Cultural Pilgrim » Crime Fiction

Non-trite thriller: Book review of Michael Gruber’s The Good Son

Andres Kabel — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 20:00:16 +0000

The thriller genre used to feed off the Cold War. More recently, the ‘bad guys’ have tended to come from terrorists, Islamists, etc., and in most cases I’ve found such books to be excruciatingly shallow. The Good Son, seventh novel from thriller writer Michael Gruber, provides a welcome whiff of intelligence in the genre, for it offers as nuanced a drama set in terrorist-dominated remote Pakistan as John le Carre did of the Cold War in his Smiley series. Cerebral adventurer and academic Sonia Laghari, estranged from a high-class Pakistani husband, is taken hostage in remote Pakistan with a group of other academics. Her son Theo, a brutally efficient American spy warrior, attempts a rescue. All this sounds like one of those crap modern American thrillers, but by making his two central characters very much semi locals (Sonia practises Islam as well as Catholicism and Theo had a period as a Pakistani soldier), and by enmeshing the hostage/rescue story in a US espionage imbroglio, Gruber deepens the book into something illuminating. The author is not a stylist like le Carre but his writing is spirited and his plotting is terrific. I found the ending both surprising and a little bit rubbery, but none of this detracted from reading enjoyment.

The Good Son is a classy thriller built on a rare foundation of intelligence. 3 stars.

Spy romp: Book review of Rupert Thomson’s Once a Spy

Andres Kabel — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 20:00:56 +0000

Rupert Thomson’s Once a Spy is a vibrant spy romp, the genre equivalent of that Brad Pitt / Angelina Jolie movie, Mr. & Mrs. Smith. An American spy, described by a colleague as a natural, begins to succumb to dementia and is saved from a hit squad by his down-and-out gambler son. The book begins at a fast clip and accelerates, the tale taken up by the baffled son, racing with his addled father to save their lives, marvelling at what irregular bouts of clarity reveal about the father he’d always imagined as dull. I hadn’t read any of Thomson’s spy novels before but judging from Once a Spy, he himself is a bit of a natural: the prose sparkles; the author successfully juggles action and sardonic humour; the plot weaves like a manic snake; the bit-part characters are deftly drawn. The imaginative insights into hunter and hunted in the modern spy milieu are especially tasty. It’s all silly stuff, of course, but frivolous spy tales weave their own magic when done well.

Too light-hearted to merit its dust jacket accolades, Once a Spy is nonetheless fresh, fun and fast. 3 stars.

A fine puzzler mystery: Book review of Peter May’s Freeze Frame

Andres Kabel — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:30:27 +0000

Who would have thought the old-style puzzler mystery is still alive in the days of CSI and serial killers and jaundiced PIs? Freeze Frame by Peter May is just that. The fourth in a destined-for-long-life series featuring Enzo McLeod, a forensic analyst tackling cold cases from the files of a journalist, Freeze Frame is written in the civilized and clear old-fashioned style of Ellery Queen, ribbed with modern sexual frankness. In this outing, Enzo journeys to a small island off the coast of Brittany to tackle the two-decades-old murder of an entomologist. The victim left behind a cryptic message suggesting his still unaltered study contains clues, and when Enzo starts fossicking for clues, laid out like an Agatha Christie puzzler, violence emerges again. The author’s plotting and pace are first rate, and all the characters, major or bit part, leap from the page. If the unravelling of clues has an air of artificiality, well, that’s the nature of puzzler mysteries, and the climax, while not a complete surprise, is suitably startling. I read the entire book in one sitting, as all good puzzlers deserve.

An intriguing, enjoyable read. 3 stars.

Limpid: Book review of Beautiful Malice by Rebecca James

Andres Kabel — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 20:00:27 +0000

Beautiful Malice by debut novelist Rebecca James has arrived with an almighty marketing splash, one alas undeserved. Told in the first person and up close, it’s the tale of Katherine, a seventeen-year-old Sydney girl with a crippling secret, who is thrilled to be befriended by glamorous Alice. As the relationship builds, a dark undercurrent emerges and the plot wiggles about with the introduction of boyfriends and other friends. There is plenty to admire in the setup of Beautiful Malice and Katherine is a likeable if unsubtle protagonist.

But from the outset this novel under delivers. The storyline limps along, with the expected ‘plot twists’ either foreshadowed or diluted. The writing style is simple and naive, which is quite in line with our heroine and could, in the hands of artful author, have worked really well. Instead, the flat prose irked me to the point of frustration. There is little sense of location, much of the tale being told via clunky dialogue or slow-witted inner thoughts. To anyone who regularly reads the mystery genre, the underlying puzzle, the obligatory ‘shock horror twist’ and the climax are all ho-hum.

Perhaps there is a market for Beautiful Malice in what I imagine to be the Barbara Taylor Bradford segment but it won’t offer any competition to the better books of 2010. 1 star.

Doorstopper finale: Book review of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Andres Kabel — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 20:00:40 +0000

So this is it, the conclusion (for author Stieg Larsson can write no more) to the Millennium thriller trilogy that has enlisted slavering fans since The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. At close to 600 pages pages, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest is as meaty as the first two books. Once more it features Lisbeth Salander, the young super-hacker goth with a horrific past of abusing men, who received a bullet into the head at the end of the previous volume, and Mikael Blomkvist the flinty, personable investigative reporter. This time their goal is to keep Salander free from the clutches of the Swedish secret service.

As with the first two books, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest puzzles veteran thriller readers like me. I have no doubt that if an extravagantly wordy tale like this, with a plot so labyrinthine that I know people who draw massive wall charts to follow it, were to be submitted by a wannabe novelist to an American publishing house, it would be thrown out with the comment ‘cut, cut, cut’. After a skilfully orchestrated beginning, Larsson clogs the huge middle section with an endless array of minor characters, many of them barely sketched for the reader, interacting in complicated ways. Unlike the many Millennium fans I know, I found this section, like the middle of The Girl Who Played with Fire, maddeningly repetitive to the point of tedium. Fortunately Larsson’s fetish for descriptive details helps bind this section together. And then the final third kicks into gear, with Salander and Blomkvist at stage centre, and suddenly I could not put the doorstopper down. A pivotal courtroom scene is as good as any I have read in years. Larsson’s refusal to sentimentalise Salander’s moments of triumph after so long is a towering triumph.

I finished The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest understanding why fans love the series, and if you’re one such, no doubt you already have this volume. I still find myself wondering whether a talented editor might have pared the mid-book bloat and transformed a compulsive, readable thriller into a genre masterpiece. 3 stars.

Safe cracking joy: Book review of The Lock Artist by Steve Hamilton

Andres Kabel — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 20:00:37 +0000

This must be the season for wonderful thrillers. I had admired Steve Hamilton’s private eye series, featuring Alex McKnight, during its early years, but stopped following him some time ago. Glowing reviews of his new standalone The Lock Artist: A Novel drew me back and thank goodness for that, for this is one of the cleverest, most engaging books I’ve read this year. The complex plot follows Michael, a youthful ‘boxman,’ what we know here in Australia as a safe cracker, through the early years of his dangerous career. Hamilton alternates two separate storylines, constructed highly intriguingly to slowly reveal Michael’s tragic childhood. The author uses an intimate, chatty first-person style that enfolds the reader, and his descriptions of safe cracking techniques are fascinating. Not a word is wasted, and the mystery and tension make for a breathless read.

The Lock Artist is an original and compelling pleasure. 4 stars.

Vivid dystopia: Book review of Charlie Huston’s Sleepless

Andres Kabel — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 20:00:37 +0000

What a dazzling premise! Charlie Huston posits for his sci-fi thriller Sleepless: A Novel an alternative early 21st century in which a tenth of the population has turned sleepless, a condition that torments and eventually kills the afflicted. Into a familiar, yet ghastly Los Angeles, Huston plunges Park Haas, the last honest cop, and his insanely destructive antagonist, the assassin Jasper. A propulsive plot propels Haas into a quest to save his loved ones, amidst a dystopia portrayed vividly by the author’s luscious prose. Characters major and minor bloom on the page. Huston’s dialogue is among the best I’ve read this year.

Sleepless grips and never lets go until a harrowing, yet redemptive end that literally had me teary, no mean feat. And as I reluctantly read to the end of the short epilogue, wishing for more, I was struck by the sensation that this brilliant thriller succeeds exactly as did that classic film Bladerunner.

One of 2010’s best novels bar none. 4 stars.

PI of the year?: Book review of Walter Mosley’s Known to Evil

Andres Kabel — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 20:00:02 +0000

Walter Mosley’s character-based crime fiction series are such pleasure to read. He has the uncanny ability to imbue every page, even in midst of a speedy plot, with the thoughts and memories of his core character, so much so that the prime joy of reading is in growing into the heart and mind of that hero. James Lee Burke uses similar techniques, plus he offers ravishing place descriptions, but Burke’s two series characters are by now wrung out. Mosley, on the other hand, moves on, and his heroes bristle with life.

Known to Evil is Mosley’s second book featuring Leonid McGill, a New York private investigator repenting of a former dirty life. A nuggetty block of a man, his unprepossessing appearance hides a fertile, intelligent inner life. In this outing, McGill is asked by a feared gangster to locate a mysterious young woman, a task that immediately entangles our hero in violence. At the same time, one of his sons somehow invites the attention of Romanian gangsters. Mosley launches the convoluted plot at rapid pace and it never lets up. I found myself constantly sighing with amazement at yet another McGill action that startled me yet seemed completely consistent. The author’s hardboiled yet semi-poetic style has never sung sweeter.

Within the crowded PI subgenre, Leonid McGill is a winner and Known to Evil is Mosley’s best in years. 4 stars.

Fizzes with energy: Book Review of Stuart Neville’s The Twelve

Andres Kabel — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 20:00:55 +0000

The Twelve (sold in America as The Ghosts of Belfast) by Stuart Neville fizzes with energy from its first paragraph. Irish paramilitary killer Gerry Fegan is dizzingly portrayed as an alcoholic has-been tormented by twelve ghosts of his brutal past, ghosts who torment him to exact vengeance on other Sinn Fein heavies. After the first action-laden section, I wondered if Neville had trapped his antihero in a predictable sequence of killings, but the plot constantly lurches sideways, and by the middle of the novel I was truly hooked. An action thriller, The Twelve also illuminates modern Northern Ireland and the unresolved consequences of generations of deaths.

Rich characterization, gripping action scenes, even a convincing romantic subplot . . . this is a rare modern thriller that delivers on all fronts. 4 stars.

Plot as countdown: Book review of Lee Child’s 61 Hours

Andres Kabel — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:00:46 +0000

Jack Reacher, Lee Child’s nomadic, taciturn action man, has recently been compared to Philip Marlowe. Marlowe he isn’t, but amongst the panoply of male antiheroes so treasured by us mystery/thriller readers, Reacher definitely stands out. The ultimate baggage-free male (literally and emotional), he’s unnoticeable until the world needs him, then becomes brutal, rational, efficient . . . the traditional superhero. I know, I know, that description slights Reacher, but the truth is, the real hero of the Reacher books is Lee Child himself. Unusually for this genre, Child is not only stylish (that’s a given for successful thrillers), he is also acutely intelligent, melding superior plots, wonderful scene pacing and even humour.

61 Hours finds Lee Child at his most playful. He wields the countdown device from the first page to the last, in a Reacher episode in which the reluctant star finds himself trapped in a snowbound town assailed by bikie gangs, an assassin and out-of-town gangsters. I found the cocktail of seamless action, tension and plot puzzlers a wonderful single-sitting read.

61 Hours is Lee Child and Jack Reacher at their peak. 3 stars.