Review: 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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Review: 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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Review: 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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Review: The Ghosts of Galway

The Ghosts of Galway by Ken Bruen
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

“It’s not that the Irish are cynical. It’s simply that they have a wonderful lack of respect for everything and everybody.” – Brendan Behan

Jack Taylor returns in “The Ghosts of Galway” with the “lack of respect” to which author Ken Bruen alludes in his Behan quote, but also with a healthy dose of cynicism. The all-weather Garda coat and the hurley return too along with “newish 501s, and the scuffed Doc Martins. You never knew when you might need to kick someone in the face.” And, as always, kicking is only the beginning of the violence meted out, and suffered, by Jack as the story proceeds and he deals with a strangely named Ukrainian; a Ron Hubbard wannabe and his enforcers; dead animals being dumped in Eyre Square; a girl with an imaginary brother; his former best friend, and now sworn enemy, Garda Ridge; and, most troubling, the return of “Emily and her diffuse weirdness” who made Taylor’s life such a “Green Hell” in his last outing. As Jack muses,

“…a thriller writer would throw out all these strands and then, presto, wrap them all up with a rugged hero, battered but unbowed, heading into an award-winning future.”

Of course, Jack Taylor, often battered, is not the traditional ‘rugged hero’ but then Ken Bruen is anything but a typical ‘thriller writer’…. There really is nothing like a Ken Bruen novel – the lyrical, poetic prose; the wry commentaries on current affairs (this time the 2016 deaths of musical heroes, the rise of Trump and Brexit; water charges…); the humour in the darkest of dark noir; the unique way he uses language, not only in the words he chooses to use but also
The
Way
Bruen
Puts
Words
On
The
Page
No other novels read like Ken Bruen’s. Brutal realism collides with stream of consciousness surrealism, commentary on the Kardasians with extreme bloody violence. The dialogue is rhythmic and musical… And profane.

For avenging angel Jack Taylor there is little redemption but, for the reader, there are few experiences to rival these books. I couldn’t put this down. Said,
“I can’t put this down.”

Unfortunately, it was over far too quickly.

“The Ghosts of Galway” is not published until November and I thank Mysterious Press and NetGalley for the early review copy and look forward to doing it all again on publication date.


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Review: Bloodstream

Bloodstream by Luca Veste
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was my first Luca Veste and I enjoyed it. Yes it is a little clichéd and a little ITV Crime Drama-like but Veste is very readable and his Murphy and Rossi team are likeable. The plot concerns the murder of a Liverpool-based celebrity couple and the subsequent investigation which reveals the existence of a serial killer targeting couples who have been keeping secrets from each other. It is a competent police procedural which has something to say about the way social media and the tabloid press exploit both celebrity and victims of crime. Veste could perhaps have explored this aspect of his story more but there was enough here to make me read more of the series and, on Whispersync, John Keeble's Liverpudlian narration really captured the Scouse wit.

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Review: A Dark So Deadly

A Dark So Deadly by Stuart MacBride
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Welcome to Mother’s Misfit Mob”

Stuart McBride’s new novel, “A Dark So Deadly”, is a standalone, separate from his Logan McCrae or Ash Henderson series although set in the same fictional town of Oldcastle as the latter. DC Callum MacGregor has ended up on a squad of police officers that no-one else wants, suspected of contaminating a crime scene but without enough evidence to have him sacked. His fellow ‘Misfits’ are similarly tainted and together they have been side-lined, unlikely to see a decent case again. When a mummified body is found in a landfill site the team are tasked with ringing round museums to find out from where it has been stolen. Then the discovery of another mummy and some strange post-mortem results suggests that the bodies are not in fact centuries old but the result of more recent experiments and that the Misfit Mob has a serial killer on their hands.

The novel is full of McBride’s usual dark humour and some characteristically Scottish descriptive terms.

“The old station house in Castleview had a weird sour coconutty smell, as if it’d got blootered on Malibu the night before and vomited all over itself. Maybe the Security Monitoring and Analysis Department liked to lube themselves up with suntan lotion of a Saturday morning?”

Initially like a dysfunctional family, we see the Misfit’s pull together as the strange case develops. Callum, who because of events in his childhood has little sense of self-worth, proves to be a capable investigator, even as his personal life gets messier. The characters, fr all their issues, become real and likeable.

In the background of the investigation is a music festival and the narrative is accompanied in places by a cheesy radio DJ advertising the event. McBride has great fun capturing the inanity of such local radio personalities as he does with the band names of those appearing at the concert – new album from ‘Overture for a Riot’ anyone?

This is a long book for a police procedural but the story rattles along. There are a few missteps – I could have done with less bad poetry from what was otherwise a really interesting character; there are a few convenient coincidences – but the book is thrilling, scary in places and very, very entertaining. I hope we see more of the Misfits and that this ‘standalone’ is the start of a new series.

I thank NetGalley and HarperCollins for the advance copy.


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Review: A Game of Ghosts

A Game of Ghosts by John Connolly
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

John Connolly is currently one of the best writers, and the Charlie Parker novels one of the best series, in any genre. In what genre these books sit is debatable; they are thrillers, detective stories, mysteries, horror stories. What is not debatable is that Connolly writes poetic, lyrical, haunting prose and dialogue which compares favourably with Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald or Elmore Leonard.

If you know these books, you know just how rewarding, if disturbing, an experience each addition to the series is. If you don't, then put down what you're reading and pick up 'Every Dead Thing', the first Parker novel.

'A Game of Ghosts' is the 15th in the Parker series. It is not a jumping on point. The books really need to be read in order and to do so is one of the most intense and satisfying journeys in modern fiction.

I envy you....

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Review: Bloodstorm

Bloodstorm by Sam Millar
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this. I didn't hate it; I just didn't love it. "Bloodstorm" is a Private Detective novel set in Belfast; I am from Northern Ireland and I love PI books. When we met it should have been murder....

The idea is a good one - take a traditional, hard-boiled, wise-cracking gumshoe and put him on the mean streets of post-troubles Belfast. Unfortunately, this could be set anywhere, Belfast never becomes a character, there is no sense of uniqueness of setting and, worst of all, people just don't speak like that, not least the people of Belfast. The dialogue is stilted and unnatural for the most part; there is no rhythm to it and in key scenes is reads like poor actors reading a laboured, expositional script.

As I said, I didn't hate it. There is a decent plot although it would benefit from a good editor; sections could have been streamlined or left out altogether, wild dogs become confused with wild pigs (both appear on Belfast's Cavehill at times in the novel), and, while I love Billie Holiday, her voice was anything but 'flawless'. I may pick up other work by Millar. His bio certainly suggests that he should have an authentic voice but it just doesn't come through in "Bloodstorm"...

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Review: Behind Her Eyes

Behind Her Eyes by Sarah Pinborough
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

#WTFthatending

“A tenner says you’ll never guess this ending”

When the promotion for a book emphasises the ending so strongly, more strongly in this case than any I have come across before, the ending becomes the focus, the thing by which the story's success is measured. I would not have won the tenner and the conclusion certainly was #WTF but unfortunately not in a good way.

'Behind Her Eyes' is a well constructed psychological thriller, a story of martial infidelity narrated by two women who may not be what they tell us they are. The narrative moves quickly, the characters are compelling and the dialogue is good. But the twist.... The ending is so out of context, although there are clues that here is something strange going on below the surface, that, when I realised where this was going, I was completely thrown out of the story.

So, despite its merits, when the publicity concentrates on an ending that, for me, is unsuccessful, I have to judge the book accordingly.

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Review: Before the Fall

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I stopped reading the X-men about the same time as Charles Xavier's son, Legion turned up. I didn't like the character and although I've watched the movies, I didn't think much of Apocalypse. So I was surprised when, having watched the first episode almost by accident, I was blown away by the Legion TV series. Even more so when I discovered the series was written and created by Noah Hawley and that he is also behind the Fargo series, another I had avoided simply because I enjoyed the movie so much. And then, courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton and Netgalley, I received a review copy of the same Noah Hawley's Before the Fall. Synchronicity...?

Before the Fall is the story of Scott Burroughs, a down on his lunch artist, who accepts an invitation to travel by private jet from Martha's Vineyard to New York. When the jet crashes into the sea all but Scott and the jet-owners' four year old son are killed. Scott becomes part of, perhaps subject of, the investigation and is pursued by news agencies eager for the story. That is essentially the plot. A large part of the narrative is the backstories of the passengers - the 24-hour news mogul and his wife, the dodgy businessman, the bodyguard, the flightcrew - and how they came to be on board the doomed plane.

But plot is not what Before the Fall is about. The novel is an exquisitely written examination of life in the 21st century; what it means to be living in a society where news has to have an 'angle', where so many people base their world view on 'what's in it for me' that it becomes impossible to comprehend that someone may just act rather than act selfishly. It is in the passengers individual stories, the little connections, the seemingly unrelated choices, that lead to larger consequences, where the real weight of the book, the message, is contained -

"Life is a series of decisions and reactions. It is the things you do and the things that are done to you."

Noah Hawley has a real gift for language, an ear for dialogue. Whole passages deserve re-reading, the reader's appreciation of the lyrical, mesmerising quality of the writing only grows. I will be going back to watch Fargo and The Good Father is on my to-read list and i might have missed it all had I not read the X-men....

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Review: The Blade Itself

The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I have always struggled a bit with Fantasy novels. As a pre-teen I discovered Robert E. Howard's Conan the Barbarian by way of Marvel's Roy Thomas and John Buscema and proceeded to read everything I could find. I to see the Arnie movie version two nights in a row. But I couldn't get to grips with Tolkien and, although I later read and enjoyed the Lord of the Rings, it is still somewhat po-faced and humourless, not to mention full of irritating diversions with the likes of Tom Bombadil. Game of Thrones was a revelation and, after watching the first episode of the TV series, I read the first volume of George RR Martin's 'A Song of Ice and Fire' in a week and quickly caught up with the those who had been reading the books for ten years.

GRRM also inspired Joe Abercrombie to begin his First Law saga, and it is a saga, a return to the days when Fantasy was still called Sword & Sorcery. It has barbarian heroes (at least I think they are heroes), powerful wizards, women who can hold their own with the men, politics, warmongering and generally a lot of strange goings on. But just as importantly, 'The Blade Itself' has a sense of humour and a huge amount of fun. It was the humour in Howard's work that kept me reading Conan's adventures and it is the playfulness in Abercrombie's writing that will keep me coming back. His cast may be archetypes but they are written as real people, three dimensional characters with understandable, if sometimes contradictory, motivations, not a few faults and insecurities. We have Logen Ninefingers, the Bloody Nine, the Conan character, a legendary but tired killer who questions his black legacy and whose berserker rages are ferocious; Jezal dan Luthar, a nobleman whose snobbery forms his world view and who may be really out of his depth; and Bayaz, First of the Magi, a possibly centuries old wizard, whose sardonic wit is a source of much of the early humour in the book.

Abercrombie has a real talent for naturalistic dialogue, profanity and bloodshed. 'The Blade Itself' is very entertaining; I loved it and the second book in the series has just moved up a few places in my 'to-read' list....

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