Review of Mixed Blood by Roger Smith (Serpent's Tail, 2009)

A veteran of the Iraq war, Jack Burn has fled the US having taken part in a bank raid in which a cop died. He lands up in an exclusive enclave of Cape Town, South Africa, with his heavily pregnant wife and young son. Their troubles though are only just starting. Just as they are sitting down to eat, two local gangsters looking to commit an opportunistic robbery enter the house. Jack dispatches them with ruthless efficiency. However, Benny Mongrel, the watchman on the building site next door has witnessed the botched robbery, and the vicious, crooked cop, Rudi Barnard, is looking for one of the gangsters. Massively overweight and overbearing, Barnard thinks that he is conducting God's work and dispenses his own brand of justice in the Cape Flats, a vast sprawling suburb of poverty and lawless. His behaviour has attracted the attentions of those wishing to clean-up corruption in the police force; the solution he knows is a large payoff. Whilst Burn disposes of the gangster's bodies, he fails to move their car, thus attracting the attentions of Barnard. And once Barnard gains an inkling of Burn's past, he sees an opportunity to gain the money he needs to buy off his pursuers.

Mixed Blood starts at a nice quick pace and steadily gathers more speed, rattling and twisting along like a rollercoaster by the end. This pace, however, is not at the expense of plot, sense of place or characterisation. Indeed, Smith manages to pack an awful lot into three hundred pages and Mixed Blood is a masterclass in tight, taut and tense writing. Smith perfectly captures the troubled post-Apartheid politics and geography of Cape Town, its racism, poverty, crime and corruption. The characters of Benny Mongrel and Rudi Barnard are very well penned, as are their back stories. The only characters I had trouble buying into were Jack and Susan Burn, who seemed a little shallow and thin. Otherwise, this is a cracker of a story. The Cape Town tourist industry probably won't thank him for his efforts, but anyone who likes noir will thoroughly enjoy this dark tale. I'll certainly be tracking down his other books. One of my discoveries of the year.

Review of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin (Pan, 2010)

In the small, rural town of Chabot, Mississippi, Larry Ott has been an outsider his whole life. Bullied and marginalised at school, his only friend was Silas, a black kid who lived with his single mother in a rundown shack in the woods owned by Ott's father. Silas was a rising baseball star and he and Larry have an uneasy relationship, largely confined to playing in the forest. When a local girl asks Larry for a date he sees an opportunity to join the fold. When she fails to return, Larry is suspected of abducting and murdering her. It's an accusation he can't shake free despite never confessing and there being no material evidence to link him to her disappearance. The result is that he is further ostracized. After his father dies in a drunk driving accident and his mother enters a home because of dementia, he is left to look after the land and his father's garage, living a lonely existence. Twenty years after his date vanished another local girl has disappeared and Ott is once again in the spotlight as a possible perpetrator. Having headed away after school, Silas is now back and working as the local cop. He's managed to avoid talking to Larry since the last abduction, but now their paths seem destined to cross; something Silas has his own reasons for dreading.

Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a slower burner of a novel that never really roars into fire, but rather sizzles along intensely from start to finish. Which suited me just fine; this was a book to savour. Like Daniel Woodrell, Franklin immerses the reader in the landscape, people and rhythms of rural America; its small town politics and social relations, the poverty and racism, the slowly decaying buildings and half-tamed wilderness. Indeed, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter is a masterclass in Country Noir - atmospheric, understated, dark, humane. It is a story that makes its readers reflect on life, how we treat each other, and how we're wrapped up in a contingent, relational set of values and interactions. The plotting was excellent with just the right balance of back story, historical flashbacks and contemporary unfolding. Larry, Silas and the other characters are very well realised, the dialogue authentic, and the scenes and social relations realistic. The childhood bullying, marginalisation and eventual isolation of Larry in adulthood is very nicely done. I thought the book might rise to a crescendo, but Franklin keeps the understated and humaneness of the story consistent to the end avoiding unnecessary clichés and leaving a nice sense of open closure. Before reading the book I thought the title was a little clunky. On finishing it, I think it works well to capture the crooked twining of Larry and Silas. Overall, a very fine piece of storytelling that lends itself well to movie adaptation.

Review of The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris (Faber, 2011)

St Petersburg in 1872 and as the ice melts and spring awakens radical politics are starting to challenge the authority of the Tsar and his institutions. Pavel Pavlovich Virginski is an investigative magistrate who has sympathy with the calls for political reform, though not necessarily the appetite for revolution. As he returns home after watching a distillery burn after being attacked by arsonists he meets a man who challenges him to act on his convictions. The next morning the body of a man is found in a thawing canal. A witness to the discovery is later found dead after his apartment is set on fire, also killing the children of the family living next door. Inspector Porfiry Petrovich starts to investigate the case, along with his colleague Virginski, quickly coming to understand that it has a political dimension. Warned off the case by Section Three, the department that investigates political crimes, Petrovich and Virginski continue to pry, Virginski using his new contact from the distillery fire to infiltrate a radical political network to seek answers.

The Cleansing Flames is the fourth instalment of Morris' Inspector Porfiry Petrovich series and the first I've read. Whilst there is much to admire about Morris' writing, especially his wry observations, social and political historicisation and sense of place, for my tastes the story suffered from a weak plot, some non-credible characters, and being overly long. The plot holds much promise, centring on a political cell in Tsarist St Petersburg. However, the cell seemed so weakly organised and run, populated by a diverse range of extravert characters, that it would have been pried open within moments of its formation, let alone sustain an entire novel's attention. That might have been okay, but I just didn't believe in Virginski as a character and his actions in infiltrating the cell, nor in a number of the other minor characters. And the dreaded Section Three, which could have provided a useful foil for the investigators, disappears without a trace in the second half of the novel. The story is quite flabby in places, with extended descriptive passages, and in my view would have benefitted from losing at least fifty pages to make it tighter and tenser. What saves the book is the overall atmosphere, political intrigue, its detailing of social relations, and Morris' subtle black humour. Overall, an interesting enough read, but with a few tweaks to the plot and tightening of the narrative it could have been a really good yarn.

Lazy Sunday Service

I bought a book yesterday based pretty much on the title, The Map and the Territory by Michel Houellebecq, released last month (the geographer in me has difficulty passing over such a title; also its partly set in Ireland). I looked it up on Amazon when I got home to discover that it has already managed to split reviewers. Seems the book is a Marmite read - you'll either love it or hate it, even if you were previously a Houellebecq fan. Hopefully I'll be in the latter camp as it wasn't a cheap buy.

I've been slow in my posts this week. The last two weeks have been very busy at work. I'll be catching up with posting book reviews in the coming week - I have four lined up including The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris, Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter by Tom Franklin, Mixed Blood by Roger Smith, and Anglo Republic by Simon Carswell. Have just made a start on The Killer is Dying by James Sallis, so that'll be coming up soon as well.

My posts this week
Mr Big by Woody Allen
What is trust ...
A mini-spree in London
You can ring my parents

You can ring my parents

'Here's your Christmas present,' Mark held out an envelope. 'You'd better open it now.'

'Now?' Sarah's brow crinkled in puzzlement. Tentatively she pulled the card free. 'A week in Majorca.'

'We leave tomorrow. Better pack a bikini.'

'But we'll miss Christmas.'

'They have it out there as well.'

'But what about my parents?'

'I'm not paying for them to come with us.'

'But we're meant to be going to them!'

'We can go afterwards. Staying here is going to be depressing. Doom and gloom and the same old shite on the television.'

'If you ring my parents; I'll start packing.'


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

A mini-spree in London

I flew into London on Wednesday night and flew back this afternoon. I was over for an editorial board meeting and slotted a couple of other meetings in. I did manage, however, to pick up a trio of books that I aim to read over the seasonal break. Two are them are new to me authors (Sallis, Smith). I've already made a start on Mixed Blood on the plane over. Great stuff. Reviews should appear over the next few weeks, hopefully.

James Sallis - The Killer is Dying
Roger Smith - Mixed Blood
Philip Kerr - Prague Fatale

What is trust ...

I finished The Cleansing Flames by R.N. Morris last night (review soon). It has a number of nice observational touches. I liked this one about the relative, provisional nature of trust. A very poststructural argument.

'Can I trust you? Can you trust me? Can he trust us? I mean to say, my dear Kirill Kirillovich, that trust is always relative, always provisional, always unstable. Trust, whatever it is, is a highly volatile substance. I am not sure it even exists at all. And so, there is no meaningful answer to the question you asked. One must act as if there is trust between us, otherwise we could get nothing done. Still and all, at the same time, one must never lower one's guard. In essence, trust no one. Do not even trust yourself, Kirill Kirillovich.'

Mr Big by Woody Allen

One of the stories in Murder for Christmas edited by Thomas Godfrey is Mr Big by Woody Allen. It's not exactly a Christmas tale, but it's a clever little piece playing on schools of philosophy, the existence of God, and hardboiled PI in the tradition of Chandler and Hamnett. PI Kaiser Lupowitz has been hired by a femme fatale to find a missing person, God. It's been converted to radio by The Drama Hour (click on the link to take a listen). The text is here.

Lazy Sunday Service: Murder for Christmas

Got a nice early present yesterday - Murder for Christmas edited by Thomas Godfrey. The edition I have was published 1982 by Mysterious Press. It was first published 1958 which explains the make-up of authors. Here's the list of contents:

Back for Christmas / John Collier
Mr. Big / Woody Allen
The adventure of the blue carbuncle / Arthur Conan Doyle
The adventure of the Christmas pudding / Agatha Christie
Dancing Dan's Christmas / Damon Runyon
Cambric tea / Marjorie Bowen
Death on Christmas eve / Stanley Ellin
A Christmas tragedy / Baroness Orczy
Silent night / Baynard Kendrick
The stolen Christmas box / Lillian de la Torre
A chaparral Christmas gift / O. Henry
Dealth on the air / Ngaio Marsh
Inspector Ghote and the miracle baby / H.R.F. Keating
Maigret's Christmas / Georges Simenon
To be taken with a grain of salt / Charles Dickens
The adventure of the Dauphin's doll / Ellery Queen
Markheim / Robert Louis Stevenson
The necklace of pearls / Dorothy L. Sayers
Blind man's hood / Carter Dickson
Christmas is for cops / Edward D. Hoch
The thieves who couldn't help sneezing / Thomas Hardy
The case is altered / Margery Allingham
Christmas party / Rex Stout
The flying stars / G.K. Chesterton
Mother's milk / James Mines
Ring out, wild bells / D.B. Wyndham Lewis

Looking forward to dipping in and out of this over the seasonal break.

My posts this week:
Review of Ashes by Sergios Gakas
The problem with thinking ...
Rotten from the top down
Banksters
First timers likely to buy or property sector's pipe dream?
Review of Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov
Cancelling Christmas

Cancelling Christmas

'There's no way we're cancelling Christmas.'

'I'm not saying we cancel it; I'm saying it can't be like previous years. We can't afford it.'

'So you want us to have bangers and mash for Christmas dinner?'

'No! I'm saying we need to cut back on the presents.'

'They're seven and nine! They've been looking forward to this all year. Just because we're broke doesn't mean we're ruining their Christmas.'

'I'm not talking about ruining it; I'm talking about making sure they're not eating bangers and mash until next Christmas.'

'And you think fewer presents is going to stop that happening?'


A drabble is a story of exactly 100 words.

Review of Death and the Penguin by Andrey Kurkov (Vintage, 2003; in Russian 1996)

Victor is a lonely aspiring writer in post-Soviet Kiev who lives with Misha, a depressed King Penguin who he has adopted from the city zoo who were unable to afford to look after the bird. Unable to place enough short stories to make a living, Victor approaches a newspaper to see if they might have any work. They immediately offer him a job writing obelisks - obituaries for notable people who have not yet died. The work seems straightforward and Victor's life starts to change in both positive and weird ways - he gains a new friend and a surrogate family; people keep letting themselves into his apartment and leaving him things. He also starts to notice that his obelisks are starting to be printed with unnerving regulatory. And more unsettling still, the grieving families want Misha to attend the funerals. As the truth behind his work emerges, Victor feels increasingly alienated and trapped.

Death and the Penguin is a black tragic-comedy. It is written in short, simple sentences and told through a series of short scenes in a deadpan style. The premise of the story is interesting and the telling is deceptively effective. There is a nice building up of additional characters and there is a good sense of place in post-Soviet Kiev, though some wider political contextualisation would have been useful. The inclusion of Misha was, I thought, was a nice touch and was well used. There were, however, two main issues with the story. The first was that Victor was very one-dimensional as a character with little emotional depth or resonance. He seemed quite monotonous regardless of circumstance or context. The second is that towards the end of the story, the narrative veered towards the absurd and for me, at least, started to fall apart. Overall, I enjoyed the read, but wasn't bowled over by it.

Banksters

I'm having a bit of an understanding banking binge at the minute. Last night I watched Inside Job, a documentary about the global financial meltdown with a particular focus on the US banking system. On Monday, I watched The Bank that Ran Out of Money about the rise and fall of the Royal Bank of Scotland, a provincial bank that over a period of a decade grew through acquisitions and dodgy products to briefly become the world's largest bank. I'm also still working my way through Anglo Republic: Inside the Bank That Broke Ireland about Anglo Irish Bank and its rapid rise and catastrophic failure. What all three reveal is how, on the one hand, bankers, insurers and other financiers' greed led to them forgetting that they were entrusted to manage customer's money and to provide sound and prudent financial advice and loans, and, on the other, that government and financial regulators failed the people who elected and trusted them by not regulating the financial system. Bankers used to be prudent and careful, partly because it was often their own money they were investing, and partly because they were regulated sufficiently to stop them gambling other peoples' money. In the last couple of decades, the bankers and politicians got into bed with each other and forgot that they were working for their constituents. The sad thing is that practically nothing has changed post crisis. Financial regulation is still almost absent and bankers are still making massive bonuses for taking risks with other peoples' money and losing it. This is the first generation in the US that are poorer than their parents and have less opportunity for class progression than their parents. The country seems to be being driven into the ground through the process of wealth transfer from the lowest earning 90% to the top 1% aided and abetted by government; the wealthy are literally asset stripping the country leaving poverty and homelessness in their wake. Heaven knows where the country will be in twenty to thirty years time if it continues on the path its on. The society portrayed by William Gibson's Virtual Light or Neal Stephenson's Snowcrash seems very possible. Anyway, take a look at Inside Job. It'll enlight and infuriate.

Rotten from the top down

Ashes by Sergios Gakas has a strong theme of institutional corruption, including the police itself. Here's a short passage revealing how the problem stems from the top down.

I decided to tell him. Not because he was my friend; it had not taken me long to realize that in this job you cannot have friends. I had to talk to him because he was my boss and in this case I needed him onside. The Chief was one exhausted technocrat, handpicked by the Prime Minister himself, a dull negligible character, who, for the last three years, had been failing to keep the ship afloat, a ship sailing under too many different flags. A ship that in its hold concealed some very good intentions, as well as bad ones, incompetence, corruption, hard work, bureaucracy and, above all, personal ambition. He had spent quite some time on the other side of the Atlantic, and was in all likelihood, in the pay of the Americans. Perhaps that was why he moved with such ease through the huge, worm-infested, third world sewer the Hellenic Police was still fed on. However convinced he was that the police were dealing heroin, he was just as convinced that the situation would never change in a million years. Besides, Zorro had never been a particular hero of his. He preferred to proceed with caution and settled for small improvements. "The police force is never going to change society, get used to that," he would say when we had been knee-deep in shit on various cases.

The problem with thinking ...

I've started to read R.N. Morris' The Cleansing Flames. Only sixty or so pages in, but came across a nice passage last night about the opportunities and dangers of thinking.

To think - to think deeply and honestly and freely - was to make yourself vulnerable. It involved cutting yourself loose from the security of received ideas and laying yourself open to new ones. It was an unsettling activity. Eventually, if one perservered, it led to greater strength. But first there was a period of uncertainty and anxiety to endure, from which some never emerged. They would spend their whole lives in a state of crippling doubt, cowering beneath a shell of cynicism.

One of the joys of being a social scientist, I think, is to spend an entire career intellectually vulnerable and in doubt, though hopefully not of the crippling kind.

Ashes by Sergios Gakas (MacLehose, 2011)

When a small cottage owned by an alcoholic lawyer, Simeon Piertzovanis, is burned to the ground the only survivor is Sonia Varika, a former actress. She is badly burned and is rushed to an intensive care unit. The three victims are an elderly man, an African woman and her young daughter. Colonel Halkidis of internal affairs pulls in a favour to be assigned the case. A former lover of Varika, he's determined to bring the people responsible for the arson to justice. Halkidis soon discovers that the cottage has been targeted by a right wing group for some time. Teaming up with Piertzovanis, also one of Sonia's former lovers, they start to uncover the truth. However, their investigation is quickly blocked by powerful forces both within and outside the police. Rather than retreating, the pair decide to fight fire with fire, pursuing justice and revenge with deadly consequences.

Ashes is a fine slice of Greek noir. All of the principle characters and institutions are deeply flawed. Although in charge of internal affairs, Colonel Halkidis is addicted to cocaine and is prepared bend the law in savage ways, though he does so for justice not financial gain. Piertzovanis is an alcoholic and prone to depression and melancholy. Raina is cheating on her boyfriend. Sonia is vain and a lush. Just about all the other characters are corrupt or prepared to turn a blind eye. The police, the government, the Church and businesses are all riddled with taken-for-granted corruption and cronyism. The story is well plotted, though it does become a little unconvincing in the latter pages as Halkidis' revenge spirals out of control and goes unchallenged. The story is told in the first person from three perspectives - Halkidis and Piertzovanis in alternating chapters, and Sonia whilst in a coma. This works surprisingly well, with Gakas able to maintain three distinct voices whilst revealing what each thinks of the other, as well as fleshing out their back stories. Indeed, the characterisation is strong throughout. There is a good sense of place and as well as being a fine crime story, Ashes is a searing social commentary on the Greek society and its institutions. Having read the novel it is certainly much easier to understand the events in the country over the past couple of years. I thoroughly enjoyed Ashes and if any of Gakas' other books are translated I intend to give them a go. There's an interesting interview with the author on the publisher's website.