Sunday 28 May 2017

Review: Here and Gone

Here and GoneHere and Gone by Haylen Beck
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Haylen Beck's debut reads like the work of a much more experienced writer. Which of course it is, actually being the 8th novel by Northern Ireland writer, Stuart Neville. But neither the author nor the publisher have made any attempt to keep this a secret, and it makes perfect sense being a real departure from Neville's excellent Ulster-set police procedurals.

'Here and Gone' will appeal to readers of Harlen Coben and Linwood Barclay. Like those authors, the story concerns ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events. In "Here and Gone', a mother fleeing an abusive husband with her son and daughter is pulled over by police as she drives from New York to the west coast. Arrested for possession of drugs, she is separated from her children and, when she asks about them, the arresting officer answers, "What children?"

It is a great premise for a psychological thriller and the author handles the tension well as the woman's anxiety grows, with the local police, the FBI, the residents of the small town in which she is held and, of course, the media firmly convinced of her guilt in the disappearance of her children.

An almost unbearably suspenseful novel which deserves huge success. Thanks to NetGalley and Harvill Secker/Vintage for the advance review copy. 'Here and Gone' is published July 13. Highly recommended.

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Review: The Plea

The Plea The Plea by Steve Cavanagh
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steve Cavanagh's second Eddie Flynn novel builds and improves on a decent debut. A twisty, tightly plotted legal thriller, 'The Plea' can stand with 'The Firm' or 'The Lincoln Lawyer'. While there are still a few unlikely developments and a couple of cases where Eddie, the first person narrator, withholds crucial information, Cavanagh maintains the fast, exciting pace throughout. The author has mastered the technique of using short chapters which finish on mini-cliffhangers that make you want to turn the page and keep going.

Eddie Flynn, ex-con artist turned defence lawyer, has to use all his street skills in the courtroom against not only the weight of evidence but also pressure from the FBI who believe Eddie's client holds vital information key to exposing a major money laundering racket and want a plea bargain to secure it. The problem is that Eddie believes his client is innocent.

I really enjoyed this and look forward to seeing where Steve Cavanagh and Eddie Flynn go next. Thankfully, the third Flynn novel, 'The Liar', is on my kindle.

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Sunday 21 May 2017

Review: The Cleaner

The Cleaner The Cleaner by Mark Dawson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Come on,” Milton said. “Look at me—do I look like James Bond?”

I enjoyed ‘The Cleaner’, Mark Dawson’s first John Milton novel, having come to it with little expectation - the author sent me the book as part of his subscriber’s Starter Library but it sat on my Kindle until an interview with Dawson on Steve Cavanagh’s & Luca Veste’s very fine ‘Two Crime Writers and a Microphone’ podcast sparked my interest again.

John Milton, the British government’s longest serving assassin, decides to quit following a messy situation in France; but you cannot quit… Pursued by Control, and a younger, more ruthless would-be successor, Milton becomes involved with a woman from London’s Hackney area whose 15-year old son has been drawn into a criminal gang led by a charismatic rapper come drugs dealer, a sort of cross between Dizzy Rascal and Scarface. The story is fast moving, violent and very entertaining. Essentially the plot is what would happen if Bond became the Equaliser against the background of the London riots from a few years back. There is a little clunky dialogue and exposition but enough to keep me interested in the series.

And of course Milton looks like James Bond; Dawson takes his physical description straight from Fleming.

“His eyes were on the grey side of blue, his mouth had a cruel twist to it, there was a long horizontal scar from his cheek to the start of his nose, and his hair was long and a little unkempt, a frond falling over his forehead in a wandering comma.”

And Milton carries “very little in the way of possessions, but what he did own was classic and timeless: a wide, flat gun-metal cigarette case; a black oxidized Ronson lighter; a Rolex Oyster Perpetual watch.”

If you like Ian Fleming’s Bond, the John Milton series comes highly recommended. As does Cavanagh’s and Veste’s podcast.


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Friday 12 May 2017

Review: Bad Blood

Bad Blood Bad Blood by Brian McGilloway
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Brian McGilloway is invisible, and that is a rare talent for a writer. There are writers, many of whose work I love, who sacrifice plot for beautifully constructed passages that warrant re-reading for the pleasure of the words; there are others for whom plot is everything and who sell millions of copies despite clunky, painfully overwrought writing. McGilloway is a storyteller who, over the course of several novels, has consistently delivered entertaining, densely plotted crime stories which simultaneously comment on current affairs, particularly post-Troubles Northern Ireland life; all without such comment getting in the way of the story. He never preaches – there are enough preachers in Northern Ireland – but, while his stories flow in a way that almost makes you forget you are reading, McGilloway is also holding up a mirror to some of the events and people still holding the country back.

‘Bad Blood’ is set in the week leading up to the Brexit referendum. The discovery of the badly beaten body of a young gay man brings DS Lucy Black into contact with a community full of suspicion and intolerance – not just the sectarianism so long prevalent in Northern Ireland society but also prejudice against homosexuals and immigrants, prejudice stirred up by firebrand preachers and ex-paramilitary community ‘leaders’.

“In Northern Ireland, you can’t have your cake at all if you’re gay…”

McGilloway’s characters are fully realised. They may have stereotypical views but there are no stereotypes. The loyalist leaders, feuding among themselves, may garner little sympathy but McGilloway captures perfectly the very real concerns in the working-class estates that keeps such figures in positions of influence. “I see the end of our culture”, says the preacher. “We’re not allowed to march. We’re not allowed to fly our flag…. This peace dividend? They never told us it was for the middle classes only. They never said that the poor would stay poor.”

The threads running through ‘Bad Blood’ come straight from the headlines in a Northern Ireland where politicians are more concerned with arguing the right of a bakery to discriminate against gay people for ‘religious’ reasons than they are with forming an effective government; where paramilitary organisations drive out ‘foreign’ drug dealers only to protect their own monopolies; where dissenters are ‘six-packed’, shot in elbows, knees and ankles; where houses are daubed with anti-Roma slogans. Brian McGilloway handles these complex issues with a masterful touch, never making them the focus of the novel, rather informing a very good police procedural which can be read and enjoyed as just that. But, if the reader is prepared to dive deeper, the story is so much more rewarding.

‘Bad Blood’ will be published just three weeks before the day of the general election, an election informed by Brexit, an election which will likely lead to further division, perhaps particularly in the only part of the UK with a land border to the Europe we are currently divorcing…

Thanks to Corsair/Hachette and NetGalley for the advance review copy.

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