Review: Dead Man’s Folly by Agatha Christie

Title: Dead Man’s Folly

Author: Agatha Christie

Narrator: David Suchet

Publisher: Harper Collins [This edition 2007, originally 1956]

ISBN: N/A [downloaded from audible.com]

Length: 6hrs 1min

Genre: Private Detective

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 4/5

One-liner: A book that simultaneously manages to offer exactly what you expect at the same time as a surprise ending

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Hercule Poirot receives a frantic phone call from his friend Ariadne Oliver, a writer of murder mysteries. She has created a live murder game for a fête to be held in the grounds of Nasse House which is the home of Lord and Lady Stubbs but she believes there is real danger lurking at the House and she begs Poirot to come immediately. Oliver gives Poirot little to go on but her feelings and, perhaps because of this, he fails to prevent the murder of the young girl who was only supposed to be playing the role of victim in the murder game. He subsequently participates in a stop-start investigation before finally solving the crime.

I was prompted to read this book by one of Margot Kinberg’s excellent contributions to the Crime Fiction Alphabet meme. Margot highlighted the humour of the book and as that is an element of crime fiction I enjoy and hadn’t really associated with Christie before I thought it would be an interesting choice for me. I wasn’t disappointed. The Ariadne Oliver character really does make a nice contrast to the somewhat prissy and proper Poirot with her ability to laugh at herself and it does seem like Christie was having a bit of fun with her genre by using the ‘mystery within a mystery’ twist.

This twist is also a perfect device for Christie’s favourite ploy: misdirection of her readers. Even though I know that her plots are always complex and that the obvious clues are red herrings to be ignored I still didn’t come close to picking up on the key hints that led to the solution. As almost always with Christie’s books, the uncovering of the murderer follows a wonderfully convoluted and unexpected journey. One of the things I liked about this book is that Poirot didn’t seem quite so cocky as he is in earlier stories. He doesn’t inveigle himself into every single interrogation and for some time it seems as if he might not even solve the mystery at all. I found this slightly more humble Poirot more likable than I have in the past.

I notice that some people mention struggling to keep track of all the people who appear in this book and I think this is where listening to the audio book had me at an advantage. David Suchet is a superb narrator and manages to provide all the characters a distinctive voice which is very helpful in such a dialogue-rich story. I must admit I am becoming quite addicted to Suchet’s narrations of Christie’s works.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

If you’ve read the print book and listened to the audio book of Dead Man’s Folly clearly the next step is to play the hidden object game based on the book. This screen shot has me tempted.

Another blog to have reviewed Dead Man’s Folly is Books Please as part of the Agatha Christie Reading Challenge that Kerrie from Mysteries in Paradise is hosting.

 

Review: The Coroner’s Lunch by Colin Cotterill

Title: The Coroner’s Lunch (the first Dr Siri Investigation)

Author: Colin Cotterill (and he blogs here)

Publisher: Quercus [originally 2005?, this edition 2007]

ISBN: 978-1-84724-196-2

Length: 400 pages

Setting: Laos, 1976

Genre: Amateur sleuth

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 5/5

One-liner: An engaging, funny, staunchly un-categorisable book. With subversive puppets!

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The book opens Laos in 1976. A fledgling Communist regime is in power for the first time and Dr Siri Paiboun, a 72-year-old doctor and former warrior, has been appointed the country’s sole Coroner. He has no training for the role, most of the available books on the subject are in a language he doesn’t speak and he has little of the necessary equipment. Despite all this he’s required to investigate an assortment of peculiar deaths, including the wife of a Party Leader and what appear to be tortured Vietnamese soldiers. Helping Dr Siri are nurse (and wannabe trainee Coroner) Dtui, morgue assistant Mr Geung and the spirits of dead people who inhabit Dr Siri’s dreams.

The highlight of the book for me was the humour which has the same witty, haphazardly surreal quality as Douglas Adams’ writing. In the past I have lamented the lack of books with this kind of sensibility but I now realise it’s a terribly difficult thing to achieve and am simply grateful whenever I stumble across an example. I don’t re-read books very often but books like this, that offer something wonderful quite independent of their narrative, tend to make it to the shelf of books I re-acquaint myself with from time to time.

The characters are delightful too. Dr Siri is reluctant in his roles as communist and coroner though he performs the latter with increasing diligence. He treats the people he meets with the amount of respect and compassion each deserves and his struggle to cope with the supernatural aspect to his life is handled well (it’s a theme normally guaranteed to turn me off). There are a myriad of other players, major and minor, alive and not, good and evil, who are all equally well depicted and credible.

The book also offers a marvellous sense of time and place although I’m so woefully ignorant of this particular part of the world and its history that I’ve no clue if it’s a realistic depiction. For all I know it could be as much a production of Cotterill’s imagination as his protagonist’s corpse-inhabited dreams but, realistic or not, it’s a glimpse into a fascinating world.

For once the prominent blurb on my copy of The Coroner’s Lunch, which likens it to Alexander McCall Smith’s African series, isn’t wildly inaccurate. Dr Siri certainly shares characteristics with Mme Ramotswe of Smith’s series although I think the plot of this book is far more intricate and it tackles weightier social issues, albeit with a delicate touch and wry humour. I found myself wanting more of this writing and these people almost before I’d even finished and, happily for me, there are already five more books in the series. What joy I have to look forward to.

Other stuff

The Coroner’s Lunch is reviewed by Helen at It’s Criminal, Maxine at Euro Crime, Karen at Euro Crime.

 

Review: Silks by Dick Francis

Title: Silks

Author: Dick Francis with Felix Francis

Publisher: Pan Books [original edition 2008, this edition 2009]

ISBN: 978-0-330-46451-2

Length: 400 pages

Setting: England, present day

Genre: Amateur sleuth

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

My rating: 3.5/5

One-liner: A quick, well-plotted tale with a satisfying ending though few surprises.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Geoffrey ‘Perry’ Mason is a professional barrister and amateur jockey and these pass times meet when a leading jockey he knows, Steve Mitchell, is accused of killing another jockey. A former client of Mason’s threatens that if he doesn’t take Mitchell’s case and lose his own family will suffer. Mason is torn between doing what he knows is right and doing what will bring him peace in his life.

Usually when I pick up a new book I do so anticipating an interesting experience: new characters to meet, places to visit, ideas to contemplate. Occasionally though I am in the mood for the literary equivalent of comfort food and for me that means reaching for one of ‘my’ authors who write to a formula I enjoy. Few do that better than Dick Francis. His books are all variations on the theme of a central male character somehow related to the world of horses who gets into trouble not of his own making that can only be overcome by heroism of the stiff upper lip variety. This is the 41st Dick Francis book I’ve read and I can’t honestly say it’s much different from any of the others. But then, today anyway, I’d have been disappointed if it had been.

Silks is the second book co-authored by Francis’ younger son Felix (Francis is 89 now) and is much better than the first, Dead Heat, which I read last year.  Unlike that one, which never felt terribly credible and had plot holes you could drive a lorry through, Silks was quite believable. The fear which people were able to induce in perfectly ordinary citizens so that they would lie and do other things against their nature felt very genuine and I was thoroughly engaged in finding out how our hero would ensure justice prevailed in the end (which of course I knew it would).

For all the lightness and frothiness of Francis’ books he does have a great ability to depict real human behaviour and it was interesting to watch how various people coped with the violent intimidation that was prevalent throughout the story. Mason’s growth into the sort of person who could stand up to quite horrifying scare tactics was also well done.

Silks is one of those books that delivers exactly what you expect and sometimes that’s enough to qualify as a satisfying read. Francis fans will enjoy the book while new readers could do worse than start with this one.

Other stuff

Silks has been reviewed at Mysteries in Paradise and Reviewing the Evidence

 

Review: A Cure For All Diseases by Reginald Hill

Title: A Cure For All Diseases (the 23rd of 24 Dalziel and Pascoe novels and published as The Price of Butcher’s Meat in the US)

Author: Reginald Hill

Publisher: Whole Story Audio Books [2009]

ISBN: N/A (acquired via digital download from audible.com)

Length: 15hours 49minutes

Narrator: Jonathan Keeble

After barely surviving a terrorist blast Superintendent Andy Dalziel is convalescing at a swanky private clinic in the seaside resort of Sandytown in Yorkshire. He befriends another young visitor to the town, Charlotte (Charley) Heywood, who is the daughter of an old Rugby mate of Dalziel’s and a psychologist reviewing the benefits of alternative therapies. They are both keen observers of the people and happenings in the town and record their observations: Andy using a digital audio recorder provided by his doctor and Charley via a series of emails to her sister. As with all fairly closed communities there are a couple of prominent families whose lives seem to impact everyone in the town directly or indirectly and the same is true of Sandytown which is the setting for a soon to be opened alternative healing centre. When one of the town’s most prominent citizens is killed in a gruesome way a full police investigation, headed by Dalziel’s old partner Peter Pascoe, gears up but Andy and Charley’s continuing observations play a key role in the solving of the murder.

This is, more than usually, a review specifically of the audio version of A Cure For All Diseases narrated by Jonathan Keeble. Because, regardless of how good the original content is, Keeble added a truly wonderful element that I don’t think could exist in the print version. His portrayal of the two main narrators of the story, ageing male Dalziel and young, somewhat excitable female Charley is truly magnificent and he rounds out the reading with an entire cast of minor players that are equally beautifully depicted. Coming back to my iPod each day became a real treat over the past week or so and I now have a sense of the anticipation people used to get as they ‘gathered round the wireless’ to hear the latest radio play in the days before television.

The format and, to some extent, the content of this story is actually Hill’s homage to Jane Austen but I don’t think it matters all that much if you’re an Austen fan and can recognise what he’s done or not. Far more important is that it provides an interesting, different approach to the standard police procedural. As someone who has lamented the formulaic writing by other well-known authors of late I applaud both the decision to do try something new and the successful execution of that decision. About half of the story is told via the recorded observations of Charley and Dalziel and I thoroughly enjoyed their dual points of view, especially the brave inclusion of a significant narrative voice that wasn’t Dalziel or Pascoe. The rest of the story is told via a more traditional narrative but the two forms are pretty seamlessly integrated.

There’s a strong undertone of humour through this book that I haven’t noticed in the series before (although I’ve not read a large number of them so maybe it has been present). Both Dalziel and Charley’s epistles are full of humour that suits their respective characters: Dalziel’s is coarse and reminiscent of a 1970’s comedian dripping with barely concealed sexual innuendo while Charley’s is full of the biting observations that a modern young woman might share with her friends in an online chat room. I found this added a very natural component to the characterisations and, particularly in the case of Dalziel, provided a layer of credibility to a character that I’ve struggled to believe in previously. He’s still all-seeing, all-knowing Fat Andy that nearly everyone is instantly afraid of, but the humorous monologue provides an insight into what makes him tick and because of it I cringed less and saw him as a more well-rounded character.

The book isn’t the fastest paced story you’ll find, especially where the two narrative voices overlap and recount the same events from their different perspectives, but the relatively slow revelation of events allowed the myriad of characters to be more fully developed than would otherwise have been the case. Rather than being ‘filler’ content of the ‘a book must have 500 pages’ variety this was a highly nuanced building up of a picture of the town and its inhabitants and I was completely captivated. I have to admit the final conclusion bordered on contrived but I forgave this minor lapse in what was otherwise a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Hill is to be congratulated for maintaining interest in his long-running series by trying something innovative with this book. I also admire the fact you don’t need to be a die hard fan of Dalziel and Pascoe to enjoy the book (although I doubt it hurts if you are). If you’re at all keen on audio books I’d highly recommend you relax and let Keeble’s narration spirit you away to Yorkshire for a few hours.

My rating 5/5

Other stuff

As Hill as a huge legion of fans his book has been reviewed by lots of fellow book bloggers including those at Mysteries in Paradise, Reviewing the Evidence, Euro Crime, Aust Crime Fiction and Ms Bookish

 

Review: Gone Tomorrow by Lee Child

Title: Gone Tomorrow

Author: Lee Child

Publisher: Bantam [2009]

ISBN: 978-0-593-05704-9

Length: 441 pages

It is late night/early morning. Jack Reacher is on a New York subway train. He spots a woman he thinks is a suicide bomber. He decides to talk to her. This action sets off a trail of unexpected events.

The short sentences in that synopsis are similar to the writing style in this book. The mostly short sentences are full of details about some things (e.g. gun models and fight sequences) but no details about other things (e.g. the people). The story unfolds via a series of events which happen so quickly that, apparently, there’s no time for anyone to display an emotion or reveal much in the way of motivation. Even the sex is rapid and seemingly as uninteresting to the participants as it was to me.

I know thrillers generally focus more on plot than character development but this one takes that to an extreme. Reacher is a character about whom we know virtually nothing: he’s ex-army, has big feet, has no home and possesses only 9 things all of which he can carry with him. I haven’t read any of the previous 12 novels in the series but I’m prepared to bet no one who has knows much more about Reacher than this as it would be appear to be a feature of the series. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that approach but it just didn’t appeal to me. I like to read not only about what people are doing but why they are doing it and Gone Tomorrow had almost none of that second element. The result was a book I simply didn’t connect with at all.

For me reading this book is like the meal you eat when you’ve got 20 minutes to spare at work and you bolt down a sandwich while checking your emails: it quells the hunger pangs but you barely taste it and wouldn’t be able to describe it to someone the next day if your life depended on it. I read this book on a leisurely interstate train trip in what was basically a single sitting but if you ask me in a week what happened I doubt I’ll be able to recall 3 distinct things about the book.

My rating 2/5

Other stuff

Although the book isn’t for me many others enjoyed the tale including Mack from Mack Captures Crime

 

My history with Wexford (or timing is everything)

George Baker as Inspector Wexford in 1998's Road Rage for TV

Back in the mid-80’s when I started to look for crime fiction as an adult reader I was a rather strident young university student taking, among my other studies, a course entitled Women in Politics. From memory it covered a mish-mash of history and commentary about the treatment of women in society and was taught by the kind of Germaine Greer worshiping feminist that you don’t often see these days. Apart from turning me into a crushing bore for several months (Surely there’s not much more annoying in life than a newly converted disciple of any cause or faith) the course influenced me to demand my local librarian provide me with contemporary crime fiction by female authors. She suggested Sara Paretsky’s V I Warshawski series, Sue Grafton’s alphabet books and Ruth Rendell’s Inspector Wexford novels. The first two of these, featuring young, adventurous female protagonists, were far more engaging to my 19-year old self than one starring two middle-aged blokes and I’ve never really gotten over my youthful disdain for Reg Wexford and Mike Burden. The books are forever identified in my mind as depicting an old-school ‘man’s world’ that I wanted no part of and even though I know now that’s a very superficial interpretation of the books I can’t help continuing to be influenced by the thought.

Regardless of this I have read at least half of the Wexford books over the years (they’re available everywhere) but they’ve never been the ones I wait impatiently for. Instead they’re the books I pick up from remainders tables when desperate or borrow from the library because it’s that or Danielle Steele (before the Internet made it simple for me to put holds on books I actually want to read). The only Wexford story I’ve liked is Road Rage which appealed to my inner hippie and focused more on Reg’s wife Dora than the other books I’ve read. I couldn’t provide you a single detail of any of the other novels if my life depended on it.

And so I shall dare to admit here that I groaned audibly when I saw From Doon with Death had been chosen for the upcoming classics month discussion at Oz Mystery Readers. But, because I do try to participate in the group discussions (and because I discovered the story is contained in the Wexford omnibus gathering dust on my bookshelves) I gave it a go.

I don’t think it would be quite fair to review the book properly given my gargantuan blind spot but this is what I thought of the book.

It’s the first in what has become a series of 22 novels featuring Chief Inspector Reg Wexford et al and was written in 1964. Ronald Parsons reports his wife missing to his neighbour Mike Burden, also a policeman. Initially skeptical, Burden starts half-heartedly making enquiries. When Margaret Parsons’ body is found the pace picks up and Wexford and Burden have to unravel a tale that started a dozen years ago when Parsons was at school in the area.

Because I really wasn’t terribly engaged by the book (refer above) I started to take note of the ways it let me know it’s 45 years old. I’d forgotten, for example, that there was a time, before the ‘war on terror’ prompted earthlings to give up any pretence of civil liberties, that an innocent person’s fingerprints would be destroyed once the case for which they’d been taken had been resolved. Imagine! There are a load of similar small details which ensure the book captures its time and place exceptionally well and I really enjoyed that aspect of the book.

The plot is well constructed and I suspect it would have been a little controversial in it’s day but it’s in no way salacious. I did get a bit bored by some of Wexford’s drawn out figuring out of things (the tracking down of the owner of a single tube of lipstick seemed to take forever for example).

We don’t learn much about Reg or Mike in the book which is probably at the heart of my disengagement with the series. We know Mike is married with two young-ish kids but I don’t think there’s any mention of Reg’s family here. We do learn that he’s 52 in this book which would have made him 97 in his last outing if he had aged the same way the rest of us do. I guess that kind of poetic license doesn’t really matter but I think it probably contributes to to my lack of ability to get drawn into the series. I like my characters to be a bit more concretely drawn.

I’ve always felt somewhat heretical for being a crime fiction lover who doesn’t go weak at the knees at the sight of a new Ruth Rendell book. But I don’t and I can’t make myself. This book, like all the others I’ve read, is a perfectly plotted police procedural but it doesn’t have the other part of what I need to want to spend time with a book: engaging characters. To me Reg and Mike are about as interesting as day-old dishwater and neither the victim of the crime here nor any of the suspect pool we were introduced to was much better. It might get me excommunicated from the crime fiction fraternity but I’ve decided I’m done with Wexford. I no longer believe eschewing him is striking a blow for womankind (I really was insufferable 22 years ago) but I am comfortable in admitting he’s just not for me.

 

Review: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher, Kate Summerscale

Title: The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House

Author: Kate Summerscale

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing [original edition 2008, this edition 2009]

ISBN: 978-07475-9648-6

Length: 372 pages

This non-fiction book lays out the story of four year old Francis Saville Kent, son of a prominent Inspector of Factories Samuel Kent, who one morning in 1860 was found to be missing from his bed. His mutilated body was discovered later that day in the grounds of the house and it was established early on that the murderer could only have been someone, family or servant, from within the household. When local police failed to make headway in identifying the culprit Inspector Whicher, a member of England’s first-ever plain clothes detective squad, was sent from London to investigate.

Summerscale has pieced together not only the immediate events surrounding the murder but also the pasts of all the main players including the Kent family and Inspector Whicher. If we need it, the story revealed here provides further evidence that phrases become clichéd because they are true and Mark Twain’s observation that truth is stranger than fiction is borne out. The Road Hill murder seems to have involved more odd characters, false accusations and misinterpreted evidence than ever Conan Doyle or Christie would have dared squeeze into a single story.

It’s obvious that a load of research, mostly from solid primary sources such as court transcripts and Whicher’s detailed reports as well as contemporary newspaper reports, has gone into this book. For me the first chapter, although probably necessary, was the least engaging as it was a bit of a jumble of people’s names and their precise locations at particular points in the timeline immediately before and after the boy’s death. However after this chapter I found the book more to my taste as there was some in depth analysis of the facts that Summerscale had gleaned from all that research.

For me anyway this book was about much more than the attempt to uncover a murderer. There’s a a fascinating description of the development of the investigative techniques (or lack thereof) used in the fledgling field of professional detection. Then there’s the always maddening contemporary explanations for the actions of the women in the case (usually involving insanity brought on by their menstrual cycles of course). While supposedly learned men’s perceptions of my gender’s inferiority is not news to me the insight into the way these kind of events were tried, even then, in the court of public opinion was quite unexpected and totally gripping. I have a feeling that the families involved in modern-day cases such as the death of Azaria Chamberlain (an Australian case from 1980) and the more recent disappearance of Madelaine McCann would feel some empathy for what the Kents and the members of their household went through. And although many things have changed since 1860 (I doubt many modern police enquiries would falter due to an embarrassment about discussing women’s under garments for example) it would appear the willingness of the general public to give  freely of their ill-informed guesswork with respect to whodunnit and why is a constant.

I was happily reminded of something reading this book: I really do enjoy this kind of history. I’ve never been that interested in the ‘major events’ (kings, presidents and wars) but this kind of history, based on teasing-out information from a plethora of sources to develop a picture of how ‘average’ people might have responded to their world, does ignite my imagination and I had forgotten just how much. I studied the subject for several years at University and spent my first few working years as an archivist, but over time became a bit bored by it all and deliberately haven’t read a heck of a lot of history in the past 10 years or so. The book is reminiscent of one of my favourite history texts, Natalie Zemon-Davis’ The Return of Martin Guerre (a 16th century case of identity theft in France), and I am quite chuffed to have had my interest in this kind of reading re-kindled.

I heartily recommend this book both to crime fiction fans who are interested in the real-world events that influenced some early works in the genre and also to those with a fondness for well written, superbly researched history of the ‘little’ people.

My rating 4.5/5

Other Stuff

Check out other reviews by Caribousmum, Sam at BookGeeks and Book Club Reviews

The book has its own website and there’s a load of other information about the book online including articles in which Maxine at Petrona observed how this book has generated much discussion among crime fiction devotees about the age-old question of why we like reading this genre and Norm at Crime Scraps even has a personal connection to the Whicher story

 

Review: Gentlemen and Players by Joanne Harris

Title: Gentlemen and Players

Author: Joanne Harris

Publisher: Black Swan [this edition 2006, original edition 2005]

ISBN: 978-0-552-77002-6

Length: 506 pages

Gentlemen and Players is about an English private school for boys, St Oswald’s. The first of two narrators for the story is the now grown up child of one of the school’s former porters who as a child was a frequent trespasser into the school grounds and is now a teacher at the school bent on revenge for the real and imagined harm done to them by the school. The second narrator is Roy Straitley a curmudgeonly Latin teacher at St Oswald’s 33 years who is no less obsessed with the school than the porter’s child. Between them these two narrators tell of the events which made such an impression on the porter’s child and also show two sides of the current events unfolding within the school’s hallowed halls.

The school is the main character in the book as well as the location for almost all of the plot development. And although that sounds as if it should make for an interesting twist on character-driven stories I found it quite boring at times. The notion that every student, teacher, parent and even the other people in the town who don’t attend the school would be so obsessed with and in awe of a relatively minor institution is fairly ludicrous. If it had only been the two narrators who were so consumed by all things St. Oswald’sian I think the story might have been more believable.

Neither of the two narrators are particularly interesting characters either: stereotyped as they are fairly early on. There certainly wasn’t a single surprise in anything Straitley said or did and, for me anyway, even the more enigmatic porter’s child had a fairly predictable story arc. The book relied heavily on a ‘shock’ twist that I thought blindingly obvious from several hundred pages before the big reveal which probably explains why I was more than a little bored.

In the end I was just never engaged by this book or the all-consuming world of St Oswald’s and I felt the author’s attempt at clever suspense was a bit too see-through. The potentially interesting themes, like the class differences between a porter’s child and the privileged boys of a private school, were handled superficially and so failed to add much to what was, in the end, a fairly dull reading experience for me.

My rating 2/5

Other stuff

Reviewed by Yvonne at Euro Crime and Karen at Bookbath

There is a short written interview/FAQ with Harris about this book on her website.

 

Review: The Black Monastery by Stav Sherez

Title: The Black Monastery

Author: Stav Sherez

Publisher: Faber [2009]

ISBN: 978-0-571-24482-9

Length: 299 pages

After 33 years in Athens Nikos has returned to the fictional Greek island of Palassos to see out his remaining time in the police force as the island’s police chief. But rather than slide slowly into retirement Nikos has to deal with some grizzly murders that hark back to awful events which occurred when he was last on the island. Kitty Carson, a successful crime writer (and the only character to warrant both a first name and a surname if my memory serves me correctly) is holidaying on the island, as is Jason, an aspiring writer who has followed Kitty in a vaguely stalker-ish manner.

For me this was a book about the past and how time doesn’t really pass into nothing-ness but rather builds up in thin layers which, eventually, have to be burrowed through or they’ll bury you. All of the characters, including the island itself, have secrets or events in their histories that have some hold over the way their current lives are playing out and Sherez unravels these threads in a tantalising way. With a Dan Brown style thriller I tend to hastily turn the pages to find out what will happen next, whereas here it was a case of reading on to find out what had happened before. I was no less gripped than I am by more conventional thrillers but because the major events being described have, for the most part, already taken place I found myself more willing to take a little time with my reading and savour the delicious, metaphor-laden language for its own sake. Although Sherez demonstrates he is no slouch in the suspense department either with his genuinely page-turning conclusion.

The book is jam-packed with strong images: some beautiful, others gruesome. I’m consciously less fond of centipedes now than I was two days ago thanks to several descriptions of their particular creepiness. Then there’s the disturbing picture created by these simple lines, which describe the scene facing Nikos as he enters an annexe of the police station (formerly the island’s church) filled with broken statues

He stares at this strange gathering, the saints missing arms or legs like crash victims, their beatific expressions covered by a thick layer of dust. The Marys stare open-eyed into the blackness. Three of them, different sizes, all missing hands or feet.

There are, quite literally, dozens more passages which have created lasting pictures in my head, several of which may, I fear, inhabit my nastier dreams for some time.

I’m not surprised Sherez chose to set his story on a fictional island as I suspect the Greek Tourism Board might have banned him permanently from the country had he assigned all Palassos’ attributes to one of the real islands. Not only is there a mysterious religious cult and a history of gruesome murders but the depiction of the dance-clubbing, drug-popping somewhat desperate young tourists that throng to the island overshadow the glorious Mediterranean sunshine or anything else of a positive nature that might be on offer. At a different level he also shows the worst side of the island’s regular inhabitants, including authorities willing to use people’s prejudices to hide truths and perpetrate lies. It certainly isn’t a place I want to visit any time soon.

For me the characters are less successful than the other elements of the book. They’re not badly crafted or unbelievable, although of all the characters I found writer Kitty the least convincing as she switched a bit too suddenly from indecisive and troubled to investigator-in-control. More than that though I didn’t react very emotionally at all to any of the major characters which meant I missed out on that strong connection that only a much loved or fiercely hated character can bring to a reading experience. Perhaps this stems from the fact the book is a standalone so the author didn’t feel a need to create characters that would engender more of an emotional response from readers. Of course he might have tried very hard to create a sympathetic character or two and I just didn’t respond in that way. I was certainly curious to find out what would happen (or had happened) to all the players but I was never at risk of bursting into tears should one of them fall victim to the murderer.

I had never heard of Stav Sherez before selecting this book from those available for review for the month based solely on the fact it is set in Greece and I don’t recall ever having read any crime fiction set there before. I thoroughly enjoyed starting a book having no idea what to expect and was delighted with what I found. For me the writing itself is the star of the show. On multiple occasions I re-read phrases and sentences, often aloud, purely because I liked the way the words sounded together. Combined with the intriguing plot (including an ending I did not see coming) this made for a very satisfying reading experience.

My rating 4/5

Other Stuff

Reviewed at It’s a Crime (Or a Mystery)

Sherez has written one other standalone crime fiction novel called The Devil’s Playground.

I was provided with a free copy of The Black Monastery for review by the publisher via the Murder and Mayhem bookclub

 

Review: Ritual by Mo Hayder

Title: Ritual (the 3rd Jack Caffrey novel)

Author: Mo Hayder

Publisher: ISIS Audio Books

ISBN: N/A (digital download from audible.com)

Length: 12hrs 20 minutes

Narrator:Andrew Wincott

Police diver Phoebe ‘Flea’ Marley discovers a human hand in a Bristol harbour. DI Jack Caffrey, newly moved to Bristol from London, responds to Flea’s suggestion that the case deserves more than a cursory handling. A second hand is soon found and when they learn that the person to whom the hands belonged was probably alive when they were severed the investigation moves into overdrive. The search is on for a man recently released from prison after serving a sentence for a terribly violent crime while at the same time the team investigate the crime’s possible links to Muti: an African belief system.

This is not your standard police procedural. It’s far more concerned with the psychological elements of crime and the things that motivate all the players. Flea and Jack both have personal demons that influence their behaviour and the kind of officers they are. Hayder provides rich back stories for them both but incorporates these into current events well enough that it never feels like a waste of time as can sometimes happen. They are complex people too, with foibles and good points in roughly equal measure, who rarely behave predictably. I think it’s a sign of excellent writing that my opinion of both these characters changed as more of their respective layers were revealed. For the most part the less important characters were created with equal deftness and even those that played only a minor role, such as Jonah’s mother who only appeared towards the very end, were totally credible. In fact the relatively few portions of the book that depict the life of the young man whose hands are severed were, for me, the most powerful and evocative of the lot.

The story too is a complex one with many concurrent themes the strongest of which is that almost all the characters have some element of their past that haunts or troubles them in their current lives. But Hayder explores other issues too including the way people deal, or don’t deal, with being transplanted from their own culture and the role that family bonds play at all layers of society. She also looks at an urban drug culture and the industry that thrives on exploiting the vulnerable within that culture. Funnily enough, the one element of the book that I struggled with was the inclusion of the more traditional crime fiction elements, like the fairly obvious false trails and red herrings, which I didn’t think were handled quite as well as the psychological elements of the book. 

I’ve not read any of the Jack Caffrey books before so I don’t know how this compares to others but I was certainly captivated by this story. If you imagine Trainspotting meets McCallum you might get a sense of this world and the fact I was an hour late for work this morning is the best evidence I have that it’s an utterly gripping read.

Audio book specific comments: I think Andrew Wincott might be my new favourite narrator. Outstanding job.

My rating 4/5

Other stuff

Reviewed by crimeficreader at It’s A Crime (Or A Mystery)

Reviewed by Maxine at EuroCrime

Reviewed by Fiona at EuroCrime

Skinis the fourth Jack Caffrey novel and it’s out now for UK readers but I don’t know when the rest of us will see it.