Review: 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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Review: 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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