Review of Midnight in Berlin by James MacManus (Duckworth Overlook, 2016)

1938 and Colonel Noel Macrae is transferred from Vienna to Berlin as military attaché. Macrae is alarmed by the Nazi programme of rearmament and their political rhetoric and wants Britain to take a tough line against German ambitions for expansion eastwards. However, the British ambassador has well developed links to senior Nazis and is a strong advocate of appeasement. As Germany runs diplomatic rings around Britain and France, walking into Austria and threatening Czechoslovakia, Macrae liaises with a senior German army figure who claims he represents a group plotting against Hitler but will act only if Britain backs a coup. The British government does not want to get involved, and to make life complicated Macrae’s contact is having an affair with his wife. Macrae himself is drawn to the enigmatic Sara, a Jewish woman forced to work as a prostitute in an exclusive Gestapo brothel designed to entrap the elite of German society and foreign visitors. As spring arrives in 1939, Macrae has three pressing concerns: can he save Sarah from the Gestapo? is his marriage worth saving? should he take matters of state into his own hands?

Midnight in Berlin, set in the city in 1938/39, draws heavily on actual events and policy and involves numerous real-world characters to tell the story of how Britain and Germany slipped towards war. To add some fictional narrative, MacManus hooks the story around the efforts of British military attache, Colonel Noel Macrae (loosely based on the real attaché at the time), to change Britain’s policy of appeasement and take a more interventionist position, and the tale of Sara, a young Jewish woman forced to work in a Gestapo honey-trap brothel. Macrae is taken to the exclusive club where he meets the woman who offers to pass on information in return for knowledge about the fate of her captive brother. The period and the events are interesting, but for me, the tale is too much a history lesson lightly fictionalised with not enough of a story. As is stands, if the historical account was pared back there's little left, and when the story did focus more on the main fictional characters it flits briefly on their affairs rather than dwelling upon them. Indeed, the tale is cast as a love story, however, the relationship between Macrae and Sara did not come across as a Nazi-era ‘Pretty Woman’. Rather, there was some lust, manipulation, and lingering infatuation, but there was no sense that there was anything serious developing and story tails off to a damp squib of an ending.

Review of The Divided City by Luke McCallin (Berkeley, 2016)

1947, Berlin. Gregor Reinhardt has returned to Berlin and is back serving as a detective inspector in the local police force. Post-war, the force is full of green and unqualified recruits, many of them serving as puppets for their various Allied masters, and Reinhardt is shunned and mocked – especially by those with communist sympathies – for being a former officer and being sponsored by the Americans.  He generally keeps himself to himself, working the night shift.  In the early hours he is called to a double homicide. A British agent is found dead in a stairwell. In an apartment above a former Luftwaffe fighter pilot has been asphyxiated. The British want the killer of their agent caught. Reinhardt is given the less political task of investigated the death of the pilot. He soon discovers that the pilot was one in a series of deaths involving members of the same squadron and the Russians and Americans are also interested in the case. Each power is demanding to be informed of progress, as well as an underground group of ex-military German personnel. Unwittingly, Reinhardt finds himself playing a deadly game with a killer out for revenge and four Allied powers struggling for control of a divided city.

The Divided City is the third book in the Reinhardt series. After charting Reinhardt’s exploits in Yugoslavia at the end of the Second World War, this outing is set in Berlin in 1947. Reinhardt has returned to his pre-war job as a detective in the Berlin Kripo. McCallin uses this scenario to create a very nice setup, with Reinhardt continuing his outsider role.  Very few policeman who served in the Nazi era have survived in post and the force is full of new recruits with little experience and who are full of resentment. Reinhardt commands little respect and is openly mocked by colleagues. He does though have the knowledge and skills to undertake a complex murder case and the survival instinct to navigate dirty politics. In the case he’s presented – former fighter pilots from the same squadron being murdered – he needs all his wits to track down clues and survive political and physical attacks from all sides. It’s clear that the book is well researched and McCallin gives a sense of the landscape and social life of the devastated city, the alienation of the German populace and social divisions, and the political in-fights between the four Allied powers running the city. Reinhardt is an interesting, conflicted character, and the characterisation in general is strong. Where the book excels is with respect to the plot. It’s a little ponderous to start, but it soon gains direction. McCallin weaves together a complex tapestry and there’s a tremendous amount going on, but at the same time it’s straightforward to follow the threads and various intrigues. It’s not obvious who the killer is until near the end, which I sensed more from intuition than piecing together evidence, and it’s only with the reveal that it’s clear that McCallin left a series of well veiled clues. Overall, an atmospheric and engaging tale.

Review of The Rules of Backyard Cricket by Jock Serong (Text Publishing, 2016)

Darren and Wally Keefe spend all their time growing up playing cricket in the backyard.  They hone their skills and rivalry through hours of contest while their single mother works in a bar to pay the bills.  Their passion and batting skills soon gets them noticed when they join a local team. A short while later they are the youngest members of the senior team and are breaking records.  As they progress into adulthood, Wally becomes taciturn and single-minded, determined to play for his country.  Darren falls in with the wrong crowd and becomes the bad-boy of Australian cricket.  Both become sporting stars, but their careers take different paths.  What remains constant is their sibling rivalry and an endless succession of ups and downs on and off the pitch.  However, as they enter middle-age, it seems as if Darren’s past has caught up with him as he’s driven from Geelong to Melbourne, locked in the boot of a car, gagged and cable-tied, a bullet in his knee.

The Rules of Backyard Cricket is a brilliant slice of literary Australian noir.  The story is told through twin narratives.  The first, which opens each chapter, details the attempt by Darren Keefe – a bad-boy of Australian cricket – to free himself from the confines of a car boot.  The second charts the childhood and careers of Darren and Wally, his elder brother who secures a place in the Australian national team and eventually becomes captain.  Throughout their careers the Keefe brothers experience a number of highs and lows, all the while maintaining their sibling rivalry and fierce devotion to their single-mother who made many sacrifices to make sure they succeeded in becoming professional cricketers.  The plotting, pacing and prose is superb, with Serong creating a convincing story of two brothers who seem to have it all but are always slightly out of their depth and attract tragedy as much as success.  The Keefes’ world is very well realised, with keen attention to detail with respect to the cricket, as well as its less attractive elements – indeed, the story had the feel of a well realised autobiography than a piece of fiction.  The characterisation and character development is excellent, with Darren Keefe in particular – with his frailties and complexities – being very nicely portrayed.  Given Darren is trussed inside the car boot throughout it’s clear where Serong is leading the tale, but the denouement still packs a powerful and surprising punch.  Overall, an excellent, engaging read that knocks the ball out of the park.

Around the world in 2016

I did quite a bit of travelling in 2016, including a month in Boston in April and several shorter trips to Italy, Germany, Korea, Russia, The Netherlands, and the UK. I also did a fair bit of literary travel to 41 countries:

Argentina
The Buenos Aires Quintet by Manuel Vazquez Montalban ***.5

Australia
Peepshow by Leigh Redhead ***.5

Brazil
Hotel Brasil by Frei Betto ****.5

Canada
A Little More Free by John McFetridge ****

Columbia
The Informers by Juan Gabriel Vásquez ***

Eygpt
The Ghost Runner by Parker Bilal **** 

England
Exposure by Helen Dunmore *****
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch ***5
The Methods of Sergeant Cluff by Gil North ****.5
The Piccadilly Murder by Anthony Berkeley ***.5
Season of Darkness by Maureen Jennings **.5
Original Skin by David Mark ***
Rough Treatment by John Harvey ***.5
Sergeant Cluff Stands Firm by Gil North ***
Streets of Darkness by AA Dhand ****
Darkside by Belinda Bauer  ****
A Killing Frost by R.D. Wingfield *****
Fool by Christopher Moore ***.5
My Kind of Justice by Col Bury ***.5
The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey **
Stalin’s Gold by Mark Ellis ***
A House of Knives by William Shaw ****
The Kill by Jane Casey ***
Tell No Tales by Eva Dolan ****
Eleven Days by Stav Sherez *****
Slow Horses by Mick Herron ****

Estonia
When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen *****

Faroes
The Blood Strand by Chris Ould ****.5

Finland
Dark As My Heart by Antti Tuomainen ***
The Defenceless by Kati Hiekkapelto ***.5
To Steal Her Love by Matti Joensuu ****.5

France
Murder in the Marais by Cara Black ***

Germany
Pavel and I by Dan Vyleta ****
The Nuremberg Enigma by Yves Bonavero **.5
Black Ice by Hans Werner Kettenbach ***
Murderer in the Ruins by Cay Rademacher ***
A Small Town in Germany by John Le Carre ****.5

Iceland
Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason ***.5

Ireland
Holding by Graham Norton ***
A Man With One of Those Faces by Caimh McDonnell ****
The Silent Dead by Claire McGowan ****.5
Hurt by Brian McGilloway ***
Elegy for April by Benjamin Black ****
Rain Dogs by Adrian McKinty ****.5
Snapshots by Michael O'Higgins ****

Japan
Parade by Shuichi Yoshida ***

Korea
Slicky Boys by Martin Limon **.5 

Kyrgyzstan
A Killing Winter by Tom Callaghan ****

Norway
The Human Flies by Hans Olav Lahlum ***.5
Dregs by Jorn Lier Horst ***.5

Poland
Entanglement by Zygmunt Miloszewski ***

Russia
City of Thieves by David Benioff ****.5
A Gentle Axe by R.N. Morris ****

Seychelles
Journey to Death by Leigh Russell **.5

Scotland
Even Dogs in the Wild by Ian Rankin ****
The Long Glasgow Kiss by Craig Russell ****.5

South Africa
Cobra by Deon Meyer ****
Blessed are the Dead by Malla Nunn *****
7Days by Deon Meyer *****

Spain
Dog Day by Alicia Giménez Bartlett ***

Sweden
The Fire Engine That Disappeared by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo ***

Ukraine
Tin Sky by Ben Pastor ***

USA
The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh *****
The Life We Bury by Allen Eskins ****.5
Willnot by James Sallis ***.5
Pleasantville by Attica Locke ****
The Whites by Richard Price ***.5
A Drink Before the War by Dennis Lehane ***.5
The Whisperers by John Connolly *****
Worst Enemies by Dana King ****.5
Night Passage by Robert Parker ***
Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe Lansdale ***
Canary by Duane Swierczynski ***
Galveston by Nic Pizzolatto ****.5
World of Trouble by Ben H Winters ****


More than one country
Black Roses by Jayne Thynne *** (Britain, Germany)
Devastation Road by Jason Hewitt **** (Czechoslovakia, Germany)
Polar Star by Martin Cruz Smith **** (Russia, United States)
Journey to Munich by Jacqueline Winspear **.5 (England, Germany)
Journey into Fear by Eric Ambler *** (Turkey, Greece, Italy)
A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute ****.5 (Malaysia, England, Australia)
The Constant Soldier by William Ryan ****.5 (Germany/Poland, Russia)
The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan ***** (Australia, Thailand)
Master and Commander by Patrick O’Brian ***.5 (Gibraltar, Spain)
Masaryk Station by David Downing **** (Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia)
Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus ***.5 (USA, Mexico, Portugal, France)
The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr **** (France, Germany)
The Man From Beijing by Henning Mankell ** (Sweden, China, England, Zimbabwe, Mozambique)
Mr Midshipman Hornblower by C.S. Forester ***.5 (England, France, Spain)
Billy Boyle by James Benn *** (England, Norway)
The Whitehall Mandarin by Edward Wilson *** (England, US, Cuba, Russia, Vietnam)
Dark Star by Alan Furst ****.5 (Belgium, Germany, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland and Russia)

Best reads of 2016

I read and reviewed 104 books in 2016.  Here are my favourite fiction and non-fiction reads.  For full reviews of each book click on the links and to see all 104 reviews click here.

Fiction
 
The Choirboys by Joseph Wambaugh

Set in 1974 in central Los Angeles, the tale follows the lives of five pairs of patrolmen working the night shift over a six-month period, culminating in a fatal shooting in MacArthur Park, where the men gather periodically to get drunk and let off steam.  The Choirboys is a fascinating, multi-layered story. The characterisation and social relations excellent, with Wambaugh fleshing out fully-dimensional personalities who form an uneasy and fractious alliance.  The vignettes and story arc are compelling and realistic.  And the prose and voice are engaging, blending serious social commentary with black humour and tragi-comedy.  A thoughtful, insightful, critical and entertaining read.  

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

The story charts the life of Dorrigo Evans, a flawed war hero who is haunted by his love for a woman with whom he had a brief affair and the horror of a Japanese prisoner of war camp.  It’s essentially an exploration of the human condition through a series of contrasts and juxtapositions – love/indifference, freedom/confinement, compassion/cruelty, carefree/haunted – with threads of connection, such as the camaraderie of prisoners, family ties, poetry and literature.  The result is a vivid, haunting, moving and thought-provoking tale of love and loss told through some wonderful prose. 

A Killing Frost by R.D. Wingfield

The final book in the Frost series.  Wingfield does a great job at weaving together a multiple set of engaging plot lines, overloading the already overstretched Frost with cases and internal battles.  Along with the plotting, the characterisation is excellent and the dialogue and interactions between characters is superb.  The result is a thoroughly enjoyable read, full of black humour.

Exposure by Helen Dunmore

Exposure is a spy drama that focuses mostly on the fallout affecting a wife and children when a family-man is framed as a traitor.  The storyline is nicely plotted and paced. The characterisation and character development is excellent, with each of the leads being fully dimensional, along with the children, and their interactions ring true.  In addition, Dunmore keeps the mood and tension low-key but persistent, keeping the sense of an everyday family caught out of step front and centre.  The result is an engaging, thoughtful, understated literary spy tale.

Blessed are the Dead by Malla Nunn

The third book in the Emmanuel Cooper series set in 1950s South Africa.  Nunn has really hit her stride with this instalment.  The characterisation is excellent, especially Cooper and his colleague Shabalala, and Nunn nicely portrays their interactions and social relations.  Indeed, she excels at detailing the complex social structure within and between communities – Black, Indian, Jewish, White Afrikaans, White English – and the politics of policing within such strictures.  There is a nice attention to historical detail and the sense of place is palpable with the reader being transported to rural South Africa and its dramatic landscape.  A very good police procedural that delivers on multiple levels.

When the Doves Disappeared by Sofi Oksanen

When the Doves Disappeared charts the entangled lives of three Estonians during the Second World War and twenty years later.  Each represent the different positions of Estonians during successive waves of occupation, resistance, and collaboration.  Oskanen maps out their intersecting lives, shuttling back and forth between the years 1941-44 and 1963-66, documenting the ongoing struggles and betrayals of family and country.  The result is a compelling, bleak, haunting and thought-provoking black drama that explores themes of love, loyalty, treachery, tragedy and freedom. 

7Days by Deon Meyer

7Days has all the good hallmarks of a police procedural – an interesting lead cop and supporting cast, a strong sense of place, interesting puzzles, and attention to detail – but also have the pace and tension of a thriller. Meyer expertly balances character development, plot and pace, producing a highly engaging and entertaining read that not only delivers an intriguing story but nicely advances the longer narrative of the Benny Griessel books.  I was hooked from the first page.

The Whisperers by John Connolly

The ninth book in the Charlie Parker series set in Maine.  In this outing, Parker is tasked with discovering why a small group of Iraqi veterans are taking their own lives.  All the key elements were on point, the hook, the social commentary on the Iraqi war and the treatment of veterans, the investigation, the sense of place, the characterisation and social relations, and the plotting.  The result is an engaging, informative and tense read grounded in strong research that contextualises but doesn’t swamp the narrative.  A thoroughly entertaining tale.

Eleven Days by Stav Sherez

In Eleven Days Sherez uses the format of a police procedural and London’s diverse population to shine a light on a couple of fairly weighty issues: the political turmoil and violence in Peru during the 1970s and the role of liberation theology and the contemporary movement of Albanian criminals into London’s underworld and sex trafficking.  The result is an engaging and compelling tale full of gritty realism in which the politics is a crucial element of the story but never overly dominates it at its expense.  I wasn’t entirely convinced by the denouement, which I felt had one twist too many, but nonetheless a superior, thought-provoking, edge-of-seat police procedural.

City of Thieves by David Beniof

City of Thieves is a well crafted coming-of-age story set during the Siege of Leningrad.  The tale has a number of strengths, including an engaging voice and prose, well-paced narrative, a well-developed sense of place, time and context, and a great hook and engaging story line.  What makes the book shine, however, is the characterisation and the emerging relationship between two friends, Lev and Kolya. Benioff nicely blends their quest to find a dozen eggs, with observations about Soviet society and the war.  An engaging and entertaining tale of hardship, friendship and adventure.


Non-fiction

The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown

The Boys in the Boat tells the story of the US rowing eight and their quest to win gold at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.  The central hook for the story is the life of Joe Rantz, a man who’d had a hard upbringing and had never rowed three years prior to the Olympics.  Brown tells a multi-layered story, weaving together strands that detail the development of rowing at UW in the 1920s and 30s, the personal trajectories of coaches and master boat builder, George Pocock, their rivalry with the University of California, and rowing in the US more generally, the Great Depression, and how the Nazis orchestrated the 1936 Olympics.  The result is a richly contextualised, fascinating, and highly entertaining tale, rich in personal biographies, historic occasions, and high emotion and drama.

Operation Paperclip by Annie Jacobsen

As the Second World War in Europe drew to a close the Allies started to hunt down Nazi war criminals and top German scientists.  In many cases, these two groups overlapped.  The US had a choice – prosecute scientists who had participated in crimes against humanity, or give them clemency and hire them to work on military science projects and for the US military-industrial complex. It chose the latter and through Operation Paperclip recruited many to work for the US.  Jacobsen does an excellent job of setting out the Operation Paperclip programme and detailing the cases of several of the most prominent scientists.  The result is an interesting, engaging and disturbing read that raises all kinds of moral and ethical questions

The Battle of Midway by Craig L Symonds

A very readable and highly informative account of the battle at Midway in June 1942, including some contextual framing with respect to Pearl Harbour, the Battle of the Coral Sea, and the first US air raid on Tokyo.  Unlike previous accounts that suggest that the US were lucky to win the encounter, Symonds argues that the US won due to good intelligence, strong leadership, and the element of surprise.  Given the number of different threads and personalities involved the narrative could have easily become quite jumbled or bogged down in detail, but Symonds manages to blend the various strands into a coherent, gripping and page-turning story told with an engaging voice.

Review of Holding by Graham Norton (Hodder and Stoughton, 2016)

The village of Duneen is full of lonely souls.  Overweight Sergeant PJ Collins has let life pass him by policing a small rural community where nothing much happens. He’s pampered by his elderly housekeeper, who has been keeping other peoples’ houses for over forty years. The three Ross sisters live together in their old farmhouse, as they have done since their mother died of cancer and father committed suicide when the youngest was still a teenager. Brid Riordan has a least married and has two children, but it is a loveless match and she regularly drinks herself to sleep. When the skeleton of a man is found buried on the old Burke farm, PJ Collins suddenly has a major case to investigate and Evelyn Ross and Brid Riordan are reminded of the source of their discontent and rivalry – the disappearance of Tommy Burke twenty-five years ago. Each blame the other for lost love and suspect the other of murder. PJ’s ambition to solve an old crime is dented by the arrival of a detective from the big city and it soon appears more difficult to unravel than anticipated and to reveal some of the village’s dark secrets.

Comic Graham Norton’s debut novel is a rural police procedural, somewhat in the cozy mode, set in rural Ireland. The story follows Sergeant PJ Collins’ investigation into the circumstances that led to a man being buried at the old Burke farm after his bones were uncovered by workmen. The suspicion is that the bones are those of Tommy Burke, who disappeared twenty-five years previously. At the time he was engaged to be married to Brid Riordan, but was also being pursued by young Evelyn Ross. Neither woman fully recovered when Burke supposedly skipped town never to return, having been seen catching the bus to Cork; Riordan slipping into a loveless marriage and Ross retreating into life as a spinster looking after her two sisters. The discovery of the bones unsettles the lives of both women, who suspect each other of foul play, but provide purpose for PJ, who finally seems to be discovering himself after years of freewheeling loneliness. The strength of the story is the characterisation, especially PJ, Brid and Evelyn, and their interplay. Norton portrays each sympathetically and nicely captures their personalities and frailties. There’s no great surprises in the plot, but it is nicely constructed and builds to an engaging denouement. However, it is a little uneven in its telling, especially with regards to one reveal. Where the tale does suffer a little though is with respect to context. The themes, social relations and Ireland portrayed felt more like a tale set twenty years ago rather than 2016. Moreover, the police procedural elements and social context did not ring true – a small rural village would not have a full-time police station, it would certainly have mobile phone coverage if it had a station, and it is highly unlikely that a brand new housing estate is being built in a rural area in Ireland at present (finishing off a ghost estate, maybe) or anyone is managing to sell sites. In this sense the tale felt nostalgic for an era when Norton left Ireland, rather than being set in the present. Nonetheless, it was an enjoyable read dealing with themes of love, loss, secrets, statis, and loneliness.

Review of The Nuremberg Enigma by Yves Bonavero (Lark & Frogmouth, 2016)

April 1945.  Russian troops are nearing the centre of Berlin.  As the Third Reich nears collapse its leaders start to plot their escape, including Adolf Hitler.  When the Russian’s reach the German leader’s bunker they discover two burnt bodies, one of which appears to be Hitler, with similar dental work but missing finger tips.  While the world is told Hitler is dead, there is some doubt as to whether this is the case.  At the same time, T-Force officer, Peter Birkett, is making his way from Brussels to Kiel, keeping up with or running ahead of frontline troops in order to secure valuable scientific sites and scientists.  His Russian counterparts are doing the same, including Elizaveta Terisova, a Volga German who has managed to survive Stalin’s purges.  They are particularly keen to track down refined Uranium for use in developing atomic bombs.  Both parties are converging on a coal field, each determined to secure the area’s assets for themselves not realising there’s a potentially greater prize hiding in one of the mine shafts.

I received a free copy of the book from its publicist in return for an honest review.  The Nuremberg Enigma takes two storylines – one an alternative history concerning the death of Hitler and the other a factional account of a T-Force officer – and merges them together.  Since I read a lot of fiction set between 1930 and 1960 and military history of the Second World War (including recently a book on T-Force) the story seemed an ideal fit for my reading tastes.  The story starts quite promisingly, with a nicely written opening section set in centre of Berlin in the dying days of the Second World War, setting up a scenario where Hitler potentially survives the final onslaught.  The story then shifts register and voice – swapping to first person - to follow the exploits of Peter Birkett, a young British officer in T-Force, a specialist group that seeks to move forward with the troops to secure scientific sites.  This is interspersed with a third-person telling of the similar exploits of a young Russian intelligence officer of German extract.  There’s an imbalance in the telling of the back stories of these two characters, with much greater description of Elizaveta’s personal history.  Personally, I think the telling would have worked better if the whole story had been told in the third person.  Moreover, the emotional register of the story is uneven with, for example, a key death barely registering on one of the central characters.  More problematic, however, is the believability of the alternative history of Hitler thread which, while nicely set up, lacked substance and credibility and often made little sense.  And the thread leads to one of the most ridiculous endings I’ve read in quite some time (which is difficult to discuss without giving spoilers).  Overall then, while the story is interesting and has plenty of action it is somewhat uneven in its telling and plot and ultimately wasn’t convincing. 

Review of Willnot by James Sallis (No Exit Press, 2016)

Hale is a doctor in the small town of Wilnott, the son of a successful science fiction writer.  He occasionally sees the world through the eyes of other.  Bobby Lowndes has returned to the town after some time in the Marines.  Both have spent time in comas before emerging to continue their lives.  A handful of rotted bodies are found in a pit.  Someone is taking sniper shots.  An FBI agent arrives, asking questions about Lowndes.  Time drifts by, Hale treating a range of town folk, Lowndes hiding out in the woods.  Strange happenings continue to occur, unsettling the usual rhythm of Willnot.

Willnot is somewhat of a curious read.  It traces the unfolding of some events – the discovery of some buried bodies, the arrival of an awol marine followed by a FBI agent, some sniper shots, and the ailments of town folk – through the eyes of Hale, a small town doctor.  Unlike most crime fiction that has strong story arc driven by an investigation to solve a mystery, in typical Sallis style the narrative drifts along to provide a more metaphysical tale about the meaning of life in small town America.  As such the story is more reflexive and philosophical, concerning itself with the mundane moments and mini-dramas in how life takes place.  The tale almost has a mystical quality, as if Hales is living out moments from his father’s science fiction novels.  The result is a thoughtful literary read that doesn’t seem to make much progress and has little in the way of denouement, but nonetheless is entrancing in its own, meandering way.

Review of Epiphany Jones by Michael Grothaus (Orenda Books, 2016)

After the deaths of his sister to leukaemia and his father in a car crash in which he was a passenger Jerry Dresden has suffered from depression and psychotic hallucinations and is addicted to celebrity porn.  Working at a job he hates in the Chicago Art Institute he is accused of murdering a colleague and stealing a priceless Van Gogh.  Forced on the run he travels to Mexico with Epiphany Jones, an equally damaged woman who believes that voice she can hear are angels directing and protecting her.  Epiphany claims to have video footage that shows Jerry is innocent, but to receive it he first has to help her track down her daughter who is ensnared in the hellhole of sex-trafficking where the clients are part of Hollywood’s elite.  Jerry is a reluctant participant in Epiphany’s quest, but it might just be a mission that gets his own life back on track.

Epiphany Jones is a rollercoaster of a read as its two principle characters, Jerry Dresden and Epiphany Jones take a long-distance journey, trying to track down the latter’s daughter, leaving in their wake a trail of violence.  Both Jerry and Epiphany are mentally damaged.  While Jerry has suffered a couple of traumatic events and sees and has relationships with imaginary people, Epiphany has lived through the hell of sex trafficking and talks to God’s Angels.  Grothaus immerses the reader in their worlds and psychoses, their fraught relationship, their struggles, despair and hopes as they undertake their quest and navigate a criminal underground.  It’s certainly a hard hitting tale that pulls few punches and there’s barely a likely character throughout.  I found it quite a difficult book to get into at the start, and the narrative was a bit episodic and uneven.  The more the tale progressed the more it seemed to gain coherence as it moved towards the denouement.  I’ve been umming and ahhing about what rating to give the book.  It’s difficult in the sense of I can see the merits of the tale and appreciate its ambition and affective punch, but it’s not a story I particularly enjoyed reading, not because of the subject matter of sex trafficking and mental illness, but rather I just never really felt connected or invested in the characters or narrative.

Review of Streets of Darkness by AA Dhand (Bantam Press, 2016)

Detective Hardeep ‘Harry’ Virdee should be on the fast track up the career ladder in the West Yorkshire police.  However, he’s been suspended for assaulting a fellow Sikh who insulted him and his heavily pregnant Muslim wife over their mixed marriage.  While out jogging his discovers the crucified body of the newly elected Asian MP for Bradford, a swastika carved on his forehead.  His boss wants Virdee to investigate the case unofficially using his network of informants and in particular to find Lucas Dwight, a former leader of the BNP in the city who has recently been released from prison and whose blood is found at the scene.  With a large multi-ethnic festival taking place in the city, racial tensions already high, and behind-the-scenes moves to fill the power vacuum and exact non-lawful justice, the stakes are potentially explosive. What should be a relatively straightforward hunt quickly takes a sharp twist, leaving Harry wondering who he can trust as he scrambles to determine the truth before the city is set ablaze.

Given the recent Brexit vote and another spike in racial tension in the UK during the campaign and afterwards, Streets of Darkness is a very timely addition to British crime fiction.  Importantly, rather than simply play to racial stereotypes and a simple black and white societal divisions, AA Dhand paints a more complex picture of relations within and across different ethnic groups.  Moreover, in a bold move, he manages to tell a police procedural in which the main detective is outside the force due to being suspended.  In fact, ‘Harry’ Virdee is a consummate outsider character having been ostracised from his Sikh family after he married a Muslim and he’s an Asian cop on a predominately white force.  Virdee’s task is to solve over the course of a single day the murder of a newly elected Asian MP for the city in which the prime suspect is the former BNP leader, while different parties are seeking to take advantage of the situation or exact revenge and some cops seem to be in-the-pocket of whoever is pulling strings.  To add to his woes his pregnant wife is one week overdue and wants to celebrate the day’s religious ceremonies. The compressed timeline, the competing interests, and Virdee’s personal situation make for a tense and fast moving plot.  Indeed, there’s much to like about the story, which has plenty of twists and turns.  However, the tale is reliant on a couple of plot devices that felt a little forced, with a subplot that stretches back over forty years that felt too coincidental, and the pace means that the character development is a little underdeveloped beyond basic description and background history.  The latter is somewhat unavoidable and will no doubt be elaborated in the next couple of books in the series.  Overall, an interesting, engaging and topical debut that ends with a nice hook for the next book.

Review of The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2016)

1956, Cote D’Azur.  An ex-kripo detective in pre-war Berlin, Bernie Gunther is now working as the concierge in the Grand Hotel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, spending his days helping guests and nights playing bridge or trying to drink his troubles away.  And Bernie has a habit of attracting or creating trouble.  When he spots an old foe, an ex-gestapo member and accomplished blackmailer, Harold Hebel, enter the hotel he senses the past might once again be about to come back and haunt him.  Not long after he’s asked by the novelist and former spy Somerset Maugham, who is residing locally, to be the intermediary in paying a sum of money for a compromising photograph.  Reluctantly, Bernie agrees wanting justice for past misdeeds but knowing that they’ll be much more to the sting operation if Hebel is involved.

The Other Side of Silence is the eleventh book in the Bernie Gunther series.  This one is mainly set in 1956 in the south of France, but shuttles back to Berlin in 1938 and Konigsberg in 1944/45 for brief interludes.  Bernie is his usual self-depreciating, world weary and sarcastic self, living a life where he unwittingly comes into contact with famous people and gets dragged into and implicated in key events.  In this case, he’s drawn into the world of Somerset Maugham and the Cambridge spies, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, as well as recounting his link to the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, in which around ten thousand people perished.  The central hook is Bernie being hired by Maugham to act as intermediary in a blackmail payment to an old foe and former gestapo member, the odious Harold Hebel.  It’s a nice setup and Kerr spins out an interesting tale, working in a femme fatale, a sinister twist, and a murder subplot.  At times, the pacing and plotting felt a little uneven, and the murder subplot was a bit of an unnecessary distraction, but there are plenty of really well-crafted scenes.  The denouement, in which Bernie creates a large lie to save himself while placing his head in another noose, is particularly nicely done.  As usual, Kerr draws a strong set of well realised characters and nicely situates the tale historically.  Overall, an enjoyable addition to the series that fills in more gaps in Bernie’s eventful life.

Review of The Blood Strand by Chris Ould (Titan Books, 2016)

Jan Reyna left the Faroes as child when his mother fled from his father.  A couple of decades later, Reyna is a British police detective, his mother is long dead, and his father is found unconscious in a car, along with a shotgun, a large sum of money, and someone else’s blood.  Reyna is persuaded by his aunt to head to the Faroes to see about reconciliation before it’s too late.  Reyna arrives with a stack of unresolved questions about his parent’s past and rift, but he’s soon drawn into a more contemporary mystery with the discovery of a young man’s body on a beach.  The case is being handled by local detective Hjalti Hentze, who turns to Reyna for help, and the prime suspect is Reyna’s father.  Together Reyna and Hjalti stoically investigate the case, while Reyna also seeks to find out more about his family and past.

The Blood Strand is the first in a new police procedural series set in the Faroes.  It very much has the feel of Scandinavian crime fiction, with its low key and realist telling and emphasis on place and family.  The tale tells the story of British detective Jan Reyna’s return to the islands he left as a child and his contribution to a murder investigation in which is father is a suspect.  Reyna’s outsider status enables Ould to introduce both the character and reader to Faroes landscape and community, with local detective Hjalti Hentze and his cousin Frida Solsker, a counsellor, acting as guides.  The characterisation is nicely done, with Reyna and Hentze both being strong, thoughtful, silent, pragmatic types, who cut through politics to get the job done.  The story unfolds at a steady pace, with Ould carefully stitching together the two main plot lines – Reyna’s reluctant quest to find out more about his family and the investigation into the murder of a local man – and working in plenty of clues and doubts, and feints and twists towards the end, and a nice denouement.  I was never quite convinced that the Faroes police would engage so thoroughly with a visiting British police officer whose father is heavily implicated in the death, but Ould makes the premise just about plausible.  Overall, a strong start to the series and I’m looking forward to reading the next, The Killing Bay, due for publication in 2017.

Review of Honky Tonk Samurai by Joe Lansdale (2016, Mulholland Books)

Always ready to stand up for those that need help, Hap and Leonard intervene to save a dog from a beating.  From across the street an old woman films them letting the owner know what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a thrashing.  Their friend and employer, Marvin, shows up and reveals he’s the new chief of police.  Given his new job he needs to sell on his private investigator business and he figures Hap and Leonard are the perfect buyers.  Having worked manual, casual jobs for years they’re not so sure, but Brett, Hap’s partner is fed up of nursing and wants to give it a go.  Their first day as the new owners the old woman who filmed them shows up wanting them to find her granddaughter, Sandy, who disappeared five years earlier, using the film to negotiate a hefty discount.  After taking a journalism degree, Sandy went to work at a classic car dealership that appears to be a front for organised crime.  Hap and Leonard take on the case and soon stir-up a hornet’s nest.  This time they might have taken on more than they can chew, but as usual their determined to administer their own brand of justice.

Honky Tonk Samurai is the eleventh book in the Hap and Leonard series.  It has the same hallmarks as the earlier books: a witches brew of colourful characters, crackling dialogue, strong action sequences, and a decent sense of place and context.  And as usual, the real pleasure is in the likeable characters of Hap and Leonard and their relationship, and Lansdale’s unique voice.  However, for me, the tale and the telling didn’t quite live up to earlier outings, especially the first few books.  The story was linear and involved little detective work, and elements of the plot didn’t seem to sit quite right.  Whereas the other books are tightly paced in this outing there are some sizable chunks of dialogue that little move the story forward (even the characters tell each other to stop rambling).  The result is an undulating plot of lulls between some nice action set pieces.  Moreover, some main characters and key aspects of the story remain off-stage.  My sense was too much of the plot was about setting Hap and Leonard up in the private investigation business, moving new characters into their personal lives, and reuniting them with characters from earlier in the series.  Nonetheless, Lansdale’s brilliant way with words and the usual hallmarks makes Honky Tonk Samurai an entertaining and enjoyable read.