Material Witness

REVIEW: Silent on the Moor by Deanna Raybourn

If you are going to take one vivacious, smart-mouthed heroine and match her with a Heathcliffesque detective and throw them together in a decaying manor house on the North Yorkshire Moors inhabited by the last descendants of Alfred the Great - well, then you'd better know what you're doing.

One false step on those Moors and you're up to your neck in it. But proceed with care and it can be a dramatic and satisfying landscape.

Moving outside the comfort zone of Victorian London society does not derail Deanna Raybourn (interview with the author) who scores another hit in the third installment of her accomplished "Silent" series featuring the aristocratic Lady Julia Grey and her would be beau and partner in detection, Nicholas Brisbane. (See reviews of previous instalments, Silent in the Grave and Silent in the Sanctuary).

Lady Julia, with her sassy sapphic sister Portia, heads north to Grimsgrave, a pile on the Moors recently acquired by Brisbane to help him get his new household in order. When they arrive Portia and Julia find a family in residence with even bluer blood and even more potty than their own March clan - the Allenbys, who trace their roots back to the Saxon kings of England and remain fiercely proud of that fact despite much reduced circumstances that mean they now rely on Brisbane for home and hearth.

When they arrive Lady Julia finds Brisbane distracted by a mysterious investigation further north and he promptly disappears - although not before he has given her romantic encouragement - leaving her to satisfy her boundless curiosity by prying into the Allenby family history and their engagement with the locals. What she finds is a heady cocktail of Eygptology, gypsy curses, philandering country gents, and a bizarre preoccupation with bloodlines that, sure enough, soon places her and others in peril.

Written in the style of say, Wuthering Heights (which is referred to as being relatively nearby), Silent on the Moor is not likely to have worked. But Deanna Raybourn is far too clever for that and instead directs a production that balances the mystery with humour. It is, as the cover of the book says, "wickedly witty". The device of imbuing the March sisters with more modern sensitivities allows the author to poke gentle fun at the rigid, social conventions of the late Victorian age, but at the same time Raybourn's clear affection for the period, the people and England itself prevents this from becoming sneering or excessive.

Instead the story is charmingly told, the heroine is feisty and likable, the supporting cast engagingly eccentric and the plot boils away quickly towards a dramatic cliffhanger of an ending. Ithoroughly enjoy this series. The books are entertaining and easy to read but also full of period detail. I am already very much looking forwards to book 4, which I understand is set in India.

I just have one complaint. The UK cover (above) is pink and very feminine. This did not stop me reading it in public, as it might some, I suppose, but had I not heard of Deanna Raybourn and just come across the book in Waterstones I would have made immediate assumptions about the story and walked on past without giving it a second look. I don't doubt that that says something uncomplimentary about me, but it is true nonetheless and makes me wonder if the presentation of the Silent series in the UK isn't instantly deterring half its potential audience. Looking online for pictures to illustrate this, I see that the US cover is actually worse and makes it look like some sort of Mills and Boon bodice ripper rather than the terrific period mystery it is.

I may be wrong but I think these books might be better served by the US cover used on previous books. See Silent in the Grave here. Alternatively perhaps I have misjudged the books and I am becoming a fan of romance in my advancing years. Either way, I'm not crazy about the cover.  

Burke on Rankin, Lehane on Connelly, the world on Dan Brown and crime in Chiswick

It took me quite a while to "get" Twitter, but after several months of bemusement following random conversations without understanding why they were happening, I am now beginning to understand its power: as an aggregator of content, as a media outlet, as a social centre - as a hub for the entire internet.

Today's been a great example. This morning a tweet arrived from Declan Burke, author of a number of books I should have read including The Big O, alerting his followers to the fact that he has penned a review of Ian Rankin's post-Rebus novel The Complaints, at his excellent blog Crime Always Pays. The review is notable for the fact that Burke criticises a fellow crime writer, a rare enough event in the close-knit crime world.  "By the end the abiding feeling is one of disappointment that Rankin, with his reputation and (presumably) fortune already secure, wasn’t prepared to take more chances in terms of style, subject matter or narrative," he writes in a review originally published in the Irish Times.

I have not got round to reading The Complaints yet, in part for this reason, that I pretty much know what to expect from Rankin, even without Rebus, and so it feels like it can wait. It is high up the reading list, however, and my guess is that I will enjoy it when I get there.

From Crimeficreader comes an alert to a post on Michael Connelly's website, an appreciation of Harry Bosch written by Dennis Lehane, the author of The Given Day and the Kenzie/Gennaro series that produced Gone Baby Gone. The Harry Bosch series will be 15 books and 17 years old when Nine Dragons is published here on October 1 and it has stood the test of time a great deal better than most series that long. Lehane, ever thoughtful, first makes a point about the fact that comparisons with Raymond Chandler are too cheaply given in the crime fiction world, before coming to the following conclusion: "If Chandler has any direct literary descendent, then, any fit wearer of his illustrious crown, any undeniable heir, it can only be Michael Connelly." High praise indeed.

It has also been fascinating watching the Twitterari debate Dan Brown. I made my views clear in yesterday's post (in short: buy something else) but have been fascinated by the polarisation of opinion. One writer I like a great deal, Deanna Raybourn, author of the wickedly witty Lady Julia Grey mystery series, likes Brown for his "quick, immensely readable books that knit up strands of logic and mysticism and art and adventure and sometimes that's precisely what I'm in the mood for". Well, she might say that, but I think you'd be better off her Silent on the Moor, her latest which I shall review shortly. There was further defence of Brown from thriller writer Joseph Finder, author of Vanished, who tweeted: "It may shock you guys....but I love Dan Brown's success. The guy works hard, is serious about what he does, and did something original."

Another interesting tweet I saw this evening. Apparently Kindle version of The Lost Symbol outselling hard copy: "Nobody wants to be seen reading it".

A last word, perhaps, to Mark Lawson in the Guardian: A puzzling, rollicking piece of tosh.

And finally a small plug for the Crime Panel at the Chiswick Book Festival in West London on Sunday September 27. A panel including Sophie Hannah, author of The Other Half Lives, and Roy Mitchell, creator of BBC series New Tricks, will discuss "The Perfect Crime - from Book to Screen". Other interesting items on a very attractive three day schedule (starting September 25) include Michael Frayn, Anthony Horowitz and Antonia Fraser. Tickets available through Waterstones on Chiswick High Road or the Advanced Book Form on the website.

Not The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown - Five alternatives to the publishing event of the year

I will not be rushing to the store tomorrow to buy a copy of The Lost Symbol, the long-awaited new book from Dan Brown of Da Vinci Code fame. I will not bore on here again about my views on Brown and his writing save to say that I thought The Da Vinci Code was a very poor film, but it was that rarest of silver screen phenomena: a movie that improved the book.

So if you want to read a thriller this week, allow me to make a case for these five books worthy of your consideration, before you give Dan Brown £10 and 12 hours of your life you will never get back.

The Anniversary Man by RJ Ellory

This is the only one of the five recommendations I have not read, but I bought it today as my alternative to Brown. Ellory has written six previous novels, all of which I have read and enjoyed. They all have three things in common: they tell compelling tales, as all novels should; they are beautifully written; they are suspenseful and are more than worthy of the dozen or so hours of your time you will devote to them.  The Anniversary Man tells the story of John Costello, a man who survives the attentions of one serial killer and uses the knowledge gained from that experience to help track down another.

Shatter by Michael Robotham

In the last six months I have listened to all of the Australian author's books, bar The Night Ferry, which I read. There is so much about Robotham that is good that I am never going to do a book like Shatter justice in a few lines here. Like with Ellory, however, here are three essential components: the characterisation is exquisite, as good as anything I have read - central protagonist Joe O'Loughlin and his friend Vincent Ruiz are likeable, memorable and utterly human characters; second, these books are written with an emotional honesty that is at times paralysing; finally it has a brilliant story that stays on a knife edge for hours. Psychologst O'Loughlin is called upon to help talk a jumper down from the Clifton Suspension Bridge. He fails, but before long discovers that while the woman jumped to her death of her own free will, she did not commit suicide. His investigation takes pits him against a terrifyingly cruel and merciless killer. A brilliant piece of work.

The Girl with The Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

The one millionth blog post praising Larsson and his Millennium trilogy, I know, I know. But the English publication next month of The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets' Nest, the final act of the trilogy, is the true publishing event of the year, the book that thriller afficionados have been waiting for. The two previous novels - Dragon Tattoo and Played with Fire (available at Waterstones and heavily discounted) - were original and compelling thrillers that became extraordinarily popular book right across Europe. If you haven't found these books yet, what is keeping you?

The Turnaround by George Pelecanos

Pelecanos is a criminally under-read thriller writer. He writes with passion, intelligence and deceptive simplicity about life on the streets; about the decisions people take, the reasons they take them and the consequences they lead to. He does not judge those about whom he writes but instead his work stands as a savage indictment of modern American society and its abandonment of urban youth. Pelecanos received a high profile endorsement when it was revealed that Barack Obama was taking his recent novel The Way Home on his holiday. It's a good book, but The Turnaround is exceptional. 

When Will There Be Good News by Kate Atkinson

When I am reading a Kate Atkinson novel I am barely capable of functioning in other areas of my live. The haunting mesmeric stories follow me around and occupy every other thought. Of her seven books, the Jackson Brodie "crime" trilogy are my favourites, and of that trilogy Good News is the most memorable. That is chiefly because of Reggie a sixteen-year-old nanny-cum-force-of-nature whose homespun wisdom, loyalty and courage dominate the book. Kate Atkinson is nothing less than a genius and these books are quite wonderful.

REVIEW: An Empty Death by Laura Wilson

The second in Laura Wilson's excellent wartime detective series moves Ted Stratton on from the beginning of the blitz in the 1940 - told in Stratton's War - into 1944, as the war moves agonisingly slowly towards its end.

In 1944 the new terror in the skies above London is the unmanned Doodlebug rocket raining death and destruction on an exhausted, hungry and thoroughly war-weary population. Following a deadly strike near his Tottenham home, Stratton pulls a woman from the rubble of her destroyed house. The newly homeless woman is taken in by Stratton's sister-in-law Donald and her husband, and her brutalised mental state quickly becomes a problem for the extended family.

Things are no easier for Stratton at the Saville Row nick.  He is called in to upon to look into the murder of a doctor from the nearby Middlesex hospital who has been left dead at an adjacent bomb site. When a nurse at the hospital suffers a similar fate, Stratton is under intense pressure to find the killer or killers and save the hospital from both falling into panic and the embarrassment of scandal.

At the centre of the web of death Stratton finds a beautiful nurse, a dashing doctor (whom the reader knows is an impostor), crusty  administrators and strict, businesslike Sisters. And if all that sounds a little like the recipe for Carry on Matron... it is actually the foundation on which Wilson skilfully builds an atmospheric and compelling thriller.

At the heart of the story is a quest for identity. For Stratton, course, this is a fairly conventional hunt for the identity of a killer. But for others it is vastly more complicated. From the rubble of her former life, Mrs Ingram, saved by Stratton, cannot recognise her husband and falls into a paranoiac hell, where there are only fleeting glimpses of her former life. For the impostor Doctor Dacre there is a relentless search for the man he would be. For Jenny Stratton, there is a nagging fear that her evacuated children - now 16 and 12 - will not fit back into their London lives should they ever be able to return from their Suffolk exile.

It is fascinating stuff, as Wilson examines the war's impact on her characters. For Doctor Dacre the fog of war, the rubble and the smoke, provide a perfect screen for his ambition as he is able to slide through the cracks. For other characters, the War is an additional heavy burden they  carry on their shoulders, making life so much harder.

The wartime canvas is cleverly constructed, and in particular the daily life at the Middlesex hospital gives a deep and vivid insight into its impact both physical and psychological, while scenes as simple as Jenny cooking dinner for Ted also exposes privations that are utterly unrecognisable today.

And so An Empty Death will delight those who like their thrillers raw and with a painful twist, while anyone with an interest in how the war impacted lives will also find much here. Bravo Laura Wilson. Here's to another Stratton soon.

REVIEW: Flipping Out by Marshall Karp

Marshall Karp has made a name for himself by being funny. The cop shop badinage between his Los Angeles detective pairing of Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs was the central feature of his first two highly entertaining novels, The Rabbit Factory and Bloodthirsty.

Given that the plot of his third, Flipping Out, centres around the search for a serial killer knocking off the wives of cops, and that Biggs' wife may well be on his list, it is not surprising that Karp turns the humour down a notch. It's hard to be funny when your wife is in fear of her life.

But fortunately it is only one notch as Biggs respectfully refrains from his usual wisecracking demeanour and in turn slips into a bleak, black humour while Lomax plays his regular straight man role to perfection.

Detective fiction is not always renowned for the quality of its dialogue, but Karp's expertise in television writing is deployed to great effect in Flipping Out - which is good because dialogue dominates - and combined with an inventive and entertaining plot, it contributes to another cracking outing for Lomax and Biggs.

Flipping Out refers to the real estate practice of buying homes to "flip" them, ie taking a wreck, renovating and decorating it and selling it on for a profit. The flipping is being done by a group of cops' wives, including Mrs Biggs, which works on one house a year. The twist here - and being LA there has to be a twist - is that a mother of one of the wives is a best-selling thriller writer who features each renovated house as a murder scene in her new book. As a result the value of the house sky-rockets. The second twist - and being a thriller of course there is more than one twist - is that the flipping wives themselves start turning up dead. Lomax and Biggs get on the case.

As well as showing his excellence in dialogue, Karp confirms two other talents in this book. First, he has great command of his plot. The story sets itself for a grand finale with about half a dozen potential killers but keeps its secret to the very last. Second he is a tremendous technician. Almost every chapter finishes on a high note or a quip - often referencing something that has gone before. In other hands that sort of clever-clever technique could be irritating and wrong. But Karp has such charm and the writing is so good that it establishes a sort of mesmeric rhythm to the story that holds the reader.

In my case it meant I read the book in a little under 24 hours, a sure sign that I was enjoying myself. SO hats off to Marshall Karp for another funny, entertaining cop thriller. What more could you ask for?

To read Material Witness' interviews with Marshall, click here (July 2008) and here (August 2009).

REVIEW: The Enemy by Charlie Higson

Orphans are stock in trade for writers of teen fiction. Freed from parental tyranny, children can roam free and have fantastic adventures without being fear of being late for their supper or having to struggle through their homework.

Harry Potter is an orphan, and Alex Ryder, and, of course young James Bond, the teen spy on whom Higson cut his teeth in young adult fiction.

In the The Enemy, published this week by Puffin, Higson takes the orphan theme one step further: what if all kids were orphans?

An undiagnosed disease has wiped out (almost) everyone over the age of 14 leaving London's children to fend for themselves. Higson bases his story on the exploits of a group living in the remains of the Waitrose store in Holloway, a year on from the initial catastrophe. But this is no permanent picnic for the children. Food and water are scarce commodities, fought over with other kids (the nearby Morrisons crew), stray dogs but also the remaining adults not killed by the disease who are vicious zombie-like figures covered in boils, wounds and scabs.

The "grown-ups", as the Waitrose crew call them, are completely wild, as well as cannibalistic, and present the primary threat to the children as becomes apparent in the first couple of chapters during which one child is taken away and others expierence a vicious attack.  The hand-to-mouth existence the children endure is nasty, brutish and potentially short, and so when a stranger appears at Waitrose with tales of a safe haven with food, water and comfortable beds it does not take the Waitrose and Morrisons group long to decide to risk leaving their fortresses for the dangerous trek across London.

The Enemy is absolutely not for the faint-hearted. Kids kill and kids die, sometimes horribly and nobody is immune: being popular or a leader of the group saves nobody in Higson's world.

I have just finished reading it to Paddy, my seven-year-old son, and he coped with the nightmarish vision of a post-civilised world extremely well - to the point that his first question on completing the book was when could we expect the next installment. I would not have read it to my nine-year-old daughter who would not have enjoyed the gore and the grief. So I don't see any particular point in recommending the book for particular age groups as children react differently. But if you have a child that is queasy about death and bloodshed, and the potentially upsetting scenario of being left without parents, you might want to try something else.

But Paddy enjoyed it hugely, "scary, exciting and funny",  he wrote in his holiday diary, all of which it is. The gallows humour of the kids serves to off-set a lot of the tension and danger - trying on adult clothes in Selfridges was memorable - while the sheer adventure of kids being in charge and crossing London kept him transfixed. Something else he picked up on, that surprised me, was the multi-track story which flitted back and forth between the main group of kids, a small boy who is abducted by the grown-ups and the one child who remains behind. The story is well-structured, easy to read and has excellent pace and flow. There are great characters, well defined and the dialogue between them is sparky and entertaining.

Higson also leaves plenty of secrets hanging - how did the disease start? what happens to the older kids as they reach a certain age? - that helps to add an air of mystery to the strong suspense that is sustained throughout the 400 pages. He also finishes the story with a strong hint of the battles to come. Hence Paddy's question about the next book (next year apparently).

For adults, and young adults with a comparative literary bent, there are unmistakable echoes of Lord of the Flies in The Enemy, even if there is no obvious allegorical element. The way the kids interact and the way they organise themselves is fascinating politically.

The Enemy is clever, imaginative and a hell of a good ride. There's a danger that Paddy will want to read the next installment himself. But tough luck, he'll have to wait for me.

REVIEW: Still Bleeding by Steve Mosby

As much as I have enjoyed Steve Mosby's books in recent years, I always have a slight sense of foreboding when I pick up a new one. There's nothing easy about reading his work as his mission seems to be to take the reader to dark, unforgiving places.

Still Bleeding, his fifth novel, does not disappoint - if this is the right word. It is another tough journey into the dark side of the human condition where morality and decency give way to nihilism and unrelenting pain.

As I have observed in previous reviews (The 50-50 Killer and Cry for Help) there is something slightly off-beam about Mosby's story-telling, a determination not to be bound by convention or to allow the writer to ease into a comfortable narrative that adds another layer of uneasiness to the stories. The world as he describes it sounds and feels like the world outside of your window, but it is a world that is just half a degree removed from reality. You know it is somewhere you do not want to visit, under any circumstances, but equally that you know you could easily stray into.

Still Bleeding focuses on the efforts of two men to find missing women. Alex Connor returns from a self-imposed exile that followed the suicide of his wife after he learns that his once best friend Sarah Pepper has apparently been murdered by Connor's brother, although police have not found the corpse that was supposedly dumped in a field. Meanwhile Detective Paul Kearney is searching for Rebecca Wingate, a woman missing from her home and who is believed to be in terrible danger from a killer who slowly bleeds his victims to death.

Their twin investigations, which never quite become linked, take the two men into a moral hinterland whose inhabitants treat death as nothing more than a spectator sport, as ripe for exploitation as any other, and where the internet is a vital enabling tool. What they find is both disturbing and dangerous and both men are sucked into a dark vortex where first their sanity and then their lives are placed at risk.

Mosby is a fine writer who handles his material expertly and has a knack for making stories personal, which means he manages to crawl under the skin and stay there. Still Reading is another top outing, confirming not only that he is on a great run but also that he is one of UK fiction's most original writers.

(For more on Mosby, try the excellent blog at his website: The Left Room. Or follow his very active - and slightly angry Twitter feed.  

REVIEW: The Dying Light by Henry Porter

At its heart The Dying Light has two premises. The first is that the combination of the anti-terrorist legislation and other surveillance tactics and methods introduced by current and recent governments holds the potential to undermine the freedom of the British people totally. The second is that we are all in grave danger of allowing this to happen through our general ignorance of the changing legal framework, our apathy and our willingness (prompted by state propaganda) to exchange some of our basic human rights in exchange for our safety from events such as 9/11 and 7/7.

This is natural territory for espionage writer Henry Porter to explore in fiction, given his four year campaign to educate his readers about the danger of Britain's slide into becoming a surveillance society in which basic freedoms are being rapidly eroded by government - as evidenced by this recent piece in the Daily Mail.

Porter casts us forward to 2014 to illustrate the impact these developments could have. David Eyam, a former head of the Joint Intelligence Committee and confidant of the Prime Minister, is killed in a bomb blast in Colombia - apparently he was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. But when his close friend Kate Lockhart, herself a former spook, attends his funeral, she quickly discovers that others are desperate to protect the secrets of Eyam's life and death: desperate enough to kill anyone who stands in their way.

Lockhart is soon at the heart of a political conspiracy that leads to the very top and one that is underpinned by the volatile combination of money and power, the ego and paranoia of a politican and the ruthless manipulation of legislation to serve personal ambition.

At times a storyline in which peacetime Britain effectively became a police state strayed into territory I considered a little unrealistic, but then I reminded myself that the legal framework that allowed it actually exists now. And of course the other factors required have already existed: vain, egomaniacal politicians; greedy businessmen; and, yes, a passive population largely unaware of the dangers.

And that in turn made The Dying Light a little bit frightening at times, because it does not take much of a mental leap to imagine it happening and after that the leaps to other totalitarian horrors become smaller and simpler. A slippery slope we already seem to have taken a step on.

If all that makes The Dying Light sound like a polemic on the dangers of CCTV and internment, then I should point out that it is also an exciting story, which begins like a classic tale of espionage before developing into a  gripping political thriller that one day will make a perfect television drama for the BBC's Sunday 9pm slot.

The characters are recognisable and therefore credible and Porter deftly brings his story to the boil and a dramatic and satisfying conclusion.

So don't let the fact that Henry Porter occasionally writes for the Daily Mail put you off. This is a book with an important story to tell and one that is well told.

Interview: Marshall Karp, author of the Lomax and Biggs series

Regular readers will know that I have become a big fan of Marshall Karp in recent years. Karp is a New York (state) based author writing a detective series set in LA that is inspired by his days there working as a Hollywood script writer. (See reviews of The Rabbit Factory and Bloodthirsty.)

His writing has drawn some comparisons to Carl Hiaasen and Janet Evanovich. As I have not read the latter I cannot comment on those, and while I understand the Hiaasen comparison - they are both very funny - this only goes so far as Karp is a more conventional writer of police detective tales.   But his is a refreshing and entertaining voice, as hinted at by his answers below, and his books are cracking mystery stories that deserve a wide audience.

I am grateful to Marshall, who I have interviewed "live" before - here - for answering more questions following the publication of his third novel, Flipping Out, by Allison & Busby publish . Flipping Out is another winner, and I will have a review shortly. 

Is Marshall Karp, Lomax or Biggs?

Terry Biggs is a New York wiseass, the master of the quick comeback, goes for the laugh every chance he gets, loyal adoring husband, devoted father, workaholic, driven by the challenge of starting a new career and rising to the top. So it’s pretty obvious — definitely not me.

On the other hand, Mike Lomax is warm, lovable, sensitive, pays more attention to the little voice in his head than he should, intelligent, intuitive, protective, and good in bed. Not me either.

I guess I just made those guys up.

I also made up Big Jim Lomax, Mike’s well meaning, totally meddling father. Really — he’s completely fictional. Just ask my kids.

Flipping Out has a great plot premise - is it based on real LA events?

Yes and no. The primary plot revolves around a bestselling mystery author who buys a run-down house in LA, and while her business partners turn it into a showpiece, she makes it the scene of a grisly murder and the star of her next book. It may sound like a plausible LA scheme, but it’s something I created — although it’s not a bad idea to put into practice. However, as you get deeper into the book, a second, much more sinister plot opens up. I won’t give it away here, but it is based on the real life activities of some very nasty criminals.

People in the UK regard LA as being a sort of giant theme park of the bad, the mad and the utterly insane. Is it as loopy as it looks long distance?

LA is a thriving metropolis with real people doing real jobs and living real lives. But that wasn’t my experience when I lived there for two years.My world was show business, and while I met some genuine people along the way, I also ran into some of the people who live up to the Tinseltown stereotype. LA, especially the entertainment business, is a magnet for the greedy, the needy, the egomaniacs, and the ego starved. It may look loopy from afar, but when you get up close it can be downright ugly. I have no regrets for my time spent in LA, and only a few resentments toward some of the more arrogant, exploitive people I met. And while they were in the minority, I’m kind of grateful for having met them. Many of my best murder victims were thinly disguised versions of assholes I worked with.

Can you give any hints about the next Lomax and Biggs plot?

Broad hints. When the first body is found (the wife of a British diplomat living in LA), the killer has left behind a detailed scrapbook as a signature. The subject of the scrapbook: the victim. Since I seem to have this penchant for multiple bodies, there will be multiple scrapbooks. If it seems simple so far, let me warn you that no one who has read it has been able to figure it out. And of course on the lighter side, Big Jim and Terry Biggs team up in a hilarious get rich in Hollywood scheme, and Mike Lomax and Diana ponder the question so many of their fans have been asking. Should they or should they not get married and/or have a baby?

What do you make of the Hiaasen / Evanovich comparisons?

There’s something about this business that seems to invite people to discover a new writer and then try to pigeonhole him by comparing him to established writers. I wonder whom Hiaasen and Evanovich were compared to when they started out. In the broadest sense I think the comparison has merit, because they both write funny, and so do I. But I hadn’t read either of them before my first book was published. I think the most accurate comparisons I’ve gotten are from close friends or others who know me well who say “your books remind me of you.”

Who/what are your literary inspirations?

James Patterson is a good friend whose style of rapid fire, easy to digest, hard to put down chapters had an enormous impact on how I craft and pace my books. While our writing styles are different, he understands better than any author what readers want and knows how to give it to them. I’ve learned a lot from him, and since we’re friends, I often get the education first hand.

My comedy style is influenced by the American playwright Neil Simon, and to some degree by Woody Allen. And I’ve learned a lot from American humorists, particularly Mark Twain.

How has your background in TV writing helped in writing novels? What are the principle differences?

My books have a lot of dialogue, and not a lot of description. Certainly that comes from my TV background. TV scripts are all dialogue. But then, so much of life is dialogue. (Especially mine. According to my wife, I do tend to prattle on.) The major difference between TV and books is that I have to remember that some description is necessary. TV shows have a scenic designer to build the set, a casting director, a wardrobe department, a location scout, and a whole crew of people to bring a script to life. When I sat down to write my first book I had to learn how to paint the pictures and capture the emotions for the readers with words alone.

If you were holding a dinner party and could invite six guests - three fictional, three real - from any era of his choosing, who would your guests be? And what would he serve them?

Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, and Superman. I’d have the guests order whatever they wanted from any restaurant in the world, then a few minutes before dinner, I’d send Superman out to pick up the food.

For more from Marshall Karp, check out his excellent website: LomaxandBiggs.com  

 

REVIEW: The Night Ferry by Michael Robotham

I don't make a habit of reviewing books that are not newly released, but I have to make an exception for The Night Ferry, Michael Robotham's third novel of a loose  "series" featuring a cast of changing characters including psychologist Joe O'Loughlin and detectives Vincent Ruiz and Alisha Barba.

I make an exception because this is a truly excellent novel that I hope I can help a few more people to find. This is the first of Michael Robotham's book I have actually read, as the other three I have downloaded from Audible and listened to on iPod with the exceptional narration of Sean Barrett (more of which when I have listened to the last couple of hours of Rowbotham's most recent novel, Shatter).

The Night Ferry is a book I had heard whispers about. Whispers suggesting it belonged in the first class of crime fiction. The whispers were absolutely spot on. This is a near flawless novel.

What makes it special is the combination of a powerhouse plot with gravitas, urgency and depth and the development of fascinating, multi-layered characters. The cement that holds them together is Robotham's exceptional feel for a story and how it develops and an exquisite way with words. Often, when listening to Robotham's books, I find myself simply nodding at how "right" every passage is - the way a chapter ends or starts, how a new character or idea is introduced. Timing is not a quality that applies easily to writing, but Rowbotham has it in spades.

The plot, as is the case with all his books, is darker than night itself. Ali Barba is contacted by an old, long-lost friend desperate for help. They meet at a school reunion but before the friend can explain her problem, she is knocked down by a car and killed. At first it looks accidental but Barba, her detective instincts to the fore, refuses to accept the obvious explanation. Her investigation, aided by old friend Vincent Ruiz - perhaps the most singluar and interesting of all current fictional detectives - leads her to the black heart of the intercontinental trade in babies and the desperate lives of those caught in its merciless grip.

If it were not quite so dark, The NIght Ferry would be a one-sitting thriller. It is entrancing, in part  because Rowbotham makes it impossible for the reader not to care about the characters. But even to a reader such as myself who is hardened to the viciousness of life as portayed by this type of fiction, there are moments in this book that require respite.

But it is exceptional, and if you haven't found it yet, get out there and grab a copy.

(further reading: excellent LA Times review. )