Wednesday 14 November 2018

Review: In the Galway Silence

In the Galway Silence In the Galway Silence by Ken Bruen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“The Irish can abide almost anything save silence.”

A few paragraphs into a new Jack Taylor novel and you hear the musicality and fall into the familiar rhythms of Ken Bruen’s prose. It is distinctive, like listening for the first time to your favourite band’s new album, you instantly the instrumentation and look forward to new tunes. Nobody in crime fiction writes like Ken Bruen. It is not just the words he uses, it is the way
he
puts
them
on
the
page.
Ex-Garda, Jack Taylor is a violent and poetic man. He beats his problems in the most literal way possible, with a hurley. Jack cares about people, yet he is self-destructive. He appears to have a death wish, yet he consumes, and enjoys, popular culture (I have gained so much from exploring books or albums recommended by Jack Taylor, although he may have taken one too many to the head - considering “Perfect” by Ed Sheehan to be, well, perfect).
Bruen’s plots are like a fever-dream. Jack narrates the madness that surrounds him, in this case a deranged killer and a returning out of the blue ex-wife, while commenting on craziness in the wider world - Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, Brexit - which only serves to heighten the sense of unreality.
I love these books and, while jumping aboard here without reading any of the previous dozen books might not be the best recommendation, if you can find the rhythm, you will definitely enjoy the song.


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Review: The Haunting of Hill House

The Haunting of Hill House The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“We couldn't even hear you, in the night....
No one could. No one lives any nearer than town. No one else will come any nearer than that.”


I’m not sure what I was expecting from The Haunting of Hill House. Or rather, I thought I knew what I was expecting, but wasn’t sure. Which is slightly different. It’s a horror story, right? It’s about a haunted house - it says so in the title. The book has been on my to-read list for perhaps longer than any other, since I was a teenager and read Stephen King’s Danse Macabre when it was first issued in paperback. King loved Hill House. It is all over Danse Macabre. But it was out of print in UK until 2009. Still, that is almost ten years ago and, still, I didn’t read it.
So, it being Hallowe’en, and with the new adaptation on Netflix (which, it turns out is excellent, but is not an adaptation, rather a reimagining), I decided it was time to read this really scary ghost story. And it is really scary, but is it a ghost story? Is Hill House haunted?
The writing is excellent, the prose lyrical (The opening and closing paragraphs are rightly lauded as classics but there are many similar passages). The dialogue is perhaps a little old-fashioned but it was written 60 years ago and it fits the gothic storytelling. Yet, on finishing the novel I was slightly disappointed. There are certainly some moments which make the hairs stand up on the back of your neck (“God! Whose hand was I holding?”) but there are so many conversations in the book about being scared, about the nature of being scared, almost looking forward to being scared. The writing is excellent though and so I gave it four stars.
And, yet. In the days since I finished the book, images and scenes have stayed with me. I am ‘haunted’ by some of the imagery and find myself replaying some of the key scenes in my head.

“Fear," the doctor said, "is the relinquishment of logic, the willing relinquishing of reasonable patterns. We yield to it or we fight it, but we cannot meet it halfway.” 

The characters surrender themselves willingly to the idea of being scared, in the same way as many of us do when reading horror fiction or watching a scary movie. And, whether there is something in Hill House which takes advantage of that, or whether it is something within the characters which tip them, particularly Eleanor, into madness, I am still unsure. And the genius of Shirley Jackson is that, two weeks later, I am still thinking about it.


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Tuesday 13 November 2018

Review: Aja

Aja Aja by Don Breithaupt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"Bringing a post-Gershwin compositional gusto to post-Dylan subject matter (and filtering it through the lens of post-Nixon America)."

There is always something for the music-lover to glean from these little books, the 33 1/3 Series, each of which focuses on a 'classic' album. Some of them centre on what the music means to the writer and how it fits into his or her life; some appear only tangentially related to the album in question. Of those that I have read, this one goes deeper into the form of the music and its construction, perhaps a little too deep at times but it does suit Steely Dan and Aja.

Author, Don Breithaupt obviously loves the album and understands music theory and he puts Aja in context, not only with what was happening in the music industry at the time of its release in 1977, but also within Donald Fagen's and Walter Becker's output and their influences with inform the album. There is a large part of the book devoted to the recording of the album and I personally love that kind of stuff although, even for me, the in-depth examination of poetic techniques such as enjambment or the relationship between E9sus4 and Amaj9 chords gets a little too much. Breithaupt is also fond of purple prose such as that quoted at the start of the review but all of this is forgiven when it leads, as this book does, to a fresh listen to, and new appreciation of, the music.

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Monday 29 October 2018

Review: The Savage Shore

The Savage Shore The Savage Shore by David Hewson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nic Costa, together with Teresa Lupo, Leo Falcone and Gianni Peroni, returns for the first time in seven years in David Hewson’s tenth book in the series. This time the Roman team are well out of their comfort zone having been dispatched to Calabria, in Italy’s toe, in preparation for the defection of a mafia crime boss. While the team pose as holidaymakers in a coastal town, Costa has gone undercover in the ‘Ndrangheta.
It has been quite a while since I first discovered David Hewson’s Italian-set crime series with ‘The Seventh Sacrament’ and I am so glad I got past that novel’s title and cover which, to my mind, were positioned to take advantage of the success of Dan Brown and the like - in truth the series could not be further from that type of thriller. Hewson writes very literate, thought-provoking mysteries with well-drawn, sympathetic characters, and ‘The Savage Shore’ is no exception.
The story is told at a slow, perhaps old-fashioned, pace but that is not a criticism. The prose is beautiful, poetic, and the setting, in one of Italy’s least well-known regions, is brought vividly to life.

“Hands running through dust on the ancient balustrade, they descended and walked out into the empty piazza by the church. The last of the summer sun dappled the snaking, shimmering channel that stood between Calabria and Sicily, a distant necklace of street lights defining the shore. Across the strait stood the mound of Etna, the only clouds around clinging to its side like needy children, the red haze of its volatile summit a dim rim of fire against the darkening sky.”

The book is a mixture of the romanticism and reality of life in an area seemingly forgotten by Italian, and European, politics - on one side, the myths and legends with which each chapter begins and which tell how the Calabrian people came to inhabit this rugged landscape; on the other, the petty crime, the forced servitude of African immigrant sellers of fake luxury items. Despite clear evidence of these realities, Nic Costa is subtly enticed by the ‘idea’ of the ’Ndrangheta, described in the fictional guide as “Criminals ‘full of a strong goodness’”, and it is clear that David Hewson fell for Calabria when researching the novel, but that is forgivable perhaps, given how much I want to see the region after reading about his version of it. I really enjoyed ‘The Savage Shore’ and hope it won’t be another seven years before we revisit the characters.


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Tuesday 16 October 2018

Review: Thin Air

Thin Air Thin Air by Richard K. Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thin Air is Richard Morgan’s first SciFi novel in eight years. I have to admit that I was unaware of Morgan until the Netflix adaption of his first, Altered Carbon, but, inspired by that, I then picked up the three books in that series. The latest, although set in a different ‘universe’ shares much with the earlier trilogy.
Thin Air is a hard-boiled noir. It may be set on Mars but is as influenced by Chandler, Hammett and MacDonald as it is by Ray Bradbury. The protagonist, Hakan Veil, bio-engineered from childhood to be an enhanced corporate soldier, is much more Mike Hammer than Philip Marlowe. Veil is essentially a thug who solves problems with his fists, always aided by a built-in AI. Having been arrested after one such ‘solution’, Veil is blackmailed into acting as bodyguard for a representative of Earth auditors, sent to interrogate the finances of ‘frontier’ businesses.
The labyrinthian plot involves political and corporate corruption, organised crime, femme fatales, a missing lottery winner and a lot of violence. I admit I got a little lost at times but The Big Sleep is one of my favourites so not being entirely sure of what is going on is not necessarily a problem. Thin Air is no The Big Sleep but it is a good read. Mars is realistically realised and the mixture of science fiction with frontier town lawlessness is fascinating.
On the evidence of Thin Air and the Altered Carbon-series, Richard Morgan is a master of the futuristic, hard-boiled hybrid and I would not be surprised to see Hakan Veil join Takeshi Kovacs on screen.


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Sunday 23 September 2018

Review: Going on the Turn

Going Round the Bend Going Round the Bend by Danny Baker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have a friend to whom nothing ordinary has ever happened. His life seems to be full of spur of the moment, sometimes ill-advised, decisions that lead to situations which, at least as he tells them, reduce the listener to tears of laughter. His gift is that he tells these stories in great detail and, despite meandering from one situation to the next, seemingly unconnected, he eventually gets back to the original point and always with a killer punchline. Danny Baker shares this gift.

‘Going on the Turn’ is the third volume of Danny Baker’s autobiography and essentially takes his story from the mid-nineties until late 2012, with many flashbacks. Like in the previous volumes, Baker discusses the absurd and coincidental as his stories crash into each other as it hurtles along at a frantic, and extremely entertaining, pace. The book contains some of his funniest tales - throwing his records in a skip; meeting David Bowie; NOT meeting David Bowie; NOT smoking cannabis - and also the harrowing, honest description of his cancer treatment in 2012. But even the latter is full of wit and humour as is the chapter about his father’s death.

If you like Danny Baker, and I do, then the only thing better than reading his latest memoir is to listen to him read it in the audiobook version. And then go straight to his vitriolic, chaotic and triumphant final show for BBC Radio London following his sacking by homogenising pen-pushers (It’s still on youtube).

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Thursday 20 September 2018

Macbeth (Hogarth Shakespeare)Macbeth by Jo Nesbø
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was a really good idea - take one of the original noir stories, Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and add a modern master of crime-writing, Jo Nesbo - but, while there are many things to like and admire about the book, it is a little less than the sum of its parts. The parts I enjoyed most are essentially all Nesbo - exciting and visceral car chases, a showdown with drug-dealing gangs, the action scenes, elements that he has inserted into the gaps in the source material where much of the ‘action’, such as Duncan’s murder, famously happens off-stage. Nesbo updates the play to an unnamed, largely Scottish, city in the 1970s - think Glasgow pre-City of Culture - and it gives the story a suitably dark and violent background. Unfortunately, I found the dialogue stilted and a little too much of a homage to the original Shakespeare. The best productions of the play bring the language to life and make it exciting and perhaps that is the biggest problem - the play is meant to be performed rather than read. Perhaps this would work as a dark, Scandinavian series along the lines of The Bridge or The Killing, and I would certainly watch it. Macbeth is not a terrible novel by any means, a worthwhile exercise, but it doesn’t match Nesbo’s best. Nor Shakespeare’s.

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Saturday 15 September 2018

Review: Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach

Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach by Ramsey Campbell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It has been a long time since I read Ramsey Campbell and I am not sure why - on the evidence of 'Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach' Campbell is still a master of chilling horror. 'Thirteen Days...', originally published a couple of years back but now available in ebook, is one of the creepiest stories I have read in a long time, full of foreboding and hair on the back of the neck tension.

Three generations of a family, mildly dysfunctional in that uptight, restrained way peculiar to the English middle-class, holiday together on a Greek island. Unknown to the rest of her family, except her husband Ray, grandmother Sandra is dying and this is likely to be the last time the whole family shares time together. But, from the start, there are signs that the holiday may not be in the ideal location - the island appears to have more cloud than expected and the nearby resort town of Sunset Beach appears strangely quiet during daylight hours, the few people around unnaturally pale for the Mediterranean. Then several of the family experience shared nightmares of nocturnal visitors…

Ramsey Campbell’s prose is descriptive without being florid, the sort of writing you linger over, until you realise the pace is increasing, the feeling of unease is mounting, and there is something there, in the dark… His characters are well-drawn particularly the older couple, Ray and Sandra, and every family has a Julian, the most uptight of the lot, who clearly does not want to be there and whose, seemingly unconscious, bullying of his stepdaughter is painful.

I can’t say that ‘Thirteen Days…’ is a return to form, as I have missed so much, but it certainly made me want to revisit ‘The Doll Who Ate His Mother’ and ‘The Face That Must Die’ and then explore the more recent books that I have neglected.


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Sunday 9 September 2018

Review: Inhuman Resources

Inhuman Resources Inhuman Resources by Pierre Lemaitre
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Pierre Lemaitre’s Inhuman Resources was originally published in France in 2010 just two years after the financial crash but its story, of a man driven to extreme measures by lack of work opportunity, resonates just as well today. Alain Delambre, a fifty-seven year old former Human Resources Manager, was made redundant four years previously and works in menial, part-time jobs to survive. When an altercation with his superior in a packing depot leads to his dismissal, Alain becomes increasingly desperate. So, when a potential opportunity with a huge company presents itself, Alain jumps at the chance to take part in the recruitment exercise, and looks for any advantage, fair or otherwise, which might bring the role his way.

The story is told in three sections, before, during, and after the recruitment exercise, a high pressure ‘role-playing’ hostage situation in which Alain and another HR professional will help choose from the candidates, none of whom know that they are role-playing, while simultaneously competing for the permanent HR role. The novel is satirical and full of implicit criticisms of Big Business, where people are ‘resources’ and senior management earn huge salaries and bonuses while low-paid workers are reduced to living in cars on Paris streets.

To be honest, while I initially sympathised with Alain, who narrates the first section, I became increasingly frustrated with him as a character. He constantly makes ‘wrong’ decisions, driven no doubt by his frantic search for work, but, despite his situation, he seems to believe still in the capitalism which has put him where he now is, constantly quoting management theories. His aim appears to be to get back his position in the system rather than to change it. His self-pity means that the latter chapters of this section start to drag. But then the book jumps into life.

The second and third sections of the novel are excellent. The book transforms into a high paced thriller, the narrative increasingly breathless and difficult to predict. I enjoyed it a lot - there are enough twists to keep the reader guessing, many echoes of the current unbalanced system and uncertain future especially in post-Brexit Europe. A worthwhile read.

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Wednesday 5 September 2018

Review: Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel

Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel Only to Sleep: A Philip Marlowe Novel by Lawrence Osborne
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“I just wanted one last outing. Every man does. One last play at the tables - it’s a common wish.”

I approached this, Lawrence Osborne’s, Chandler Estate-authorised, Philip Marlowe novel, with some trepidation and a little scepticism. Raymond Chandler is my favourite writer and ‘The Little Sister’ the first ‘crime’ novel I remember reading. But Osborne’s decision to write about a 72-year old Marlowe was intriguing and, to some extent, prevents the novel from becoming pastiche, keeps it from being just an inferior continuation of what Chandler did so well. In fact, it adds another dimension to the character.

It is 1988. Philip Marlowe is retired, living physically in Mexico and mentally in the past, detesting old age. So, when an insurance company approaches him about a suspected fraud, he is quick to accept the challenge despite the reservations of others.

‘“You have a good life, Philip. You’re too old to knock people out. Stay down there and go fishing. They can’t be offering you that much. Or maybe you’re just bored.”
“There’s that. I never thought retirement would be so sad.”’

A young widow has been awarded a huge benefit on the death of her much older husband whose rapid cremation following his drowning off the Mexican coast has raised the insurers’ suspicions. As Marlowe begins to investigate we sense that his aim is not really to find answers but to recapture the thrill of past cases. Osborne’s take on Marlowe is not Chandler - it really couldn’t be - but he does echo Chandler’s language without trying to compete and delivers a thoroughly enjoyable, if very sad, novel. Sad because Marlowe cannot recapture the life he had thirty, forty years ago. He finds himself falling for the widow but knows it will not be reciprocated. He drinks and suffers for it where before he would shrug it off. He continues to try to live the life of a tough guy despite knowing that it might kill him.

‘Years of this kind of life wears you down and makes you porous. You die off bit by bit. the stale grit of the road gets into your unconscious, a small voice arises and says to you, “This is the last time, there won’t be any more awakenings and thank god for that, eh?”’

I really liked this book despite my initial misgivings. Osborne makes great use of the Mexican locations he obviously knows well. He finds the dreamlike, slightly unreal quality that Chandler was so good at. But the knight errant is jaded, filled with regret, and chivalry is not so easy to maintain. If this is the end of Philip Marlowe, and it probably should be, it is a fitting end.

‘My dreams were of ships in gales, decks swept by relentless waves, and the threat of being lost at sea. Waters rushed past me and the ship heaved and sank; the bottom of the ocean clamoured with falling coins, glasses and sextants, and cocktail shakers. And there I drifted down among them until I came to rest upon a vast bed of silver and sand and fell asleep like a capsized bosun filled with water and salt.’

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Friday 24 August 2018

Review: Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967

Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967 Stone Free: Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967 by Jas Obrecht
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As the subtitle suggests, "Stone Free:Jimi Hendrix in London, September 1966–June 1967" concentrates on a very specific period in Hendrix's life, from his 'discovery' in New York by ex-Animal, Chas Chandler, until his triumphant appearance at Monterey Pop in June 1967. The nine months between these events, when Jimi left his native USA to come to London, form the Experience, record his first music under his own name before returning to America on his way to global superstardom, are covered in great detail by Jas Obrecht, former editor of Guitar Player magazine. The book takes us on a month-by-month chronological journey as the unknown Hendrix takes 'Swinging London' by storm. The author is thorough if a little dry. He covers the Jimi Hendrix Experience's first gigs, where the guitarist's technique astounded contemporaries such as Eric Clapton and Pete Townsend, the mismatched package tours, with the likes of Englebert Humperdink and the Walker Brothers, which took him around the UK and into Europe. Obrecht lists the recording sessions, locations and numbers recorded, which produced Hendrix's first singles and his debut "Are You Experienced?" album. We also learn where Hendrix lived during the period.

The writing is a little 'matter of fact' but never tedious. The book does appear to be aimed at the 'Guitar Player' crowd rather than a general audience although, strangely given the revolutionary guitar sounds on that first album, Obrecht seems a little unsure how much 'technical' detail to include. There is a detailed analysis of whether the left-handed Hendrix used a right-handed Fender Telecaster on 'Purple Haze' ("the second overdub, at 1:08, is a repeat of the previous motif...") which would certainly appeal to a guitar player but the author only very occasionally revisits HOW Hendrix was playing. Elsewhere, the author touches on potential financial mismanagement by the group's handlers. He also mentions drug-taking. But, by limiting himself strictly to the period in the title, many things are never followed to a natural conclusion.

I enjoyed the book but suspect the readership is going to be fairly limited. It will not attract those new to Jimi Hendrix's music and will not entirely satisfy those familiar with his work. As a fan and a guitarist, I would love an extended examination of the recordings.

Thanks to NetGalley and University of North Carolina Press for the advance review copy.

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Thursday 2 August 2018

Review: Redemption Point

Redemption Point Redemption Point by Candice Fox
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Candice Fox’s Redemption is the second in her Crimson Lake series about mis-matched Australian PIs, Ted Conkaffey and Amanda Pharrell. I have not read the first but that in no way hindered my understanding or enjoyment of this novel. In fact, it feels like the first in a series.

To get the blurb out of the way first, the publisher compares this book to Jane Harper’s The Dry and, while there are similarities - Australia, murder, suspicion thrown on the protagonist - The Dry uses the environment almost as a main character, the oppressive heat is palpable and integral to the story; Redemption is not that novel. But, it is a very good thriller with interesting characters.

Having been aware of the first in the series, I was under the impression that the suspicion of child abduction and rape hanging over Conkaffey would have been dealt with in Crimson Lake, but the crime and its aftermath still follow him and he finds it hard to escape despite moving away from Sydney in an effort to escape those who deem him guilty despite the collapse of his trial. I have to admit, I didn’t particularly warm to Ted. His, first-person narrated, sections of the novel read almost self-serving; he seems to be trying hard to convince the reader that he didn’t do what he was accused of while, at the same time, telling us that he tries to ignore the support he is getting from podcasters championing his innocence. Not particularly liking him is not the same as not enjoying reading about him; I did and the touches such as the podcast are very well done.

Amanda, I did like. Unconventional, a one-off, a little bit weird, she is a convicted murderess, who did do it - although she got the wrong person. I really preferred the sections of the story that tell Amanda’s tale, and that of the police officer, Phillipa Sweeney, with whom Ted and Amanda become involved when investigating the local murder of two late-night bar staff when the father of one of the victims hires the pair to balance his mistrust of the police.

The stories of the local murder and of the attack of which Ted is accused intertwine and overlap and each is brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the author. Redemption is a very good detective novel and I will go back and read Fox’s first book in the series.

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Tuesday 31 July 2018

Review: AC DC's Highway To Hell

AC DC's Highway To Hell AC DC's Highway To Hell by Joe Bonomo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One of the more straightforward 33 1/3 books, Joe Bonomo’s Highway to Hell is an examination of AC/DC’s breakthrough album and, while I profess to prefer this type of book to the more fanciful in the series, the real problem is that, while Highway to Hell is an excellent album, there is really not a lot here that requires detailed examination.

The book is split into three ‘chords’ - the first section puts the album in context and then essentially describes the songs in order; the second is a fairly pointless discussion of the album cover and live photos; the third a history of the band following Bon Scott’s death and the author and some of his friends looking back on how much they liked, and continue to like, the album. It’s all fairly inconsequential and very much US-centric but, if it makes you dig out the album again, it’s not a bad read.

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Review: Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV

Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I like the 33 1/3 books and I like Led Zeppelin, although I have never subscribed to the hyperbolic nonsense and mythologising that constitutes the vast majority of the material written about the band over the years. I mean, they were an very good band but they were no Deep Purple…

In the first few paragraphs of his book, Erik Davis describes buying “a copy of that literally nameless slab of luminous rune-rock we must stoop to dub Led Zeppelin IV, or Four Symbols, or Zoso” and I almost stopped reading but, a few lines later, “sure it was cock rock, but it was also a mystery, wrapped in an enigma, stuffed into a cock.” I thought, maybe this is tongue in cheek.

In truth, there is a lot of nonsense in Davis’s book. He decries myth making and then proceeds to tell the story of Zeppelin’s fourth album with the mythical journey of ‘Percy’ which he seems to feel winds through the two sides of the album. He does have a sense of humour but also a tendency to use the purple prose with which the music press used to be filled. But, ultimately, it is a short book and there is enough here to hold the interest.

And Davis does find some interesting ways into the music, despite his concentrating on Page’s preoccupation with magic(k) and Percy’s ‘bona fide quest’ (which, it has to be said, despite having concocted it entirely unaided, he does lighten by comparing it to ‘The Odyssey or The Hobbit or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure.’ He makes interesting observations about the differences between vinyl and MP3 and how consumption of the former made for a more immersive, and yes, perhaps, a more magical experience; the final chapters which take the songs in pairs are very readable; Davis also spends time on Led Zeppelin’s, primarily Jimmy Page’s, wholesale thievery, whether from blues greats or Bert Jansch, which many other authors are too willing to excuse.

Perhaps I just prefer those 33 1/3 books which delve into the making of the albums. I’m glad I finished this but it is not one of my favourites.

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Tuesday 24 July 2018

Review: The Winter of Frankie Machine

The Winter of Frankie Machine The Winter of Frankie Machine by Don Winslow
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"It's a lot of work being me"

Frank Machianno is a worker, a businessman. He owns a bait shop on San Diego pier, supplies fish to the best local restaurants and has a property rental portfolio. Frank also enjoys the finer things in life. He has season tickets for the opera; he surfs, never missing 'Gentlemen's Hour'; he enjoys cooking in the kitchen he has designed to be just right. He loves his 'cucina'.

'"This is a quality-of-life issue"' and 'quality of life is doing the little things - doing then well, doing them right.'

And Frank is a stand-up guy, a 'sheriff' on the pier, who settles a dispute between a Vietnamese fisherman and a crossbow 'hunter' when the latter 'sees something in Frank's eyes that just makes him shut his mouth.'

Because Frank Macchianno was, in an earlier time, Frankie Machine, top hitman for the San Diego mob. And it appears that someone wants Frankie dead...

I've come late to Don Winslow. I read 'The Power of the Dog' and 'The Cartel', both big sprawling visceral, and brilliant, commentaries on the War on Drugs, and his latest, 'The Force', a stunning 'dirty cop' novel whose central character, and anti-Serpico, vehemently believes that he is the good guy. 'The Winter of Frankie Machine' makes it clear to me that Mr Winslow is the natural successor to Elmore Leonard.

In the first few chapters, we get a clear picture of who Frank Machianno is, and what his life is like. And then all hell breaks loose...

With sharp dialogue, succinct, even laconic, descriptions, flashbacks that serve the plot, Winslow tells a 'hunter becomes the hunted becomes the hunter' story which could easily be formulaic in lesser hands. The novel is reminiscent of the movies of William Friedkin, or perhaps Walter Hill -I'm thinking of the likes of 'The French Connection', 'To Live and Die in LA' or 'The Driver'.

I loved 'The Winter of Frankie Machine' and, as when I discovered the novels of Elmore Leonard maybe 30 years ago, there are many novels to catch up on. And I'm going to read them all....


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Sunday 15 July 2018

Review: The Death of Mrs. Westaway

The Death of Mrs. Westaway The Death of Mrs. Westaway by Ruth Ware
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Out of money, out of luck and living in fear of the loanshark to whom she is debt, Harriet 'Hal' Westaway, a Brighton pier tarot card reader, receives a lifeline in the form of a letter from a Penzance solicitor informing her that she is a beneficiary of her grandmother's will. Almost immediately, Hal realises that this is a mistake as the dead woman is obviously not her grandmother, but she desperately decides to pretend otherwise in the hope of gaining the few thousand pounds to get her out of the hole she is in. And so Hal travels to the funeral and on to the Manderley-like Trepassen House and secrets of a 'family' she has never met....

I didn't know what to expect from this novel or from Ruth Ware. I had heard good things about her books, 'The Woman in Cabin 10' especially, but had not got round to reading them. 'The Death of Mrs. Westaway' is a gothic mystery which builds suspense and maintains a sense of foreboding throughout. Ruth Ware writes extremely well - one character is described as having "the air fo a man who had eaten a good meal, but would always want more, nibbling at nuts and cheese" - and keeps the tension so that the reader wants to keep reading to see what happens next. That I guessed a couple of the twists didn't matter at all and, while it does get a little frantic towards the climax, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and will be putting the author's previous books on my 'to-read list'.

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Tuesday 3 July 2018

Review: The Whisperer

The Whisperer The Whisperer by Donato Carrisi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Strange one this. Despite being a fan of all things Italian, and despite The Whisperer apparently being hugely successful in Europe, I was unaware of both this book and the author until a friend's recommendation. It is advertised as a 'literary' thriller which sometimes means no plot, but it kept me intrigued to the end. There is a labyrinthine plot involving multiple abductions, and murders, and a team of suitably damaged experts attempting to solve the crimes which appear to be the work of a fiendishly clever serial killer. I felt it was not always plausible and the language is at times, not exactly stilted, but a little cold, a little 'off'. Whether this is the Carrisi's style or a result of the translation, I don't know but it adds a sense of strangeness to the novel which is accentuated by the lack of a sense of place; it is hard to determine where the action is taking place. Carrisi is Italian but the book does not feel Italian, nor do the characters have Italian names. If anything, it feels Scandinavian.

I set this aside to read on a trip to Rome, which is perhaps where my slight unease comes from - but it is not necessarily a bad thing. I will pick up another Carrisi, perhaps the one with Rome in the title - that should be Italian, right?

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Sunday 10 June 2018

Review: Sirens

Sirens Sirens by Joseph Knox
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Joseph Knox's debut is excellent. A dark noir set in a dark wintry Manchester, Sirens takes the reader into the city's drug culture in the company of DC Aidan Waits, a user himself, a troubled young man whose police career seems to be on a downward spiral when we meet him and whose prospects aren't improved much by the undercover assignment he 'accepts'. As Waits investigates the disappearance of a politician's daughter, death, both accidental and homicide, is never far away. The violence is sudden and shocking, the atmosphere nihilistic at times. Like the Joy Division albums, whose titles are shared by the sections of the novel, there is little humour here but the writing is gritty and realistic.

Sirens reminded me a lot of two other first novels which took my breath away recently - Dodgers by Bill Beverly & A Lesson In Violence (She Rides Shotgun) by Jordan Harper - and I look forward to reading the follow up, The Smiling Man, soon.

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Monday 28 May 2018

Review: The Ruin

The Ruin The Ruin by Dervla McTiernan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Dervla McTiernan's debut, The Ruin, is an excellent addition to the fine run of Irish crime novels published in recent years. Set in Galway, the novel introduces Cormac Reilly, recently transferred from Dublin to a seemingly unwelcoming An Garda Síochána station in the city, who finds that suicide of a local man appears connected to a crime scene to which he was assigned 2o years ago as an inexperienced Guard. The Ruin reminded me a lot of Tana French, which can't be a bad thing. Dervla McTiernan writes very well; the characters are well drawn and the dialogue natural. I enjoyed this immensely and look forward to the next in the series due in 2019.

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Wednesday 23 May 2018

Review: Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul

Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul Detroit 67: The Year That Changed Soul by Stuart Cosgrove
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Detroit 67:The Year That Changed Soul is an excellent month-by-month chronology of the momentous political and social events which took place in the city in that year. Stuart Cosgrove hangs his history on Motown, the fantastically successful Hitsville USA, which was in 1967 rocked by internal events which mirrored those in the city of Detroit and the wider USA. He concentrates largely on the breakdown within The Supremes and the ousting of Florence Ballard but also covers the sacking of David Ruffin from The Temptations, Holland-Dozier-Holland's divorce from the label and the achingly sad story of Tammi Terrell.

Cosgrove is a very talented writer, particularly when covering the soul music he clearly loves, both the Motown artists and those in the wider Detroit soul scene. He is less convincing when writing about the emerging garage-rock scene and the MC5 - and Jimi Hendrix did not burn the American flag at Woodstock; he didn't need to, his incendiary rendition of the Star Spangled Banner was protest enough against the ongoing Vietnam war. But the book is largely successful and reads at times like a thriller. The sections detailing the murders of 3 black youths and the torture of others by Detroit police officers in the Algiers motel are harrowing.

1967 was the year that Motown began the move away from Detroit to LA and became less the purveyor of 'the Motown sound' but it led to the more overtly political and social commentary of Marvin Gaye, Stevie Wonder and the Norman Whitfield era Temptations. I am really looking forward to Cosgrove's take on the southern soul scene in his follow up, Memphis '68.

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Tuesday 24 April 2018

Review: Disorder

Disorder Disorder by Gerard Brennan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Disorder.
The crowd roars.
Noise.
It crackles like a radio between stations.
Violence.
A troop of civilians moves as one. There's a savage beauty to this chaos. It tumbles like the tide. Crashes into riot shields. Seeks a break in the seal.
It's relentless.
Disorder.


I like Gerard Brennan. His early novellas, like The Point and Wee Rockets, 'crackled and fizzled' with violence and sly dark, very dark, Northern Ireland humour. And, while his 2014 novel, Undercover, felt like he was writing the book he thought he should write, a fairly straight thriller. Disorder is a return to that gritty, wryly funny, Belfast Noir.

Like the best Noir, Disorder is populated by disreputable characters with varying levels of stupidity and sleekedness (look it up..). It's a story of revenge, of drugs, of riots, of political and corporate meddling, all underpinned by a black comedy that perhaps only people from Norn Iron can understand but will hopefully be appreciated further afield.

Published by those nice people at No Alibis, the best bookshop in the world, Gerard Brennan's Disorder deserves to be in the company of Stuart Neville, Adrian McKinty, Colin Bateman and Brian McGilloway whose recommendations all appear on the cover.

Highly recommended.

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Friday 16 March 2018

Review: Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin

Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin Trampled Under Foot: The Power and Excess of Led Zeppelin by Barney Hoskyns
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"The paranoia and the suspicion and all that stuff is part and parcel of who he is, and unfortunately it manifests itself in some weird ways."

I don't like Jimmy Page although I do like a lot of his music. I don't like that Page appears to be unable to share credit (unless legally enforced in doing so) - whether in stealing from Willie Dixon and other blues greats or taking full credit for every note, every sound on Led Zeppelin albums to the extent of changing engineers in case any of them had the temerity to claim they did anything other than position the faders exactly where Jimmy told them to. I don't like that he resurfaces every few years to repackage and resell the same 8 or so albums. 2018 being Zep's 50th, we can expect to go through the cycle again.

I don't like John Bonham. He was a good drummer, but he didn't invent drums. He was a thug.

I do like Robert Plant. He has had a musical life after Zeppelin and some of it has been good.

I do like John Paul Jones, a seriously under-estimated musician. He also seems like a nice man.

I do like Barney Hoskyns but I would have liked some commentary from him, an opinion. Trampled Underfoot is essentially a chronological arranging of various interviews and, while they tell a fascinating story, I expected at least some counterpoint to the likes of Mick Wall's "You are Jimmy Page and you are justified in robbing everyone blind because you are a genius and they would never have been as good as you anyway..." (see When Giants Walked the Earth) or the salacious Hammer of the Gods.

There is a fascinating story here but I think Hoskyns could have told it better.

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Friday 2 March 2018

Review: We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered by Mark Andersen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
by Mark Andersen, Ralph Heibutzki

An admirable attempt to put the last few years of The Clash into a political and social context, ‘We Are The Clash Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered’ is the story of the band’s final days set against the turmoil of Thatcher’s Britain - the miners’ strike, the Falklands War - and Reagan’s America - the Cold War threat of ‘limited nuclear war in Europe’, Iran-Contra - times that should have been made for a band as politically outspoken as The Clash.

The authors have written a well-researched and very readable history of a period in The Clash’s history which has largely been ignored by the vast majority of music journalism. The band had splintered: drummer, Topper Headon had already gone, struggling with heroin addiction and, in a move which would have been unthinkable a couple of years earlier, in 1982 Joe Strummer had sacked founder member and lead-guitarist, Mick Jones. In most retrospectives, including the band’s own, The Clash ended here but, as the authors rightly point out and evidenced by bootleg recordings of the time, musically, The Clash were in pretty good shape.

Andersen and Heibutzki also offer a succinct history of, and commentary on, the contemporaneous events of the early 1980s. In the UK, Margaret Thatcher’s war on the mining industry tore communities apart and caused bitterness and resentment that still resonate today. In the USA, Ronald Reagan was conducting a more covert war against ‘the threat of communism’ and breaking all manner of laws in doing so. The arms race with USSR came as close as it ever did to ‘Mutually Assured Destruction’ when, on September 26, 1983, only the gutsy stubbornness of Stansilav Petrov, a Soviet ‘early warning system’ monitor, in not reporting what turned out to be a malfunction as an actual attack, prevented the start of WWIII.

The failure of the book is that, despite valiant attempts to connect the band to the times around them, there was actually little connection. Little connection, not because of any failure on the authors’ part but rather because The Clash, and Joe Strummer in particular, were in such a state of disarray that, other than a few low-key gigs in support of the striking miners in the UK, they failed to make any meaningful impact.

'The gap between Strummer’s aims and his ability to live them yawned even wider.’

‘“Where was The Clash? They were AWOL, missing in action, nowhere to be seen”’ - Billy Bragg

The book is littered with awkward transitions between what was happening with The Clash and what was happening in the world because the truth is that The Clash failed to turn up.

‘Three days before Reagan chose to wager his regime on this desperate ploy (selling arms to Iran), The Clash played the Rockscene in Guehenno, in a remote region of France.’

The authors neatly sum up the significance of The Clash at the time in this one sentence. Not only was the venue remote, the band remote from shady and probably illegal political machinations but on that particular date - July 13, 1985 - “seemingly every major rock act on earth played the Live Aid concert for African famine relief..” All of these events were calling for The Clash and The Clash didn’t show up.

The authors make a good case that the major cause of the end of The Clash was not the sacking of Mick Jones but the return of manager Bernie Rhodes. Rhodes, who had been instrumental in pulling the band together with Jones, prior to Strummer’s recruitment, before being ousted, saw an opportunity to take the reins and steer The Clash in the direction in which he wanted to go. The band toured as directed by Rhodes and, more significantly, the album which put the final nail in the band’s coffin, ‘Cut The Crap’, was Rhodes’ vision, a melding of punk and ‘80s electronic pop.

The authors offer a hearty defence of the album, on which few of The Clash save Strummer make any real contribution - guitar parts are heavily processed and lost in the mix, the drums are largely programmed and played in a drum machine - but their arguments are weak. Early demos of many of the tracks on ‘Cut The Crap’ suggest a much better album was in there but the final result is weak. As the book points out, Joe Strummer was lost at this point, occasionally literally, and The Clash did not really exist. A busking tour was a final stand and, had the album been successful, could have led to a resurgence but Joe Strummer essentially walked away and, thankfully, Bernie Rhodes plans to keep the band going without him came to nothing.

The book should be a must-read for Clash fans. It is well-written and is largely successful in placing The Clash in context with the times. That the band failed to engage with the world around them is not the fault of the authors but perhaps serves to mark not just the end of The Clash but the beginning of the end of any real political influence of rock and pop groups as a whole.

We Are The Clash: Reagan, Thatcher, and the Last Stand of a Band That Mattered
by Mark Andersen, Ralph Heibutzki is published by Akashic Books on July 3, 2018.

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Wednesday 10 January 2018

Review: Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Riveting stuff, 'Fire and Fury' reads like a novel, a fast-moving, sometimes breathless account of the first nine months of the Trump administration. If only 10 percent of this were true, and a review of Trump's Twitter account or a quick glance at the news lends weight to it being vastly more than that, it would still be sensational and frightening. The fact that Trump tried to prevent publication should make this required reading and the events in few months since the period the author covers - from 'my nuclear button is bigger than his' to Steve Bannon being seemingly forced to step down from Breitbart News this morning - suggest that the scary story is far from over....

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Review: The Driver

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

Another excellent episode in what is becoming a must-read series for me, 'The Driver', while not just as strong as the first two books, is a fast-moving thriller and excellent entertainment.

Following on 3 months after the events in Mexico, John Milton is lying low in San Francisco, working two jobs, as a taxi driver and delivery man, while trying to find time to attend AA meetings. It is in the order job that he takes a young woman, who turns out to be a call-girl, to a party from which she flees and disappears. Milton, still atoning for his past 'sins', feels responsible and begins to investigate. The investigation takes on increased urgency when the bodies of other call-girls are found.

The more leisurely pace of the plot means that Milton has time to develop some semblance of a personal life with a woman he meets at AA. Beau Baxter from 'Saint Death' also makes an appearance which serves to broaden Milton's world too.

I am really taken by the whole 'James Bond, Licence Revoked' nature of these book and, while tighter editing may have been needed in places (at times there were references to two 'He's' with some confusion to whom the 'he' referred), I am really looking forward to 'Ghosts' and the introduction of Beatrix Rose.

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Wednesday 3 January 2018

Review: Saint Death

Saint Death Saint Death by Mark Dawson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed this fast-moving thriller, the second in Mark Dawson's John Milton series. It is the literary equivalent of a Jason Statham movie, and that's not a bad thing - the Stathe is very good at what he does, John Milton is very good at what he does, and Mark Dawson is proving very, very good at what he does.

This time round, Milton, recovering from his 'quitting' the British Secret Service, and his less than successful attempt to help those in need in 'The Cleaner', turns up in Mexico just in time to face off against the Cartel and, all the while, his employers are trying to track him down and possibly 'retire' him for good. This is not the war on drugs epic of Don Winslow but it is not trying to be. It is a breathless thriller, easily the equal of Lee Child (although I admit I find Reacher hard to relate to).

Milton is Bond gone rogue and trying to do the right thing. I loved it and I'm going straight into the third novel, 'The Driver'.

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#BlogTour - Still See You Everywhere by Lisa Gardner

A remote tropical island. Countless dangerous secrets. No way to call help. ‘A  master of the thriller  genre’ David Baldacci ‘Full-on  acti...