Material Witness

In praise of the bookstore

On Saturday afternoon, at the end of a whistlestop tour around the glories of Georgian Bath, I spied a bookstore. I'd been pretty well disciplined over the holiday period - with no need for new books (I had an unusually good Christmas haul), I had spurned many opportunities to visit stores.

But this was one temptation too many. We crossed the street, and in I went.

The fundamental difference between a good bookstore and a bad one, I think, is the degree to which the bookseller loves books. Somehow it's easy to tell: it can be seen in the presentation; it can be seen in the organization (just how many books can you cram into a sqaure metre of floor space?); it can be seen in the disposition of the staff. And so many of the books were wrapped. I loved that. "These documents are precious", it said. "Look after them."

A love of books was written all over Topping and Co. From the immaculately designed window, to an interior so crammed with books that it was all but impossible not to bump into a table and knock the end pile on to the floor (as I did, followed swiftly by a staff member who was too deep engrossed in a phone call trying to organize the visit of a SciFi writer).

Reacting favourably to a bookstore is dependent to some extent on finding books within it that you like - as I did. But I am also fairly certain I was predisposed to spend money the second I walked into the place. In the end I bought four - two from authors I'd never heard of, a great treat - and it could have been four times that. Partly I think that is because Topping's had so many book faces on display, rather than the usual anonymous row-upon-row of spines. It simply meant that more titles caught my attention.  (Many of these were piled precariously on tables).

It was partly, I suspect, because the ambience of the place lent itself rather well to browsing. The overall atmosphere was welcoming; the staff helpful but discreet; the lighting rather good; and then over the speakers they were playing Ludovico Einauldi, including the marvellous I Giorno. There was really no incentive to leave.

If that all sounds a bit dewey-eyed and romantic, well, that's pretty much how it made me feel. I should cherish books more! I should read more! Write more! And, yes, blog again.

The timing was perfect. Earlier in the weekend, I read that more than one million of us received e-readers for Christmas this year. Close friends in the village - bookworms both - have been glued to their Kindles since 25/12. But books are beautiful things, rather more than just 0s and 1s in a software file.

It's good to be reminded of that once in a while. Thanks Topping's!!

(For the record, I bought:  The London Train by Tessa Hadley; Girl Reading by Katie Ward; Hornblower and the Hotspur by CS Forrester; The Terror of St.Trinian's and other drawings by Ronald Searle)

So long, and thanks for all the books...

On World Book Night, in March, I travelled to Coalville public library to listen to RJ Ellory talk about his work. Roger very kindly gave me 30 minutes of his time after a lively and enjoyable discussion to interview him about his writing and his life. Five months later, to my shame, the tape of the interview is half transcribed and the interview not written.

I feel pretty bad about this. But the truth is, I really don't have time for Material Witness right now.

In 2007 I read 103 books. In 2008 it was 77, in 2009 just 40. Last year it was 51 and so far in 2011 it is just 29. I have reviewed just 12 of those.

And every week at least half a dozen new books arrive through the post. I get excited about them, read the synopses, put them on the shelves, and most of them stay there untouched. And that doesn't feel right.

So today I have reached a big decision. I am mothballing Material Witness. I will continue paying my subscription to Typepad and keep the content alive, but I don't have time to write a regular blog, and so for now I will stop. I hope to come back to it soon.

I've been writing Material Witness since April 2006, and have written 390 posts (which is really not a lot compared to some of the terrific prolific bloggers out there). I started as writing therapy, having packed in journalism for PR, and to fill what I saw as a gap in the market for reviews of crime fiction. You can read the first post here.

I've thoroughly enjoyed it. In that first year the blog attracted an average of about 3 readers a day (most of them related to me). But gradually as social media and blogs became more accepted, dare I say even reached the mainstream, that has risen dramatically, particularly in the last two years to peaks of 170-200 per day when I've been very active.

I know that a lot of people have taken recommendations from Material Witness, and I hope I've helped some authors to find a market that may otherwise have eluded them.

I've enjoyed getting to know a number of writers, a great many hard-working, charming and incredibly helpful people in publishing and a number of other crime fiction bloggers - Maxine, Dorte, Rhian among others - whose virtual company I have always enjoyed.

I would like to offer thanks to a handful of people. Firstly to Gaby Young at Orion who supported the blog with review copies when it started. Orion authors have been something of a mainstay since. Second to Sam Eades at Headline, who more than anyone else has made a huge effort to harness the blogosphere for her authors. To all the other publishers and writers who have supported the site: sincere thanks.

When the rest of life calms down just a little bit and affords me time to read and write, I really hope to back. But for now, so long, and thanks for all the books.

COMPETITION: Win a signed copy of Carte Blanche, the new James Bond novel by Jeffrey Deaver

As if having to turn down an invite to the dramatic launch party of the new James Bond novel, Carte Blanche, wasn't disappointing enough, having to walk past the event taking place in the champagne bar at London St Pancras on my way to another meeting was really too much. As a rule, I do not drink a lot of champagne before midday, but I'm always prepared to make an exception, particularly when there's a Bond girl around.

By way of compensation, my copy of Carte Blanche arrived in the mail this morning. Unfortunately, as blogging is not yet lucrative enough to allow me to pack in the day job, I can't tell you much more than that the book has a very stylish cover. But 15 minutes or so when I head off to bed, I will start reading it, and I hope to review it soon.

Thanks to publisher Hodder & Stoughton, I also have a copy signed by Jeffrey Deaver to give away to one UK reader of Material Witness.

All you have to - by the end of Tuesday May 31 is answer a simple question:

In what year was the last James Bond novel (Sebastian Faulks' Devil May Care) set?

A) 1987

B) 1967

C) 2007

A clue - well, let's be honest, the answer - can be found in this review of Devil May Care.

Send your answer, together with your name and postal address to material.witness@yahoo.com. Good luck.

REVIEW: Unknown by Didier van Caulewaert

The less time I have for reading, the more I come to appreciate short novels, books that can be polished off over the course of a couple of three hour flights, plus maybe an hour at lights out.

I chose to read Unknown, by French writer Didier van Caulewaert, primarily on account of its length - 235 relatively small pages - and to a lesser degree for a plot that seemed to have Bourne-like potential. (And certainly not for the film tie-in cover, which is usually a turn off.)

Of course being a short novel isn't enough in itself - although sometimes I wonder if the publishing industry believes that if a thriller isn't a 380 page monster it's not worth printing - but when it packs as much in as Unknown does it is a particular pleasure. And Unknown really does pack a great deal iin. Multum in Parvo, as it says on welcome signs in Rutland. (England's smallest county).

The premise is a simple one: a man is released from hospital after a couple of days in a coma. When he returns home to his Paris flat, neither his wife nor his neighbour recognises him, and a man claiming both his name and to be his wife's husband unceremoniously kicks him off the property. Martin Harris suddenly finds himself very much on the outside looking in at his own life. Utterly bewildered and increasingly doubting his own memory and sanity he sets off on a frantic 36 hour race to answer a most fundamental human question that most of us only ever ask ourselves in the abstract: Who am I?

Of course in the modern world we leave more traces than we did a century ago - even if we perhaps know, and are known to, far fewer people, and so Harris is not entirely without resource. Even so, the only human help he can find is from a virtual stranger - the taxi driver who knocked him over causing his injury in the first place.

In the interest of suspense I can't say a lot more about the plot, but what I can say is that this is a clever and tense thriller, and one with a tremendous ending; the sort of ending that makes you rethink the entire narrative (like The Sixth Sense movie).

On top of the terrific plot, this is a philosophical gem (well, it is a French novel, after all). Before you finish, you too will be asking "who am I?" and dwelling on the fragile nature of the immensely complicated existences we lead in the modern world and the maze of electronic data and organic memory that forms our identity.

I loved this little book. I loved it because I read it in 24 hours, because it thrilled me with its tight and tense plotting and because it made me think. What more could you want from 235 relatively short pages?

 

REVIEW: Mercy by Jussi Adler-Olsen

With the triumphant publication of Mercy, the Nordic crime full house is complete. Swedes, Finns, Icelanders, Norwegians and now a Dane. Denmark, indeed, might be considered in the ascendant. First, The Killing (Forbrydelsen) - comfortably the most mesmerising piece of television I have seen since series one of The Wire - and now Mercy, a tremendously tense and engrossing novel.

Where to start? A fiendish, cruel and unpredictable plot. A broken cop accidentally setting off in search of redemption, navigating a complex and emotional maze as he goes. On top of that his only assistance comes from a sidekick named after the lion of Damascus. Then there is a sprkinling of political intrigue, plenty of highly satisfying cop in-fighting, all topped off by an absolutely breathless finale.

I must admit to finding it difficult to settle into the rhythm of the novel at first, in part because the cop novel cliches seemed to arrive thick and fast, and I wondered if this wasn't another me-too troubled cop solves clever crime story. But it really isn't, and quite quickly Jussi Adler-Olsen demonstrates that his thinking is satisfyingly original, even a little off-beam, and so Mercy eventually became hugely enjoyable.

The story revolves around two lost souls. One, politician Merete Lynggaard, is held for five years in solitary in a locked cell, and being tortured for reasons she doesn't understand and which her captors will not reveal. The second, Carl Morck, is returning to active duty after recovering from being shot during an operation in which one close colleague died and another was left quadraplegic. Morck is racked with guilt about his part in the operation and his survival. Already a difficult man, although a fine detective, his colleagues now find him impossible.

They find a way to side-track him by establishing him as the head of a new unit, Department Q, which is set up to reinvestigate cold cases. Banished to a boiler room office in the basement, Morck settles in to an unhealthy laziness as he sleeps through most of the day as the files gather dust on his desk.

He is shaken from his stupor by an assistant, Hafez al-Assad, whose arrival, purpose is a mystery to Morck, a mystery that deepens rather than clears as the story proceeds. Assad, between cleaning the basement and seeking out east for his daily prayer, begins to scour the cases and is quickly drawn into the disappearance of the Lynggaard, about which precious little is known. As Assad probes, Morck's insticts awaken and very quickly the two men find the merest hint of a trail, which is just enough to put them into a race against time to find and save Lynggaard.

Adler-Olsen's writing reminds me a little of Steve Mosby, and in particular his novel Still Bleeding, because while everything appears reasonably conventional, it never quite is.  It is, however, highly satisfying and as the promised series develops I look forward to seeing how the author plays his two main characters, because in Mercy he displays a rare emotional intelligence and insight that should serve the series well in future.

 

Carte Blanche - Be James Bond for a day!

You can probably expect to hear quite a bit about James Bond in the next seven days as the world gears up for publication of the latest James Bond novel, Carte Blanche, which has been written by US bestseller Jeffrey Deaver (who is best known for his Lincoln Rhyme novels).

The release of Carte Blanche would appear to establish a pattern of A List guest writers being invited to follow in the footsteps of Ian Fleming, following the 2008 publication of Sebastian Faulks' novel Devil May Care. (See Material Witness review).

Despite concluding that "the adult Bond is best left to him (Fleming) and those seeking a little extra might be best served by visiting Charlie Higson's Young Bond series", I find myself predictably excited about the arrival of a new chapter in the Bond legend, and I will be hoping for an early delivery on May 26.

But you needn't necessarily wait until May 26. Bond's publishers are running a very cool competition to celebrate the launch of the book. The challenge involves visiting a number of online sites, picking up clues followed by "one final 007-style secret mission to take place in London". Details of this are available at a special Facebook page.

After completing a 007-style mission there's a Bond-esque prize to match: the winner will be picked up in a Bentley and taken to the Lanesborough for a romantic evening... reading an advance copy of the book! (It doesn't say anything about a Bond girl) The following day they will then be able to meet Deaver and take part in all the other festivities.

There are additional prizes available - 10 sets of books including a signed copy of Carte Blanche and other titles by Flemin and Higson - for those in the sticks who are unable to spend a day gadding about in London.

Good luck!

 

 

 

World Book Night - A wonderful celebration of reading

Yesterday afternoon I picked up 48 copies of Kate Atkinson's marvellous crime novel, Case Histories, the first in the best-selling Jackson Brodie series. Until I picked up the two boxes from Debbie at her lovely store - The Bookshop in Kibworth Beauchamp in Leicestershire - it hadn't quite occurred to me what being a "giver" was all about.

But seeing the books has made me realise what a privilege it is to be able to participate in World Book Night, an event which will see one million books being given away to promote the joy of reading. Case Histories is one of 25 books chosen, with 40,000 copies of each printed up. 20,000 givers will start handing those books out tomorrow.

The back cover of the books I have reads: "World Book Night is a celebration of great writing and the power of books and the pleasures of reading".

The timing seems perfect. Reading seems to be under assualt. First the news that the government is to cut Bookstart funding, then cuts in library services are announced all over the country. So this initiative - supported by more enlightened institutions than the barbarians implementing ill-thought out and damaging cuts - comes at a good time. Tonight in Trafalgar Square - as I write in fact - writers such as Philip Pullman, Allan Bennett and Sarah Waters along with celebrities like Suggs and Rupert Everett - are celebrating the written word. I hope that the books I give out - in our local church, at a youth group, at Oakham Rugby Club - allow others to join the celebration.

I feel incredibly strongly about this, and find myself almost surprised at the strenghth of those feelings; that we would all live in a kinder, more generous and more civilised world if more people chose to read, rather than watch X-Factor, play computer games or surfed the internet. There is so much to learn from books: about ourselves, about each other, about the world we live in. And there's so much entertainment. There's nothing quite like that moment where the book takes you away.

That's why I chose Kate Atkinson. I have put a note in each of the books I will be giving away: "I have chosen Case Histories for the power of its story-telling and the insight, wit and human warmth that fills the book. Kate Atkinson makes it very easy for the reader to get completely lost in her narrative, and that's my greatest pleasure in reading: reaching that untouchable place that a great book can take you to, where nothing else matters..."

Case Histories is actually a rather bleak book in many ways, based as it is on the mystery of three tragedies. It takes some of the worst of human behaviour and finds people at their very lowest - after the death of a child. But in Jackson Brodie, Atkinson's singular PI, it has a hero with humility, humanity and humour and that sort of hero can take you a long way. (Guardian review)

It starts a wonderful series of four books, the most recent of which is Started Early, Took My Dog (my review). But the best of the series is When Will There be Good News? an absolute tour de force featuring one of my literary heroines, Reggie, a 16-year-old nanny, and the sort of brave and loyal soul I'd want on my side if I was ever in trouble. (Her character is picked out nicely on this blog: Lyss on Something)

Finally, I'd just like to offer my thanks to the organisers, partners and publishers of World Book Night and I applaud the vision of those who made it happen.

Happy Reading.

REVIEW: The Big Short by Michael Lewis

Michael Lewis is one of the most accomplished and readable business writers out there. His books on American football and baseball - The Blind Side and Moneyball - are so fascinating, engaging and accessible that I had every confidence that he was the writer finally to help me understand exactly how and why the financial crisis of 2008 happened.

And while I still do not fully understand the complex mess of credit default swaps and collateralized debt obligations built on the insanity of the US sub-prime mortgage industry, I do have a far better sense of the greed, arrogance, idiocy and subterfuge that helped to produce them. And they rather than the financial instruments are the core of Lewis' utterly compelling story.

At the heart of the human story are two people at opposite ends of the US economic spectrum. The first - mentioned in the book, but not by name - is a Mexican fruit picker in California earning $14,000 who is given a $750,000 mortgage. The second is a faceless Wall Street bond trader - one of many - who is able to repackage the Mexican's mortage and hundreds of thousands like them into financial instruments so complex almost nobody understands them; and so toxic that if they were mushrooms you'd be poisoned just catching sight of them.

The fruit picker's mortgage became known ultimately as "sub-prime", essentially a moniker attached to lending that any rational individual would have recognised as being inherently risky and deeply flawed. The very phrase "sub-prime" captures some of the dishonesty of the lending industry handing over the cash and the gambling industry in Wall Street taking bets on it. "Sub-prime" suggests a sort of "not-quite-optimal" loan rather than a ridiculous one.

Lewis' great achievement in The Big Short, aside from making the whole mess vaguely comprehensible to non-financial minds, is to expose relentlessly the lies and hypocrisy at the epicentre of the industry.

From the delusional lenders giving unrealistic sums to people who never have a prayer of being able to pay them back, on the unrealistic assumption that property prices would simply continue rising. To the bond traders packaging the loans into just another instrument they can make a quick buck out of. To the ratings agencies - Moody's and S&P - that gave these bonds triple A ratings, the same as US Treasury notes! And finally to the big chiefs of the Wall Street banks who had absolutely no idea what their people were doing with their solvency.

Lewis finds a handful of people, mostly indpendent hedge fund managers and investors who spot the scam early on, and tells the story through their eyes as they build positions that will make them rich when the system collapses as house prices start to fall and the system hurtles towards the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the global bail-outs. But as they build their positions they also try to warn the Wall Street banks of the error of their ways. Nobody is listening. And why would they? They're all making money.

There is no happy ending here. The collapse of the sub-prime industry resulted in hundreds of thousands losing their homes. And as the global banking system teetered on the very brink, it triggered financial meltdown that is being felt now and has made life incredibly difficult for hundreds of millions of people.

The perpetrators, by and large, wondered off into the sunset with their bonuses and their assets. The Wall Street banks took a it for a couple of years but appear to be back to their main business of printing money. For some reason people still listen to and trust the ratings agencies. 

And you cannot read this book without thinking: these people should be in jail. Thousands of these people should be in jail. They are lying, thieving cheats. 

So, no happy ending, but the book is some compensation. It is superbly written, often very funny and full of characters so extreme you would not accept them in a fictional environment. If you only read one book on the financial crisis, make it The Big Short. (For a taster, check out this excerpt at Vanity Fair).

 

 

REVIEW: World Made by Hand - and - The Witch of Hebron by James Howard Kunstler

It is not too difficult to understand why apocalypse lit has enjoyed such a surge in popularity in recent years. Before you even get to vampire plagues and dark angel rebellions, the combination of earthly troubles from high oil prices and dangerous flu variants to geo-political instability and food shortages offer writers (and indeed film-makers) a rich source of disasters on which to build their all-too-credible stories.

Most of the literature I have come across focused on the cause and drama of the crisis (Last Light, The Passage, or the immediate battle for survival (The Things That Keep Us Here) and have done so convincingly.

What makes James Howard Kunstler's World Made by Hand novels (The Witches of Hebron is the second in the series)  different, is that they pick up where these stories leave off, when man is struggling to rebuild the society he has just destroyed.

In this case we are in the town of Union Grove in upstate New York, where residents are living, more or less in isolation, in a largely agrarian society with a barter economy after the breakdown of the structures that once delivered food and oil through the local Wal-Mart and Exxon. It is some years after the breakdown of 20th Century society, the era of the automobile.

What makes Kunstler's books so fascinating is that he attempts to answer the question of what sort of society should the survivors build - something modelled on what has been lost or something more elemental and primitive. In doing so the author - who has written non-fiction work about the converging crises of the 21st Century - provides himself the perfect platfom to reflect on current human excesses. 

The people of Union Grove react in very different ways to their changed circumstances. Many simply cannot cope in a new harsh environment in which most of the comforts they once took for granted - electric heat and light, automobiles, television, anti-biotics - are gone. We learn that there have been many suicides.

Others adjust more easily, finding peace and harmony in a more simple and localised life, even if it is much harder and hand to mouth.

The central character in the novels is a former Boston marketing executive, Robert Earl, who now makes his living as a carpenter, trading his goods for food, medical treatment and the other necessities of life. At the outset of the first novel, Earl witnesses the murder of a young man at the hands of the thugs of Wayne Karp, a thug whose supply business operates at the black end of the barter market.

The murder unsettles what has passed for peace in Union Grove, exposing a lack of ability to enforce any sort of law and order in the new society, a vacuum which the law of the jungle threatens to fill.

Earl and his friend Loren Holder, a congregationalist minister who has lost his faith, are forced to confront their town's reality and begin to look at ways to restore some sort of authority that can provide the townsfolk with the security they need.

As this process starts the unsteady equilibrium of the town is further disrupted by the arrival of a mysterious religious sect, which sets up camp in the abandoned High School. Led by the charismatic Brother Job, the New Faith Brotherhood rapidly becomes an alternative source of authority in the town, ready to match the new structures being put in place by Holder and Earl in the person of magistrate Stephen Bullock, a major local landowner.

The two stories - World Made by Hand and the sequel The Witches of Hebron - largely deal with the community's attempts to both define and rebuild some semblance of the civilisation they have lost, and in particular how they settle the ancient (but also very American) question of how the individual relates to the group, the private to the public.

They also have distinctive and colourful storylines of their own. The future these stories depict is violent and tough but not without hope or charm - actually perhaps not so very different from our own. They are clearly  intended as a warning to the human race to mend the error of its way before it is too late, if it is not too late already.

They are thoughtful and worthy additions to the apocalpypse canon and I hope for more from Kunstler

 

REVIEW: Saints of New York by RJ Ellory

The NYPD does not need fiction to add to its mythological status as one of the world's most storied police departments. It has it all: from gang wars to 9/11 and corruption scandals to fighting the Mob.

On the one hand this makes New York highly fertile ground for crime fiction. "There are a million stories in the naked city," says Matt Scudder, Lawrence Block's New York cop-turned-PI, in Eight Million Ways to Die, one of the finest novels in an exceptional series.

But equally it must surely make it somewhat intimidating for writers. "Can you really do all this justice?" I imagine the empty page asking a writer embarking on an NYPD project.

And so I couldn't help but admire RJ Ellory's courage in taking on not only the NYPD in his latest novel, Saints of New York, but the idea of the NYPD. He takes on its legend in all its glory: both triumphant and grubby.

Saints of New York tells the tale of one lost and conflicted officer, Frank Parrish - a man who is at the lowest ebb of a troubled and controversial career, following the death of his partner in an incident in which he was heavily involved, and, in some circles, implicated in the blame.

Parrish is the son of one of New York's most celebrated detectives, an officer credited with unusual and extraordinary success in fighting the mafia as part of a dedicated unit that became known as the Saints of New York. And so his entire career has been viewed through the distorting prism of having to live up to the family name. But more than that Parrish lives with the knowledge - that he believes is unique to him - that his heroic father was actually a corrupt and morally bankrupt man living in the pocket of the Mob.  

Saints of New York is essentially the psychological tale of a man close to losing everything - his career, his family, his mind - as he tries to reconcile his own fading world with the lustre of his father's glorious, but phony, status.

The books starts in the most dramatic fashion, with Parrish desperately trying to talk a former contact down from an alcohol-fuelled murder-suicide - a bid that ends in failure. But it exposes the core of Parrish: courage and a determination to do the right thing, allied with a sense that failure or misunderstanding of his motives by others is somehow inevitable.

Parrish is then given a new, young partner and lands a case of a vulnerable young woman who has been brutally murdered and her body casually disposed of. He quickly sees a pattern emerging that ties his case to other murders, but with his credibility at rock bottom finds it difficult to persuade his partner and superiors to follow his logic. This forces Parrish - who is convinced that he can save lives by proving his theory and nailing the murder - into a lone investigation in which he takes a series of ever more desperate and dangerous decisions.

The investigation is run in parallel with Parrish's enforced counselling following the death of his previous partner, and through it we learn the story of his father, Parrish's only family breakdown and his seeming inability to do the right thing by his wife and children - while he is obsessive in doing the right thing for crime victims. His investigation becomes as much a quest for redemption as it does for justice (even if Parrish himself cannot quite recongise this).

Parrish's obsessive and addictive personality - he's an alcoholic - is dangerous territory for Ellory as he takes himself to the precipice of cop cliché.

Less gifted writers, without Ellory's command of narrative and characterisation, would have toppled off the top and killed the story on the rocks below. But Ellory, as he's shown with A Simple Act of Violence and A Quiet Belief in Angels, is a bold and confident novellist and he tackles the ruined life of Frank Parrish with sensitivity but (largely) without sentimentality and delivers a moving and naked portrait of a deeply flawed but heroic man. On top that he gives readers a pulsating and tense mystery.  

It's bloody good. Another cracking read from Ellory, one of the UK's very best crime writers. Nobody who likes crime, mystery and thrillers is going to be disappointed to get this one for Christmas. Put it on the lists.