Material Witness

Double Jeopardy

April 25, 09.13

One of the (few) benefits of having a daily tube journey is it allows me to keep a finger on the pulse of public reading habits.

The first thing to report from the last couple of weeks is that the Dan Brown moment is over. The days of every third passenger reading the Da Vinci Code or Angels and Demons - the other books, which I have heard are dreadful, never reached the heights of Underground popularity as the two Vatican-baiting thrillers - have passed and diversity has returned.

In the last couple of days I have seen three people reading PJ Tracy books. PJ Tracy is the mother-daughter team of PJ and Traci Lambrecht that brought Minneapolis-St Paul to life for millions of readers who had previously thought the Twin Cities were nothing more than a frozen wasteland with a giant shopping mall - somewhere to fly over between Boston and San Francisco.

I bought one of their books, Want To Play, published in the US as Monkeewrench from a bookshelf in a pub for 50 pence.  At that price the book seemed worth a look, whereas I hadn't been prepared to pay ful whack for a thriller written by a team, as that sounded like a recipe for disaster.

Having spent seven years as a journalist I have some experience of tag team writing and know just how difficult it can be, defining who does what, meshing different pieces of text together and (more often than not) worrying about whose byline goes first - that might sound childish, pedantic and vain but trust me, it can be a real problem.

But somehow PC and Traci make it work for them - here is their explanation of how - and I thoroughly enjoyed it,  even to the extent that it vaguely made me want to go to Minneapolis, even if I haven't picked up another of the books, although I intend to get around to them.

Reading

Cross Bones (p317)

Tell No One revisited

April 24, 8.01pm

I loaded an unabridged recording of Tell No One onto my iPod before heading to the gym.

It's on there mostly because when I visited the library to find a replacement for The Historian, Elizabeth Kostova's modern vampire tale, which I finished while walking the dog over the weekend - for the record, I found it fascinating if a little slow in stretches - and there was nothing that tickled my fancy that I hadn't read before.

It was no great problem going back to Tell No One, which is certainly the most skilfully crafted mystery novel I have ever read - and the only book I can remember finishing in one sitting. At 4am in the morning in fact. Not long after I went to see Harlan Coben at a signing of Gone For Good at the Murder One bookstore on Charing Cross Road.

I complained to him that Tell No One had kept me up all night and with his signature in the book, he wrote: "This will keep you up even later." He was wrong though. I enjoyed Gone for Good, but not nearly as much as Tell No One, which is as close to the perfect thriller I can conveive of. What was apparent in Gone For Good is that Coben had hit upon a winning formula in the previous novel and was damned well going to stick to it: No Second Chance, Just One Look and The Innocent all followed a broadly similar pattern. That's not a criticism, just an observation. But none of the books that followed were as tightly knit as Tell No One.

So I now finding myself listening to that book as sort of a research project. Exactly what about it was so special? Are there elements in there that can reveal the secret of writing a great thriller? I think there might be.

Reading

Cross Bones (p287)

Listening to

Tell No One (CD 2 of 10)

Review: The Last Days of Newgate by Andrew Pepper

April 24, 09.32am

There is always a danger in assessing a debut novel that the reviewer is too willing for the writer to succeed, too hopeful perhaps that what they have in their hands is the only chapter of a glittering career, perhaps a trifle reluctant to put the boot in if necessary.

I felt this keenly when a proof of Andrew Pepper's first novel, The Last Days of Newgate dropped through the letterbox. It appeared as if this book would stimulate most of my sweet spots. It is set in 1829 - a fascinating era socially, politically, economically, criminally. It promised "high intrigue and low politics" and a reluctant and unusual hero. I wanted to like it.

The sine qua non of the historical novel is a convincing depiction of a the era in which it is set. It needn't be authentic necessarily - Pepper himself admits in his post-script that authenticity is all but impossible - but it needs to feel like it is. And this is Pepper's greatest achievement in The Last Days of Newgate does. He creates a vision of London for 1829 so atmospheric that it is almost possible to feel the fog enveloping your face, to smell the stench from the gutters and feel the danger in the rookeries. The despair of the wretched drink-addled, starving inhabitants of those rookeries reminded me of the London found by the novelist Jack London when he went underground in the East End more than 70 years later to research conditions there. (His findings of disease and poverty and exploitation were chillingly recounted in The People of the Abyss.) 

This is the world occupied by Pyke, Pepper's reluctant hero, a man of many contradictions (aren't all the best fictional detectives?) who is both thief and policeman (a Bow Street Runner no less) as well as innkeeper and philosopher.  He is clever, sensitive and thoughtful but quick to violence, and so, well-suited to the anarchic underbelly of a society constantly on the edge of tipping over into mayhem.

Pyke's role as a Bow Street Runner collides with his sideline as a private detective for a wealthy aristocrat when a suspect he is following for the latter leads him into a scene of unspeakable brutality and cruelty: the murder of a young Irish family in one of London's most notorious rookeries.

Pyke's investigation into the slayings carry him through both the extremes of London society - opera with the wealthy, bear-baiting with the working poor - and also puts him at the heart of the two most explosive political issues of the day: Catholic emancipation and police reform.

None of this journey ever feels like the work of a debutant novelist, there is scarcely a word out of place until a somewhat helter-skelter ending seems to get away just a little from Pepper.

But that barely detracts from a terrific and pacy read, from a brilliant debut full of great promise. Pepper's characters are as convincing as his places, and in Pyke, from whom more is expected he has a compelling and fascinating hero who could do for pre-Victorian London what Sharpe did for the Napoleonic Wars. If you like historical crime fiction, you'll love this.

The Last Days of Newgate by Andrew Pepper will be published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson on July 6.

Feisty women

April 20, 08.46am

I'm not quite sure what it was about California in the mid-to-early years of the last century, but it produced the most extraordinary fictional characters - in the private eye genre at any rate.

Now I know that two novels - The Big Sleep and The Maltese Falcon - is a small representative sample, and so I'm reluctant to create too many stereotypes from just these books, but my word are there some strong and unusual women in these novels.

The Sternwood girls - Regan and Carmen - in The Big Sleep are hard work even by their own estimation and the latter's handling of a gun should be enough of a warning to most suitors that they should steer clear, never mind the various other strange behaviour exhibited by both.

Another bravura performance comes from Mona Mars, gangster's moll, who helps Marlowe out of a tight spot late on with such a cool hand that only ice water could run in her veins.

Similarly, Effie Perrine, Sam Spade's deals with the violence, death and destruction that her employer brings into her life with the  sanguine acceptance she might show on being asked to do a spot of filing.

And then there is Dashiel Hammett's other (other than Spade himself, that is) masterpiece of characterisation - Brigid O'Shaughnessy - a femme fatale so devious, clever and convincing that she must rank amongst the most compelling female felons portrayed by anyone anywhere.

There's so much to admire in both these books, but this was something that struck me immediately about them. Another is the sense of place - the charcaterisation of the cities themselves - and that's something I'd like to return to later.

(btw the reason the needle on Cross Bones is stuck on p 198 is I can't find it. Please don't think I wasn't enjoying it, or have given up - I was and I haven't).

Reading

Cross Bones (p198)

The Last Days of Newgate by Andrew Pepper (p78)

On the Shelf

Pig Island by Mo Hayder

Pelagia and the White Bulldog by Boris Akunin

The Jasmine Trade by Denise Hamilton   

REVIEW: Pegasus Descending by James Lee Burke

April 18, 20.42pm

About halfway through James Lee Burke’s latest journey into the Lousiana underworld policed for almost two decades by Dave Robicheaux, the detective’s boss Sheriff Helen Soileau leaves her  New Iberia  parish to attend an emergency planning meeting in New Orleans.

It is the summer of 2005 in Pegasus Descending, the 14th Robicheaux novel, and when Soileau returns and is asked what she has discovered on her outing, Burke’s readers are treated to a grim piece of future history: that if a 160 mph wind hit the City, the levees of New Orleans will flood and leave the city floating in a pool of mud, oil and human waste.

The moment passes quickly. But without fuss and without pointed political polemic, Burke has made his point: that the potential for catastrophe in New Orleans was well known long before Hurricane Katrina shredded the Big Easy and was equally well ignored long before some of America’s poorest were left to fend for themselves in the most distressing of circumstances.

 
In its own quiet way, this book resonates with fury at how this situation was allowed to develop, and that will surprise those who familiar with Burke’s work who will doubtless know that Dave Robicheaux has little tolerance for those who abuse and exploit the disenfranchised (mainly black) population of south Lousiana.

James Lee Burke may have had no intention of making the brutal, senseless death of Yvonne Dubonaire and her the grief of her father Cesaire an allegory for the destruction of New Orleans and the misery of its  dispossessed but it is difficult to keep this thought out while reading Pegasus Descending.

But while Burke lands punches on those responsible for the New Orleans apocalypse, Robicheaux pursues his guilty parties with the finesse of an angry, wounded bull in a china shop  

What follows is a Robicheaux classic, populated by all the grotesque caricatures that a trip into the bayous is incomplete without: two racketeers/casino entrpreneurs and their privileged frat boy sons with whom Ms Darbonne became entangled before her death (by apparent suicide); a vicious killer without a moral compass; a publicity-hungry and politically-ambitious district attorney ready to throw the book at any available scapegoat for the sake of a media-friendly quick conviction and an overweight pusher who finds himself inadvertently pitched into this circle of hell.

What has always made Burke’s books so fascinating, however, is his refusal to take all the but the most repugnant of these characters at their decidedly ugly face value, but instead to see in each a reflection of their past and the chain of events and circumstances that informed their present.

 

This recognition of shades of grey makes for a convoluted, complex investigation into three deaths Robicheaux is certain are linked – one of which comes directly from his own past, the murder of a friend he witnessed through the bottom of a whisky tumbler – but which cause him constantly to re-examine suspects and their motivations.

His own demons rage within him as he struggles to overcome a visceral dislike of injustice and cruelty that brings him into conflict with those closest to him as well as his enemies.

 Burke’s legion of Robicheaux fanatics will love Pegasus Descending – as I did. It is a complex, emotional and sophisticated novel that speaks eloquently and wisely of Lousiana’s corrupt, unjust and morally decaying society but also of the strength and dignity of the human spirit of some and the cancer eating away at that of others. 

But I wondered, reading it, whether there was anything here for the new reader, the airport bookstand crowd that will see it on their way to the sun in mid July when it is published.

And I'm not sure there is. To a fresh pair of eyes, Robicheaux may now seem little more than an unhinged recovering alcoholic, whose odd mixture of compassion and rage is beyond comprehension, while Clete Purcel is nothing more than a deranged, violent lunatic.

These are difficult characters that require context, and I'm not sure that one book is nearly enough to give that. Dave is a product of the death of Annie, the dry drunks, Vietnam, John Bell Hood, Alafair and the Giacanos. Without them he is a carboard cutout. So if you're coming in a Robicheaux virgin, my advice is to go elsewhere, away from the tempting new releases at the front of the store and head to the shelves of older crime fiction, back to the beginning to Neon Rain and Heavens Prisoners.

That said this is a cracking tale, smartly told, with a plot line that is moved along with snap and with enough contortions to keep the reader twisting away. 

Oh, and for devotees of Clete Purcel, there is also one of the most memorable scenes of violence in any mystery/crime novel anywhere in which our blond Irish-Italian hero from the Channel attacks an adversary with a most unusual weapon.

 

Pegasus Descending is published by Orion Books on July 20.

Reading 

The Maltese Falcon (p135)

Flying falcon

April 18, 2006, 10.30am

It was a relatively light weekend on the book front as the generally decent weather called out for other activities - including two rounds of golf, one Friday, one Monday, same course but 110 on Friday, 93 yesterday. Go figure.

But I did have time to finish Pegasus Descending - review coming - and start The Maltese Falcon. For the life of me, I cannot now work out how I came to struggle with the Falcon so badly before. I picked it up late yesterday and was instantly hooked. It is everything I expected it to be the first time I picked it up, and more.

I was also given Pig Island as a chocolate-substitute easter present. It goes onto an ever-increasing shelf list that also includes the latest Boris Akunin, freshly arrived from the good folks at Weidenfeld & Nicholson.

More later

Reading

The Maltese Falcon (p117)

Cross Bones (p198)

Muy copacetico

April 13, 9.11am

Last day at the coal face before a long 4 day easter weekend lies gloriously ahead.

It may give me a little time to complete one or two tasks that need sorting:

• writing up the interview with Robert Crais
• starting The Maltese Falcon (17 days to go)
• finishing Pegasus Descending and writing the review

I am finding, as ever, that another book is calling out to me as I pass posters on the tube and elsewhere. The current book is Pig Island by Mo Hayder, the marketing for which is everywhere.

From the various blurbs  I've read  about it, it sounds a little like a modern update of The Wicker Man, one of my favourite movies ever.

I hadn't come across Mo Hayder's books until a friend recommended Tokyo last year, which I found extraordinarily compelling. I've not visited the city itself but have imagined it as a sort of claustrophic pressure cooker, with a culture disarming and disenfranching alien culture (which half came across in Lost in Translation.

Hayder created that sense brilliantly - the sense of being lost and lonely in a dangerous and unfamiliar environment - just the sort that Edward Woodward's copper came across in the remote Scottish Island in The Wicker Man. The same sort of remote Scottish island described in the Pig Island blurb.

But I must resist, at least until The Maltese Falcon has taken flight.

Happy, Copacetic Easter

Reading

Pegasus Descending (p270)

Cross Bones (p242)

Filming Dave

April 11, 17.19pm

Scooting around James Lee Burke's site earlier while beginning to build the links list on the left - I will work on this more in coming days - I noticed him talking about a possible film version of In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead.

Part of me is thrilled about this. Confederate Dead is my favourite JLB, my favourite crime novel in fact, a quite stunning work of art that straddles the line between actual and the spiritual quite brilliantly and tells the most emotional of all the stories of Dave Robicheaux's difficult, complicated and fascinating life.

Done well, it could be an equally arresting and revealing motion picture. But done badly it could do for JLB and Dave Robicheaux what the egregious 1986 version of 8 Million Ways to Die did for Lawrence Block and Matt Scudder. (Scudder in LA? Played by Jeff Bridges??? Give me a break.)

I quite liked the 1996 adaptation of Heavens Prisoners. While I wasn't convinced by Alec Baldwin as Dave, he was OK and some of the supporting cast, including the surprisingly good Teri Hatcher, were very watchable.

But Heavens Prisoners wasn't Confederate Dead and for me to enjoy a film like that it will need to be damned near perfect, and more than anything else that will mean getting the cast right. (As ITV must be realising now that they have the near-as-dammit-perfect Ken Stott playing Ian Rankin's Rebus rather than the entirely-wrong John Hannah.

Perhaps not surprisingly the image of Dave I've always carried in my head is one of James Lee Burke himself, with a Streak, and so I've never thought much about who might play him (although I've always fancied Holly Hunter for Bootsie). But getting that right would be critical. And for that matter Clete Purcel, Baby Feet Balboni and, of course  General John Bell Hood.

Any ideas?

More later

Vorsprung Durch Podcast

April 11, 9.20am

I've seen some odd cross-promotion in my time, but quite why BMW has joined the podcasting craze, I couldn't possibly say.

I came across the concept of BMW Audiobooks while cruising around  Guardian Unlimited, which is always a source of fresh thinking and innovative journalism - in fact probably the only newspaper website, in the UK at any rate, to have really understood the full potential and disruptive force of the online medium and tried to exploit it.

What made sit up and look at it was the fact that there is a clever looking tale from Karin Slaughter, that is now sitting on my iPod awaiting my next trip to the gym.

Reading

Pegasus Descending (p78)

Cross Bones (P198)

More later

Truth stranger than fiction again

April 10, 9.47am

A couple of years ago I was lucky enough to interview Carl Hiaasen for the Financial Times. One of the most memorable elements of a long and winding discussion was his concern that one of the biggest dangers for writers of his ilk was however absurd and fantastical his plots, however grotesque his characters, they would always be trumped by reality.

I remembered this conversation this morning when I was woken by the radio at 6am with the alarming news that George W Bush might consider it his "messianic" mission to implement regime change in Iran, possibly using tactical nuclear strikes. Does he not have enough on his plate next door? Who is giving this man advice?

Truth might well be stranger than fiction, but I have to say, when that's the first item on the news agenda, I'll stick with fiction, it's a good deal less scary.

Started the new JLB this morning. Forty pages in, I'm already hooked. As with Crusader's Cross, Dave Robicheaux is delving into his troubled, drink-ridden past. Will post a full review when through.

More later

Reading

Cross Bones (p198)

Pegasus Descending (p47)