Material Witness

REVIEW: The Rabbit Factory by Marshall Karp

The Rabbit Factory, Marshall Karp's debut novel, works beautifully on so many different levels it is difficult to know where to start.

First, it's a great Cop novel, a fresh green shoot on the tree originally planted by Joseph Wambaugh in The Choirboys, with which it shares its LAPD canvas. Karp works diligently  to establish his characters - Detectives Mike Lomax and Terry Biggs - and to build their partnership. Their camaraderie and witty cop bad badinage gives a terrific book its conscience and soul and is an excellent foundation, hopefully, for more outings for the pair.

It's also a great comic novel. I suspect that the fact the story is based around a series of murders linked to a fictional theme park owned by a giant media house with its origins in animation - Familyland, where the iconic character is Rambunctious Rabbit - led to the comparisons with Carl Hiaasen, who has covered similar territory.  But I'm not convinced by the comparisons. True, they are both very funny, but while Hiaasen's work may be rooted in Florida reality his books stray into territory that is borderline farce with out-and-out loons as central characters. Karp is more conventional; some of his people may be caricatures, but they are convincing nonetheless. His humour is based more on the witty one-liner and situational comedy rather than inhabiting Hiaasen's chaotic asylum.

Thirdly, the Rabbit Factory is a nicely-observed commentary on the modern morals (if that's the right word) of Hollywood. The characterisation is sharp and precise, and there's a lot to learn here about Tinsel Town.

Finally, it's a dazzlingly good mystery novel. At upwards of 600 pages and numerous stages of plot development there were any number of moments the Rabbit Factory could have gone off the rails and lost the slickness of the narrative and the attention of the reader. But it doesn't. This is partly because Karp is simply an incredibly engaging writer, breathing life into characters you'll be interested in, be they heroes or villains.

And the plot is just flat-out great. Incredibly clever, ingenious even, without being too-clever-for-its-own good, satisfyingly complex and sustained.

A thoroughly enjoyable book. A terrific first novel. A great talent.

In praise of Hiro, most heroic hero of Heroes

One remedy for an insomniac spending a lot of time in hotel rooms without the energy to read is to lie back and allow the soporific qualities of television to do their worst

And so I found myself buying a DVD box set of the first series of Heroes, the most recent US smash hit to come to the screen in the UK, as its promise of comic book surrealism seemed like just the sort of light-hearted stuff that would do the trick.

Of course, as a strategy for finding sleep, it really didn’t work. Instead I find myself addicted to heroes and presented withyet another obstacle to forty winks.

Because for all the silliness of its plot - a group of (seemingly) unlinked human being discover that they are genetically highly-evolved, in possession of a range of super powers from flying to regeneration through the ability to paint the future, and must save New York from nuclear catastrophe - its pretty compelling stuff.

As is becoming the norm with US television drama, the production values are high: the scripts are snappy; the acting very good (particularly cameos from Malcolm McDowell and Christopher Doctor Who Eccleston; the special effects terrific and the sets lavish.

And OK, of course it turns out that all the Heroes are gorgeous young Americans with perfect teeth.

Well, almost all. Halfway through an episode last night (can't remember exactly which, but somewhere towards the end of the series) I realised that there is one undisputed star of the show, one pair of shoulders that carries Heroes to excellence: Hiro, the Japanese salaryman cum comic book nerd who can alter the space time continuum.

There's not too much wrong with any of the disparate story lines running through Heroes. I really enjoy Matt Parkman, the mind-reading cop from LA with problems at home and work; Hayden Panettiere is engaging, not to mention highly attractive, as Claire Bennet, the girl who comes back from the dead; Nathan Petrelli is a suitably oleaginous wannabe politician (who can fly!! what might that do for Hillary Clinton's poll ratings??); and Silar must be one of the most chilling villains to hit the screen in many a year.

But none of these can touch the glory that is the "Hiro and Ando do America" thread. Sitting in his depressing cubicle in Tokyo, office worker Hiro begins to realise that he can stop the clock at his desk with his mind. On his way home from another dreary day in the office he decides to test his powers further, imagining himself in New York City and before you can say "Yatta!" there he is, standing in the middle of the road, his face decorated with joy, triumph and shock. Once he gets there he discovers that he is the hero of a comic book called The Ninth Wonder, and realises that it is his destiny (and mission) to save the world.

And so along the way he hires a Nissan Versa - it's more interesting than you think - falls in love with a dying woman, helps his friend Ando (the straightman to Hiro's day-dreaming loon) win big in Vegas by stopping roulette wheels and the like and eventually  comes to believe that he is the heir to celebrated Samurai Takezo Sensei and must have his sword in order to save the world.

And it's all done with the most marvellous charm. Masi Oka has a beautiful range of facial expressions that can move from bewildered to naive to triumphant to sad to joyful in the raising of an eyebrow or the hint of a smile. And he also brings incredible energy to the part. You just can't take your eyes off him when he's on the screen. I can't recall such an engaging television hero in a good long time.

So if you haven't had a look at Heroes yet, you should. It really is quite the most marvellous, watchable nonsense.

REVIEW: Girls of Tender Age by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

I want to start this review in somewhat unusual fashion, with a word of thanks. To Chiara Priorelli at Allison & Busby for sending this wonderful book. It's a little out of my usual range, but Chiara, knowing my affinity for New England and for books set there, felt it might appeal because it was set in Connecticut, which was very thoughtful of her.

When Girls of Tender Age first arrived I wasn't sure. It looked like it might be one of those Dave Pelzer-style misery memoirs, which have never really appealed. I understand why people write them - it must be very cathartic - but struggle to work out why people would read them.

But once I took the plunge I realised I could not have been more wrong. Although there is a violent, tragic, disturbing event at the heart of this memoir, it is a wonderfully-moving and life-affirming book.

It is part autbiographical family memoir, part social history and part thriller, and succeeds on all counts.

Mary Ann, or Mickey as she is known to her family, is brought up in working-class Hartford in the 1950s at the heart of a sprawling French-Italian family. Her home life is off-beam. While her father is adoring and showers her with love, her mother is distant, resentful character. And then there is Tyler, her idiot savant autistic brother whose obsessive compulsive regime and long list of neuroses rules family life with a rod of iron.

For all that, it was a happy childhood, surrounded by friends and cousins and a freedom of movement and innocence that is unrecognisable in this neurotic age.

And the author's memory for the detail of her childhood, as well her descriptive brilliance and the judicious, incisive application of the wisdom of hindsight makes this a special  book indeed. It helps, of course, that the characters are so full of life. Not least Tyler, who with his obsession with the second world war, is a constant source of absurity and hilarity, enough to make me feel guilty for laughing anyway. (And I was relieved towards the end of the group when Mickey joins a sibling counselling group where the participants laugh away at the antics of their brothers and sisters).

As a slice of family life in the '50s this is incredibly evocative and warm and frames well the attitudes and ethics that dominated the day. But there is a dark heart at the centre of the book: the murder and molestation of a friend of Mickey's at the tender age of 11.

Tirone Smith works this element extremely skilfully, gradually introducing the destructive presence over the course of the first half of the book, where he hangs like a cancerous shadow over Mickey, her family and the neighbourhood.

And once the murder takes place, the atmosphere changes everywhere as if an era has passed and a darker age has superceded it, although a veil of silence falls over the murder as if nothing ever happened including the life of the lost child.

And having been forced to close down and ignore the memory of her friend as a child, later in her life Tirone Smith decides to make up for lost time and lost memory of her friend by looking into the crime and discovering how and why it happened.

And she dissects the investigation, the trial, the political pressure and the treatment of victim and criminal alike, and suddenly the book is a study of the deficiencies of the legal and judicial systems.

And what is perhaps most striking  - in this age of hysterical headlines - is that Tirone Smith doesn't  judge the murderer. She is scathing in her criticism of everybody else, but he is treated with a compassion lacking in his treatment of his victims, which helps keep the book on an even keel.

It is also magnificently written, by a woman who clearly has an outstanding gift for story-telling and the touch of a genius in her use of language. (She has apparently written several novels, which I will very soon be hunting down)

Girls of Tender Age stands as a fitting and enduring memorial: to a lost friend; to a bygone age; to athe eccentricity of family life; to love and to loss. It is, quite simply, stunning.

REVIEW: Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution by Michael Bond

A couple of months ago, on a long trip car journey to see Hadrian's Wall with the children, I slipped a free Paddington Bear CD we had received from a newspaper into the stereo in a desperate last ditch attempt to stop the three little angels from killing one another and/or driving us mad.

I hadn't given Paddington much thought over the last 20 or so years except when seeing the merchandsise stall selling Bear memorable at the eponymous west London railway station. But my childlike fondness for the bear from darkest Peru returned quickly as I listened to Michael Bond's charming, witty story of his mischievous, idiosyncratic character attempting to negotiate an underground escalator with predictably chaotic results.

So to be given an opportunity shortly afterwards to take a look at another Michael Bond book - this one a mystery novel - was most welcome. Somehow I had missed the fact that Bond had written no fewer than 15  previous novels featuring gastronomic French detective Aristide Pamplemousse and his "friend and mentor" bloodhound Pommes Frites before Monsieur Pamplemousse and the French Solution.

And what I have missed is a comic treat. The French Solution is an exquisitely witty book, part farce, part shrewd societal observation and part splendid mystery story.

Monsieur Pamplemousse, a former member of the Paris Surete, is now a restaurant inspector for Le Guide, one of France's most respected gastronomic organs whose much sought after stock pot ratings can make or break a restaurant's reputation and a chef's heart.

Working his way around the Auvergne, where he is looking forward to the Gargouilllou of the celebrated Michel Bras - "a warm salad of over 20 young vegetables, each separately steamed before being brought together in total harmony" - he is suddenly called back to HQ as a matter of urgency by the Director.

When he arrives in Paris he finds the office of Le Guide in chaos: the new security guard won't let him in; someone has vandalised cars in the yard; the bookkeeper is on strike leaving Pamplemousse's fellow inspectors are in uproar because their massive expenses have not been paid. Meanwhile the Director is skulking in his office.

When Pamplemousse is finally admitted to the inner sanctum, he receives a sort of explanation. Le Guide is under attack from assailants unknown. The Director appears to have been the victim of an Air France Premiere Classe sting attack in which a nubile nun attempts to persuade him to join the mile high club on a return journey from New York, and takes incriminating photos into the bargain. While in the Big Apple he has also fallen victim to the wiles of a business efficiency expert who has persuaded the Director to make unwelcome internal changes.

But worst of all, the integrity of Pamplemousse himself has fallen under suspicion as the Director has received a photograph of Pommes Frites being fed under a table in Lyons.

In short the reputation of Le Guide - its entire operating capital, effectively - is at risk. Pommes Frites is fired, and Pamplemousse tenders his resignation in solidarity.

And but for a visit from the wife of the Director, that could have been the end of Pamplemousse's career as a gastronome, but he is quickly enlisted to investigate the various shenanigans and is led into a tale of greed and revenge.

The emotion that flies off every page of this lovely book is joy: Bond's joy of writing. His love of words and his ability to spin them elegantly into a quite charming comic gem. And it's impossible not to catch the bug and go with the joyful flow.

It may have taken me a long time to find the wonderful Pamplemousse and the dogged Pommes Frites, but it will not take me long to seek out more.

REVIEW: Impeccable Sources by David Brewerton

The popular view of the newsroom of a national daily newspaper  - propagated by other forms of the media, and notably television - is of a loud, chaotic, frenetic place where hacks and editors yell at one another across the floor, screaming: "Hold the Front Page".

It was a bit of a disappointment to find that real life did not quite match up to that image. At the newspaper where I worked the newsroom was more like a library, full of studious bookish types quietly and unfussily getting on with their jobs. At least that was what it looked like to the uninitiated.

In fact that serene facade merely hid all manner of human activity and emotion, such as you would actually find in any workplace, despite it being a relatively civilised place to work: seething resentment, uncontainable ambition, plot and counter-plot, alliance and caucus, friendship and enmity, bullying, depression, various addictions, joy and hope. All human life, in fact. And somehow all that energy was harnessed to good effect to produce a newspaper every single day - to the great surprise of many there.

In his debut novel, David Brewerton, former hack and public relations man, offers a revealing and honest insight into the world of the printed media, as seen from the business desk of a major London-based daily, where an Aussie hack, Cassandra Brown, is handed the story of a lifetime, the sort all journalists dream of:  rich, successful advertising mogul disappears in mysterious circumstances while on holiday, leaving behind a wife he may have been cheating on (with a supermodel, naturally), personal financial woes, a hint of boardroom corruption and nakedly ambitious colleagues quite prepared to do the dirty on him dead or alive.

It's a wonderful thing fiction. Take a rumour from the gossip column, a headline from the business page, a racy news item and a travel diary mishap - a combination the average business journalist would probably not even be capable of dreaming up, such is the comparative dryness of their daily diet - mix the ingredients together and you have a convincing potboiler with sufficient intrigue and mystery to make the jump comfortably from the unloved business shelf at Waterstone's to the  heavy footfall of the crime table.

And that  is what Brewerton has achieved: an investigative thriller with a strong, credible plot, told at a good pace and with a lot of fascinating detail that students of the media will enjoy.

As a former business hack myself, I thought Brewerton's description of the newsroom dynamic was very good: the desperation of the news editor with the empty or weak story list; the anger of the hack whose story is "spiked" either because there's not enough space or someone further up the tree doesn't like it; the pressure of being on deadline with several different stories or of being in a position where you are expected to deliver a new angle on a particular story every day, irrespective of whether there is actually something to write.

The only slight flaw I found in this book was with Cassandra Brown herself. The rest of the cast - from the oleaginous PR man to the harrassed news editor and the former star writer who has gone to seed, all are very recognisable - was excellent. But I never quite got to grips with Brown. She possesses a strange mixture of self-confidence, ambition and a weird reluctance to take the story by the balls. For a supposedly gifted investigative  journalist she seemed to require a lot of spoon-feeding from sources and cajoling by editors. A former colleague said to me recently that journalism is a profession stacked with people with "egos the sizes of Zeppelins", and this is true. Brown seemed to have the Zeppelin but not the knowledge of how to drive it. She improved as the story went on, however, and was not unlikable in any way, just not quite convincing. Perhaps readers without an extensive period on a newspaper will not notice; probably not.

But despite that, Brewerton has written a fine novel and one that holds the promise of more good things to come.

INTERVIEW: Deanna Raybourn

Deanna Raybourn has two accents: one she speaks with, one she writes with.

The spoken accent is Texan, with some of the edges softened by years of living further north (although still in the South) in Virginia.

But you won't find any of that languid, silky drawl in her books, where the accent is clipped, the pronunication received and the English very much that of the Queen. Victoria, that is, rather than the current incumbent of the throne, as Silent in the Grave is a murder mystery set in aristocratic London towards the end of the reign of England's longest-serving monarch.

I made my way about half way through Raybourn's wonderful first book  - Silent in the Grave, which is published in the UK this month, while the second Silent in the Sanctuary was published in her native US this week - before I discovered that the author was American. One senior executive at her UK publisher only discovered the nationality of his talent after finishing the book.

"That's the biggest compliment I could have had," she says.

It is well deserved. There is not the merest hint in the book that this novel was not the work of an English woman, nor indeed a modern author, so well observed is the serious business of Victorian society and manners and so authentically drawn are the characters.

But then few writers, even here, are perhaps as immersed in English culture than Raybourn, who spent about six weeks in the UK in the course of researching her books and spends even more time in the company of British writers and BBC America.

"It's saturation. The more British fiction I read, the more television I watch, the more I pick up, although I am sure there are mistakes," she says.

As her work is about to be published in the UK for the first time, Raybourn says she is far more nervous than she was before publication in the US (where her books were well received critically).

"There's a huge responsibility when you take on another country's culture and vernacular and sensibilities. You have to do it justice, " she says.

But although Texas, and even Virginia, may seem distant from these shores, Raybourn believes there are historical ties and cultural similarities with the South that have contributed to her anglophilia and helped to inform her writing in a book, which at least in part, is something of a comedy of Victorian manners and social mores.

"The South is where the culture of the gentlemen and the plantations was carried out, much more so than the North where there is more diversity of immigration. The South was mostly British, and it did not divide up in the same way. So there are attachments there, and there is a peculiar sense of humour and eccentricity," she says. "If find the odd can be extremely entertaining."

The opening of Silent in the Grave finds Raybourn's heroine, Lady Julia Grey, an unexpected widow, when her husband dies during a dinner party, exposing her to the extraordinary eccentricity of VIctorian mourning procedure.

"This was really due to Victoria and her mourning of Albert and the fact that people ran with it, rather than saying we can do this a little more healthily. But I think it was a time when mortality was high and life expectancy relatively low, and people are surrounded by death all the time so they like these rituals," she says.

Indeed, the novel was conceived as a piece of Regency era gaiety, but a few dozen pages in, Raybourn realised that the buttoned-up Victorians offered a canvass with far more potential, and she has certainly  managed to find the comedy potential, with the huge social event of the funeral attended by scores of relatives, a scene reflecting her own experience in the South.

"When my grand-mother died when I was 19," she recalls, "people descended on us from all over the South, expecting to be fed and entertained."

But Raybourn exploits the set piece further, creating a wonderful chorus character, the Ghoul, an ancient aunt who follows family the reaper around, arriving for the funeral and only leaving when another relative appears to be close to death's door.

"I really liked the idea of character for comic relief, who takes things one step further and stays forever," she says.

The author's sense of humour radiates through the book, and will be familiar to readers in the UK.

"I think the British are the funniest people on the face of the earth. There is a subtlety to the humour that is brilliant and engaging. The US is more slapstick and farce. And if there was a great line I wanted to hear delivered, I would awlays choose John Cleese over Steve Martin or Eddie Murphy to do it," she says.

But it was Britain's mystery writers who ultimately proved influential in Raybourn's literary career, not our comics: Dorothy L Sayers, Agatha Christie, Sarah Caudwell, Beverley Nichols.

Raybourn spent a year almost as a full-time reader, in the company of the cream of the golden age  of British crime fiction - almost entirely British authors - trying to find her own voice, after a previous 14 years in which she tried and failed to become a romance novelist.

Her story offers hope to all those who harbour an ambition to becoming a published novelist and who have foundered on the cold, jagged rocks of the rejection letter.

"I wrote for 14 years without being published. My agent packed them up and sent them off. But I was not writing mystery but romance, which I did not read. And so my agent said, 'I want you to stop writing. Take a year off and read.' So I did, and I only read things that I really wanted to read," she says.

"And in those books I found the British sensibilities, the sense of humour and the history which was a blueprint for the book I wanted to write."

And then her ninth novel became her first to be published and so enamoured with the advrentures of Lady Julia Grey were her US publishers Mira, that suddenly Raybourn was confronting an unexpected problem: a three book deal with an option for three more.

"I had been adamant that I would never sign a multi-book contract, but when they say you can have one, and they show you the money, you say, 'well of course I can', but it's terrifying," she says.

And terrifying it might well be, but it seems to be working out OK. Silent in the Grave sold well in the US, and should do well elsewhere. (And given the current obsession in the UK for historical drama on the television it is surely only a matter of time before we see Lady Julia on the BBC - the book is perfect for it.) Those who have read it say that Silent in the Sanctuary is better, while the manuscript for the third in the series has just been completed.

Deanna Raybourn, it seems, is set to become a fixture on the scene as is Lady Julia, a feisty, independently-minded woman from an era when independent thinking was not encouraged in women. And while Raybourn might not have stuck close to the primary school essay-writing guidelines of "go with what you know" in terms of era and location, in terms of characterisation, she says she has stayed close to home.

"She's hugely autobiographical, not in the detail obviously, nor in the sense that I am neither high-born nor wealthy. But her perspective on the world is very similar to my own, the idea that it is pointless and stupid simply to do things because people tell you you have to. I want her to be a woman of independence, to have adventures and to be happy and comfortable within her own skin. That's all you can really ask for in a life."

Books like Silent in the Grave stand or fall by the strength of their central protagonists: if a reader is going to spend 300 pages in the company of one person they need to like them or sympathise with them or at the very least understand them.

Lady Julia is witty, charming and eminently likable. I think I know where she gets it from.

   

 

 

In which I torture authors

I've conducted a few interviews over the years - writers, business people, sportsmen, Prime Ministers (well, a Prime Minister) - but until today I've never had feedback on the matter before the story has even been published.

But I noticed quite a bit of the traffic coming in here today was being referred from Deanna Raybourn's site, where she has been telling her readers how interviews "induce panic" and that she was "nearly hyperventilating by the time he called".

Well, it was not my intention to cause distress, merely to get some of the background behind her excellent debut novel, Silent in the Grave, which is being published here in the UK this month, and in particular to find out how a Texan comes to write such a convincing depiction of Victorian London. (The answers to which I hope to be able to provide tomorrow when I finish writing the interview up).

But it appears I have left her in a bit of a state, as this excerpt from her blog describes: "That wasn't the highlight of the interview (describing To Kill a Mockingbird as the one book she would recommend everyone read) -no, that was when I gushed about Jane Austen. TO AN ENGLISHMAN. That's some serious groundbreaking right there. God, I hate myself."

Well, all I can say is this. First, Deanna was charming, generous with her time, witty, erudite and fascinating. (And if the interview doesn't come across that way, it is entirely my fault). Second, a major confession: I have never read any Jane Austen, although I have seen six different broadcast adaptations of EACH of the five novels. Third I always get nervous as hell before conducting interviews, hoping I don' leave the subject thinking about what an idiot I am for only asking the most obvious questions.

Now her blog didn't say that I wasn't...

George MacDonald Fraser - a small tribute

It was with a tremendous sense of sadness that I heard on the radio this morning that George MacDonald Fraser had died at the age of 82 after a long battle with cancer.

I hope that Fraser is remembered as a great man of British literature and one of the finest exponents of the comic novel that this country, or indeed any other, has ever produced.

I came very late to his Flashman novels, picking up my first about three years ago, but a few pages in I was utterly addicted, and blasted through all 12 in a matter of weeks.

There were two great achievements in these novels. The first was that they were insanely funny, full of joyous, utterly hilarious moments that you did not want to find yourself reading one in public for fear of being taken away by the men in white coats. The one that stands out above all others for me was Flashman, the great coward, bully and misogynist, finding himself inadvertantly leading the charge of the Light Brigade while farting like a true champion.

But the other achievement was that interwoven with the divine comedy was historical accuracy and detail of the highest order, accompanied by Fraser's own sharp and incisive commentary. Flashman was the work of a genuine genius.

I am doubly sad that Fraser has died apparently without writing the great US Civil War Flashman novel that many of his fans - myself included - have long waited for. So many other great campaigns have been covered, including the hanging of John Brown at Harper's Ferry and a slave trade story in the US, but Fraser offered tantalising glimpses of a Civil War story in which Flashman manages to fight on both sides of the divide and find himself with Lee and Grant in the court house at Appomattox.

I console myself that there are a number of Fraser's works that I have not yet read, among them the McAuslan files and The Reavers, his last work.

There was a great deal more to Fraser's body of work than these books, however, among them credits for a Bond film. I am looking forward to seeing some great obituaries in the next few days, and hoping perhaps that his passing will lead to some broadcast media retrospective. But for now here is an obit published in the Daily Telegraph.

REVIEW: The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

What is it with the Nordic nations? Surely there cannot be a place on the planet that produces more first class crime novelists per capita. Such is the prolific nature of thriller writing there that Scandinavian writers have their own table in the Waterstones on Piccadilly, the only region afforded such exposure as far as I could see.

Most people have heard of Henning Mankell, surely the standard bearer, but behind come a raft of others: Arnaldur Indridason, Ake Edwardson, Karin Fossum, Asa Larsson, Hakan Nesser and more.

(And I realise that there is some debate about which countries are Scandinavian and which are not, and therefore that some of these writers will not consider themselves part of this category. And so I humbly apologise for any offence but I don't really want to get into these historic and cultural arguments here)

Perhaps it is the cold dark winters that leave  a lot of time for black imagination? Perhaps the ancient Viking blood has left a murderous imprint?

Whatever the reason we should be grateful that the conveyor belt is strong, and that it produces such luminaries as Jo Nesbo, a musician and economist, capable of writing stories as richly-textured, complex and beautifully-crafted as The Redbreast.

The Redbreast is the second novel featuring Oslo detective Harry Hole, a man who at first site looks something like the stereotypical loner police detective. A man with a certain disdain for the rules and a certain love of the bottle.

But there's nothing cliched about Hole, who nurtures and encourages colleagues, is valued by his superiors, is independently-minded without being maverick and who has a surprisingly sympathetic and romantic soul.

In The Redbreast, Hole finds himself with varied duties. As the story opens he is assisting with security for the visit of the American president to Oslo at the turn of the century when the Norwegian capital was at the heart of attempts to bring peace to the Middle East. But his actions there are merely a prelude to him moving to a different branch of the security services where he immediately finds himself investigating the possibility that a rare Marklin rifle has been imported into Norway by someone intent on a possible assassination attempt.

The reader, at least two or three steps ahead thanks to a multi viewpoint narrative, knows this to be the case, as an old man who fought with fellow Norwegians on the eastern front with the Nazis during the second world war, is indeed plotting the deaths of unknown individuals for reasons of a betrayal of some sort. A third thread traces (we suspect early on, but it is not clear) the life and times of the old man at the front.

Still further narratives examine an underbelly of racism in Oslo society and the rise of neo-nazism as well as the misogynistic activities of a senior civil servant in Norway's diplomatic corps. 

At first it is devilishly difficult to work out how  and where these disparate strands intersect (and in fact it's still fairly difficult 100 pages out from the book's breathless, dramatic ending) but it scarcely matters as each is fascinating in its own way, offering either a revealing  glimpse into Norway's present or a fascinating reminder of a recent past of occupation, collaboration and resistance that Nesbo makes sure the reader understands is neither as black or as white as many would have us believe.

And although the story rattles along at a good pace, it is allowed to develop carefully, over a number of months as Norway moves from the brutality of its winter into the hope and joy of a spring and all too brief summer. (Perhaps when one season is so long, dominant and difficult it is natural that the climate and environment should be given a life of its own by writers - as Nesbo does here and as Indridason and Mankell have also done to great effect).

And as the story moves on, Hole becomes ever more engaging, events more intriguing and the story ever more compelling.

This book has been well received critically, and rightly so. It is top tier from beginning to end, and a worthy addition to the vast and growing body of Nordic crime fiction.

For a review of Jo Nesbo's latest thriller, Nemesis, click here.

 

   

   

Resolutions

Eating, drinking and preventing all-out family warfare over Christmas leaves little time for reading, so these have been slow times for Material Witness.

But here we are again in a New Year, determined to be more conscientious and to keep finding ways to improve the blog. So there are a couple of changes coming. FIrstly there will be better interviews. The current format (10 Questions) has worked well, primarily because it minimises the actual amount of work that I have to do. But it is hardly insightful, so I'll be looking to do more in depth interviews, hopefully starting very soon with Deanna Raybourn, who has already agreed to be interviewed, and whose book Silent in the Grave, is released in the UK very soon.

I will also be better at finding great stuff on the web, and linking through to it, particularly the great blog work out there.

Another addition to the site will be a "read this year" list, mainly because I am interested in how much I have been through in 12 months (record: 103 books in 2005), and it will be easiest to track by keeping a list.

Finally, something of a risk. Over the past five years or so, I have written three half-novels, which for a variety of reasons I have not finished.  I am a little fed up with my lack of persistence on these things, so I'm going to make a public promise (as much to myself as anyone else) to take one of these and write  and publish it on a new blog, which I will set up within the next forthnight. I will write a chapter a fortnight from there, and hope to be able to complete it about this time next year. Once this is up and running, I will link back here.

Coming up in the near future: a review of Jo Nesbo's excellent novel, The Redbreast, and David Brewerton's debut, Impeccable Sources, which I am reading right now.

A Happy New Year to all.