Material Witness

REVIEW: The Sweetness of the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley

On the face of it, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, the debut novel of Canadian writer Alan Bradley, could hardly have been less promising. The blurb described an eleven-year-old, aristocratic female detective investigating the murder of a man who turns up dead in the vegetable patch of her crumbling country home. It just read like it had the potential for disaster, a sort of golden age, rustic  Nancy Drew. No thanks.

I should know better. Really, I should. I have read enough crap with wonderful covers and compelling synopses and enough fabulous books hidden behind dreary illustrations and descriptions. Never judge a...

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie is an absolute treat. It is original, clever, entertaining and funny. Bradley, whose biography suggests he did not spend a great deal of time in 1950s rural England where his novel is set, has captured a moment in time perfectly. It is post-War, and a way of life that has served the landed de Luce family well for generations is changing as "modern" life and economic reality knocks on the door of the under-funded country pile.

Eleven-year-old Flavia at times feels as if she is living the entire country's last days of innocence, living in a rural theme park, skipping through meadows, cycling everywhere, scrumping in the orchard. Although there is nothing particularly innocent about Flavia, who maintains a poison laboratory in the basement, runs rings her vain sisters and the faithful retainers and investigates crimes like a pre-pubescent Miss Marple.

She is phenomenally bright, inventive, courageous, curious. Precocious. And put like that she sounds dreadful. Utterly unbearable. Except that she isn't. She is engaging and entertaining company, witty and sharp.

In addition to Flavia, there's a wonderful supporting cast: sisters, servants, yokels, shady visitors to the house. And a great story, equisitely told detailing old jealousies, new greed and the rarest of stamps. Rare enough to kill, and die, for.

Philately and chemistry. Not a combination I could ever imagine being especially appealing. But Bradley really has something. That story-telling star dust that enables him to pull the whole tale together leading the wonderful Flavia through an extraordinary maze of mystery and intrigue and driving the reader to turn those pages in glorious anticipation.

There is just one false note in the book. Flavia is just too much for an eleven-year-old. Too smart. too fearless. Too much. Her age simply didn't ring true. Thirteen perhaps. But not eleven.  But quite honestly I was enjoying the book too much to allow that little detail to get in the way. So I adopted two "coping£" strategies. I either didn't think about it or I pretended she was fourteen.

This really is a terrific book, so different to anything I have read recently it felt like being on the most wonderfully relaxing holiday with fresh sea breezes blowing away the cobwebs.

We are promised a Flavia "series". I do hope the promise is kept.

For an interview with Alan Bradley, please click here.

Wallander - television at its best

(For a review of series two Wallander - showing in January 2010 - go to: The welcome return of Wallander).

The ring tone of Kurt Wallander's mobile phone - as portrayed in the recently broadcast BBC dramatisation of Henning Mankell's books - is shrill, insistent, impossible to ignore and just a little bit hypnotic.

As such the phone represents the pull of the job on Wallander's life: it is always on; liable to go off at any second; it has an unbreakable hold on him. 

The phone is a tiny detail. But that detail is rich, well-observed and illustrative of the high production values and careful attention to detail in this superb dramatisation.

Of course the heart of the programme is the headlined star himself, Wallander - given a far more elevated billing than Mankell ever handed his creation. For the programme to be a success, a command performance in the lead role was required. Branagh delivered in spades and if there is any justice in the world he will be up and down from his velvet seat with great regularity when the television gong season begins.

Branagh utterly dominated the screen, making it all but impossible to look away. His unshaven face, stooped gait, and tired red eyes held a raging storm of conflicting emotion as well as an uplifting humanity. It was a moving, mesmeric performance, understated and yet dramatic, absolutely as good as anything I have ever seen on the small screen.

The canvas on which Branagh was painted was equally dramatic. There is a quality of light and space in Scandinavian countries in the summer that is quite different to anything I have experienced elsewhere. It is captured exquisitely by cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle. But despite the light and the space Wallander also captures that essential quality of Nordic gloom. It is quite something to pull this off.

And finally there are Mankell's stories: compelling, complex, convicing. I only ever read one, about five years. And I found it dark and depressing, certainly enough not to return. But I can't help feel I made a mistake, and that Branagh has shown me the error of my ways. I will read more.

But for now it is enough that the BBC has shown that television can still be a powerful medium for drama, and that the British have not fully ceded this ground to the Americans making the Wire and other great shows. Let's hope for more.

REVIEW: Burial by Neil Cross

Something very unusual happened while I was reading Burial, the latest novel from Neil Cross: I had the most extraordinary urge to turn to the end to find out how the story finished.

I honestly cannot recall another occasion when I have been tempted to commit this most heinous of crimes against literature. But there was something so disturbing, so broken-chalk-on-blackboard disarming about this story that I wasn't sure I could get through the full narrative to the conclusion.

Nathan is a provincial radio producer who attends the annual party of his boss, a one-time celebrity broadcaster, and makes a series of bad decisions involving a dying relationship, alcohol and narcotics that indirectly result in the sordid death of a young girl in the back of a car he has been making out in (alongside an acquaintance, Bob, who is "with" the girl when she dies, while Nathan is in the front seat).

Just as they bury her body, so Nathan eventually manages to bury the memory and move on with his life although now as a greeting card salesman. But Elise comes back, first metaphorically into Nathan's life and then physically as development of the woods where she is buried threatens Nathan's secret as well as his now-settled life.

In the meantime Nathan continues to take decisions that while understandable to a point, defy some of the norms of human behaviour and put him in situations that still now make me want to hide behind a sofa when I think about them. 

His characterisation is one of the more clever and insightful I have read this year and is so skilfully handled it holds together a plot that might otherwise have been just that little bit difficult to believe. 

As it is the plot boils mercilessly towards a dramatic conclusion and lingers in the mind long after the final page. I can't say I enjoyed this book - it was a times excruciating - but it was utterly compelling. 

And, no, I did not turn to the back before the end. But I have no idea how I resisted it.  

Christmas Books 2008

According to the list running down the side of the site, I have finished 73 books in 2008, and with a couple of weeks off coming before the New Year I would expect that number to edge close to 80. Not a huge year in terms of numbers, but what really stands out is the quality.

I have not yet explained the rating system I have given to the books, but basically it ranges from 5 stars, essentially meaning "unmissable", to one star, "not completely terrible, but...".

Below is a bit of a round-up of the year, and a guide to those looking for that last minute gift for those who like a bit of murder and mayhem at Christmas.

Best (new) Crime Novel  

A lot to like this year. Andrew Taylor wrote a wonderfully seductive and atmospheric novel in Bleeding Heart Square, which any other year might have come out on top. Stieg Larsson's The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo absolutely lived up to the pre-publication hype, and I only have to endure one more torturous trip to northern Europe where all three books in the series are available in Finnish, Swedish and every other language bar English on every shelf of every bookshop, before the translation of the second book becomes available in 2009.

But one book outshone the rest this year: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos. As moving a journey into the human condition as you could imagine, and so eloquently told. Simply brilliant.

Best Thriller

A bit of licence here. Thriller as opposed to "Crime Novel". This is for the "up all night" experience. Call it the Harlan Coben award, if you like. And it goes to: Linwood Barclay for Too Close to Home. Consummate story-telling.

Best (old) Crime Novel

The imperative of reading and reviewing new fiction for the site means I tend not to spend too much time in back catalogues, but I couldn't resist a secondhand story copy of Mo Hayder's first Jack Caffery novel, Bird Man. If you haven't found Hayder yet, the Caffrey trilogy, Bird Man, The Treatment and Ritual are exceptional.

Best writer discovery

I am not entirely sure how I managed to miss Michael Rowbotham for quite so long. I know he has an army of fans out there and with good cause. I listened to, rather than read, two of his books this year: Lost and The Suspect, and was enthralled with both. Lost was particularly memorable for the exceptional narration of Ray Lonnen.

Best Non-Fiction

You would have to be Dick Cheney not to be moved by the tragic tale of Wyoming roughneck Colton H Bryant who lost his young life on the oil fields because of the greed and corruption of the oil industry. Beautifully told by Alexandra Fuller, The Legend of Colton H Bryant is a very modern morality tale with an unforgettable hero.

Honourable mention to the wonderfully evocative Girls of Tender Age by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith.

Best addition to series

Sorely tempted to give this one to Revelation, the fourth in the vibrant Tudor series featuring Matthew Shardlake by CJ Sansom. But instead I'll go for James Lee Burke's Swan Peak. There have been times in recent Robicheaux books where I have wondered how much value Burke has been bringing to the series by extending it, but this terrific book suggests there is life in the old dog yet.

Best Television adaptation

Praise be for Sky Plus. It's been a busy time of late and not a lot of time for television, but last night I finally managed to sit down and watch the first episode of the BBC's adaptation of Wallander, with Kenneth Branagh in the lead as Henning Mankell's disillusioned Swedish detective. Well, Branagh is brilliant, looking every bit as lived in as Wallander should be and the production values are so high that it shows what can be achieved by British television makers when they put their minds to it.

Look out for this in 2009

Two books scheduled for release early next year which I plan to review soon. One is Neil Cross' disturbing thriller Burial, the other a quite unexpected triumph called (wonderfully) The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Canadian author Alan Bradley. I took the latter to the beach in the summer and was totally charmed by it and its pre-teen detective Flavia de Luce. A lovely New Year hangover cure.