Material Witness

REVIEW: Natural Causes by James Oswald

The Edinburgh police procedural is tough terrain for a debut author. The comparative literature in the police detective segment is as celebrated as any series in British crime fiction and so James Oswald has his work cut out. 

In my idle moments I imagine Rebus slouching into an Edinburgh pub and confronting the newcomer - Oswald's Detective Inspector Tony McLean - with a gruff, "this is my patch, son". 

Oswald proves, however, in Natural Causes that Edinburgh is more than big enough for both of them. His first novel, an online publishing sensation before Penguin stepped in to present it to the traditional market next month, takes the best elements of a procedural and ties them into a fascinating plot with promising characters and a narrative pace that never lets up.

Tony McLean, newly called to the ranks of Detective Insepctor, is called in to investigate the discovery of a young woman's mutilated corpse in the locked room of a long forgotten house. The body, which has been in situ untouched for decades appears to have been arranged as part of a cruel ritual. 

McLean is handed this coldest of cases while his immediate superior DCI Duguid investigates a spate of vicious, inexplicable killings of old men, many of them notable Edinburgh citiizens. Duguid clearly does not appreciate having the youngster on his patch and the clashes between the two men - refereed by Chief Superintendent Jayne McIntyre - are among the most enjoyable passages in the book. 

And it is largely the strong characters that carry the book. McLean himself is the anti-genre copper. He's an independently wealthy, well-educated, charming and largely calm man who appears to have no destructive relationships with addictive substances. His sidekicks, Constable Stuart MacBride and the sergeant Grumpy Bob (the nickname is used consistently and somewhat annoyingly throughout the book) are well drawn and the cast of supporting characters including the pathologist Angus Cadwallader and some of McLean's friends add a little zest to the dialogue.

If the writing is a little ragged in places and if some of the scenes feel just a little too over-engineered, it's of no great detriment to the whole. Overall, Natural Causes is a highly enjoyable read and a promising addition to the crime fiction fold. A sequel, The Book Of Souls (review to follow, but better than the first) is to be published in July with a welcome third to follow. 

In an interview with Oswald, published at Crime Fiction Lover, the author explains that he did not promote his work through social media during its amazing rise up the bestseller charts because, 'Im just not very good at blowing my own trumpet'. 

Well, I have no hesitation in doing that here: If you like Rankin, you'll like Oswald. 

Review: The Gods of Gotham by Lyndsay Faye

The premise of Lyndsay Faye's fascinating novel, The Gods of Gotham, was always going to be difficult to resist. Set against the backdrop of the great fire of New York City in 1845 it tells a story of the birth of the famous NYPD amid a great political dispute and the tidal wave of immigrants arriving from Ireland to escape the catastrophic potato famine.

There's a great deal to like about Faye's book - not least a cracking murder mystery investigated by the nascent "Copper Stars" force - but chief among them is a great wealth of historical detail outlining one of the pivotal periods of development of one of the world's great cities.

Faye's story takes place at a time when lower Manhattan is a combustible - quite literally in 1845 - cocktail of commerce and poverty, in which great fortunes are being made and laying the foundations of the City's global financial dominance but while tens of thousands of immigrants, blacks and native (not Red Indian, you understand) Americans are hovering on a desperate breadline.

Many passages of the book take the reader into quite desperate corners of humanity: brothels exploiting orphan and other lost children; the most deprived and depraved slums, such as the Five Points where misery is a constant companion to many who have fallen through the cracks of a brutal and merciless society. These passages reminded me of The People of the Abyss, Jack London's stark 1903 account of life in late Victorian East London, which detailed the struggle of the poor living on the doorstep of what was then the world's wealthiest city.

The Gods of Gotham is also an extaordinary reminder of the youth of the United States of America in general and of New York City in particular. In 1845 New York City had a population under 375,000 but was expanding at a staggering rate (by 1860 it had more than doubled) as waves of immigrants landed from the old world in search of a better life or in flight from persecution or economic disaster. But while Faye describes life in a densely packed Manhattan she also describes the orchards, woods and farmlands that separate the City from Harlem - scenes that's are unimaginable now. 

The huge and unfettered growth of Gotham creates the conditions that make it necessary for the City's fathers to instigate its first police force: not least the religious and economic tension between the new arrivals with their "popery" and the city's existing residents who fear for their jobs, their way of life and even their lives at the hands of the demonised, dehumanised Irish.

Into this heady mess our hero Timothy Wilde is pitched. After his savings and his dreams of marriage go up in flames during the fire, his politico brother Valentine arranges a commission for Tim in the newly former Copper Star force, walking the beat in the dangerous 6th ward - "hell's privy pit". 

As Tim adjusts unhappily to his new life and circumstances, he has his world turned upside a second tiem when a young, terrified girl, covered in blood, runs into him during his rounds. Tim takes the girl to his landlady for care and shortly after is confronted with a second, bllody child - this one dead in suspicious circumstances.

Tim's investigations, gently encouraged by George Washington Matsell, a historical figure later to become the City's first Commissioner of Police, open up a can of worm that the City's political agitators are determined to turn into a religious war on the Irish.

It's a heady, raucous brew, enlivened by extraordinary characters such as the City's army of paperboy entrpreneurs, an early anatomist and Matsell himself. Early NYC is vividly brought to life and the story is further enriched by the liberal use of the "Flash" language, the Rogue's Lexicon recorded for posterity by Matsell.

Faye keeps an ambitious and involved plot moving at a good speed and doesn't let her clear fascination for the history hinder the unfolding of her story. The Gods of Gotham is a worthy addition to the historical crime canon, and I hope a second installment follows.  

REVIEW: The Fall by Claire McGowan

If your 2012 Summer getaway coincides with the holiday weekend and you're looking for a sharp and gripping thriller, then pick up a copy of Claire McGowan's debut novel The Fall, which is published in paperback this week.

McGowan has clearly learned much from her role as Director of the Crime Writers Association, as The Fall is an immaculately engineered thriller that initially threatens to head into genre cliche territory but avoids all the traps and emerges as a fresh, challenging and enjoyable novel. It is also stylishly written, with a light and often witty touch.   

The Fall tells the story of two women from opposite ends of the social spectrum whose lives crash into one another after a murder in a night club. Charlotte, a PR professional, is there with her banker fiancee Dan a few days before their perfect, extravagant wedding and fabulously expensive honeymoon. Keisha is there with her feckless, abusive boyfriend Chris.

Until Dan is arrested for the murder of the nighclub's owner, Charlotte's prime concern in life was her table plan and ensuring that the flowers don't clash with the linen at the reception of the Mandarin Oriental. Within days of his arrest she discovers that her middle class life was more fragile than she could have imagined. Her friends desert her with indecent haste, her career is in crisis and her banged-up boyfriend was up to his ears in debt.

Keisha, who already knew she was penniless, is pre-occupied by regaining access to her daughter Ruby who is in care and her sick mother.

Although neither realises it, the two women have more in common than their link to the murder, and this is what I liked best about The Fall: its subtle and clever analysis of the lines of class and colour that criss-cross London and their deconstruction as Keisha and Charlotte form an unlikely alliance. The passages that track their developing relationship are the most compelling in the book. While the men in the story are mostly hopeless - even likable investigating copper Matthew Hegarty demonstrates less than ideal judgment - the women are strong and resourceful, particularly Keisha.

The crime often feels subsidiary to this character-driven plot - even though it is the hinge that joins the two women - but that narrative is kept up as Hegarty, Charlotte and Keisha all negotiate their way through the web that has entangled them.

This is a strong, confident debut that deserves the praise that has been heaped on it, and I daresay that most who read it will be waiting expectantly for McGowan's next star turn The Lost, when it is published next year.

 

REVIEW: Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Four pages from the end of Gone Girl, I could only marvel at the ability of Gillian Flynn to maintain an electric level of tension and mystery throughout a 400-pls page novel. Four pages from the end, I still had no idea how this mesmerising book would end, and was every bit as gripped as I had been from the very first page.

A day earlier, at 1.30am in a hotel room in Germany, I was torn between two competing and mutually exclusive demands. I had to know how Gone Girl finished, and therefore read the final 150 pages, but I had to try and get some sleep.

Gillian Flynn has that effect on me, and many many others. In the six years I have been writing Material Witness, no author has delivered a three card trick as powerful as Sharp Objects, Dark Places and now Gone Girl.

In my review of Dark Places, I wrote that Flynn's greatest strength is her ability to put the reader "inside the story, having them live every twist and turn", with her characters.

And she repeats the trick here, in a very clever story in which nothing is quite what it seems and nobody quite who people think they are.

Nick and Amy Dunne are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary when Amy disappears from their home amidst signs of a struggle. The ensuing investigation - in which Nick, who has no alibi for the critical period, inevitably becomes the focus of suspicion - begins to chip away at the facade of their marriage. In parallel we learn their history through Amy's diaries, which detail the souring of the perfect love story as both lose their jobs and they move back from New York City to Nick's childhood home town on the Mississippi in Missouri.

Seeing the story in alternate chapters from twin perspectives - the present through Nick's eyes, history through Amy's words - is a simple device that immediately ratchets up the tension, lifting the lid on the private institution of marriage and putting husband and wife at loggerheads.  

Even if most married couples do not experience the extremes of Amy and Nick, every one will recongise the telltale signs of the stresses and strains of relationships, the petty resentments and irritations that, if allowed to fester, infect everything very quickly. This makes the story both disturbing and compulsive, like a motorway pile-up, and sustains it for 400 pages.

All the hallmarks of success from Flynn's first two books are here: a pacey, emotional narrative; characterisation of the highest order and first class writing.  

Gone Girl is a strong candidate for thriller of the year - it's certainly the best I've read in 2012 and it should add to the reputation of Gillian Flynn, who surely now ranks in the highest echelons of the thriller writer world.

 

REVIEW: The Roots of Betrayal by James Forrester

What is it about pirates that so enthralls us? In other criminals the murder, mayhem and misogyny would be regarded as repulsive. But pirates are increasingly romanticised in fiction - from The Pirates of Penzance to Jack Sparrow, they are no longer the terrifying villains of old but now are viewed as swashbuckling heroes.

William Harley, Clarenceux King of Arms, the herald at the centre of James Forrester's excellent series, confronts this question of pirates himself. Clarenceux (as he is known), now in his second Elizabethan conspiracy-thriller The Roots Of Betrayal, is thrust into the pirate life when he finds himself in the company of the wonderfully named Raw Carew, a privateer prowling the English channel in search of "Catholic treasure".

Clarenceux too is seeking the same treasure, although he understands that it is not gold, but a document whose content is so explosive it threatens not just Elizabeth's legitimacy on the throne but also the lives of those who have it in their possession and even those who see it. 

As their twin quests collide, so do their very different world views. Clarenceux is essentially an academic, a researcher who travels the land documenting the heraldic claims of the landed gentry. He has had adventure forced on him by his protection of, and subsequent loss of, said document. (For back story, see Sacred Treason).  Carew, by contrast, is the bastard son of a nobleman who fled a life of poverty in Calais - where he had been abandoned to his fate with his prostitute mother - for a life of crime on the high seas. Carew is a charismatic man of action, governed only by his desire to make a living for himself in his chosen profession and his Robin Hoodesque credo of looking after the poor and oppressed.

Despite witnessing Carew's violence, philandering and piracy - and indeed being its victim - Clarenceux, a religious man, cannot help but be drawn to the man, and ultimately they end up allies of sorts, drawn together by a mutual quest for survival.

The relationship between the two men and their adventures is the heart of an enjoyable novel that moves along at a good enough pace, with action and intrigue balanced by Forrester's natural inclination towards detail - political, social, historical. (In real life, Forrester is historian Ian Mortimer).  

Both men have also been betrayed. Carew has been betrayed by his father; but Clarenceux is not entirely sure by whom he has been betrayed. The document, much sought after both by crown loyalists and rebellious Catholics alike has been stolen from him, placing his life in danger. The Queen's attack dog Francis Walsingham - still smarting at being out-manoeuvered by Clarenceux in the original quest for the document - seeks to pin treason on Clarenceux, who is left without a soul to trust until he runs painfully into Carew.

If on occasion Forrester gets bogged down in period detail, he can be forgiven because ultimately the vivid Tudor canvass he paints enriches a lively story. And if the plot is perhaps just a little too reminscent of Sacred Treason, it doesn't matter too much as Carew arrives to give it a steroidal shot in the arm.

This is a fine historical novel, full of intrigue and drama and I look forward to the promised third part of the trilogy, The Final Sacrament, when it is published next year.  

 

REVIEW: Purge by Sofi Oksanen

Shortly before I read Purge, I heard an academic on the radio talking about how, for all its dangers and privations, the 1939-45 war was "straightforward" for Britain and its people. This remark was made in the context of a former Ukrainian soldier and UK immigrant, who had essentially survived the war only because he had chosen, when captured, to fight for the German army rather than go to a camp.

"At least the British always knew who the enemy was," the academic said, and I paraphrase, "for many Europeans on the ever-moving front line between Germany and Russia, life was much more complicated."

I kept this thought in mind throughout Sofi Oksanen's Purge, a clever, subtle psychological thriller which tells the story of two women trapped between nations and ideologies, forced into compromise and crime in the desperate battle for survival. The first, Aliide, is an Estonian peasant who spends the latter part of the war and then the Cold War locked in a loveless marriage with a Party official as she seeks to hide a secret past and present that represents imminent danger to her. The second, Zara, is a young Russian woman who leaves poverty and boredom in the east for freedom in the west only to find that her freedom holds its own awful price - sexual slavery.

The story evolves in parallel with the relationship between the two women, after Zara arrives on Aliide's doorstep bloodied and beaten, fleeing for her life. As the two women spar their way through a suspicious and largely silent introduction, their stories unfold through trips back to their earlier lives. Zara has her head turned by a flashy friend returning to their hometown, dripping with gold, telling stories of the riches within her reach.

Meanwhile Aliide journeys through Estonia's painful past and the transition from German occupation to Soviet state to fledgling democracy. Each regime demands its own sacrifice for personal survival, and throw Aliide into conflict either with the state, her neighbours even her family. The Soviet era is particularly fraught with danger as petty jealousies and ancient grudges are pursued through insidious betrayal to the secret police.

The banality and pointlessness of so much of the surveillance and snitching is in direct contrast to the devastating impact it has on lives and families. The climate of fear and suspicion reduces individuals either to party clones or to shells of their former selves - terrified of everyone and everything, even their own thoughts.

And so this is not just the story of Aliide and Zara, of course, it is the story of Estonia and countless other nations caught in the frontline between conflicting ideologies and eras.

Purge has a sort of stealthy brilliance that crept up on me and took an iron grip that I didn't notice until I neared its breathless finale. But brilliant it undoutedly is, seamlessly combining the agonising struggling of the individual with the crushing weight of important themes.

Inevitably, given that the writer - a young woman of Finnish/Estonian extraction - is from the Nordic region, she will be lumped in with the great Scandinavian crime wave currently taking over the globe. And while that might well help build Sofi Oksanen's profile and sales, on the evidence of this book she does not fit into this category (just as Finland is not part of Scandinavia). And that's not a value judgement, just a warning: don't come here expecting the new Larsson or Nesbo. Oksanen has a fresh voice, one that I look forward to hearing more from.

 

 

 

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.

 

On the Stand: Imogen Robertson

I became an instant fan of Imogen Robertson early last year when I first encountered her amateur Georgian detectives, Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther in her debut novel Instrument of Darkness. It was immediately evident from that novel that the Daily Telegraph had picked a real talent to win its Novel in a Year competition in 2007.

The two novels that have followed, Anatomy of Murder and Island of Bones, confirmed those first impressions. This is an historical series to rival the best in the genre.

I am very grateful to her for taking the time out to answer a few questions...

Favourite author:

Nevil Shute. Today that is. Like most people I find it impossible to stick to one favourite, but I do envy Shute’s prose and I find the books deeply moving.

Favourite book:

Gaudy Night by Dorothy L Sayers. A great detective novel, with the best marriage proposal in Latin ever delivered in 20th century literature.

Favourite character:

Stephen Maturin from the Aubery-Maturin novels of Patrick O’Brian. I love his intelligence and awkwardness, and the way his fascination with natural history can blind him to what else is happening around him. I read through the entire series in the matter of a couple of months some years ago, and suspect he is one of the spiritual Godfathers of my own character, Gabriel Crowther.

Best book read in 2011:

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters. Bit of a cheat this, because I read it when it first came out, but I did reread it this year when I was preparing for a workshop on historical fiction. Meant to just look for a passage to use for teaching, then couldn’t stop. The way Waters manages to convey the tone of a certain age is remarkable. Reading her is a masterclass in historical writing.

Best crime city:

London. Of course. The way we are all piled on top of each other in this city of secret corners, back alleys and crowds. Sit on a London bus for an hour and you’ll have a story.

Best film adaptation:

No Country for Old Men. The Coen brother’s film of the book by Cormac McCarthy. One of the most frightening but beautiful films I’ve seen in years. I never thought they could match the poetry of McCarthy’s prose, but they do. I still have nightmares about being out on the Mexico border being chased by Javier Bardem

Book that gave you the thriller bug:

I’ve read mystery and crime novels since I could smuggle a flash-light into bed, but as an adult I think it was Nicci French’s The Memory Game. I missed stops on the tube and fell of escalators reading that one.

New/Young author to watch:

I met Diane Janes at an event last year and so bought her first book The Pull of the Moon. I loved it. A brilliant thriller, taught and atmospheric. I’m really looking forward to the next one. ‘Why Don’t You Come for Me?’ which is out in May.

What do you snack on while writing:

Coffee, cigarette, sugared almond. Coffee, cigarette, sugared almond. Repeat till word count is completed.

Who would play you in a film of your life:

On my good days, Emma Thompson. On my bad days Richard E Grant in Withnail mode.

 

My thanks to Imogen and to Helena Towers at Headline for facilitating the interview.

REVIEW: Island of Bones by Imogen Robertson

They are crime fiction's odd couple: the aging anatomist who has his renounced title and estate to pursue a quiet life dedicated to science; and the glamorous and wealthy young naval widow (and landowner) with an inappropriate sense of curiosity and a healthy disregard for the tedious rules of society.

Gabriel Crowther and Harriet Westerman have brought an engaging freshness to the historical crime novel, throwing light into the dark and secretive corners of Georgian England from deepest, rural Sussex (Instruments of Darkness) through conspiratorial London (Anatomy of Murder) and on to feudal, pagan Cumbria in this latest outing, Island of Bones.

As in the previous novels in the series, Island of Bones is notable for the combination of revealing historical detail, inctricate plotting and strong and entertaining characterisation.

Crowther and Harriet, who by now have obtained a degree of notoriety for their macabre investigations are called upon to investigate the discovery of an unexplained body in the tomb of the Earl of Greta, on the Earl's former lands near the town of Keswick. The land, not at all coincidentally, briefly belonged to Crowther who inherited it following the murder of his father (by Crowther's brother), the incident that convinved him to turn his back on his history.

The body turns up clues which hint at long-forgotten mysteries surrounding the original transfer of land to Crowther's father following the disgrace of the Earl of Greta who joined the ill-fated Jacobite rebellion. Crowther cannot resist delving deep into a history of familial malevolence, betrayal, jealousy and murder and with Harriet's impulsive and irresistible assistance his investigation begins to dislodge long-held secrets.

There is a touch of the MIdsomer Murders about Island of Bones - and I mean that in the most complimentary way. There is a truly outstanding supporting cast of utterly eccentric rural characters held in thrall to an extraordinary mix of pagan folklore, old wives tales and marvellous ghost stories.  This is a long way from the contemporary sophistication of Georgian London, and Robertson evokes the dark, local landscape skilfully. Where it diverges from Midsomer Murders is in the strong and compelling story-telling.

Robertson spins her tale brilliantly, playing show and tell with her readers, dropping tantalising hints into the mystery and illusory glimpses of the truth while ratcheting up the tension.

Crowther and Harriet, odd match though they might be, are the perfect leading pair for Robertson's dramas, their contrasting darkness and light, professional and energetic passion merged to just the right effect. These are splendid novels that will win a wide audience.