“A Season for the Dead”, David Hewson

Most of my postings involve books I've read recently, reflecting my response to a book at its most visceral and critically when the plot and characterisation is fresh in my mind.

This is a departure from that principle and is not really a book review.

I picked up David Hewson's first Nic Costa novel back in February 2008, the result of a Saturday morning's stroll refamiliarising myself with Aberystwyth. “A Season for the Dead” formed part of a three-for-two offer in the local bookshop, along with Mark Mill's “Savage Garden” and John Niven's “Kill your Friends” (actually quite an unpleasant book, in a strangely compelling way, as things transpired). I'm hard pressed to remember which one was the 'free' book in this package, but memory whispers to me that it probably wasn't the Hewson, I'd just come back from Rome, and full of the prospect of more work there, the prospect of a rich Italian mystery really appealed.

Bringing things to the present day, late on Thursday night, coping with an oppressively hot Bologna night, I came across a recent spat concerning Hewson and his response to negative reviews, bringing up an array of topics including, among many others, cyber-bullying, fair use of copyright material, and libel. Ill tempered discussion such as this, which periodically flare up on the internet, often show the shortcomings of blogging, where there's too much reliance on literal communication and it's all too easy to post in haste and repent at leisure, however this did serve to make me, with the benefit of distant hindsight, think about what I've thought about David Hewson's books.

I read “A Season for the Dead” and while finishing it, being driven with a sense of curiousity about how the plot panned out, an interest in the core characters, and a real sense of enjoyment about the location, something about it left me feeling a touch disappointed. There was a palpable lack of redemption about the book. To take the persona of Nic Costa as an example, there's no shortage of troubled detectives with a surfeit of 'issues' in crime fiction, however I found a certain sense of frustration with him, and struggled to identify with him. Equally, while crime in reality is almost never elegant, much of plot represented humanity at its most tawdry, and left me feeling somewhat stained.

That said, my response to my first exposure to Hewson clearly wasn't completely negative. I clearly remember frustration at my local library not stocking the earlier books in the Costa series, and at some point last year I bought the third book, “The Sacred Cut”, probably at an airport, but it never really grabbed me, and despite a few attempts at starting, ultimately it fell victim to the demands of limited shelf space in a South London semi, and went to the charity shop unread with my feeling that for whatever reason I didn't really get on with Hewson/Costa and I didn't see myself reading it anytime soon.

There ended my engagement with David Hewson, probably concluding that while they were perfectly good crime novels of a particular type, they weren't necessarily for me, but that's just a case of horses for courses.

Reading about the spat referred to above raised some interesting questions in my mind though. I haven't seen the negative review penned by Norm, so I can't comment on whether it was or was not libellous. Raising the issue of libel is however something that does make my blood run cold. I've worked in publishing for many years, and still clearly recall the horror of receiving a phone call from the BBC asking if I was aware that a writ for libel was forthcoming from a third party. I was lucky enough then to be working for a big publisher, with the sort of editorial processes that gave us confidence in our story, and a wider support structure in terms of administration and legal help that cushioned the blow. Blogging is undeniably publishing, and libel is libel, but thinking back to my understanding of the laws surrounding such things, looking at reputational damage in the eyes of the right thinking person on the Clapham ominbus, one does have to wonder what purpose is served by taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut.

What I do find positive, having over the past couple of days revisited some of the controversial correspondence, is that David Hewson is reading and responding to writings about his work. Engaging in a dialogue, within reason, about its merits, is so much more healthy than leaving things in the hands of lawyers. Clay Shirky among others makes the point that the one thing the internet does is lower the barrier to publication, this has the effect that there is a blurring of lines between the old traditional 'book review' of the Saturday supplement and the impassioned conversation between friends previously the reserved preserve of small groups. From my perspective as a reader this has been vastly positive, introducing me to so many books I wouldn't otherwise have found, however there has to be a process of understanding that maybe principles arrived at for the long established print world do not work as well in a world where everyone can publish and accordingly have their 15 megabytes of fame.

There are going to be good and bad aspects to this, but perhaps it's worth revisiting the basic lessons of libel I was taught many years ago – as an author, would you want this written about you? And as a plaintif, once you enter into litigation gloves will come off and you lose control over what is said.

Restraint is usually the best way forward.

“The Night Climbers”, Ivo Stourton

Ivo Stourton’s debut novel was, for me, a classic library impulse borrowing. Nestling in that awkward genre somewhere between crime and literature, with an appealing cover and an engaging description it fitted easily into my late May borrowing, and then, regrettably sat on the shelf while other books competed with it for my attention – so much so that it very nearly went back unread.

That didn’t happen – and I am enormously pleased about that. The slim paperback made its way into my briefcase last week for a trip to Ankara, and proved the most pleasant of surprises – an engaging, erudite, and accomplished work that had me rechecking the author’s details, astonished my the maturity of the writing.

Set in a Cambridge that must be the late 1990s (although at times it feels much earlier, bygone era) and a contemporary London (it doesn’t pay to try and over analyse the dates, as I’m pretty sure they don’t quite add up – this however does not matter in the slightest) it follows the development of a young undergraduate, James Walker, as he moves from shy undergraduate, through socialite student, to prosperous lawyer. This transformation, from likeable youth to thoroughly unpleasant 30 something is an absorbing morality tale, accurately portrayed in the first person, as Walker punctuate his narrative with observations such as

How foolish it is to believe that you cannot love someone for their fortune.

This cuts to the heart of the novel. This is a story about the corrupting influence of money and its power to ruin. The undergraduate Walker is not rich, and does not come from vast wealth, his father now living in what is hinted at being somewhat straitened circumstances. To live up to his new found friends, who delight in flouting authority, from pirating essays to the nocturnal scaling of college buildings the title refers to, he spends profligately, if unnecessarily, and when his doomed friend, Francis, is cut off from his wealth, Walker is a ready accomplice in their descent into more extreme forms of crime – even if throughout he remains by no means the most criminal or corrupted of his set.

Make no mistake however, despite Walker not being the worst of people, the London lawyer he becomes is thoroughly unappealing. An arrogant, alcoholic-in-denial (with the damning tell-tale phrase of “I never really got drunk any more” appearing), habitual user of pornography and prostitution fails utterly to stir much sympathy in us, the ‘redeeming’ quality of his acquired wealth doing nothing to make him a better person. The roots of this behaviour are signposted throughout the novel; in particular his admiration for Michael’s sexual prowess is depressing.

He was much further advanced in seduction techniques than the rest of us, who still thought that sex in some way was linked to mutual affection.

Intriguingly Walker initially does not rashly plunge into friendships at Cambridge, following the advice of his father and Evelyn Waugh to choose his friends wisely not quickly. His reaction to Michael’s arrival through his window and ensuing introduction to the rest of the night climbers, which sets him on his path to ruin, show that perhaps he was not so judicious in his choice, and that the comment of the porter, initially chasing the climbers, that much worse could stem from what appears to be just youthful antics, was indeed prescient.

This is not a long book, it was read between arriving at Ankara’s eerie deserted airport to fly home and landing at Heathrow, and ultimately this is a fulfilling book, reminiscent in some ways of Hollinghurst’s “Line of Beauty”. There is a trace of redemption at the end, with some level of closure being found, and a realisation that Walker had been misled by others, as well as misleading himself. None of this excuses much of his behaviour or lifestyle, but by the end one starts to realise that his cold night odyssey with old fellow night climber Jessica, her beauty now faded, is a journey out of his depraved existence, in the same way his night climbing in Cambridge sucked him down. To close the book, and realise that you cared about his fate, is testament to the precocious skill that Stourton has brought to his tale. Following this up will not be easy for him.

“The Associate”, John Grisham

London Heathrow Terminal 2 has almost no redeeming features, even the bookshop being something of a tawdry ill organised affair. It does however provide airport exclusives, which always have a certain appeal, and the usual two for 20 pounds deal means there's scope for a degree of adventurism in book choice. John Grisham's probably not much of an adventure, but given the patchy response to some of his recent work, picking up “The Associate” wasn't the no-brainer that other book purchases have been.

Through 2005 I went through my first real Grisham phase, raiding charity shops across South London in search of battered copies, and accepting their basic formulaic nature, predominantly found it a rewarding enough way to while away a few hours. “The Associate” in no way is a departure from the common basic theme that has served Grisham well in the past, the tale of the idealistic young lawyer, corrupted by law's misapplication, leading to ultimate redemption, surrendering the trappings of richness for a more wholesome approach to life.

A small area of differentiation in “The Associate” is that the protagonist, Kyle McAvoy, is a flawed character to start with and initially it is hard to warm to him – the skeletons in his closet aren't particularly pleasant, and his protestations that he wants to go and earnestly work on behalf of immigrants in Virginia rings a touch false. These flaws in his character make plausible the hook whereby he is blackmailed and pushed into the Wall St corporate law he claims to be trying to avoid.

The hidden manipulators pulling McAvoy's strings are more faceless than usual, and this actually adds a lot to the book. The murkiness of their motive, and the fact that many elements with them are left unresolved avoids the book being too pat. Grisham performs at his best building a sense of menace surrounding 'Bennie' and his ability to reach into people's lives, and by leaving much unwritten, allows the reader the readily fill in the blanks quite possibly more effectively than a more detailed description might allow for.

Where Grisham falls down a touch is in his description of the central legal case that drives the plot. While in actual fact this is largely inconsequential, the complex defence contract giving rise to the enormous controversial lawsuit of interest to 'Bennie' doesn't ring true and has the feel of an author out of their depth and struggling to explain it. This is in direct contrast to the aplomb with which Grisham has handled subjects like tobacco and firearms in previous works.

Reading John Grisham seldom offers much encouragement towards a legal career, and “The Associate”, more than usual, paints a very bleak picture of the profession. The reality of legal life beyond the large salaries and luxurious public facing rooms is shown to be tawdry, venal, and thoroughly unappealing.

“The Associate” has been likened Grisham's breakthrough work, “The Firm”, and particularly feels like a filmscript in waiting. McAvoy should be easy to cast, there are clear acts and scenes that could readily transition to screen, and critically the book is brief enough to not have to be cut to shreds to fit it into a two hour window offered by Hollywood.

Written with possibly more than half an eye on the screen adaptation, “The Associate” isn't a great book. It's very linear, the majority of the characters are shallow and undeveloped, and the plot fairly simple. While I'm firmly of the opinion that 'twists' are not obligatory in fiction, the absence of one here is felt. To a reader familiar with Grisham this is a very predictable work and few surprises are encountered on the way. That said, while it lasts it's an engaging read. Started as the plane pushed back at Frankfurt airport on Friday, it was well on its way by the time Heathrow was reached, and readily completed by the end of the weekend. This doesn't however mask the fact that ultimately “The Associate” is a forgettable book. I am under no illusions that it will quickly be recycled back to a charity shop, and in a few months time it will be a struggle to differentiate it from most of Grisham's other work. Having recently read Gimenenz's “Common Lawyer” one can't help thinking that the position of pre-eminent legal thriller writer might have shifted.

“Death in a Strange Country”, Donna Leon

I came to Donna Leon almost by accident. She's one of those authors of whose existence you're always aware of, more through peripheral vision than actually considering them. The beauty of a public library means that you can experiment, and in that sort of line a month or so ago I ended up with her “Friends in High Places”. As is perhaps obvious from the title of this post, Donna Leon was sufficiently engaging to make me want to start right at the beginning of her series about criminal Venice and her somewhat lachrymose protagonist, Guido Brunetti.

“Death in a Strange Country” is a very Italian crime novel. Written in the early 1990s it captures the manifold complexities of Italian society, running the gamut of political corruption, the divides between left and right, the difficulties of making money in late 20th century Italy, the omnipresent mafia and the lawless South, and the central point, the impact of the American military presence in Italy. All of this enriches the story, with the impact that the traditional crime narrative, with a process generally leading to an arrest or conviction, is much less achievable. Justice, when served, is less a function of due process than emotion, not all loose ends are tied up, yet all of it is couched in the terms of what passes for a police investigation.

The label 'police procedural' is one that I profoundly dislike; it does nothing to erode the impression of crime fiction being synonymous with trash fiction, and as a term it conveys little in the way of excitement. Perhaps depressingly however Leon's books, and “Death in a Strange Country” is as good an example as any of the three I've come across so far, fits so closely with what we should see as a 'police procedural'. Brunetti exists within the context of a tightly defined criminal justice structure, crimes are committed, investigated, and some form of closure is arrived at. It is to Leon's credit that the way she executes plot keeps attention, build affinity, and applies a gritty veneer to Venice, a city most of us will associate with almost theme park levels of packaged tourism. The Venice we see here really is a fading sinking edifice, loved by its inhabitants, still full of tremendous grandeur, but nonetheless a city exposed warts and all. In short, Leon writes police procedurals, but they are very Italian.

One of the aspects that has struck me in reading this series so far is that it has, for me, struggled somewhat with characterisation. Brunetti, the archetypal frustrated diligent cop is a touch too good. Patta, his superior is altogether too bleakly incompetent. Paola, Brunetti's wife is one dimensional, and almost too good. In fact the road to Damascus experience I had while reading “Death in a Strange Country” was that perhaps the most real character, and one easiest to identify with is Brunetti's father-in-law. His wife's father plays a key role in many of the works as serving as a vehicle for the happy coincidence in moving the plot along, but here his persona is scratched more deeply. The father-in-law (and I apologise for not giving him a name, but my cat is very contentedly asleep on my feet, and it seems cruel to shift him to go and dig out the book to check precise details) comes across maybe as the truest Italian, certainly corrupt, largely trying to do the right thing for his family, and struggling with the compromises that his life revolves around. It is in this unexpected richness in character that really adds to the enjoyment of the book.

Thus far Donna Leon's not quite at the level where there's a desperate hunger for the next book, but there's undeniably a richness here that makes me happy that there are many more in the series. Maybe my opinion will change as I read more of them and get a more rounded view of them, but thus far it's all pretty positive.

Finally, an apology for the gap in posting. Generally when I'm busy at work I'll be on the road a lot, which means I get to read a lot, and thus this should be translated into posting. Unusually February so far has entailed a lot of sitting in the office toiling away and the only real travel being done has been a case of sitting in a car through a South London commute. Book reading overall has fallen through the floor recently, so it's a real pleasure to draw a line under this one and, thankfully, get back to expressing some opinion.

“Death on the Holy Mountain”, David Dickinson

The Lord Francis Powerscourt series of mysteries, largely set in Victorian/Edwardian Britain, fall comfortably into the arena of entertaining light hearted silliness. In general they don't take themselves too seriously, have an engaging cast of characters and an ability to make the reader interested. Perhaps the key strength of the series is that it covers a period that lends itself to over pompous mawkishness with a refreshing tone of humour. Be it a rainy afternoon in London, or in one engaging case, a shady deck on a Greek ferry (with “Goodnight Sweet Prince”) a Dickinson novel can generally be relied on to while away the hours in an eminently pleasurable manner; “Death on the Holy Mountain” broadly adheres to these criteria, if at times becoming a touch too bedded into the author's comprehensive background research.

The central character, Powerscourt, is a member of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy, and the series has visited Ireland in the past, but “Death on the Holy Mountain” is the first to set itself primarily there. The Ireland of the period should offer plentiful raw materials for Dickinson to work with, and he draws on many of the obvious candidates such as the faded glory of the rural Protestant nobility, the role of the church in the struggle for independence, and the growing Irish cultural movements. He does, however work on contextualising all of this a touch too much. Great swathes of text devoted to the death of Parnell and his funeral, with a very tangential link to the core plot, and while interesting, serve more to slow down Dickinson's usual pace. Perhaps it's my Irish upbringing suffused with the Irish history of the period, but I suspect leaving some of the historical narrative on the research shelf would have benefitted the book.

The Powerscourt series generally have art and crime related to art as a theme, and “Death on the Holy Mountain” conforms to this, with a series of thefts of ancestral portraits. I do worry however that the threat posed by this lacks a serious level of menace. It doesn't get too much in the way of the story, and reinforces the point that you actively shouldn't overanalyse the plots of these books.

Some of the subplots are, a touch disappointingly, left hanging, in particular a rather engaging adulterous affair conducted by two of the more minor protagonists lacks a satisfactory conclusion. Perhaps in part this helps show the effectiveness of the techniques of 'latent suasion' used in the Irish independence struggle, but stylistically the absence of any real closure in this area disappoints.

None of this should give the impression that this is anything other than a highly entertaining and pleasurable read. The Powerscourt series isn't high literature, but has no pretensions to be so, and is so much the better for it.

“Isle of Dogs”, Patricia Cornwell

Sometimes reading moves from the sublime to the ridiculous. The experience of finishing Steig Larsson's “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” and moving on to one of Cornwell's non-Scarpetta books is almost enough to make one despair.

It takes a while to work out what Cornwell is attempting with “Isle of Dogs”. Let's be clear, this is not another police procedural in the manner of the Scarpetta series, just with a different suite of characters. Herein lies the problem. Since “The Last Precinct” Cornwell has clearly been bored by the formula that served he well, the later Scarpetta novels, and the Andy Brazil series show a distinct change of tone, Scarpetta's story taking a profoundly darker turn, and Brazil representing an experiment with magic realism. Having made her reputation with Scarpetta she may well have sought to escape being typecast as just another formulaic crime novelist. As such something like “Isle of Dogs” can be seen as a completely understandable step. The trouble is it doesn't really work.

The problems start with the character of Andy Brazil. The persona of the state trooper cum blogger-journalist simply doesn't ring true. One role or another might work, but the way in which they are fused, and the concept that a police superintendent could readily allow one of their staff to work with such freedom, or that they would see the value in them doing so stretches credibility beyond breaking point. Furthermore, the “Trooper Truth” series of columns fail utterly to convince me that they would inspire a frenzy of public attention, reading instead like countless other bland unread blog entries. It's to Cornwell's credit that she sees the power of the changing media landscape, but sadly Trooper Truth doesn't seem like the Web2.0 phenomenon he's cut out to be.

Stylistically “Isle of Dogs” clearly attempts to be a comic novel. There's nothing wrong with novels raising a smile, and there's no particular reason not to find humour in crime, however I just don't think Patricia Cornwell is very good at it. All too often humour resorts to crude toilet gags and simplistic pokes of fun at Virginia patois, in neither case really succeeding in achieving even a wry smile.

Magic realism is a dangerous concept to try and use. It's genuinely rare to find a case of it being used effectively and the attempts to introduce it in “Isle of Dogs”, with sentient crabs and zippers impervious to bullets don't work. I'm not saying this to be horrible or cruel, it's just the case that the the book would ultimately be better off without them.

The Brazil series has clearly sold, and I suspect there may be those to whom it will appeal, but too much of it trades on the Cornwell name. Reading it is too much like hard work – it's neither a comic novel, nor an effective police work, and too much of the time it comes across as just silly, and not in a good way.

“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, Stieg Larsson

Before reading this I deliberately avoided the hype surrounding Stieg Larsson, first by accident, and then, once deciding to give him a go, quite deliberately. Invariably when an author's reputation soars to these sort of heights, especially when combined with Larsson's early death, expectations can be built up to an unachievable level. For once however, I suspect this is a case where you should believe the hype, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” really is that good.

Readers of crime fiction should be more than usually familiar with the context of Sweden, and the world portrayed here is more than usually Swedish, at times breathtakingly so, showing that Scandinavian crime fiction really is a lot more than an episode of “The Bill” with Ikea furniture. In terms of cultural signposts, “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” probably resembles the Sweden of Liza Marklund somewhat more than that of Henning Mankell, more urbane, somehow grittier in terms of the flaws in Swedish society, and critically, a move away from the often too familiar police procedural.

The premise, a disgraced investigative journalist employed by an industrial magnate to solve the disappearance of his niece 40 years beforehand provides an engaging cast of characters and using unashamed cultural namechecks, offers an alternative take on a Dorothy Sayers style locked room mystery. Significantly however, the plot moves in such a way that the reader cares about what happens, can identify with most of the major characters, and can appreciate the method whereby the journalist, Blomqvist, gradually unpicks the mystery. Larsson pulls few, if any, punches in the telling of the story, unflinching in describing the true unpleasantness behind the crimes committed, and arresting in the way in which violence is perpetrated. Make no mistake, there are some very unpleasant scenes in this story.

The girl with the dragon tattoo transpires to be the only really problematic character. A troubled woman made a ward of the Swedish state (this in itself being a powerful expose of one the less savoury aspects of Sweden's caring' state system), Salander is computer hacker whose ability to see into people's most closely guarded secrets works as a mechanism for revealing what would otherwise be altogether too coincidental and serendipitous. Salander however is a little bit too much of an achiever. As a gnomish dweller of cyberspace she works, even if she is perhaps a little too effective (I'm open to correction from any cyber security professionals out there though!). However she often transcends this, more resembling Stefanie Patrick / Petra Reuter from Mark Burnell's “Rhythm Section” series, and here, credibility is stretched.

Other plot elements are left hanging, Blomqvist's relationship with one of the Vanger daughters ends abruptly and acrimoniously, with no real explanation. Is this a flaw or a true reflection that relationships do sometimes just end for reasons you can't really explain?

As a whole however “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” fundamentally works. Okay, I read this on holiday, and books do seem to get read more quickly on the beach at Sharm el Sheikh than they do when they have to be fitted around the more mundane aspects of life such as work and commuting, but this is gripping to a miss meals sort of level. Larsson has created a universe I want to know more about, to the extent that there's an urge to find, almost at any cost, his next work, and a profound sadness that we will only ever have three works of his to read.