Review of If The Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2009)

It’s only eighteen months since the end of the Weimar Republic and unable to stomach working for the Nazi regime homicide detective Bernie Gunther has quit the police force and taken a job as the house detective at the world famous Adlon Hotel, just a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate. There are rumours of impending race laws, but the Jewish population are already suffering daily humiliation and discrimination, including being expelled from all German sporting organisations. Such anti-Semitism looks like it might draw international condemnation and pressure with the Americans in particular threatening to boycott to the 1936 Olympics, but inexplicably the American delegate visiting Berlin reports to Roosevelt that stories concerning anti-Jewish actions are overly hyped. Two American guests at the Adlon have a vested interest in the decision – the beautiful Noreen Charalambides, a Jewish journalist and aspiring novelist who wishes to expose the truth, and Max Reles, a Chicago gangster, friendly with several high-ranking Nazis, who wants to repeat the mob’s success at the Los Angeles Olympics at rigging the construction contracts. Gunther has problems of his own – he’s managed to accidentally kill a cop and he needs his Jewish grandmother to be airbrushed from history – but he’s also soon unwittingly caught between the two Americans and has two murders to solve – that of a German businessman and a Jewish boxer. The only problem is, very few people want them solved. Twenty years later, having managed to survive the war, Gunther is hiding out in Cuba on an Argentine passport when the ghosts of the case reappear, only the Chicago mob have swapped deals with the Nazis for Batista’s regime.

Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series has a lot of things going for it. First, Kerr’s narrative is colourful and engaging, and he tells a well plotted story. Second, he expertly blends fiction with real people, places and historical events. Third, the books are politically astute and targeted, whilst at the same time being multi-layered, complex and ambiguous. Kerr is vehemently anti-Nazi, but he recognises that post Weimer Republic Germany was a cauldron of competing ideologies and that personal relationships often over-rode ideological differences. So, for example, former colleagues who have become pro-Nazi are prepared to help Gunther out as a personal favour, and vice versa, even though they know his political views. Fourth, in Bernie Gunther he has created one of the finest characters in crime fiction. Gunther is no black and white character with little depth. Rather he’s a resonant, luminous, multi-coloured, complex, compromised and flawed individual. While his heart is roughly in the right place, Gunther is morally suspect on many levels with his personal desires, head strong nature and smart mouth clouding his decision making, often placing him in situations where lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc. is a necessary solution.

If The Dead Rise Not is a solid addition to the series, but in my view is not quite as good as some of the others in the series (which given the very high standard of the previous books is always going to be a tough challenge). The dialogue was, as ever, sharp and often caustic and very funny. The characterisation was excellent. The story was interesting. My issue was with pacing and coincidence. For me the 1934 period of the book, which was effectively the back story for 1954 period, was too long and drawn out and the 1954 period too short and underdeveloped. My sense was that the balance needed to be shifted to at least a fifty-fifty split in length, with the Cuba part of the plot extended and deepened to cover more of the politics of the time and the mob connections, and provide more details of Gunther’s life post-Argentina (following on from the last book – A Quiet Flame). The ending was also too swift. In addition, the plot hinges on a coincidence in which three characters who have not seen each other in twenty years meet in the one location (on a different continent) in the space of a few hours. I had a hard time buying that. Despite these two issues, the book was still a highly enjoyable read and I look forward to the next instalment in the series.

The Lazy Sunday Service

Posts I've enjoyed this week
Fair thee well then, 'good writing', I hardly knew ye - Crime Always Pays
D is for Deverell, William - Crime Watch
Everybody knows - the paperback - Do Some Damage
No more mister nice guy - International Crime Authors
Brother Grimm, Craig Russell - Mysteries in Paradise
The Trojan Dog - Reactions to Reading
Getting re-sentitised to violence - Confessions of an idiosyncratic mind
Taking it laterally - Killer Covers
The Broken Teaglass - Murder, Mystery and Mayhem

My posts this week
It was a dark night ...
Review of Mrs D'Silva's Detective Instincts by Glen Peters
Planning for a sustainable Ireland
Seeking Armenian fiction
Forgotten Friday - The Small Back Room by Nigel Balchin
Saturday Snippet - The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart Kaminsky

Saturday Snippet: The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart Kaminsky (ibooks, 1993)

The Devil Met a Lady blends facts concerning Bette Davis’ life with the fictional world of private investigator Toby Peters (my review here). Kaminsky’s dialogue is snappy and smart, and the book would easily translate into a retro-noir movie or be updated to be set in the present.

The emergency room nurse patched up Jeremy’s head with iodine and strips of gauze held down with tape, and then she took care of me. She was dressed in white, smelled like rubbing alcohol, and reminded me of my ex-wife Anne. The nurse’s name was Joanne Writz. Her hair was yellow, her body thin. She didn’t look the least bit like Anne, but she noticed that my wounds were not fresh and she looked at me with the disapproving eyes of someone who expected no better from men.

‘I saw them enter the hotel,’ Jeremy explained as he watched me being cleaned and chastised. ‘I wasn’t sure it was them or I would have come inside.’

‘We’ll find her,’ I said.

‘You sure you want me to hear this?’ asked Joanne the nurse.

‘You plan to talk to anybody about it?’ I asked.

‘Only if I’m asked,’ she said, touching a rib. ‘Body’s not bad, if you ignore the scars.’

‘You like movies?’ I asked her.

‘Sure,’ she said, wrapping tape around my chest. ‘Judy Garland and Gene Kelly in For Me and My Gal?’ I tried.

She looked at Jeremy and then at me. ‘Are you asking me for a date?’ she said, putting her hands on her hips.

‘Says ‘Miss’ on your name tag,’ I answered with a grin.

‘I don’t go out with suicidals and children,’ she said.

‘I’m not suicidal.’

The nurse looked at Jeremy.

He looked back at her and nodded. ‘I’m sorry, Toby,’ he said. ‘But she may be right.’

‘Anne used to say I wouldn’t grow up,’ I said, as Joanne stepped back to survey her work.

‘Hmm,’ she said, satisfied.

‘Anne’s my ex-wife,’ I explained.

‘From what I can see, she’s a wise woman,’ said Joanne. ‘You can go now. Come back when you grow up.’

Forgotten Friday: The Small Back Room by Nigel Balchin (1943, William Collins and Sons; reissued 2000 by Cassell)

Sammy Rice works as a scientist in a small outfit that seeks to produce and evaluate inventions that are useful to the war effort and which reports directly to the Minister for War. Despite his academic skills he suffers from poor self-esteem after having his left foot amputated in 1928 and replaced with an aluminium substitute. With a penchant for feeling sorry for himself, he often swaps whiskey for his pain-killing tablets, and waits for his girlfriend to leave him for somebody more worthy. Things are not made any easier by having to deal with endless rounds of petty politics at work between the scientists, civil servants and the army, for which he has little appetite. When the Germans start to drop a new type of booby trapped bomb, which explodes when disturbed, the army turns to Sammy in the hope that he can find a way to defuse them, and Sammy embraces the task sensing that this is a way to repair his esteem and make a real difference to the war effort.

Nigel Balchin started the war as a psychologist in the personnel section of the War Office before transferring to the Army Council, eventually becoming Deputy Scientific Officer. By the end of the war he’d risen to the rank of Brigadier General. His insider knowledge of how science was being employed to help the war effort gives The Small Back Room an authentic feel. Indeed, I was somewhat surprised that the book had been published during the war given that he paints a fairly negative picture of Whitehall politics, the organisation of the scientific research, and relations between the civilian scientists, the civil service and the army. It’s not difficult to suspect the novel might have been written as a means to highlight how things needed to change.

I found the story very engaging. Although told from a first person perspective, the story largely unfolds through dialogue with only a few reflective interludes. The conversations are exceptionally well written and give real insight to the nature of the main characters. And given this style it’s easy to imagine that the book was relatively painless to adapt for the big screen, which it was in 1948. In general, the plot is highly believable and the petty politics and manoeuvrings of personal and inter-departmental rivalries are well done and will be familiar to anybody who works in a university or the civil service. Some of the emotional turmoil is a little overwrought, but otherwise a highly enjoyable read and I’d certainly be interested in watching the film adaptation.

Seeking Armenian fiction

A little more tricky this request. I've been invited to go to Armenia in two weeks time to talk to the Minister for Diaspora and the National Competiveness Council about developing and implementing diaspora strategies. Armenia is a little unusual in that more Armenians live outside the country than in it. Its population is 3.2 million and its Armenian born diaspora estimated to be 5.5 million (plus a sizable extended diaspora). What I'm after is recommendations for Armenian fiction (of any kind - I suspect narrowing it to just crime fiction might be a step too far). Any suggestions?

Planning for a sustainable Ireland

I drafted this editorial on planning and economic recovery in Ireland a little while ago and it never saw the light of day, so I thought I'd publish it here.

Creating a sustainable, successful society and economy requires a well thought out, comprehensive planning system that works to maximise efficiencies, returns and quality of life, balanced against fairness and social justice, and minimises wastage, inconvenience and deterioration of services. Effective planning works both sectorially (e.g., economic, health, transport) and spatially (local, regional, urban and rural), blending and balancing the needs of different social and economic sectors within and across areas and scales. Good, strategic planning, along with associated targeted investment, is vital to ensure short and, in particular, long term solutions to the present economic crisis. It will work to position both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland favourably to benefit from a global economic recovery when it occurs.

Over the past twenty five years planning in Ireland has been both progressive and regressive. Planning was transformed from the mid-1980s onward by the rolling out of a new form of entrepreneurial planning that designated certain zones for regeneration using tax exemptions and public-private partnerships as a mechanism to encourage and drive development. The new approach targeted very select, flagship sites such as the IFSC that would seek to attract specific industries, notably those of the service sector. Similarly, the Industrial Development Agency (IDA) was charged with encouraging inward investment by skilled, manufacturing companies to selected, ready-made and serviced sites, accompanied by grants and other incentives. As a result, planning became more pragmatic, flexible and results-orientated, focusing on areas that were perceived to have the highest potential for success. This approach, while not free of problems, was successful in providing the planning conditions conducive to encouraging inward investment, gentrification, and speculative property development that drove the Celtic Tiger economy. Planning thus became more responsive to creating the environmental and spatial conditions necessary to attract inward investment (whilst at the same time creating an abundance of problems through poor implementation that ultimately has led to NAMA).

From the late 1990s this was complemented by a spatial planning approach driven in part by the new territorial strategy devised for Europe by the European Spatial Development Perspective. This led to the formulation of the National Spatial Strategy in the Republic and the Regional Development Strategy in the North. The NSS and RDS aim to achieve a better balance of social, economic and physical development across Ireland, supported by more co-ordinated and effective planning at the regional and local level through Regional Planning Guidelines and Local Development Plans. In order to drive development in the regions, the NSS proposed that areas of sufficient scale and critical mass be built up through a network of urban gateways and hubs that links Ireland more effectively into a European and global economy. Effectively the NSS is designed to build connections between urban centres and the creation of new relationships between urban and rural areas to capitalise upon the potential of all regions to contribute to sustainable development into the long term.

Despite these initiatives, the public perception of planning in the Republic is that it is at best weak and at worst corrupt, and that the economic successes of the Celtic Tiger happened in spite of planning decisions and provisions rather than because of them. While the latter assertion can be debated, there is plenty of evidence – both from the press and anecdotally – that planning has been performing sub-optimally. There are many reasons for this including cronyism, too many different institutional bodies and vested parties being involved in the planning process (there are 88 local planning authorities in the Republic plus government departments and semi-state agencies such as the EPA and NRA), a reluctance to prosecute planning offenders, a high turnover of planners from the public sector to private sector developers, and a failure of elected parties to deliver on political promises. The result has been widespread, inappropriate development projects consisting of poor quality housing with weak infrastructure and services (such as no or low public transport provision, a lack of schools, health services and shops), an oversupply of one-off housing, and disinvestment in public housing. In addition, the timing of the NSS was unfortunate as it missed the opportunity to be tied to the NDP 2000-2006 funding stream and was undermined by the decentralisation plan that ignored its recommendations. It now underpins the NDP 2007-2013, although that plan is being massively revised in the face of budget cuts.

While an economic recovery might happen regardless of planning decisions, the chances of long term, sustainable success are greatly increased through a strategically aware and robust planning system. This means, on the one hand reform of the planning system, and on the other the implementation of the NSS and RDS and investment in sectorial and spatial planning initiatives. If these two reforms take place then planning will help create balanced regional development by ensuring equal access to infrastructure and resources necessary to ensure the businesses are not disadvantaged by locating beyond the major cities; regenerate areas blighted by social issues; enable the rolling out of the green economy; implement a sustainable/low carbon transport infrastructure that promotes economic development; and put the housing and commercial property sectors back on an even keel. Moreover, planning on a cross-border basis, where there is a matching up of investment on key infrastructure projects and the sharing services, will lead to new opportunities and cost savings and efficiencies.

Our long term future needs to be driven by a strategic, sustainable, robust planning system that formulates and implements investment decisions that will pay back handsomely into the future. Planning needs to be seen and positioned at the forefront of providing long term solutions to our present economic predicament. It has to become a central plank of our strategy for recovery, not seen as a distraction or a hindrance. This means, in particular, reform of the planning system and pushing ahead with the NSS initiatives.

Review of Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts and the Shaitan of Calcutta by Glen Peters (Carnival/Parthian, 2009)

It’s 1960 and Mrs D’Silva is a young, Anglo-Indian, widow trying to make ends meet in Calcutta having lost her husband to a rail accident five years previously. She teaches at Don Bosco’s Catholic School, which her ten year old son Errol also attends. On a picnic visit to Our Lady shrine in Bandle Errol discovers the mutilated body of a young woman washed up on the bank of the Hooghly river, a tributary of the Ganges. The girl had been raised in the Loreto convent and had recently married a much older man who has converted to Christianity. In the absence of any compelling evidence, the death is ruled as suicide by a judge. Two of the girl’s friends, Anil – a former pupil of Mrs D’Silva - and Philomena suspect foul play. Unbeknownst to Mrs D’Silva, both have become involved in a Mao-backed communist movement and are active in a campaign against a British owned engineering company. At one of the protests a manager in the company is stabbed to death with Anil’s knife and he is arrested for murder. When Mrs D’Silva visits him in prison he protests his innocence and she vows to try and clear his name. A few days later he is found hanging in his cell in suspicious circumstances. It seems as if Dutta, the ruthless Shaitan of the communist movement, will stop at nothing to secure a new India free of the legacy of colonial rule. Despite the obvious dangers, Mrs D’Silva in her own understated way tries to help uncover the truth.

The back cover describes Mrs D’Silva’s Detective Instincts as a ‘vivid and engaging novel of recipes and murder, intrigue and romance’. Food and culture certainly feature strongly in the story and Peters takes great care to detail sights, sounds, and particularly the tastes, of the melting pot of 1960s India, just a few years after independence. To that end the book is informative and provides strong historical contextualisation. The story, for me, however never really amounted to more than an okay read; a relatively pleasant sojourn but failing to turn into a real page turner. I think this mainly to do with (somewhat ironically) taste. Mrs D’Silva is effectively an Anglo-Indian cozy that fairly gently rolls along, so that despite the murders and political intrigue it never really builds up a head of steam. In the first half of the book, the plot meanders aimlessly until Mrs D’Silva discovers her rather shaky detective instincts and the story starts to gain some structure and purpose. The characterization is fine without being stellar and while Mrs D’Silva herself is ably drawn I have no particular longing to catch up with her on any of further adventures. For me, the thing that is most striking about the book is its production values. The novel is beautifully presented and feels like something invested with time and passion. It’s just a shame that the story itself didn’t instil the same in me, although I know that it has received very favourable reviews by others – see:

It’s a Crime
Crime Scraps

It was a dark night …

Yesterday evening I took a walk down to a neighbour’s house with one of the dogs for a cup of tea and a yarn. I stayed slightly longer than I was expecting and did the mile or so return trip under a moonless but star filled sky. It’s easy to forget how dark and quiet it gets in the countryside, especially when there are no streetlights or housing estates for miles. The cattle have all been taken in given the sodden fields, and the birds had long given up on the day, so the only sound was my boots and occasionally the dog’s claws on tarmac when he wasn’t rooting around in the long grass between the roadside and the ditches. The lane is lined by tall, ivy-covered ash trees that lost their leaves in the last week or so and it was barely possible to see my feet let alone a few yards beyond. And the dog simply vanished except for the slight tug every now and then on the long lead. The only thing to guide our direction was the expanse of stars visible through the branches above. We only passed three houses on our jaunt, one long abandoned, entropy letting nature creep in and smother the crumbling structure in ivy and weeds, the other two letting out weak light through unlined curtains. There was something magical, yet slightly spooky, about our little adventure and as the winter draws in these night time escapades will no doubt become a regular experience. I have to admit I’m looking forward to them.

The Lazy Sunday Service

We only receive the four domestic Irish TV channels. That provides a fairly limited choice and as there was nothing much on last night we went to the DVD rental place. Having spent ten minutes browsing we came home empty handed. For some reason nothing much appealed; well not enough to spend five euros renting it. I can't ever imagine that happening in a bookshop, but perhaps the day will come. The big difference is likely to be that I can return home knowing there'll be something in the to read pile that'll take my fancy. Not unsurprisingly spent the evening reading instead whilst the rain lashed down outside (no surprise there either).

Posts I've enjoyed this week
Harvey Ismuth's 42 essential 3rd act twists - Dresden Codak (via The Bunburyist)
Amazon - WTF - Crime Scene NI (the next day I got the same email but because I bought August Heat by Andrea Camilleri!)
Academe in Mystery and Detective Fiction - Do You Write Under Your Own Name?
Hey, I hear you've written a book - Do Some Damage
Back in the land of the almost living - Big Beat from Badsville
Guys and Molls - Do Some Damage
Start Screaming Murder by Talmage Powell - Killer Covers

My posts this week
I'm not saying it's true, but ...
Review of The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart Kaminsky
Seeking Oz crime fiction suggestions
Review of The Rabbit Factory by Marshall Karp
Second guessing
Saturday Snippet: Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Saturday Snippet: Winter’s Bone by Daniel Woodrell

Winter’s Bone is a coming of age story concerning sixteen year old Ree’s attempt to track down her no-good father in order to save her family’s beat-up house from possession by a bail bond company (my review here). Beautifully told, Daniel Woodrell expertly captures the sense of place and clannish familial social relations of the rural Ozarks of Missouri. In the following passage, Ree turns to her jailbird uncle for help, only to be turned down – Woodrell capturing the casual violence and minor politics of family ties.

Teardrop raised his hand and drew it back to smack her and let fly but diverted the smacking hand inches from Ree’s face to the nut bowl. His fingers dove rattling into the nuts, beneath the silver pistol, and lifted it from the lazy Susan. He bounced the weapon on his flat palm as though judging the weight with his hand for a scale, sighed, then ran a finger gently along the barrel to brush away grains of salt.

“Don’t you, nor nobody else, neither, ever go down around Hawkfall askin’ them people shit about stuff they ain’t offerin’ to talk about. That’s a real good way to end up et by hogs, or wishin’ you was. You ain’t no silly-assed town girl. You know better’n that foolishness.’

‘But we’re all related, ain’t we?’

‘Our relations get watered kinda thin between this valley here and Hawkfall. It’s better’n bein’ a foreigner or town people, but it ain’t nowhere near the same as bein’ from Hawkfall.’

Victoria said, ‘You know all those people down there, Teardrop. You could ask.’

‘Shut up.’

‘I just mean, none of them’s goin’ to be in a great big hurry to tangle with you, neither. If Jessup’s over there, Ree needs to see him. Bad.’

‘I said shut up once already, with my mouth.’

Ree felt bogged and forlorn, doomed to a spreading swamp of hateful obligations. Therewould be no ready fix or answer or help. She felt like crying but wouldn’t. She could be beat with a garden rake and never cry and had proved that twice before Mamaw saw an unsmiling angel pointing from the treetops at dusk and quit the bottle. She would never cry where the tears might be seen and counted against her. ‘Jesus-fuckin’-Christ. Dad’s your only little brother!’

‘You think I forgot that?’ He grabbed the clip and slammed it into the pistol, then ejected it and tossed pistol and clip back into the nut bowl. He made a fist with his right hand and rubbed it with his left. ‘Jessup’n me run together for nigh on forty years – but I don’t know where he’s at, and I ain’t goin’ to go around askin’ after him, neither.’

Ree knew better than to say another word, but was going to anyhow, when Victoria grabbed her hand and held it, squeezed, then said, ‘Now, when is it you was tellin’ me you’ll be old enough to join the army?’

Definitely on my list of best reads for this year and an author whose back-catalogue I'm looking forward to catching up with.

Second guessing

I've been having an odd email exchange with someone. His replies seem to have an intangental relation to what I'm trying to convey. So, for example, I originally asked whether he would consider contributing a single paper to an academic journal that would form the basis of a forum where other people would then comment on the paper. He replied that he'd be delighted to put together a special issue consisting of several full papers. It was a couple of days until I replied as I was travelling, so I started by apologising for the delay and then explained that I wasn't looking for several papers but just a single one. His response was to say he was looking forward to my reply when I got the chance. I think he's just skimming the first line of my emails, guessing the rest and replying. It's kind of annoying as I have to start all of my responses by correcting his misreading.

Anyway, this has got me to think about backcover blurbs as I think the same phenomena might be happening with them. There have been a few books I've read recently where the blurb seems tangentally related to story the book tells or has fairly basic factual errors. My sense is that they have been written by someone who has at best skim read the book or wrote it after an editor tried to describe it to them after a few drinks down the pub. Some of the backcover blurbs for my academic books have been awful and I now insist on writing them. I guess what I'm wondering is, 1) who writes these blurbs and are they expected to have actually read the book? 2) do authors get to see them, and if so, why don't they get them altered?

Review of The Rabbit Factory by Marshall Karp (2006, Allison and Busby)

A lowlife paedophile who gets his kicks fondling young children whilst working as Rambunctious Rabbit, the signature mascot of the global entertainment conglomerate Lamarr Enterprises, is found dead in the subterranean warren of service tunnels below the FamilyLand theme park. LAPD detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs are assigned to the case, immediately coming under political pressure to keep a low profile and the case out of the media. Soon another Lamarr employee is murdered, then a customer, and it appears as if somebody has a vendetta against the company, determined to drive down the stock price and put the company out of business. There are no shortage of potential suspects from disgruntled ex-employees, the son of one of the founding cartoonists swindled out of millions of shares, and the rivals of a casino owned by the mob who have signed a partnership agreement to create a Lamarr themed, family friendly complex in Las Vegas. Lomax and Biggs not only have to investigate a series of killings that are very carefully plotted and try and keep the murders out of the media to stop mass hysteria, they have to stay in the game as other agencies look to take the case away from them.

The Rabbit Factory was an enjoyable read and from about halfway through became a real page turner where, despite being heavily jetlagged and desperately needing sleep, I kept on going wanting to find out what happened next. Lomax and Biggs are engaging characters and the story was generally well plotted with some nice twists. The scale of the story is perhaps what’s most impressive and in particular how Karp envisages how a global conglomerate can be speedily bought to its knees. This is not to say that book is not without issues. For example, at over 600 pages the book is too long and could have done with a relatively severe edit, at least trimming 75-100 pages. This in part is caused by an unevenness in the pacing of the story - the start of the book is quite wordy, with each day taking up a fair few pages, but by the end of the book days pass relatively quickly. In addition, the subplot focusing on Lomax’s wayward brother could have gone as it had no bearing on the core of the story, plus some of the over-elaborate back stories to relatively minor characters such as the Israeli visitor who does a cameo and then is never referred to again.

The cover blurb compares Karp to Carl Hiaasen and suggests that he’s funnier. I’m not sure I’d go along with that. Hiaasen is a lot more screwball and farce-based with a cast of oddball characters. Karp has a wise-cracking cop, some witty dialogue in places, and a light touch, otherwise it’s a fairly straight police procedural. Overall a fun read and I’m looking forward to reading the next in the series, Blood Thirsty.

Seeking Oz crime novel suggestions

I've a colleague visiting from Griffith University in Brisbane at the start of December. I was going to take the opportunity to try and load him up with some Australian crime fiction to bring over with him. To give him enough time to order them in I want to let him know what I'm after as soon as possible. But there's the rub - I'm not sure what I am after! The only book I have on my list at the minute is Phillip Gwynne's, The Build Up, and to my shame I think the only Oz writer I'm familiar with is Peter Temple, of whom I'm a great fan.

So, what I am after is some recommendations for four other books, preferably in paperback and relatively easy to get hold of, that I can pass on to him to order for me and lump over in his suitcase. Any suggestions? Pointers to reviews would be good as well!

Review of The Devil Met a Lady by Stuart Kaminsky (ibooks, 1993)

It’s 1943 and Private Investigator Toby Peters is contacted by Bette Davis’ test pilot husband who has been warned that his wife will be kidnapped and an embarrassing recording released that'll ruin his wife’s Hollywood career unless he hands over the secret plans of a new bombsight. Peters is named as the preferred go-between because the potential kidnappers know that he knows that such a recording exists as he was responsible for secretly capturing for posterity Davis’ affair with Howard Hughes. Not long after agreeing to take the case Peters is warned by a local seer that Davis will be kidnapped twice and himself three times before the case is resolved. And so it comes to pass as a tough, caustic, witty and cynical Davis and a Chandleresque Peters are pursued by a group of third-rate, wannabe actors who form a hapless Nazi spy ring, falling in and out of their grasp as they try to recover and destroy the offending record and foil the blackmailing plot.

Based on extensive research of Bette Davis’ career, The Devil Met a Lady blends facts concerning her life with the fictional world of Toby Peters to produce a screwball comedy that Davis’ would have excelled at playing. Kaminsky captures Davis’ character perfectly, Peters is an engaging, nourish PI who stumbles from one crisis to the next, and there are a host of assorted, odd but well drawn characters including a massive former wrestler, a dwarf, a cranky landlady, and host of failed, hammy actors. The dialogue is excellent and the story is engagingly written and zips along at a jaunty pace. The blending of historical fact with fiction is very well done (perhaps not unsurprisingly as Kaminsky was a Professor of Film History), and one feels dropped into 1940s war time Los Angeles. I though the first half was excellent and while the second half was compelling the screwball element slipped away a little and the ending didn’t quite rise to the crescendo I was expecting. All in all though a very enjoyable read and I’ll be keeping an eye out for other books by Kaminsky (who unfortunately passed away a couple of weeks ago after a highly productive writing career).

I'm not saying that it's true, but ...

I spent part of yesterday catching up on the week's news. The following piece on RTE made me smile, not only because it takes a swipe at economists, but because billonaire businessman Denis O'Brien does his fair share of making a nuisance of himself (including making this speech). I've had my fair share of arguments with economists over the years who have a very particular way of looking at the world. I remember one exchange where an economist was insisting that his model was right and the world was wrong (and the model was meant to be explanatory not normative - i.e., he was trying to explain the world, not detail how the world ought to be). My line was that the world is as it is and if the model didn't explain what was going on then it was the model that was wrong. He categorically refused to accept that! His model was the truth and the world was some sub-optimal version of it, rather than vice versa.

Mr O'Brien also said the country's third level sector supported 250 academic economists whom he accused of 'writing blogs, twittering and taking out ads to stop NAMA'.

He said they generally made a nuisance of themselves - which would be fine if 99% of them had not failed to predict the economic meltdown facing the country. He said the other 1% predicted doom all the time.

'I have a sense that all these economists need to come and work for real businesses to really understand how the economy works and see the actual stress and strain of running a business... only then will they have something to contribute,' he said.

A fairly damning assessment of academic economists in Ireland. I'm not saying that it's true, but ... To be fair, what's really being said is that because they are not advocating what is best for Denis O'Brien they are not up to scratch. Of course, what is best for O'Brien and what is best for the country are not necessarily the same thing.

The rest of the article is part of the softening up process for the forthcoming budget wherein public sector workers are going to get hit again with a wage cut. Through tax levies public sector take home pay is down between 10 and 15 percent so far this year. It's likely that they'll cut base pay in the budget by up to an additional 15 percent depending on overall salary. Of course this cuts disposable income, which cuts consumer spend, which cuts indirect sales tax revenue, which cuts the overall tax base ... I better stop there before an economist steps in to correct me.