The Ice Harvest - book and movie

Last week I read Scott Phillips The Ice Harvest (review later this week). I thought I'd watch the movie over the weekend to see how it translated to the big screen. It was somewhat of a disconcerting experience. The book and the movie are quite different; the movie being a strange echo of the book. The Billy Bob Thornton character in the movie only has a couple of pages in the book, and whilst some of the scenes mirrored the book, most of the plot had been altered to some degree, including the relationships between the characters, and just about all the dialogue had been re-written. Even the scene in the book where Charlie Arglist's brother-in-law crawls across the ice to be sick in the car's footwell - a scene that had me in a fit of giggles - had been reworked and lost just about all it's impact. I'm kind of baffled by this as the movie would have worked just as well, if not better, if it had followed the book. And as for the movie ending - the book nearly flew at the television! The book is pure noir - let's just say the film was heading that way until it bottled the end and went all Hollywood. The movie wasn't bad, but in my view it was a shame it didn't follow the book more faithfully.

Lazy Sunday Service

Kerrie's review of The Rule Book over on Mysteries in Paradise has given a lift to what has been a busy few days in which I taught an entire twelve week course (usually two hours a week) over four days, whilst trying to do all the usual stuff. Always nice to get a positive review. Hopefully, Ghostland, the third McEvoy book will see the light of day at some point - it's stuck in submission limbo at the minute. I've been making good progress on Good Cop/Bad Cop over the past six weeks and only have four more chapters to write to finish the book off. Talking of which I better get back to it.

My posts this week:
Life sized virtual doubles
Review of Black Diamond by Martin Walker
A last attempt to keep allied lobby groups and voters on side?
Montreal/Quebec crime fiction
Code/Space book cover
Review of Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein

Life sized virtual doubles

In an effort to speed up security clearance at Manchester Airport from next week they are using full sized holograms of staff to prepare travellers as they enter the security zone (see story here). The idea seems to be that passengers are more likely to take notice of a person than a tannoy announcement or a television screen and the virtual self takes some of the work away from their real counterparts. The holograms are realistic enough that some passengers are fooled into trying to hand them their travel documents. I'm sure there are all kinds of plots that could be linked to such holograms, with witnesses being fooled into seeing a hologram rather than the real person, thus providing an alibi, etc. Kind of like virtual twins. If it works, it'll be interesting to see if the world starts to be populated with very helpful virtual doubles.

Review of Black Diamond by Martin Walker (Quercus, 2010)

In the Perigord region of France, Captain Bruno Courreges keeps the peace in the small town of St Denis. Tension is high in the town with the forced closing of the saw mill due to a rivalry between father and son, there are reports that a scam is operating in the local truffle market, and a tit-for-tat war between Chinese and Vietnamese food vendors has broken out. Not long after Courreges starts to investigate the latter two crimes, one of his close friends, Hercule is found brutally murdered. Hercule has a shady past in the French foreign service and his death attracts the attention of specialist services in Paris. As the feud between father and son, and the Chinese and Vietnamese escalates, Courreges tries to solve the murder and dissipate the building tension.

It took me a while to warm to Black Diamond, and even then my interest waxed and waned as I progressed through the story. What saved the novel from the did not finish pile was the character of Captain Bruno Courreges and the contextual framing with respect to France’s bloody colonial exits from Vietnam and Algeria. Courreges is a complex, multi-layered character who’s likeable and enjoyable company. Where I struggled with the book was the somewhat lifeless prose – though occasionally it sparks into life, especially around scenes with food – the uneven pacing, with several pages devoted to relatively inconsequential events and other scenes dealt with quite quickly, and especially the dialogue which is wooden and formal, with all characters speaking through the same voice. The plot is relatively straightforward and became more interesting as the story unfolded. Overall, a book with some merits – especially the character of Courreges, but the unevenness of the prose and pacing, and the weak dialogue, let the reading experience down for me. That said, it has some very good reviews elsewhere, for example, this review in the Independent.

Montreal/Quebec crime fiction?

I'm off to Montreal in mid-March for a week. We've been doing some work on Canada and potential diaspora strategies and they're flying us over to present the findings and discuss them more fully. I like to try and read crime fiction set in the places I visit, but I'm not really aware of novels set in Montreal or Quebec more broadly. Since I probably need to think about ordering books now if I'm to have them in good time for when I travel, I thought I'd post to see if anyone had any recommendations? I'm interested in any crime sub-genre.

Update:
My review of The Main by Trevanian is here.
My review of Still Life by Lousie Penny is here.

Code/Space book cover

The designer at MIT Press has just emailed through the cover design for our forthcoming Code/Space book. What do you think? Good? Needs tweaks? Hopefully should be out March/April time.

Review of Tilt-a-Whirl by Chris Grabenstein (2005, Carroll and Graf)

Part-time summer cop, Danny Boyle, and his mentor, Iraqi veteran, John Ceepak are having breakfast in Sea Haven, New Jersey, when a blood soaked girl stumbles up to the Pancake Palace. The girl and her father had sneaked into Sunnyside Playland at dawn to sit on the tilt-a-whirl before the amusement park opened for business. There a crazed gunman has shot her father dead. It turns out that he’s Reginald Hart, a billionaire developer with his fingers in many pies and a list of enemies a mile long. Ceepak vows to the girl that he’ll protect her and capture the man that killed her father, and he’s a man of his word, living by what he calls his ‘code’. With the town in a panic, a small police force stretched to the limit, and various vested interests circling the case, it’s a vow that he’s going to find difficult to fulfil.

In Tilt-a-Whirl Grabenstein creates an authentic feeling seasonal seaside town with its tourist shops, local haunts, and ragbag collection of characters ranging from homeless bums to entrepreneurial mayor. The characterization is generally good, if a little clichéd, and the writing engaging and lightly amusing, with a good pace. The telling is kind of a mix between a cosy and a police procedural, told through the first person narrative of twenty four year old, rookie part-time cop, Danny Boyle. Where I felt the story was a little stretched was in relation to the plotting. It had its twists and turns, and it tugged the reader along, but it felt a bit lightweight in places due, I think, to the levity in Grabenstein’s writing. Also, for some reason I sensed very early on who the killer was, and the ending felt kind of clunky and not fully worked through. Overall, I enjoyed Boyle and Ceepak’s first outing, and feel that Grabenstein is onto a good thing with these characters and the setting of Sea Haven, but felt a little let down in that this had the potential to be my first five star review of the year. I’ll be keeping an eye out for other books in the series.

Lazy Sunday Service

Never has the saying 'a week is a long time in politics' been more apt than the last seven days in Ireland. Under enormous pressure in the wake of revelations of socialising with leading bankers ahead of the bank guarantee that has bought the country to its knees, the Taoiseach (Prime Minister), Brian Cowen, last weekend announced that he would be holding a motion of confidence in himself on Tuesday evening as leader of his party (not as Taoiseach). He won this motion, but on Wednesday took the decision to undertake a cabinet reshuffle, asking those ministers retiring at the next general election to stand down to make way for new members. It was a badly judged move as the government's coalition partners - the Green Party - not only blocked the move but insisted on a date being set for a general election. Chaos broke out on Thursday as it became clear that ministers had resigned but were not going to be replaced, meaning that the remaining ministers had to double up offices. Then yesterday, Brian Cowen resigned as leader of his party, but not as the Taoiseach, which means that between now and the 11th March, we'll have a leader of the country who is not leader of his political party, and several ministeries with only part-time ministers. It's a farcical end to the probably the worst government in the history of the state - first they got us into the mess and then they managed to make things even worse by how they handled the crisis. I was in government buildings on Wednesday afternoon meeting the Housing Minister and the heads of a couple of government agencies. I thought that since Cowen had won his motion of confidence it was back to business as usual, unaware of the plot about to unfold - and I'm fairly certain nobody in the room knew either as some government business due to go through the Dail in the next few weeks was briefly discussed. It would have been interesting to have been there the next morning as all hell broke loose. It's looking increasingly likely the government will collapse in the next couple of days and the election will be sometime in February. Thank God.

My posts this week
What difference will voice recognition software make to writing fiction?
Should local authorities be temporarily be relieved of their decision making power?
Mapbacks
Draft guidance manual for managing and resolving unfinished housing developments
Review of Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler
Review of The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson
A bargain haul

A bargain haul

We discovered a tiny little secondhand bookshop this morning and picked up a few bargains. For the modest sum of 18 euro we got seven Agatha Christie's, a Dorothy Sayers, James Lee Burke, Mark Billingham and Stephen Ambrose. Added to the existing TBR, these should keep the household quiet for a little while. I've already made a start into one of them.

Review of The Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson (1952, Orion)

Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford is a well liked and respected member of Central City’s community. He’s known for being good with problem prisoners, able to talk them round, and being somewhat over-friendly with the public. But it’s all part of Ford’s strategy to manage his ‘sickness’ after the death of his father and his adopted brother, Mike, killed on a construction site owned by Chester Conway. Mike had been sent to reform school for sexually assaulting a young girl, taking the rap for Ford, and his death was no accident. Ford has a score to settle Conway just as soon as the right opportunity arises. And that opportunity is Joyce Lakeland. Only Joyce has reawakened his sickness – his brutal dark side. Their violent first encounter drives a wedge between Ford and fiancée and sets in train a spate of murders in Central City. Ford thinks he’s covered his tracks, but now his inner demon has re-emerged he finds himself slowly becoming the attention of suspicion.

The Killer Inside Me is a curious read in that it manages to maintain its suspense throughout despite the unfolding of the story holding few surprises. Ford is a sociopath in the sense that at one level he appears normal and he’s self-aware of his ‘sickness’, but he’s manipulative and deceitful, has shallow emotions, lacks empathy and remorse, and can flip into extreme violence. Thompson does a great job of exploring Ford’s complex personality as he uses all of his sociopathic traits to exercise his revenge and cover up his trail through deception and calculated violence. The writing is tight, all tell and no show, and plotting and characterization is excellent. Where it excels is in exploring Ford’s warped mind and world, without resorting to excessive description and back story, and yet being dotted with nuanced insight. I was slightly disappointed by the end, but it fitted with the rest of the narrative, and the plotting was a little forced at times. I was expecting the book to be uber-violent, but actually it’s reasonably run of the mill by today’s standards and is certainly not excessive. Overall, a great character driven read that’s very thought-provoking. I've another Thompson already lined up; looking forward to it.

Review of Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler (Dell, 2001)

Charlie Swift is a gun monkey for the mobster running Orlando. Mostly he hangs around the back room of O’Malley’s playing monopoly with his fellow enforcers. Every now and then he puts on a pair of knuckle dusters and reminds folk of their obligations. And if they fail to deliver he makes them disappear. Forever. Occasionally, Stan hires him out, which is why he finds himself with the inept Blade Sanchez and the headless body of Rollo Kramer in the car’s trunk. Rollo has been skimming off the top of Beggar Johnson’s take. The only plus in the hit is that Swift gets to meet Marcie, Rollo’s ex-wife. A short time later, Beggar wants another hit, this time in Orlando. Everything seems to be going to plan until he realises he’s just shot dead the wrong people, inherited some very hot books, and his colleagues are dropping dead. With Beggar moving in on Stan’s territory and the FBI on his tail, Swift is desperately trying to stay one step of those that want the books and him dead, whilst protecting his family and sorting out the mess.

There’s a rich sub-genre of Florida comic crime capers by the likes of Carl Hiaasen, Tim Dorsey, Laurence Shames, James Hall, Elmore Leonard, Randy Wade White, John MacDonald and Charles Willeford. Breaking into that set is a tough ask. Gischler makes a pretty good stab at it. The real strength of the book is the pace and action. It never lets up, rattling along a terrific speed. And the writing, characterization and plotting is solid. The book has a great opening, with some nice comic touches. As the book progresses the comic elements lessen, being replaced with more violent set pieces. Swift is meant to be an anti-hero – the bad guy with the redeeming side and conscience. This gets stretched to breaking point, however, given his cold blooded massacre of just about everybody he meets and the body count by the end of the book is in war movie territory. As a consequence, my connection to him waned as the book progressed. There were also a couple of plotlines that also didn’t amount to much, such as that with New Guy. Overall, an enjoyable first novel that made enough of an impression that I’ll take a read of Gischler’s subsequent novels.

Mapbacks

Bernadette over at Reactions to Reading has consistently praised Chris Grabenstein's Sea Haven mysteries involving Iraq veteran John Ceepak, so I thought I'd give them a go. I'm half way through Tilt A Whirl and it's living up to expectation. On his site, Grabenstein helpfully provides a map (warning this is a big file - click right for a larger lower res image) of his fictional resort of Sea Haven, reviving the old tradition of supplying maps to help readers place the story. This used to be a lot more common, for example, the Dell Mapbacks, where a map was provided on the inside cover. These ran from #5 to #550 in the series (1943-1951 before petering out). Perhaps its tradition that might be worth reviving? What do you think - would mapbacks be of use to you as a reader?

What difference will voice recognition software make to writing fiction?

I've just had a PhD student successfully defend her thesis. It was nearly all written using voice recognition software. It actually made very little different to the style of the text, but then there are pretty rigid conventions about how a thesis should be written. It's got me thinking though as to whether 'writing' a novel by talking it out aloud, rather than typing it in, or writing it down, would make a difference to the prose, narrative, style, etc? Would it push the style to tell rather than show? Would it increase the amount of dialogue, or even the quality of the dialogue? Would it lead to narratives that are more like verbal storytelling? Sometimes when I read a novel, the quality of the voice is so good, I think that the writer must have read it into a dictaphone and then transcribed it. I've no idea whether they did or not, or whether they were just very good at capturing the cadence, pauses, half-sentences, etc, of verbal storytelling. Would it lead to shorter, tighter stories? I'm not sure how I'd get on composing a story entirely through the spoken word. I reckon I need to think and type. I think I'd also feel pretty odd sitting in a room talking to myself! Anybody got any views or experience? How would talking to compose a story affect the story?

Lazy Sunday Service

I'm reading Gun Monkeys by Victor Gischler at moment. A kind of madcap, crime caper novel that has a few chuckles in it. Here's a typical gag that made me laugh.

"We might as well cash it in," Bob said. "He's got the yellow ones, the green ones and now the blue ones."

As far as Bob was concerned, nothing had a proper name. Everything was the blue one or the green one or the lumpy one or the wet one or the one that smelled like cheese. He'd been married nine years before his wife had caught him with her sister. When I asked which sister, he'd said, "The easy one."

My posts this week:
Rewriting history? Crime fiction meets true crime
Post seasonal splurge
Review of Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
New buildings, but what's their status in the market?
Future framework for higher education: Regional clusters
Review of Orchid Blue by Eoin McNamee
How 'economically free' do we want Ireland to be?
Atkinson inverted

Atkinson inverted

I've just finished Jim Thompson's The Killer Inside Me. I haven't enough time to write a review for the forgotten Friday slot, so I'll just share one observation. Earlier in the week I reviewed Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, a story I felt was pretty verbose, with a lot of show at the expense of tell, and which could have lost a hundred pages and the story be unaffected. Thompson's writing is almost the complete opposite - all show and little tell and as tight as a drum. Here's how he sets the scene:

Our standards of conduct aren't the same, say, as they are in the east or middle-west. Out here you say yes ma'am and no ma'am to anything with skirts on; anything white, that is. Out here, if you catch a man with his pants down, you apologize ... even if you have to arrest him afterwards. Out here you're a man, a man and a gentleman, or you aren't anything. And God help you if you're not.

I don't know about you, but I have a pretty good idea about this place and its social norms. Five sentences then straight back into the dialogue and action. Great stuff.