.  He’s made an awkward truce with his daughter, who is now in her early twenties, and he’s given up drink.  When an old acquaintance from his college days asks him not to perform an autopsy on the body of his dead wife to save her from the stigma of suicide, Quirke cautiously agrees.  Deirdre Hunt has been recovered from Dublin Bay.  Only she didn’t drown.  Nevertheless, Quirke decides to keep that information to himself and to perjure himself at the coroner’s hearing.  Fascinated by the case, however, he starts to poke around only to find his daughter having an affair with Deirdre Hunt’s business partner.  Moreover, Inspector Hackett has become interested in the death and Quirke is left wondering if he made the right decision to help Billy Hunt.

Compared to many contemporary crime fiction novels, which have a relatively quick pace and are packed with melodrama or dramatic action, The Silver Swan is quite sedate.  Benjamin Black’s (John Banville) style is understated, atmospheric drama, told with a steady cadence of unfussy prose.  It is well suited to portraying the drab city streets of Dublin and the conservative and reserved society of Ireland in the 1950s and its hidden, seedy underbelly.  The book hinges on two events that at first seemed unlikely: Quirke’s decision to lie about an autopsy and his withdrawn and distant daughter taking up with the victim’s flamboyant business partner.  However, the first makes some sense when placed into the context of Ireland in the 1950s, when suicide carried significant stigma, and the second works well in terms of introducing a certain edge to what is generally a quite a flat story.  The plot is nicely set out and the characters well drawn, with Quirke a reticent, taciturn and troubled investigator.  Overall, a tale that takes a different path to most crime fiction.

Review of The Low Road by Chris Womersley (Quercus, 2007)

After leaving prison, Lee is recruited by Josef into the criminal underworld.  Sent on a job to collect eight thousand dollars from a gambler, Lee is shot in the stomach.  He awakens in a grubby motel on the edge of the city.  The motel manager calls on Wild, a disgraced junkie doctor on the run to tend to the wound.  Wild reluctantly agrees but feels Lee needs the attention of a better physician.  Together they set off across country to visit Wild’s former mentor, taking with them a suitcase containing the gambler’s debt money.  Given Josef recruited Lee, he is responsible for debt is paid to his boss and he sets off in pursuit.

The Low Road is a bleak, dark, literary noir tale.  It is somewhat of a curious story as it feels both timeless and placeless: it could be set anywhere from the mid-1930s through to the 1990s and in any reasonable sized city with a large rural hinterland.  The story is all about the three main characters, especially Lee, a young petty criminal, and Wild, a doctor addicted to morphine, and their journey to try and escape their past and their developing, uneasy friendship.  It is not a cheery plot, but it well crafted and paced, told through stark and engaging prose.  Overall, this is not a story that will inspire hope and joy, but is an evocative and engaging tale that has the feel of a stage play with its small cast and handful of settings.

Review of A Nail Through the Heart by Tim Hallinan (Harper, 2007)

Poke Rafferty is a writer of ‘off-the-beaten-track’ travel guides to South East Asia.  He’s settled in Bangkok, taken in a young street girl, Miaow, who he’s trying to adopt, has an ex go-go dancer as a girlfriend, Rose, who has set up her own cleaning business, and is friends with, Arthit, an honest cop serving in a largely corrupt police force.  Not long after agreeing to help Superman, Miaow’s friend from the street who has a reputation for being difficult and violent, Raffrety is asked by an Australian woman to find her missing uncle, a long time resident in the city.  He reluctantly agrees as a favour to Arthit.  His investigation soon leads him to the unsettling and dangerous Madame Wing, who wants him to find the person trying to blackmail her.  Given the money on offer, Rafferty agrees.  His two cases are seemingly disconnected, but both lead to very dark places.  Unable to disentangle himself, he needs to find a solution that administers justice but does not threaten his new family, a task that seems all but impossible.

The strength of A Nail Through the Heart is the sense of place and contextualisation; Poke Rafferty is a travel writer in Bangkok and, likewise, Hallinan gives a good Western perspective and explanation of the city and culture.  The story, however, suffers from a couple of shortcomings: I did not sufficiently believe in the main character, nor in the plot.  Poke Rafferty came across as somewhat schizophrenic – hyper-sensitive and caring to the point of being sappy with his adopted family and certain others, yet hardnosed, threatening, and at times violent with others.  He’s either tiptoeing over eggshells or creating them and the two halves felt disconnected.  The main two plotlines are interesting and unfold at a good pace, but too many elements are over-contrived and clunky, and there were too many subplots.  It was if Hallinan decided to try cram as much action and emotive darkness into one story as possible.  Sometimes less is more.  This was a shame as it’s clear he’s a good writer and the set-up and setting have a lot of promise.  Overall, a reasonably entertaining read, and I’d try the next in the series, but this felt over-written.

Review of Zugzwang by Ronan Bennett (Bloomsbury, 2007)

Dr Otto Spethmann is a widowed psychoanalyst working in St Petersburg in 1914, a city bracing itself for an impending war with Germany, whilst also in turmoil as reactionary forces seek to foment a revolution.  Amongst his patients are Anna Petrovna, a rich heiress who is troubled by a past event, and Avrom Rozental, a chess master on the verge of a nervous breakdown who is about to take part in a tournament, whom his famous musician friend and chess rival, Kopelzon, has asked him to treat.  As a chess player, Spethmann is keen to help Rozental overcome his demons, but he’s distracted by his attraction to Anna and a murder that the police have linked to him and his daughter, Catherine.  Despite his efforts to distance himself from the case, including seeking the intervention of influential citizens such as Anna’s father, Spethmann finds himself the target of a persistent police officer who suspects him of being implicated in a revolutionary plot to kill the Tsar.  Whichever way he turns he appears to be in Zugzwang: a position in chess in which a player is obliged to move, but every move available will only make his position worse.

Zugzwang moves along at quick clip, the story laced with intrigue and twists.  The historical context of St Petersburg in 1914, and its various conspiracies and revolutionary plots, forms a nice backdrop to the story without dominating the narrative.  The characterisation is well realised, if a little clichéd at times, and whilst the writing is engaging and plot intricate, the tale felt a little over-contrived, with various, complex inter-relations between several characters and interweaving subplots.  This is partly a result of Bennett seemingly trying to position every major character in a position of Zugzwang.  One nice touch is the inclusion of a chess game (including a picture of the board, the positions of the pieces and the moves) between Spethmann and his friend, Kopelzon, that mirrors Spethmann’s movement through the plot.  Overall, an enjoyable, if melodramatic, page-turner with an interesting backdrop.  

Review of Dust Devils by James Reasoner (Pointblank, 2007)

After a childhood living in foster homes, Toby McCoy has drifted south from Oklahoma to Texas seeking answers to his past.  He approaches a lonely farm, looking for work.  The woman living there alone is twice his age and nervy, but she agrees to take him on.  Over the next month they grow close, but both have their secrets.  The woman’s arrives in the form of two old friends intent on revenge.  After a gunfight, Toby and Dana are on the run with their two dogs, Max and Clifford, bound together through their developing relationship.  Their adventure, however, is only just starting as Dana tries to cut herself free from her past by confronting old demons.

The strong point of Dust Devils is the plotting, its strong noir undertones, and the characters of Toby and Dana.  The setup is very nicely done and the story continues at a nice, jaunty pace as the two principal characters seek to resolve their respective issues: Dana’s life of crime and Toby’s abandonment as a child and his mother fixation.  As they travel across Texas, the tale becomes ever darker, with the sense of foreboding growing, leading to a well played resolution.  Despite these pluses, the writing at times is quite flat, and despite a style that is mainly dialogue and action, it slips into tell rather than show at times.  The result is a nicely plotted story, told in a voice that is sometimes weak.  Nevertheless, Dust Devils is an enjoyable slice of country noir.