April was a funny month

Most of this month has been a bit of a blur. A week trying to meet deadlines, a couple of weeks in Washington, a lot of sleep, a couple of days trying to catch up, and the last four days at two other conferences (one of which I am still at). I'm still behind on most things and have four books sitting on the shelf that I've read but await review. Hopefully May is going to be a quiet month. I got my hands on a copy of The White Gallows on Thursday, so it now feels a bit more real. The official release date is in June sometime.

My reviews this week:
Review of Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas
Unsold houses could bankrupt councils
Volcanic shadow
Negative equity nears 50 percent
Review of Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski
Requiems for the Departed

Requiems for the Departed

Gerard Brennan has very kindly sent me an ARC pdf of Requiems for the Departed out in June (pre-order here). Rather than simply being a collection of short crime stories, each story is inspired by Irish mythology, and there is a stellar line-up of authors (contents below). I'll post a full review in due course, but wanted to give folk a heads-up at this stage. Based on the first few stories, it'll be well worth checking out.

Queen of the Hill - Stuart Neville
Hound of Culann - Tony Black
Hats off to Mary - Garry Kilworth
Sliabh Ban - Arlene Hunt
Red Hand of Ulster - Sam Millar
She Wails Through the Fair - Ken Bruen
A Price to Pay - Maxim Jakubowski
Red Milk - T. A. Moore
Bog Man - John McAllister
The Sea is Not Full - Una McCormack
The Druid's Dance - Tony Bailie
Children of Gear - Neville Thompson
Diarmid and Grainne - Adrian McKinty
The Fortunate Isles - Dave Hutchinson
First to Score - Garbhan Downey
Fisherman's Blues - Brian McGilloway
The Life Business - John Grant

Also check out Gerard's blog, Crime Scene NI. An entertaining read.

Review of Expiration Date by Duane Swierczynski (Minotaur Books, 2010)

Mickey Wade has lost his job as a journalist and unable to afford his upscale apartment in central Philadelphia he reluctantly moves into his Grandfather’s apartment in down at heel, Frankford. The neighbourhood is where Wade grew up, the place he was desperate to escape from, especially after his musician father died. With his grandfather in hospital, he has the place to himself, and flat broke he adopts a slacker diet – apples (fibre), peanuts (protein) and beer (grains) - listens to his father’s albums on an old turntable, and munches on some old Tylenol tablets that have some very strange consequences – they transport him back in time to the same apartment in the early 1970s. An apartment occupied by Dr DeMeo, who specialises in researching out of body experiences for the military; an apartment located directly above that of a single mother and her twelve year old son who will grow up to murder Wade’s father.

I was a little dubious of the sci-fi meets pulp crime fiction cross-over, but Swierczynski carries if off with aplomb. The Wheelman was one of my best reads of 2009 and I was delighted to spot Expiration Date in a bookshop in Reagan Airport in DC. The first two pages were enough to convince me to add weight to my carry-on bag, and moreover make me consider seriously putting the book I was presently reading to one side. The start is a big, juicy worm baited on a razor sharp hook; one of the best openings I’ve read in quite a while. The story is meticulously plotted and surprisingly credible given the time travel element, and the pacing is high tempo without being rushed. The characterisation is strong and the dialogue snappy and realistic. Unusually, the story is accompanied by some illustrations by Laurence Campbell, who does work for Marvel Comics, and they nicely complement the narrative. The telling went a tiny bit flat in places (I suspect because it was originally written as 12 equal length instalments that were to be serialised in the New York Times before the section was unfortunately dropped), but in all honesty there’s very little to dislike – this is top quality stuff. It’s increasingly difficult for an author to find their own voice and to come up with relatively novel premise - Swierczynski scores on both counts and, even though I’ve only read two of his books, he’s quickly become a favourite author.

Volcanic shadow

Yesterday a friend sent me a link to a NBC 2 news item from last week. I was one of the stranded passengers interviewed by their roving reporter, but I'd assumed I hadn't made the cut. Needless to say I got back five days late instead of 9-12, but the sentiment was right! Being a bit dumb sometimes, someone else had to point out to me that the video bit played the segment! I also did an 'expert commentator' piece on TG4 (Irish language) news last night (the segment starts 9.25 secs in for anyone interested). Apparently they had to get special permission to talk to me due to my lack of language skills and had a limit of c. 3 seconds. I didn't really escape the media whilst away in DC, being contacted 5 times. I spent ten minutes talking on the phone to a Newstalk researcher from outside the White House about a news item I'd missed because I was on a plane, which was a little strange. Anyway, a little bit of my extended trip stored for posterity.

Review of Have Mercy on Us All by Fred Vargas (Vintage, 2004)

Joss Le Geurn was the captain of a trawler before an accident led to a run in with the ship’s owner and banishment from Brittany’s fishing fleet. Several years later and he has taken up the family business as a town crier, working a square in Paris, reading out the messages left in his box three times a day. Over the course of a few days he receives a series of semi-cryptic messages, written in an old style, foretelling the coming of the Black Death. Then doors around the city start to be daubed with an ancient symbol that supposedly wards off the plague. In each apartment block a single door is left untouched. Detective Commissionaire Adamsberg is drawn to the case, sensing the work of a crank, but then the people who live behind the un-daubed doors start to perish, apparently showing plague-like symptoms. As the press start to speculate on whether the fatal disease has once again broken out in the city, Adamsberg seeks to track down a serial killer with a well-developed sense of history and purpose.

Have Mercy on Us All is a curious book. At one level it is a highly enjoyable read that rattles along at good pace, with colourful characterisation and an interesting plot. On another, the dialogue is weak (quite possibly a translation issue), some of the police procedural elements and plot are simply not credible, and Adamsberg, whilst an engaging character, is difficult to imagine as a cop in charge of a busy murder squad, whose antics border on Clouseau territory at times. For example, Paris is gripped by the threat of the plague, yet Adamsberg has loads of time to wander the streets pondering life, have an affair, and sit in a bar waiting for things to happen, seemingly without any pressure from his superiors, politicians or the public. One would imagine he would be flat out dealing with leads, directing his squad, and handling the media and other diversions. Overall, an enjoyable read that is particularly strong on characterisation and concept, as long as one doesn’t mind clunky dialogue and is able to suspend one’s belief in how the investigation is conducted (which I appreciate wouldn’t be a big issue for some readers).

This weekend I have been mostly ... sleeping

Arrived home from my forced exile on Friday morning. Since then I've spent 35 of the first 51 hours sleeping, which has got to be some kind of personal record. The past couple of weeks already feels kind of dream-like and hazy, as if it never really happened. Hopefully all my colleagues are now back; they were due in this morning, nice and fresh for work tomorrow. In between coma-like sleeps, I've been catching up on domestic stuff and reading Joe Lansdale's, Leather Maiden. The man's one helluva writer. Brilliant stuff.

My posts this week:
A slow week on the posts due to various distractions. Should be back to normal service this week as I've reviews of Fred Vargas, Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Duane Swierczynski and Joe Lansdale to post.

Homeward bound
Missing your own book launch
I'm making a real (h)ash of this volcano malarky

Homeward bound

After a yo-yo morning yesterday on the airlines website and on the phone to an agent I've managed to get on a flight back to Dublin today. Finger's crossed. As I was talking to the agent a seat on the Atlanta-Dublin flight was cancelled. That seat was free for less than a second! That volcano better behave itself for the next 24 hours ... Plenty of time in aiports and planes for some reading. Just finished a Fred Vargas, have a Sjowall and Wahloo (Roseanna) and Joe Lansdale (Leather Maiden) in the carry-on bag. Hopefully the next post will be from the other side of the Atlantic.

Missing your own book launch

I've managed to doubly miss my own book launch. First, I didn't manage to travel to the London Book Fair taking place 19th-21st April. Second, I forgot that the book was officially published yesterday! I suspect that the book fair is a shadow of what it could have been given that a good chunk of exhibitors, authors, agents, etc will be absent. Still it would have been nice to attend, not least so I could have picked up a copy of The White Gallows. Perhaps next year once I've got the slow boat home.

I'm making a real (h)ash of this volcano malarky

I've just spent two hours trying to find another hotel in the DC area that is not mega-expensive and isn't 30 miles out from the city or miles from public transport. There's a very limited choice. I'm assuming that DC is super-busy with both conferences and people stranded after flight cancellations, as within the city limits there are no hotels for under 250 dollars a night and the majority are fully booked. When we booked into the hotel we're presently in, we weren't quite sure where it was or what it was like, other than it was next to a freeway. We booked two nights initially to see whether we wanted to stay the whole week. When we went to extend the stay all the rooms had been booked out. Now we'll spend a chunk of tomorrow transferring hotels to one a bit farther out, but nearer to a rail link. The earliest we can get a shuttle bus to the station in the morning is 10am. Late with the hotel booking; late with the shuttle reservation! I've also spoken to my travel insurance company who have told me the maximum they will pay is £230 delayed travel fee. On the bright side, thanks to Patti, I have now have an office in George Washington University and I'm giving a seminar there on Wednesday. The news on the volcano and travel is presently a little confused - some news sites say that airports are going to open tomorrow, others that the volcano has just spewed out another batch of ash. Prospects seem to flucuate hourly. I'm just hoping that it's okay on Thursday when the first of our party is due to fly back and fully operational at the weekend, when I'm now due to fly.

The long, dusty road home

The ash cloud over Europe has claimed another victim. My flight home has been cancelled and I have been rebooked onto a flight on the 25th April. So, whether I like it or not, I have another week in Washington, along with several hundred other people who were attending the same meeting. No doubt there are millions of others stranded in the wrong place all over the world. The lack of information to travellers is astonishing, not helped by the internet in the hotel being down for the last day or so. The next task is to find another hotel for tonight whilst I work out what I'm going to do for the week ...

My posts this week:
Review of Truth by Peter Temple
Review of Paying For It by Tony Black
NAMA might demolish, but what about the rest?
Noirish night
Review of Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi
Review of A Firing Offense by George Pelecanos

Review of A Firing Offense by George P. Pelecanos (Serpent’s Tail, 1992)

Nick Stefanos has worked his way up from the sales floor of a Nutty Nathan’s electrical discount store to the position of advertising director. It’s not a role that gives him any real kind of fulfilment and he’s still trying to cling onto the alternative music lifestyle of his twenties. When one of the stockboys he’s befriended, a young kid who reminds him of himself, disappears he reluctantly agrees to help the kid’s grandfather track him down. But it seems that the kid has fallen in with the wrong crowd and is now running for his life. Stefanos is undergoing his own coming of age story, partying like there’s no tomorrow, throwing off the shackles of the corporate life, and slowly mutating into an amateur private eye. Once on the trail of the kid, danger looms, and it quickly becomes a race to see who can track him down first.

The power of Pelecanos’ writing is that he immerses the reader in the protagonist’s world and he has a fine observational eye for how social relations play out. The characterisation, dialogue and scene writing is first class. In particular, Pelecanos perfectly captures the people and banter of the sales floor, the tricks used to tumble customers into sales, the micropolitics of workplaces in general, and the ambivalent and conflicted nature of family relations. The plotting of A Firing Offense, however, is a little uneven, drifting at times, and lacks some credibility in places, and Stefanos lapses towards just about every stereotype of a PI, though given a thoroughly modern twist. Overall, the quality of the writing and observations win out, and the novel is a hugely enjoyable read. There are two more novels in the Stefanos series and I hope to track them down shortly.

Review of Inspector Cataldo’s Criminal Summer by Luigi Guicciardi (Hersilia Press, 2010/1999)

When a stranger turns up in a small town in the Apennines a ripple of disquiet spreads amongst a small group of childhood friends. A day later and one of the friends, Zoboli, an academic who researches old manuscripts is dead, seemingly commits suicide by blowing his brains out with a pistol. Inspector Cataldo is assigned to investigate the suspicious death. A thoughtful, insightful detective he soon discovers that the stranger and the death are connected through a death 18 years previously, and that each of the small group are reticent to disclose what they know about that night. A short while later a second man is dead and a photograph stolen. All Cataldo needs to do is piece together the puzzle to discover the killer with a dark secret to hide.

Criminal Summer has the feel of an old-style detective story, reminding me somewhat of a Poirot-style story. Cataldo is an unflappable, cerebral detective, who’s strong on observation and fitting together the pieces of a puzzle. Technically a police procedural, Cataldo works predominately alone and there is very little in terms of back story or internal police politics. And although there is some tension underpinning the narrative, it is understated; the story told in a very sedate fashion, with little hint of violence or conflict. Consequently, the story kind of drifts along at a leisurely pace. That said, the characterisation, plot and sense of place all sufficient to make the book a pleasant experience. However, personally I would have preferred a bit more of a sense of urgency, more realism in the police investigation, and a lot more back story to make the book a truly satisfying read.

Noirish night

I spent a very pleasant evening with Glenn from International Noir yesterday evening. We hooked up at Kramer's bookstore off Dupont Circle in Washington DC. Had a good browse of the books and chatted about different authors and books and other stuff. I did quite well in that I only came away with 6 books. Afterwards I headed to a big book-barn place by myself. It was a strangely lifeless, soulless space. It had 7 bookcases of SF, 9 cases of romance and 3 of what it called mystery, 90% of which were cozies. I couldn't get my head into alignment with its stocking policy and left after five minutes (and I'm usually a minimum of a good half an hour browsing kind of a person). Also spent a couple of interesting hours in the Smithsonian Air and Space museum; well worth a visit if your visiting DC.

Review of Paying For It by Tony Black (Preface, 2008)

Gus Dury used to be an up-and-coming journalist until he managed to break the nose of a Scottish Parliament cabinet minister with an unintentional headbutt. Having lost his job and also his wife, he drifts from one Edinburgh pub to another drowning his sorrows in endless pints followed by whisky chasers, living off the good will of his remaining friends. Then the son of one of those friends is found tortured to death, but the police seemingly have little appetite for finding his killer. Reluctantly, Gus agrees to use his old investigative skills to discover the reason for Billy’s brutal slaying and the killer’s identity. Descending into the Edinburgh underworld, he soon discovers that Billy had been running with a ruthless East European gang who were importing young girls, and that the gang leader, Benny Zalinskas, has powerful friends in high places. Uncovering Billy’s killer will be no easy task, especially when the next drink is always beckoning.

Paying For It is written from a first person perspective, the reader viewing the world through Gus Dury. And it’s the view from one step away from the gutter. Dury knows how to drink himself to oblivion, how to push those people that still care away, how to provoke dangerous people into a fight and then take the punishment. And yet he still retains some humanity and dignity, some semblance of journalistic righteousness and justice. For the most part I enjoyed the novel. Dury is plausible, the characterisation well realised, the dialogue believable. The prose is workmanlike, and the pacing good. At times though the story lacks credibility – Dury drinks so much, and takes beatings that would leave him so incapacitated that he’d hardly be able to function. And yet he soldiers on, with folk for the most part ignoring the battered and bruised state he's in. After a particularly savage beating in which he loses his teeth, his mother’s comment is that he looks like he needs a good feed! And there are a couple of continuity issues, such as Nadja losing her East European accent after the first couple of scenes, and a couple of puzzling questions concerning the resolution. Despite those issues, Paying For It passed a few pleasant hours and the teaser instalment of Dury’s next outing, Gutted, did its job.

Review of Truth by Peter Temple (2009, Quercus)

A young girl is found dead in a glass bath in an empty apartment, thirty storeys up in a brand new, exclusive property development. The building’s management company claim there’s no security footage, despite boasting that it’s the most secure complex in the city, using the latest Israeli systems. Inspector Stephen Villani, head of the Victoria Police Homicide Squad, knows he’s been given the brush-off, and he’s determined to get to the truth. Only the truth is an intangible and slippery concept, especially when everyone Villani encounters is on the make in one way or another or has a dark secret to hide, including his colleagues and himself. Then more bodies start to turn up and Villani finds himself swimming in very murky waters infested with powerful politicians, influential businessmen, and senior police officers bent on using him for their own gain, all offering rewards for looking the other way. And to top it off, his wife is away, his youngest daughter is roaming the streets in a drug-addled state, his brother is mixed up with a biker gang, and his father is refusing to leave his landholding despite a huge forest fire heading his way. Unsure who to trust, doubting himself, and trying to keep his own secrets hidden, Villani seeks justice, if not the truth.

It took me a little while to get hooked into Truth. The story had a change in style from Temple’s previous novels somewhat similar to the transformation in James Ellroy’s work – the prose becoming starker, terser and sparser, yet still retaining its lyrical prose. For much of the first half of the book, the story is a succession of fragments, the reader dropped into scenes that lack backstory and context; it’s a bit like hearing a sequence of partial conversations between guarded protagonists and trying to piece them together into a full narrative to try and understand what is going on. The result is that the reader is not really sure what is happening or why. Slowly things start to take shape and the multi-layered plot twists to a resolution. While the characterisation is good, and the dialogue realistic, the strength of the novel is that it provides plenty of food for thought with respect to its central premise – that nobody can be trusted, even family and friends; that everybody is on the make in some fashion; and every action has to be evaluated for possible consequences and costs. To that end, Truth, for me at least, is a novel that has more weight and substance a few days after reading, as its deeper meanings surface on reflection. Overall, an enjoyable novel that lingers after reading, but not quite in the same league as Temple’s Jack Irish novels, which are first class.