Tag: crime thriller

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, England, Fiction, Hodder, London, Publisher, Sabine Durrant, Setting

‘Finders, Keepers’ by Sabine Durrant

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Fiction – Kindle edition; Hodder & Stoughton; 320 pages; 2020.

Morally dubious characters are a mainstay of Sabine Durrant’s work, and Finders, Keepers, her latest novel, is no exception.

In this gripping story — which is right out of the Patricia Highsmith playbook — two women, poles apart in background and personality, develop a strange, obsessional relationship that culminates in a murder. As the pair dance around one another, their individual secrets are revealed one by one, in a carefully paced narrative filled with many a-ha! moments.

Told from the perspective of Verity, an eccentric woman in her 50s who makes her living working from home as a lexicographer for the English Oxford Dictionary, the story juxtaposes two narrative threads: a retrospective one that looks back on how Verity became friends with her neighbour Ailsa, and a current one that focuses on Ailsa’s new life awaiting trial for murder.

Murder by poisoning

When the book opens, Ailsa is staying with Verity after having spent several nights in a cell at the local police station. Someone has daubed “YOUR GUILTEY” in red paint on the front fence. We later learn that Ailsa’s husband has died, possibly from eating poisoned food, and that she has been charged with his murder. Her three children have been taken into care.

Verity, kind-hearted and eager to please, looks after her friend with unwavering devotion, the kind of devotion she had previously doled out to her aged mother, whom she cared for until her death five years earlier. Estranged from her only sister, Verity lives alone with only her dog Maudie for company.

Verity explains that when Ailsa moved in next door — after “13 months of drills and bulldozers, the clatter of scaffolding, the whining of saws, the bangs and shouts and music and oaths of the increasingly frantic builders” — it’s a relief that the renovations are over. She already knows that Ailsa, who works in HR, and her husband, Tom, who is a record company executive, have moved to London after a failed stint in Kent. She knows their taste in furniture and fittings (having seen it all delivered).

But their friendship gets off to a wonky start when Tom comes around to complain about the trees and ivy along the back fence (wanting her to cut everything back). Later, when she’s invited over for drinks (via a handwritten invitation on the back of a postcard), she drops by, unaware that it’s a thinly veiled attempt to convince her to clear up her garden.

This sets the tone for their friendship, though Verity seems genuinely unaware that she is being used or manipulated by both parties. Even when she begins (accidentally) tutoring their son, Max, who is struggling at school because of his dyslexia, Verity can never see it in herself to chase the promised payment.

Mutually dependent friendship

As the story unfolds and the two narratives, past and present, intertwine we begin to learn more and more about the ways in which these two women come to depend on one another, and we begin to see how Tom’s behaviour, bullying and rude, might have lead to his downfall.

Finders, Keepers is a clever, suspense-filled story, one that doesn’t follow all the conventional rules of the genre. It’s far from predictable and has the kind of satisfactory ending that makes you glad you took the time to read the book.

But it’s the characters that really make the story — the bitchy, manipulative Aisla, who is all sweetness and light whenever the spotlight is cast in her direction, is rather wonderful, yet it’s Verity, an oddball with her quirky interests, that gives the novel its real heart.

Author, Book review, Catherine Steadman, crime/thriller, Fiction, London, Publisher, Setting, Simon & Schuster

‘Something in the Water’ by Catherine Steadman

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Fiction – paperback; Simon & Schuster UK; 368 pages; 2019.

If you found $1million that didn’t belong to you, what would you do? Take it and say nothing, or report it to police?

In Catherine Steadman’s debut novel Something in the Water, this is the moral dilemma faced by Erin, a documentary film maker, and her new husband, Mark, an out-of-work fund manager, who discover a bag filled with money — and lots more other “goodies” inside — when scuba diving during their honeymoon on the French Polynesian island of Bora Bora.

When they decide to smuggle it home to London, the pair set in motion a chain of events that will tip both their worlds upside down.

A tightly plotted tale

Of course, as with every crime thriller I’ve ever read, it’s difficult to review without giving away crucial plot spoilers, so forgive me if what follows is a little vague. Let’s just say that Something in the Water is a fast-paced, tightly plotted story that heads into some dangerous criminal underworld territory.

Apart from a few aspects, it feels largely believable throughout, which is some achievement given that Mark and Erin are portrayed as essentially squeaky clean lovebirds. How they get caught up in events much bigger than themselves makes the story more imminently relatable, because we are all capable of making bad choices or having our moral compass go a little skewiff when there’s a lot of money at stake.

Steadman, who is also British TV and stage actor, structures her story so that Erin’s working life  — putting together a documentary following three prisoners about to be paroled — collides neatly with her new criminal life, which adds an extra dimension of jeopardy to the tale. And it is this jeopardy that propels the narrative forward in a truly suspenseful and heart-hammering way. I don’t recall being this caught up in a crime thriller since reading John Grisham’s The Firm almost 30 years ago!

She also does something super clever: in the opening chapter she has her female protagonist digging her husband’s grave, so you immediately want to know how events escalated to that point. Did Erin kill Mark, or has she found Mark’s body and decided to bury it herself?

Have you ever wondered how long it takes to dig a grave? Wonder no longer. It takes an age. However long you think it takes, double that.

The story then spools back to the honeymoon and then painstakingly outlines what happened on that fateful trip followed by the aftermath.

An intelligent thriller

Despite the octane-fuelled pace, Steadman doesn’t skimp on detail. Her characters are well drawn, the scenes are vivid and alive, the dialogue authentic, the sense of paranoia palpable. There’s an air of intelligence about the story, too: this isn’t a dumbed down thriller for a dumbed down audience.

And the best bit? The plot doesn’t hinge on the gruesome murder of a woman, which has become so de rigueur in this genre that I’ve stopped buying books (and watching films) that use this lazy device. There’s no gratuitous violence, either.

Apparently the film rights to Something in the Water have already been sold — to Reese Witherspoon’s production company — and I can see why, because it’s such a visual, plot driven, story. (The book is also a Reece Witherspoon Book Club Pick. I’m not sure that’s any indicator of quality, but it does mean the book will attract a large audience.)

I thoroughly enjoyed this crime thriller and look forward to reading Steadman’s next book, Mr Nobody, which is due for publication early next year.

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, London, Publisher, Reading Projects, Setting, Simon & Schuster, Sweden, TBR40, Tom Rob Smith

‘The Farm’ by Tom Rob Smith

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Fiction – Kindle edition; Simon & Schuster UK; 384 pages; 2015.

Looking for something easy to read on a recent weekend jaunt to Rome, I extracted Tim Rob Smith’s The Farm from my electronic TBR. A strange and twisted story about madness, lies, secrets and gaslighting, it kept me entertained for the duration of my trip — but I had very mixed feelings about it.

A parental tug-of-war

The tale centres around Daniel, a young man living in London, who gets drawn into a dispute between his parents who now live on a remote farm in Sweden having retired from their business (a garden nursery) a few years ago.

One morning Daniel’s father, Chris, calls him to say that his mother has had a psychotic breakdown and has fled the hospital where she had been committed. He’s warned that his mother is dangerously unwell and potentially violent.

Moments later Daniel receives a phone call from his mother, Tilde, saying that everything he’s been told by his father is a lie and she has the evidence to prove it. “I’m about to board a flight to London. Meet me at Heathrow,” she says.

From thereon in, the narrative is structured around Tilde’s story of what happened to her. She sits in Daniel’s kitchen (and later a hotel room) and tells her story in strict chronological order, interrupted only occasionally by Daniel who wants to clarify things (or jump to conclusions), before a dramatic shift about 100 pages from the end which jumps ahead to reveal that Tilde is now in a psychiatric unit in London.

Who to believe?

What makes The Farm so compelling to read is not quite knowing who to believe: is Tilde really psychotic or is her tale of strange goings on in the local community, presided over by a creepy, manipulative neighbour, Håken, really true? Has she been gaslighted into believing that the crimes to which she alludes are just figments of her imagination? And is the disappearance of Håken’s adopted 16-year-old daughter, the beautiful Mia from Angola, connected to a pedophile ring (or something similar)?

What didn’t quite work for me is never fully knowing Chris’s side of the story. He is largely seen through Tilde’s eyes so we can never be entirely sure if what she’s saying about him is reliable.

Daniel’s own investigation — he heads to Sweden on a solo mission to uncover evidence for himself — seems a bit rushed and he never seems to quite ask the questions I wanted him to ask. This, in turn, made me wonder if his account was unreliable, too?

And the ending itself felt abrupt — and hugely disappointing. I don’t expect everything I read in novels to be neatly tied up at the end, but this left open too many dangling threads for my liking. So while I largely enjoyed the journey I was left disappointed with the destination.

Nevertheless, The Farm is an entertaining, suspenseful (but slow-paced) read. It’s just a pity that what started out as a truly intriguing premise for a story got waylaid somewhere along the line.

This is my 18th book for #TBR40. According to my Amazon account, I purchased this book on 14 March 2015 for £2.85, but I have no idea what prompted me to buy it. Was it someone else’s review, perhaps?

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, Phoebe Locke, Publisher, Setting, TBR40, UK, USA, Wildfire

‘The Tall Man’ by Phoebe Locke

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Fiction – Kindle edition; Wildfire; 368 pages; 2018.

A few years ago I watched the documentary Beware the Slenderman about a pair of young American schoolgirls who attempted to murder one of their friends. Their motive was to appease “Slender Man”, a fictional monster whom they believed was true, and which had originated as a horror-related meme on the internet. (You can read more about Slender Man via this Wikipedia entry.)

Phoebe Locke’s The Tall Man uses this incident, albeit translated to the UK, as the basis of her creepy, psychological suspense novel.

Divided into three separate storylines set in three different time periods (1990, 2000 and 2018), it largely follows the exploits of 18-year-old Amber Tanner, who is the subject of a documentary film project. Self-obsessed and self-aware, she’s very much a closed shop and the documentary makers are having a hard time getting her to open up about the murder she committed a year or so ago.

This storyline is intertwined with two earlier ones. The first focuses on Amber’s upbringing in rural England, abandoned as a young baby and raised by her father single-handedly to become a too-good-to-be-true devoted daughter, while the second charts how her mother, Sadie, having devoted herself to a sinister figure known as “the tall man” in her childhood, spends her adult life frightened of him because of his deep desire to steal daughters and, in particular, hers.

Eventually, each of these three storylines coalesces into a powerful, if somewhat disappointing, ending, but this isn’t your average psychological thriller. Locke weaves in elements of horror, suspense and the supernatural to create a story right out of the Stephen King playbook.

An author in control of her story

She cleverly keeps certain “clues” at bay, so you are never quite sure who Amber killed until the very end, nor do you know whether Amber really believes in the Tall Man or whether she might just be using him as an excuse for her murderous behaviour.

And while Amber and Sadie aren’t particularly likeable characters (making it difficult for the reader to empathise with either of them), the young filmmaker Greta and the unreasonable demands she experiences from her boss provides an additional element to the story, including the ethics of documentary making and the ways in which young people are taken advantage of in the workplace.

Ultimately The Tall Man is an unsettling read rather than a thrilling one. There’s a few twists and turns along the way and the chopped up storylines provide an element of tension. The characterisation, particularly of Amber (elusive and narcissistic), Sadie (frightened, scatty and reliant on alcohol) and Greta (professional, ambitious but with a strong moral compass) gives weight to what might otherwise have been a fairly mediocre story.

This is my 3rd book for #TBR40. I purchased it last year as a Kindle 99p special having wondered if it might be based on the “Beware the Slenderman” documentary that had so freaked me out when I watched it on TV a few years ago. I’ve been fascinated by this modern legend ever since.

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, England, Fiction, London, Mulholland Books, Publisher, Sabine Durrant, Setting

‘Take Me In’ by Sabine Durrant

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Fiction – paperback; Mulholland Books; 352 pages; 2019.

Last summer I was completely besotted by Sabine Durrant’s Lie to Me, a wonderfully dark thriller set on a Greek island, so when I saw her latest one on special offer at WH Smith just as I was about to board a long haul flight, I couldn’t resist buying it.

Take Me In turned out to be another gripping psychological thriller, one that had me furiously turning the pages in a bid to find out what happens next.

It’s set in modern-day London, but opens on a Greek island, where middle-class couple, Marcus and Tessa, have gone for a week-long holiday designed to save their failing marriage. Their three-year-old son, Josh, is with them.

One afternoon, on the beach, Josh nearly drowns and is rescued by a fellow holiday maker — a bald-headed, tattooed Brit called Dave Jepsom — who dives into the ocean to save him. Marcus and Tessa, caught out by their own parenting inadequacies, feel indebted to Dave, even though they don’t much like him.

When they return to London, their marriage still intact (but only just), they find that Dave, who claims to be “in construction” and lives in Essex, has seemingly inveigled his way into their lives. He turns up on their doorstep uninvited with gifts for Josh and, on a separate occasion, to fix the couple’s leaky bathroom tap. At other moments, he appears in the shadows, spotted at restaurants, in shopping centres, in local streets, almost as if he is spying on them.

What does Dave want? And does he pose a threat to Marcus and Tessa’s safety?

Two intertwined voices

The story is told from two points of view in alternate chapters marked Him (Marcus) and Her (Tessa). This allows us to see their individual take on things (Marcus often feels inadequate as a man when he compares himself with big, beefy Dave; Tessa simply feels sorry for him but would rather he was not a part of their lives) and to find out more about their own internal thought processes. (Annoyingly, the tone of voice in both is quite indistinguishable, and Marcus doesn’t feel quite “male” enough to me, but that’s a minor quibble.)

It soon becomes clear that though they are both well-meaning people, they’re not particularly nice. Marcus is too focussed on his career as co-founder of a crisis management firm to much care about his family at home — it’s all about being on call 24 hours a day and saving brands from self-combusting — while Tessa feels so insecure as a mother and house wife that she’s having an affair with a man she once worked with when she was in PR.

They’re low-key social climbers, materialistic and over-protective of their child (except, of course, when he’s swimming at the beach). And they’re both paranoid that everything they’ve worked for might one day be taken from them, which goes some way to explain their fear of Dave and what he might be plotting.

As well as being a fast-paced psychological thriller, Take Me In is also a story about modern manners and morals — how do you thank someone for saving your son’s life? how do you extricate yourself from relationships you don’t want? is it okay to make friends with people from backgrounds so unlike your own? — and the irrational fears held by some middle class people against the working class.

It’s also a clever dissection of a troubled marriage and the burdens we can place on women to find fulfilment in the home if they give up their careers, as well as looking at the ethics of running a business where dodgy money is concerned.

And while the ending is a bit of a let down, the kind that throws open more questions than solutions, it’s a good put-your-brain-in-neutral read and it made a plane trip and a couple of days chilling out noticeably more entertaining for me. I will definitely read more by Sabine Durrant in the future.

Ali Land, Book review, crime/thriller, England, Fiction, London, Penguin, Publisher, Setting

‘Good Me Bad Me’ by Ali Land

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Good me bad me

Fiction – paperback; Penguin; 352 pages; 2017.

A toxic relationship between a mother and her teenage daughter is at the heart of Good Me Bad Me, a peculiarly dark psychological suspense cum domestic drama by debut author Ali Land.

As the title suggests, the novel’s narrator treads a fine line between being good and being bad, and part of the fun of reading the book is deciding whether you trust her to tell the truth.

It’s a really fast-paced read, full of twists and turns and little shocks and “a-ha” moments, and perfect fodder if you are looking for something that’s a little bit different to the usual run-of-the-mill thrillers. I don’t wish to damn it with faint praise, but it feels like a sophisticated young adult novel (most of it is set in a secondary school and many of the characters are teenagers).

It’s not terribly believable (or authentic) on various different levels, but it does take you on a terrific ride.

Witness for the prosecution

Briefly, the story goes something like this. Annie’s mother has been doing bad things to young children, murdering them and then hiding the bodies in her house in rural Devon. Annie, who has had enough of her mother being a serial killer, goes to the police.

She turns witness for the prosecution and is given a new name — Milly Barnes — and is packed off to London to live with a foster family until her mother’s court case comes to trial.

But this new life isn’t easy. The only person who knows of her troubled past is her foster father, Mike, the psychologist who is helping her prepare for her time on the witness stand. While Mike and his wife, Saskia —  a frail, fragile type with problems of her own — are kind and gentle with Milly, their teenage daughter Phoebe is so insecure and jealous that she takes an instant dislike to her new foster sister and begins bullying her at school.

The book basically charts Milly’s new life in this unconventional middle-class family as she tries to find her feet and prepare for the murder trial ahead. But between the merciless bullying at school, the need to keep her real identity secret and the pull of her jailed mother’s mental hold over her, it seems unlikely that Milly’s going to be given the fresh start she deserves.

Compelling and suspenseful tale

Is this book preposterous? Yes.

Is it full of truly unrealistic, incredulous elements (when, for instance, would a foster father ever be allowed to be his foster child’s approved therapist)? Yes.

Is it predictable? Yes.

But it’s also compelling, gripping and unputdownable, helped, I suspect, by the staccato rhythm of the short sentences and the author keeping back information so that you keep turning the pages in a bid to find out the next surprise. It’s brimful of suspense, and Milly’s voice — immediate, intimate and troubled — gives the story a bewitching edge.

Would I read it again? No.

Would I recommend it to someone looking for a palate cleanser after reading a steady diet of literary fiction? Yes.

Good Me Bad Me was a Richard & Judy Book Club pick last year, a Sunday Times bestseller and one of The Telegraph’s crime books of the year.

20 books of summer (2017), Australian Women Writers Challenge, Author, AWW2017, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, Helen FitzGerald, London, Polygon, Publisher, Setting

‘The Devil’s Staircase’ by Helen FitzGerald

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The Devil's Staircase by Helen Fitzgerald

Fiction – Kindle edition; Polygon; 224 pages; 2012.

First things first. The Devil’s Staircase by Helen FitzGerald is completely ludicrous. But it’s also entertaining — provided, of course, you suspend belief, try not to analyse the holes in the plot or the rationality (or otherwise) of the characters and don’t mind your fiction being dark and edgy.

Backpacking life in London

It tells the story of Bronny, a likeable but naive 18-year-old Australian, who’s just had a blood test to determine whether she has inherited the genetic disorder that killed her mother. She’s too scared to find out the result, so runs away to London without telling her father or elder sister.

She’s spent most of her teenage years frightened of being diagnosed with Huntington’s disease and has lived her life cautiously:

There was darkness, seeping into me.
I missed out on a lot in those four years:
I never went on the Scenic Railway at Luna Park.
I never kissed a boy in case I began to love him.
I never applied for university.
I never lost my virginity.
I was already dead.

In London she falls in with a group of backpackers and moves into a squat (an abandoned town house off the Bayswater Road) next door to a hostel, finds herself a meaningless job handing out towels in a gym and goes on an unabashed mission to lose her virginity. She makes new friends, goes sight-seeing, starts taking drugs and generally learns to loosen up a little. It’s all very far removed from her life in rural Australia living at home with her nice dad and her high achieving sister.

But there’s a dark element to the storyline, which comes as a bit of a shock when it’s revealed more than a third of the way through: there’s a woman hidden away in the basement of the squat. She’s gagged and bound to a chair. She’s been kidnapped by a depraved young man, who uses her for sexual gratification, and there doesn’t seem to be any way out of her predicament.

FitzGerald interleaves these two narrative threads — Bronny’s new hedonistic life in London (told in the first person) with the terrified woman in the basement (told in the third person) — to build up a sense of mounting tension: when will Bronny realise there’s someone stuck in the cellar below her room and do something about it?

Fast-paced read

The story is, of course, bonkers and far-fetched. It’s fast-paced though and I ripped through it in about three sittings. But it does make for uncomfortable reading, because in typical FitzGerald style she never shies away from writing about the questionable morality of ordinary people and doesn’t seem to mind if her fiction is exploitative. (She’s worked for the Scottish probation and parole service for more than a decade, so I suspect she’s seen it all.)

While it’s essentially a psychological thriller with a dark, noirish bent, The Devil’s Staircase does throw up some pertinent issues. For instance, is it ethical to be tested for a genetic disorder when you’re a teenager and how do you live with the results when they are disclosed? Does living your life mean doing things that may risk it? What can we do to stop depravity in seemingly ordinary people? How does losing a parent at a young age affect the rest your life?

This is a genuinely dark and edgy read, with great characterisation and superb pacing, but I question the exploitative nature of some of the basement scenes. Still, as a form of escapism, it’s difficult to beat and makes me relieved that my early days as a backpacker in London were nothing like this!

This is my 8th book for #AWW2017 and my 5th book for #20booksofsummer. I bought it online in August 2015 for the princely sum of 99p. I’ve read several of Fitzgerald’s novels, so knew it would be an entertaining read.

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, Gillian Flynn, Publisher, Setting, USA, Weidenfeld & Nicolson

‘Gone Girl’ by Gillian Flynn

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Gone-Girl

Fiction – hardcover; Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 416 pages; 2012.

Gillian Flynn‘s Gone Girl is one of those much-hyped books that I wasn’t sure I would like. Hence, I borrowed it from the library instead of forking out £10 for the hardcover edition. (The paperback isn’t released in the UK until next March.)

Admittedly, I wasn’t impressed when I first began reading it — it felt overwritten, too preppy and unconvincing. But when I asked the good people of Twitter whether I should continue reading, I received an avalanche of replies, mostly in the affirmative.

And I’m happy to report that I am glad I persevered. The book might not be perfect — indeed, it’s completely ludicrous in places — but it’s an enjoyable romp, with plenty of (unexpected) sharp left and right turns in the plot and a story arc that is far from conventional. In short, this is a fun, suspense-filled read.

A perfect couple

The story revolves around a seemingly perfect 30-something loved-up couple — Nick and Amy Dunne — who both lose their magazine jobs in Manhattan within a few months of each other. They move out west, to Nick’s home town in Missouri, to start afresh. Nick sets up a bar with his twin sister, Margo, and helps out his parents, both of whom are ill (his mother has cancer; his father Alzheimer’s), while Amy, who is independently wealthy, stays at home and does not very much at all.

On the surface, the couple appear happy, but behind closed doors all is not well.  And when Amy goes missing on the morning of the couple’s fifth wedding anniversary police suspicion falls on the emotionally disconnected Nick. But did he really kill his wife? And if he did so, what was the motive? And what did he do with the body?

Over the ensuing 400-plus pages, the reader is taken on a rather surreal roller-coaster journey as we follow the outfall of Amy’s disappearance and get an inside glimpse of a marriage between two very complex, needy characters full of contradictions: Nick is the perfect husband but harbours misogynistic thoughts; Amy is the dutiful only child but secretly hates the parents who dote on her.

Unreliable narrators?

The structure of Gone Girl is one of the most interesting things about this suspense novel. In alternate chapters, Nick and Amy take it in turns to tell their version of events, but it’s done in such a way that you are never quite sure which character is telling the truth and which one is lying. And just when you think you have things figured out, one of them does or says something that makes you change your mind. Nothing is entirely straightforward or clear cut.

But the novel is not perfect. Putting aside the fact that the concept of the plot is preposterous — don’t think about it too much and just go with the flow, is my advice — I found that there was little to distinguish the voices of Amy and Nick, so that I occasionally got them muddled up. It doesn’t help that Nick is not a convincing male character.

The prose also feels heavy-handed and overwritten. (On more than one occasion it reminded me of Tana French, who has the same tendency towards verbosity.) Initially, I wondered if it might simply be  a characteristic of Nick’s voice, but Amy’s voice was written in exactly the same vein so I suspect it’s just the way Flynn writes.

A masterpiece of plotting

But these are only minor criticisms. Flynn’s real strength — apart from turning the suspense/crime genre on its head — is her careful plotting and her steady drip-feed of new facts and admissions that make you constantly switch your allegiance from one character to another the further you get into the story.

Flynn is also very good at capturing modern America after the global financial crash of 2008 — most of Nick and Amy’s neighbours have defaulted on their mortgages, the local mall has gone bankrupt, hundreds of people have been laid off — and the way in which public opinion is determined by the media.

This is a fast-paced, incredibly well plotted and often surprising read. I have to admit I didn’t become truly hooked until page 144 when I was so alarmed by the turn of events I just had to keep turning the pages — and then I couldn’t stop. Gone Girl  is not exactly a pleasant read — the characters are nasty, manipulative, shallow and conniving — but it’s an addictive one.

Author, Book review, crime/thriller, Fiction, Hodder, Ireland, Publisher, Setting, Tana French

‘Broken Harbour’ by Tana French

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Broken-Harbour

Fiction – Kindle edition; Hodder; 544 pages; 2012.

Last week Tana French‘s Broken Harbour won the Crime Fiction Book of the Year at the Irish Book Awards. I read it back in July, within a week or two of its release, after I’d trawled every independent book store near Charing Cross Road looking for it. Not one shop had it in stock and I had to resort to buying it from Amazon as a Kindle edition.

I have a long relationship with Tana French, having read (and loved) In The Woods, The Likeness and Faithful Place. And because I knew this one was set in the aftermath of Ireland going bust — a topic that’s only now just emerging as a common thread in Irish fiction — I was eager to read it, hence my search for it on foot (and then online).

Murder mystery

The story is essentially a locked room murder mystery: a young man, Patrick Spain, has been stabbed to death in the family home; his two children have been smothered in their beds; and a fourth victim, Jennifer Spain, is in intensive care but is not expected to recover. There are no signs of forced entry. However, something is clearly not right.

This is how Mike “Scorcher” Kennedy, the detective in charge of the investigation, puts it:

‘There was something very weird going on in that house, and I’m talking
about well before last night. We’ve got a bunch of holes in the walls, and no clue who made them or why — if you can find us any indications, fingerprints or anything, we’d be very grateful. We’ve also got a load of baby monitors — at least two audio and five video, going by the chargers on the bedside table, but there could be more. We’re not sure what they were for yet, and we’ve only located three of the cameras: upstairs landing, sitting-room side table, kitchen floor. I’d like photos of all of them in situ. And we need to find the other two cameras, or however many there are. Same for the viewers: we’ve got two charging, two on the kitchen floor, so we’re short at least one.’

As Scorcher’s investigation develops he discovers some strange things about the Spain family, specifically Patrick, who was made redundant from his well-paid job and then spent countless hours on the internet trying to find out what was making a noise in the interior walls of his house. Was he  paranoid — or depressed? Or was there really something living in his house he couldn’t catch?

Suspenseful narrative

French does a wonderful job of building suspense — the Spains were living on a “ghost estate”, a housing development called Ocean View that was never completed when the Irish economy went bust. Only a handful of homes are habitable. This “haunted blackness of the estate, scaffolding bones looming up out of
nowhere, stark against the stars” gives  the house an eerie setting. The fact that “Scorcher” has bad memories of the area from his childhood, when it was known as Broken Harbour, adds to the claustrophobic feel. The place reverberates with menace and French mines that trench expertly.

She is also an expert at characterisation — and boy, there is an extensive list of well-rounded characters in this one: Patrick and Jennifer Spain, Jennifer’s sister Fiona Rafferty, rookie cop Richie and Scorcher’s troubled younger sister, Dina.

Scorcher, of course, is the standout — he’s appeared in French’s earlier novels, but is the least likable of all the police she has previously introduced us to. He narrates Broken Harbour in a voice that is full of bravado and egotism, a voice that I found annoying pretty much from the start.

I am bloody good at my job. I still believe that. I’ve been on the Murder Squad for ten years, and for seven of those, ever since I found my feet, I’ve had the highest solve rate in the place.

But Scorcher has a softer, more humble side, and as you get to know him over the course of the book it becomes clear that his arrogance is a cover for deep, personal insecurities. He’s actually a damn nice bloke with his heart in the right place — once you understand that, you really want him to figure out “whodunnit”  so that he can maintain his impressive “solve rate”.

An ambitious novel 

But, of course, there are some downsides to this novel, too. Broken Harbour is big, rollicking, often repetitive and sometimes unwieldy. It could have lost a good 200 pages and been all the better for it. There are too many divergent threads, too many red herrings and too many sub-plots going on. This means it takes an age to get to the conclusion — and when you get there you’re so exhausted (or bored or confused) it doesn’t feel particularly satisfying.

That’s not to say this is a bad book. It’s not. I enjoyed it and doubtless plenty of others will, too. Aside from French’s tendency to overwrite things, this is a suspenseful murder mystery that breaks normal crime novel conventions — this is more about why the crime happened and less about who committed it. It also has a kind of Scandinavian feel to it, by which I mean it puts the abhorrent crime into a social context: what part did the rampant consumerism and the subsequent credit crunch have to play in the deaths of one man and his two young children?

In a way, you could probably say they had been broke even before Patrick lost his job. He had made good money, but their credit card had a six-grand limit and it had spent most of the time maxed out — there were a lot of three-figure charges to Brown Thomas, Debenhams, a few websites with vaguely familiar girly names — and then there were the two car loans and the mortgage. But only innocents think broke is made of how much you earn and how much you owe. Ask any economist: broke is made of how you feel. The credit crunch didn’t happen because people woke up any poorer than they’d been the day before; it happened because people woke up scared. Back in January, when Jenny had spent two hundred and seventy euros on some website called Shoe 2 You, the Spains had been doing just fine. By July, they had been broke as all hell. Some people get hit by a tidal wave, dig in their nails and hold on; they stay focused on the positive, keep visualising the way through till it opens up in front of them. Some lose hold. Broke can lead people to places they would never have imagined. It can nudge a law-abiding citizen onto that blurred crumbling edge where a dozen kinds of crime feel like they’re only an arm’s reach away. It can scour away at a lifetime of mild, peaceful decency until all that’s left is teeth and claws and terror. You could almost catch the stench of fear, dank as rotting seaweed, coming up from the dark space at the back of the closet where the Spains had kept their monsters locked down.

That is a long quote to finish on, but I think it showcases French’s prose style and her understanding of what makes people — and society — tick. It also represents the heart and soul of this quite ambitious but slightly flawed novel.

For other, more positive takes on Broken Harbour, please see Guy Savage’s review at His Futile Preoccupations and Danielle’s review at A Work in Progress.

Author, Book review, Brazil, Corsair, crime/thriller, Fiction, Ira Levin, Publisher, Setting, South America

‘The Boys from Brazil’ by Ira Levin

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Boys-from-Brazil

Fiction – Kindle edition; Corsair; 288 pages; 2011.

Ira Levin’s  The Boys from Brazil is a classic thriller first published in 1976. Some of you may better know it as a film, starring Gregory Peck and Laurence Olivier, which was nominated for three Academy Awards in 1978. I have not seen the film, and I didn’t really know anything of the book’s plot, other than it was about Nazis. I picked it up for 99 pence earlier this year and thought I would save it for a time when I was looking for something fast-paced and easy to read — such as a long-haul flight.

Mysterious murder plot hatched by fugitive Nazis

The story, which opens in September 1974, is based around a mysterious plot hatched by a group of Nazi war criminals now hiding out in South America. The head Nazi is none other than Dr Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death”, who carried out horrible experiments on inmates at Auschwitz during the Second World War. In a secret meeting, held in a Japanese restaurant in Sao Paulo, Brazil, he tells the gathering:

‘It’s the most important operation the Organization has ever undertaken, and “important” is a thousand times too weak a word to describe it. The hope and the destiny of the Aryan race lie in the balance. No exaggeration here, my friends; literal truth: the destiny of the Aryan folk – to hold sway over the Slays and the Semites, the Black and the Yellow – will be fulfilled if the operation succeeds, will not be fulfilled if the operation fails. So “important” isn’t a strong enough word, is it? “Holy”, maybe? Yes, that’s closer. It’s a holy operation you’re taking part in.’

The operation involves murdering civil servants living around the world, on or around their 65th birthdays.

‘Ninety-four men have to die on or near certain dates in the next two and a half years,’ he said, reading. ‘Sixteen of them are in West Germany, fourteen in Sweden, thirteen in England, twelve in the United States, ten in Norway, nine in Austria, eight in Holland and six each in Denmark and Canada. Total, ninety-four. The first is to die on or near October sixteenth; the last, on or near the twenty-third of April, 1977.’

The meeting is secretly taped by a young American journalist, who tips off the Vienna-based “Nazi hunter” Yakov Liebermann. While the pair are on the telephone discussing the matter, the journalist is killed, setting into motion a chain of events which span the globe.

To say much more is impossible without giving away crucial plot spoilers. But what I can say is this: part of the fun in reading this book is trying to figure out why these seemingly unimportant men are to be killed. Are they connected to the Nazi Party in some way? Or have they wronged Mengele in the past? Will Liebermann figure it out before he, too, is murdered by these assassins?

Genre-bending novel

The Boys from Brazil isn’t your average thriller. It has elements of science fiction in it and because it is based on real characters — including Simon Wiesenthal, whom Yakov Liebermann is supposed to represent —  it also feels rooted in “truth”. And the reason for the murder plot, when it is revealed, is chilling to the core.

However, some elements of the story, such as genetic engineering, are slightly outdated now, but I imagine that in the mid-1970s this book must have felt not only fresh and exciting but within the realm of possibility — so many of those Nazi’s were on the run and Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor, had devoted his life to tracking them down and bringing them to justice.

I should also point out that Levin’s prose style is overly simplistic to the point of being dull. That’s not to say he isn’t a cracking storyteller — he is — but to keep the momentum and suspense going in this fast-paced plot, Levin doesn’t worry too much about descriptions or scene setting; he just wants to get to the point. Some people will appreciate this style, others will hate it. I didn’t mind it, although his tendency to hyphenate words — wedding-ringed, wet-darkened shoulders and so on — grated on me after awhile.

All in all, I enjoyed this book — it kept me thoroughly entertained on a flight between Rio de Janeiro and Paris — and you can’t ask much more than that.