Material Witness

REVIEW: Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn

I have a small confession to make. If I had looked at the synopsis on the back cover of Silent in the Grave before I picked it up and put it in my backpack, I might never have read it. It didn't look too appealing.

But as I was rushing out the door on my way to work, and knowing that I was close to the end of the previous book I was reading and that I would be miserable on the train without a new read, I simply picked up the closest book to hand, and left myself no choice but to give it a go. And thank goodness, because my sheer good luck was repaid immediately and I found myself hooked from the first chapter.

So enjoyable did I find this wonderful slice of historical mystery fiction, in face, that I can no longer recall what it was about the book that I didn't find appealing. Perhaps the promise of 400 pages spent with buttoned-up Victorian womanhood? Perhaps an unlikely-sounding plot? No idea. Can't remember.

Whatever I was anticipating doesn't matter one jot. What I got was a witty, beautifully-written slice of Victorian life among the upper classes, and a fine mystery novel to boot.

Deanna Raybourn's plot sounds misleadingly simple. A young aristocratic woman, Lady Julia Grey, watches her husband collapse and die of an apparent heart condition during a dinner party. With his family background offering much experience of short males lives, Sir Edward's death is attributed to natural causes.  But just as Lady Julia settles into her 12-month period of mourning, a dark figure  arrives on the scene telling dark tales of threats and murder.

At first, Lady Julia dismisses the tale of Nicholas Brisbane, a handsome charismatic figure who leaves her flustered, but a year later after finding a threatening note tucked away at the back of her husband's bureau drawer, she realises he was telling her the truth and enlists him to investigate the circumstances of her husband's death.

And so one of mystery fiction's oddest partnerships is formed.  The dashing and determined Brisbane and the amateur enthusiast Lady Julia.

The two embark on a dangerous journey  that takes them from Gyspy encampments on Primrose Hill  through to shenanigans "below stairs" and even into Mayfair's finer brothels.

The story is sparky and exceptionally well told, always amusing and endlessly interesting.  The mystery plot develops slowly, but is worth the wait as it boils up to fiery ending. But while biding her time with the plot, Raybourn built her edifice quite brilliantly, revealing much fascinating details about late Victorian mores, attitudes and behaviour. The description of the absurdities of the mourning period and the place in society occupied by the mourner are as hilarious as they are detailed. Not being a Victorian historian I don't know how accurate all of this is, but it is convincing and that is all that really matters from the perspective of fiction.

Raybourn also introduces us to an electic collection of characters who one hopes will populate the promised sequels to this book. From Lady Julia's sapphic sister Portia, through her morbid aunt - nicknamed "the Ghoul" because of her attraction to the dead and dying - through various odd brothers, doctors, servants and society figures. It is a rich and satisfying tapestry.

What is all the more remarkable about this wonderful book is that Deanna Raybourn (who keeps a terrific blog that is well worth a visit) appears to hail from south Texas, amking her detailed research and description all the more commendable.

If I have a complaint, it is this: the second book in the Lady Julia Grey / Nicholas Brisbane series  is apparently not going to be published until January 2009. Come on, Deanna, give me a break. I want it now! (And I did get a copy a little early. Click here for a review of Silent in the Sanctuary.)

REVIEW:No Time for Goodbye by Linwood Barclay

The uncorrected proof of No Time for Goodbye really didn't need the blurb from Peter Robinson enticing potential readers with the line: "If you liked Harlan Coben, you'll love Linwood Barclay".

Substitute Coben's suburban New Jersey for Barclay's coastal Connecticut, added to a storyline of extraordinary (and dangerous) things happening to  seemingly ordinary people, throw in precise, controlled story-telling, fine characterisation and a dramatic build-up in tension and you have a vintage Coben bottled and corked by the Canadian writer, who is adding a first standalone novel to a four book series featuring science fiction writer Zack Walker.

In the UK at least, Barclay has yet to develop much of a profile, but No Time for Goodbye should change that as it joins the rush for the post Christmas book voucher spend when it is published here in January (following a successful September launch in North America).

Barclay's story begins with 14-year old Cynthia Bigge waking up one morning, after being carpeted the night before for breaking all sorts of parental rules, to find an empty house. When she returns home from school later she realises that her parents and brother have disappeared without either trace or explanation.

A quarter of a century later, she is now Cynthia Archer, married to a kind and gentle schoolmaster, with a young daughter of her own, and still carrying the deep scars of still-mysterious past.

The profound psychological impact her abandonment has on Cynthia - a situation that includes the fact that she has no idea if her family is dead or left her on her own on purpose - plays a huge role in the early chapters of the story. That this is incredibly skilfully handled is to a large degree the key to the success of the book. Cynthia is paranoid and neurotic and traps her family in her own past with her inability to move on sufficiently for them to develop their own lives. It causes friction in her marriage and frustrates her 8-year-old daughter, who is smotheringly mothered.

When signs begin to emerge that her family might not be dead and that they are trying to contact her, the tensions are only intensified.

Barclay brilliantly brings this pressure cook to the boil, creating a claustrophobic environment breeding mistrust, anger and resentment. From there he launches a more conventional thriller in which Cynthia and her long-suffering husband Terry launch a desperate search for the truth before that elusive commodity finds them and tears them apart.

And as the body count rises, so do the questions that must be answered and suddenly everybody is under suspicion.

If I have one criticism of No Time For Goodbye - and in all honesty this is really only nit-picking, I thoroughly enjoyed this book - it is that Barclay gives the game away a little early and long-time students of the Harlan Coben approach to thriller-writing will spot the twists in the climax a good 30 pages before the author might have wanted them to.

But no matter. This is a terrific thriller, and one that should herald the arrival of Linwood Barclay. Perfect either for those post-Christmas blues or (if you can get hold of a copy earlier) for that moment on December 25 when you just need to be alone for a little while.   

Books beyond borders: how the 'net is being cast ever wider

Material Witness is being featured as a guest blog at the 2007 Love of Reading Online Book Fair, which opens today and runs through until Friday. It's a great idea with massive potential and they have some terrific events going on for the next three days.

On a rainy night in July this year, I was hanging around in a bar in the Crown Hotel in Harrogate, sharing a beer with Steve Mosby, author of the excellent but too little known thriller The  50/50 Killer, waiting for Laura Lippman, Mark Billingham and others to take the stage for the celebrated Foul Play feature in the Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival.

Steve introduced to me his Dutch publisher, Steven Maat, who began filling me in on some of his other writers. Among them was Australian Peter Temple. I admitted I had heard of Temple, but had not read any of his books yet.

"You must," he said. "You must read Peter Temple."

And so I did, picking up a copy of The Broken Shore, and I very quickly discovered why Steven had been so insistent.

As the famous ad goes: Ticket to Foul Play at the Harrogate Crime Festival - £7.50. Beer in the bar at the Crown Hotel - £3.50. Rail ticket to Harrogate: £37.60. Getting a hot recommendation for an Australian writer from a Dutch publisher in a bar in North Yorkshire: Priceless.

Priceless, perhaps, but inefficient and rare. The Harrogate experience was terrific. I picked up recommendations for perhaps half a dozen other authors I hadn't heard of, or only vaguely knew of. But Harrogate comes but once a year. I need recommendations for new authors all the time, and not just from publishers, literary critics and the featured writers' table at Borders. But from others who share my fascination and love of crime fiction, and who are prepared to look past Dan Brown and Ian Rankin and Michael Connelly and find the hidden gems.

And that, of course, is where the internet plugs the knowledge gap.

It's been going on for a while, starting with the great retailer in the ether.

There are those in the literary and blogging community that view Amazon as Iran views the US: the Great Satan. For their discounting of books and application of heavy unbearable pressure on independent booksellers. For taking the romance out of buying books.

I've never taken that view, regarding Amazon as an efficient, inexpensive source of books and a lifesaver at Christmas, keeping me away from the misery of the holiday shopping season.

But early on, Amazon introduced me to some of my now favourite authors - Robert Crais and Laura Lippman among them - through their "people who bought this book also bought books by x, y and z". Shameless marketing, yes of course it is. But it's useful.

In the very early days of the internet retailing phenomenon, someone at Amazon was clever enough to recognise the power of the community, of the independent recommendation and harnessed it in a very clever way.

But as people have come to understand the power of the internet as a marketplace for the exchange of ideas, the community has become ever more sophisticated and found news ways to interact. Blogs are, of course, a big part of it. Material Witness was started as a place for me to fill what I perceived as a gap in the literary criticism landscape here in the UK.  The mainstream media, I feel, devotes far too little time and space to genre fiction, making it difficult for those with an interest to find new books and authors.

Once I started doing it, I was thrilled to discover that others were doing the same, and was delighted to become part of a wider community bouncing ideas and recommendations back and forth between themselves.

And more resourceful people than I have found ways  of both extending the community and at the same time drawing it tighter together. Barbara Fister's Carnival of the Criminal Minds is just one such example: a fortnightly tour around the crime fiction world, starting off in Australia, moving on to the West Coast before moving on to the Windy City. The Carnival is coming to a blog near you in about a month's time.

And now we have the Love of Reading Online Book Fair, opening today. I missed last year's event, and I'm fascinated to see how it works and to pick up some new ideas.

And the best part of all this? We're really only at the beginning. The internet is still in its infancy and we've only just started to work out how we can engage with it, and by extension, the world.

Enjoy the Fair.   

10 Questions: Martin Edwards

How is it possible for an author who has been reviewed (positively) in the New York Times and Chicago Tribune to have slipped under the radar here for so long?

I really have no idea, but I'm grateful to have found Martin Edwards now, not least because he has fantastic website, which is full of unexpected treasure. I particularly recommend clicking on the "Collecting crime" link.

Martin writes novels set in Liverpool and the English lakes, and has been generous enough to answer the 10 questions.

Favourite author:Charles Dickens. Among crime writers: Ruth Rendell, aka Barbara Vine (living) and Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie (deceased)

Favourite book: American: Catch-22. British: Billy Liar and Bleak House. British crime: A Fatal Inversion. US crime:  Red Leaves

Favourite character: Sherlock Holmes

Best book read in 2007: British: The Secret Hangman by Peter Lovesey. American:  Whiskey Sour        by J.A.Konrath. Older book: 'The Prisoner' by Boileau and Narcejac

Best crime city: London

Best film adaptation: Not easy to choose between: Don't Look Now, Vertigo, and Get Carter

Book that gave you the thriller bug: The Murder at the Vicarage

Author to watch: American: J.A. Konrath. British: Kate Ellis

What you snack on while writing: Kit-Kat chocolate biscuits

Who would play Martin Edwards in a film of your life: Robert Lindsay, if the casting director was feeling very generous

Spinning around the 'sphere: the best of the blogs

It's been a while since I had the chance to have a good trawl around the blogosphere and draw together some of the excellent stuff that is always out there. This site benefits quite a bit from the conscientiousness of other bloggers in linking here and I've been negligent in not returning the favour. So consider (some of) this a belated repayment of some debts.

First up, a great idea from crimeficreader over at It's a Crime! (or a mystery...) where some of Britain's best crime writing talent has been signed up to offer their books for Christmas. So far Steve Mosby, Ann Cleves, Andrew Taylor and a raft of others have been signed up. Keep tracking back over there throughout November when their posts go live.

Petrona doesn't deal exclusively in crime and other nastiness, which is a pity for those of us with one track minds, but enlightening for others, I suspect. Nonetheless, when she does  turn  her attention to  the darker arts, Maxine is always interesting, and this weekend, as part of the Sunday Salon collective (something I'm still trying to get my head around) she has unearthed a shinging gem from Peter Temple, whose back catalogue is on my Christmas list this year.

There's always something worth seeing over at Eurocrime, where Karen continues to keep one of the most comprehensive sites on the net. Her blog contains a raft of new reviews right now as well as  some early news of what will be on offer in Harrogate next year at the Crime Writing Festival. It looks like a typically heavyweight line-up is being assembled including Peter Robinson and a personal favourite in Robert Crais.

One of the better ideas I've seen in my recent travels around the web is the Mysteries Around the World site, a sort of crime fiction atlas from the good people at the Tulsa Library Service in Oklahoma. I came across this marvel when looking into what seems to me to be the onset of world crime domination by Scandinavian writers. (Something I plan to go into more detail on another time). So if you feel tempted by a crime novel set in Bosnia, Botswana or some other far-flung corner, this is the place to start.

Finally, a plug for three author blogs. Steve Mosby is currently in Italy doing some publicity for his excellent book The 50/50 Killer, which should be far better known than it is, so I hope it's going well for Steve over there. Another ludicrously under-the-radar book is Alex Scarrow's Last Light, which analyses the potential impact of a global oil drought, and ought to be scaring the shit out of people everywhere. Alex currently seems to be preoccupied with X Factor, the execrable lack-of-talent show running on a  television screen near you, but here's a terrific post from earlier in the year (which I missed until last week) in which the clearly-paranoid author reveals the moment he thought he was the subject of a sniper attack in London.

And finally, an introduction (for me at least) to Martin Edwards, a UK novelist writing books set in Liverpool and the Lake District. I'm looking forward to getting to grips with his books in the near future, but in the meantime, here's his blog, Do You Write Under Your Own Name? to be going on with.

10 Questions: John Connor

The latest subject for the 10 questions is John Connor, author of the acclaimed Karen Sharpe police procedurals set in the West Yorkshire area. His latest book, Falling, reviewed here recently,  has just been published. And very good it is too.

The review prompted an exchange of ideas between myself and John about how crime fiction like their lead characters: angular, awkward and tough-to-love like Karen Sharpe or KInsey Millhone girl-next-door-likable. I'll write that up next week. There will also be my guest blog for the Love of Reading online book fair, subject yet to be determined.

In the meantime, thank you to John for taking the time to respond:

Favourite author: No single one. J M Coetzee, Mika Waltari, Ford Maddox Ford, Chandler, Hammett, and many others

Favourite book: As above; Disgrace, The Dark Angel, Parades End, Farewell My Lovely, The Maltese Falcon (for the Flitcraft chapter), The Thought Gang (Tibor Fischer) and others

Favourite character: Sharrow, from Against A Dark Background by Iain M Banks, or Becky Sharpe, of course (Vanity Fair)

Best book read in 2007: Ice Moon by Jan Costin Wagner

Best crime city: Chandler’s LA. In real life Bradford is pretty good for crime – I ran a team of lawyers prosecuting crime in Bradford and Leeds for a while, and it seemed as richly destructive as any city of greater note or size. All of West Yorkshire enjoys a unique landscape of mixed urban development (sometimes quite prestigious, as with Leeds) and post-industrial decay, laced now with terrible racial tensions  - the whole set in the most magnificent rural beauty. Rural beauty and inncer city blight are often right alongside each other. It's a fantastic area to set any kind of novel in. And I'm not from Yorkshire, so I'm not just doing the usual Yorkshireman's plug...

Best film adaptation: No idea

Book that gave you the thriller bug: El Invierno en Lisboa and Beltenebros. Both by Antonio Munoz Molina

Author to watch: Jan Costin Wagner, for crime. Ice Moon is a really very impressive book. Breaks enough rules to stand out from the pack. Beautiful bathos at the ‘climax’, for example.

What you snack on while writing:  Saucisson sec, cheese, selery salt, Palm beer (whilst over here, in Belgium). Probably packets of crisps in the UK. 

Who would play you in a film of your life:  No idea

 

Join the party: the 2007 Online Book Fair is imminent

The way in which the power of the internet is harnessed to bring people and ideas together is changing rapidly, and many industries, interest groups and communities are beginning to find innovative and exciting uses for the online exchange.

For about 18 months now I've been using Material Witness as a means of talking to the world about one of my great passions: crime fiction and associated genres.

It has had its successes and failures. I know I have introduced  some readers to authors and books that might otherwise have passed them by, and similarly I have had my eyes opened to things I otherwise would have missed.

What it has demonstrated is that there is an online community hungry for new ideas about books, and willing to look around to find them.

So hats off to FSB Associates, the pioneering online publicity agency for the publishing industry, which has given the community an event at which it can come together and celebrate the hugely positive collaboration between books and the web: the Love of Reading online Book fair, which runs for three days from Wednesday November 14.

I was honoured to be asked to be both a sponsor and guest blogger during the fair, and delighted to eb able to agree to both.

Full details for the book fair are below. Enjoy the show!

Love of Reading Online Book Fair

Second annual fair celebrates and connects online book community with three days of non-stop events

The second annual Love of Reading Online Book Fair will be held November 14-16 at www.loveofreading.com from the hours of 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST.

A cause for celebration and connection for the burgeoning online book community, the three-day fair has something for everyone, according to Fauzia Burke, a pioneer in online book promotion and president of FSB Associates, host of the successful event. With its “Love of Reading” theme, the event is designed for a wide audience—authors, publishers, booksellers, bookworms, bloggers, reviewers and anyone looking for a gift for the holidays.

“Participants will have non-stop interaction and information at their fingertips,” says Burke, along with a variety of special events and giveaways. Among the online happenings:

*Free raffles—including 3 free books an hour and one large prize giveaway per day

*Ongoing Podcasts and author readings by popular authors such as Alan Alda, Kim Edwards and Pulitzer Prize Winner Rick Atkinson.

*Guest bloggers and reviewers will blog at the fair

*Forum and discussion groups

*Reader’s Choice Award for favorite book jacket. Last year’s winner was the mega bestseller, The Thirteenth Tale.

*Roundtable discussions with topics including How to Get Your Book Published

“Today’s online book community is more vital and vibrant than ever” says Burke. “Throughout the book fair, we want to celebrate their increasingly important voice and connect people who love books in a whole new way."

REVIEW: The Tin Roof Blowdown by James Lee Burke

The sense of anger, betrayal, frustration and helplessness felt by the people of southern Louisiana, and in particular New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in early September 2005 is all but unimaginable.

The fact that the levees protecting the Big Easy from the waters of Lake Pontchartrain were known to be weak and inadequate to the task of holding strong in the event of a Category 5 and that funding for flood defence in the area was actually cut is nothing short of criminal negligence.

The fact that the people of New Orleans were forced to fend for themselves following the flooding when there was a total breakdown in society and the systems and authorities that govern it - in the world's wealthiest and most powerful country - is still almost impossible to believe.

With all that in the background, and indeed in the foreground of The Tin Roof Blowdown, it is surprising that James Lee Burke's anger is not louder, stronger, more violent even in this book.

That Burke is appalled and disgusted by the negligence, corruption and incompentence of city, state and federal authorities is evident in every chapter of this book. But his anger is understated and quiet, the sort of anger that children recognise from their parents as a sign that they are really in trouble this time. There are few references to any particular politician. President Bush, at one stage, is called the "shrubster" in a conversation that does not reflect well on the leader of the free world, and there is a scene in which Air Force One flies low over New Orleans and someone remarks sarcastically on how much better it makes them feel to know that the President is on the case

But the criticism and the anger is alrgely quiet, and more seething and more deadly for that.

The Tin Roof Blowdown opens with Katrina looming large, and quickly moves on to the relief that the storm seems to have passed - downgraded to a category 3 hurricane - without the cataclysmic damage that had been feared.

And perhaps if the government had kept those levees in the condition they needed to be in, the story would have ended there. But, of course the story did not end there and as the dam broke and water flooded in, the New Orleans Superdome and the neary Convention Centre became the epicentre of the global media for about 72 hours and the US, and its leaders were humiliated before the world, as its people - largely black, largely poor - paid the highest price for administrative complacency.

As the disastrous situation becomes clear, Dave Robicheaux is dispatched from his nearby home town on New Iberia to assist what remains of the NOPD to keep peace in the City - or at the very least, to restrict the growing war. What he finds appalls him, and the only reference point he has as a comparator is his experience in Vietnam. Burke's prose here is as purple as it ever was. His descriptions of the apocalyptic scenes are vivid and emotional, full of compassion and power.

But Burke is neither polemicist nor reporter, but rather a crime novelist and so out of the floods he creates a gripping thriller from the carnage as the wealthy white world and the criminal black world collide in the chaos with catastrophic results for all.

And so we find Otis Baylor, a successful insurance executive, holed up in his residence, feeling smug about how his generator will continue to give him air and light while his neighbours go without, and still seething about the rape of his teenager daughter at the hands of some black thugs some time earlier.

At the other end of the social scale, small time gangsters Bertrand and Eddy Melancon and Andre and Kevin Rochon, view the breakdown of law and order as a business opportunity: a chance to venture out into the unprotected world of the haves and engage in some serious redistribution of wealth.

The four young men break into an abandoned house on Baylor's street, ripping cocaine, weapons and huge wads of dollars bills out of the walls and ceilings that turn out to belong to dangerous gangland boss Sidney Kovick. They also remove a bag of blood diamonds, the pursuit of which, by various people you would not like to darken your doorstep, becomes the theme of the second half of the book.

As the four young men leave Kovick's residence, their boat runs out of fuel. They turn to the one source of obvious power in the street: Otis Baylor's generator. As they approach his house, however, one of them is recognised by his daughter as one of her assailants. In the ensuing melee, two of the men are shot, one fatally.

What happens from here is quintessential Burke as several storylines jostle for space in an increasingly involved narrative. Otis Baylor fights to clear his name as his life disintegrates before his eyes. Bertrand Melancon tries to come to terms with his own crimes and misdemeanours, and even enlists Dave Robicheaux's help as the subject on whom he unburdens his soul. Clete Purcel attempts to come to terms with the destruction of New Orleans in his own destructive way. And as Dave Robicheaux tries to hold everything together his family becomes the subject of the unwanted attentions of a psychopath with a strange-looking head.

While the Katrina angle gives The Tin Roof Blowdown a different focus from the usual Robicheaux outing (this is the 16th in the series) in every other way this is vintage Burke: a great plot, extraordinary characterisation, a closer-than-comfortable analysis of the blurred line that separates good from evil and all the atmopshere we have come to expect from the smell, sights and sounds of the Bayou Teche.

    

   

REVIEW: Playing for Pizza by John Grisham

One of the by-products of the greatness of John Grisham as a writer is that you can often speed through his tales without time to reflect on what a great writer he really is.

I think I've read the entire Grisham fictional oeuvre now from A Time to Kill through The Firm and  The Brethren and on to the latest, Playing for Pizza. I even read (and really enjoyed) Skipping Christmas. Some are better than others, obviously, but they are uniformly good.

Grisham writes so beautifully, so simply, with such touch, control and command of language that he allows aspirant thriller writers to be fooled into believing that this writing malarkey is easy. Anyone can do it. The legal thrillers, in particular, are effortless reads:  fantastic, sophisticated plots crammed full of believable, engaging characters; corkscrews of twists and turns; crackling dialogue and brooding atmosphere; and often they can be clever, thought-provoking morality plays to boot, full of simple, but often crushing observations on the nature of officialdom (and human nature), whether it be corrupt or virtuous, cowardly or valiant.

And more often than not, I simply don't notice. So good and pacy are the stories they kidnap you for the duration of the read and the rest of it slides by, assumed as a given, taken on trust.

And so it requires a step back to notice the brilliance of all this. For me that moment arrives when Grisham glides off piste. Most recently this occurred with The Innocent Man, the extraordinary true story of a desperately depressing miscarriage of justice.

And again this week with Playing for Pizza, a thoroughly charming tale of a washed-up American football player who is cast off the by the NFL after the 11 most pathetic minutes ever played by any quarterback anywhere and finds himself playing for a small stipend and a tiny Fiat for the might Parma Panthers in Italy.

Grisham has football previous. His terrific 2003 novel Bleachers found a group of former high school players reunited following the death of their legendary coach, and playing out the soundtracks of their youth while agonising over the missteps that followed.

Like Bleachers, Playing for Pizza is a story of broken dreams, but only to a limited extent. It is more a voyage of discovery, of new dreams and new lives.

Rick Dockery, the quarterback in question, is hounded out of Cleveland after his heroically inept final 11 minutes in the NFL - as a third string QB - costs the Browns their best ever chance of a first Superbowl. His beleaguered agent is laughed off the phone by alternative employers until a chance presents itself for Rick to become the new QB of the Parma Panthers.

Fleeing a mooted paternity suit from a Browns cheerleader, Rick reluctantly takes flight for Parma, where he is instantly welcomed as the messiah by his new team of enthusiastic amateurs; the real NFL QB who can take them to the promised land of a first Italian Superbowl.

Rick cautiously fumbles his way into La Dolce Vita. First through food, and the extraordinary hospitality of his hosts. He then has his head turned by the considerable charms of Italian womanhood, and ultimately even by opera.

This tale of the American abroad is beautifully handled by Grisham, whose admiration for Italians, their culture and their way of life shines through every page. For those who like their football, there is plenty of it, also lovingly described. For those who don't care for the pigskin, it really doesn't matter, there's too much life and laughter in this book to worry about the odd page turned over to quick slants, third downs and field goals.

And right there in the middle are Grisham's startling and deceptively simple observations on human nature.

It's a little gem, bursting with beauty, optimism and sunshine, that rattles along to a dramatic conclusion. I commend it to all.

REVIEW: Falling by John Connor

Very quietly, John Connor has come up through the ranks of UK police procedural writers corps, to the point where he really now should be considered among the very best practicing that difficult and particular art.

In Karen Sharpe, he has created one of the most complex and fascinating characters out there. She is damaged, moody, unpredictable and unreliable, yet brave and achingly resilient.  You wouldn't want to be Mairead, her long-suffering daughter, or Pete Bains, her live-in boyfriend.

The emotional scarring in a past blighted by the consequences of anti-terrorist undercover work leaves her with too little of herself to attend to their needs. But if you were the victim of a violent crime requiring the services of an avenging angel to track down the perpetrator and serve justice, you could do no better than Karen Sharpe. She is far from being crime fiction's most sympathetic carrier, but she is never less than interesting.

In Falling, Connor's fourth novel, DC Sharpe is recovering from another terrifying ordeal some 18 months earlier and has been relegated to simple unthreatening cases by the West Yorkshire Constabulary.

But when the brutal murder of a pregnant Asian woman and the near fatal shooting of her white husband remains unresolved for a week  with the latter victim unable or unwilling to cooperate with the investigation, Sharpe is called in as victim liaison in the hope that her bedside manner - soft and sympathetic - can open the case up.

Sharpe is swiftly in the midst of a nationwide man hunt with explosive racial undertones at a time when west Yorkshire and much of Lancashire is a tinder box of racial anger and frustration.

And as she is dragged ever deeper into her case, and a second vicious racist attack, Sharpe's personal life is brought into sharp focus once again, taking her fragile and frayed psyche to the very edge of oblivion.

This is an intense, uncompromising read. Stories told from multiple viewpoints, as Falling is, often feel fractured. But Connor marshalls  his materials expertly, keeping a compelling story moving  across many fronts towards a gripping climax.

It's high time that John Connor won the recognition and sales his great storytelling deserves.  Falling is a novel with all the tools to achieve that.