Material Witness

REVIEW: Truth by Peter Temple

I often think the time at which I finish a book is a good guide to how compelling I found it, how much I needed to finish it. I finished Truth at about 2am. Another good guide might be how long you lie awake thinking about. At least an hour. With the alarm set for 7, this was hardly good preparation for a busy day, but boy was it ever worth it.

When Peter Temple turns on the literary afterburners, there aren't many writers who can stay with him. His prose is rich and earthy and his dialogue in particular is special, rounding out his characters, giving them flesh, blood and soul. And the themes he explores lend his books a sharp and cutting edge that lifts them above the ordinary: ethics, loyalty, corruption, politics, family, age, personal and public failings.

Truth explores the twin investigations into the murder of a young woman in an exclusive Melbourne appartment and the apparently gangland slaying of two Slavic thugs and a companion. The senior investigating officer is Melbourne's head of homicide, Stephen Villani, a close friend and colleague of Joe Cashin, the police officer at the centre of The Broken Shore, Temple's 2005 masterpiece.

Villani is a cop of the old school, a man who sacrifices almost everything to bring justice to the victims of the crimes he investigates. His marriage is a wreck, his family distant and estranged. In an increasingly politicised police department, his refusal to "play the game" threatens his career.

His investigations take place against the backdrop of forthcoming State elections in Victoria, and the policing of the City becomes a live and vicious campaign issue, the investigation a political pawn.

Money also rears its almost inevitably ugly head. The appartment the girl has died in is linked to one of Melbourne's richest families. With campaign dollars at stake, nobody but Villani wishes to stir the pot and to uncover the truth.

But Villani is unbending, placing his career, his family, his life at risk. In the background, in rural Victoria, catastrophic bush fires rage, closing in on the childhood home Villani's father still inhabits. The metaphor could hardly be clearer.

This is exceptional crime fiction. If it does not quite reach the heights of The Broken Shore, that does not diminish it. (Only three or four books I have read can). It is intelligent, fascinating, gripping and universal.

It might keep you up all night, but you will not regret it.

COMPETITION: Win a copy of Captured by Neil Cross

Material Witness has 10 copies of Neil Cross' excellent thriller Captured (review) up for grabs, thanks to the kind people at Simon & Schuster.

To win you just need to answer the following question. Which of Neil's previous novels was longlisted for the Booker Prize?

Send your answers to [email protected], with a mailing address, by midnight Sunday January 31. Ten correct answers will be picked at random.

PLEASE NOTE THIS COMPETITION IS OPEN TO UK RESIDENTS ONLY

Good luck.

REVIEW: Captured by Neil Cross

It has been a while since I read a book as quickly as I yesterday read Neil Cross' latest masterpiece of suspense, Captured.

Last year, with the creepy Burial, Cross almost had me delving into the final pages for a dishonourable peek at the conclusion because the suspense was near unbearable. With Captured the compulsion to get to the end of the story was every bit as strong, although this time I was not tempted to cheat.

Instead, the reader is led in a rush through a beautifully constructed story that Cross whips along with great speed and ever-rising tension.

Kenny Drummond, a solitary artist, is diagnosed as having a terminal brain tumour and told by doctors he has just a few weeks, at best, to live. In response, Kenny makes a list of those people he has somehow let down during the course of his live and sets out to put things right with them, irrespective of the fact that three of the four people on the list have been out of his life for decades.

He quickly crosses two of those off the list, and is left with his ex-wife Mary and a girl he knew at junior school, who was kind to him at a time when others were not. He discovers that the girl, now a married woman named Caroline Reese, disappeared in a highly publicised case some years earlier.

With his condition worsening by the day, and knowing time is running out for him, Kenny sets out to try and find out what happened to her. In the process he brings himself and friends into danger as he sets off a series of events that threatens the delicate equilibirum of many lives.

There are two elements to Cross's writing that really lift these books into the "special" category. The first is the characterisation. Captured is not a long book, and some of the minor characters have relatively brief roles. But while brief, often critical, and Cross takes care to make them work within the story in a consistent and credible way that is highly impressive. Secondly, as perhaps befits a former lead scriptwriter for Spooks, he understands how to keep a plot going from start-to-finish, consistently lifting the tempo and the tension levels, while at the same time keeping the reader guessing.

REVIEW: Snow Angels by James Thompson

Finland has been notably under-represented in the surge of Nordic crime fiction that has take the genre by storm in recent years. While Icelanders, Swedes and Norwegians have risen to prominence few Finnish authors have broken into international markets.

This has been a personal disappointment to me. Having spent a lot of time in Finland, and grown to like it and the Finns very much, I have long been waiting for a writer to bring the country to life on the crime scene.

So it was with the greatest of pleasure that I discovered James Thompson and his debut novel Snow Angels, set in FInnish lapland during Kaamos, the bleak, black Polar midwinter during which the sun does not rise at all for several days.

It is a good starting place and time for a writer exploring Finland and taking it to a new audience. Light and heat are perhaps the two most dominant characteristics of the country to a newcomer: in the winter there is an alarming lack of both - even in southern parts such as Helsinki; in the summer there is a surfeit of the latter. It is impossible not to wonder what impact the long dark winters has on those living here.

Thompson, a long-term resident, sets his story up handsomely to examine this question and others about the Finns, and Snow Angels, which is essentially a terrific mystery novel, explores some of these themes primarily through the dynamic between the central character, police detective Kari Vaara, and his American wife Kate, who is enduring her first Finnish winter as a manager in the Arctic ski resort of Levi. Vaara sees the Finns as they see themselves, while Kate provides the outsiders view.

For someone interested in FInland, it is fascinating, at least in part because Thompson is brave: exploring attitudes to race, to alcohol, to depression. It is possible that some of his Finnish neighbours will not be pleased by his conclusions. What emerges is a community tense, volatile and downbeat. At temperatures touching minus 40 degrees Celsius, merely existing is difficult, while the lack of natural light throws a claustrophobic blanket over the small town.

To many, Finnish Lapland is associated with reindeer, husky-pulled sleigh rides and the dream of Santa Claus and Christmas. But in Snow Angels, the long night brings a nightmare not dreams. Vaara is called out to a field in a reindeer farm where a famous Somali film star is found brutally murdered in an attack that carries both racial and sexual overtones.

Vaara's small team embarks on a very public investigation that rapidly envelops a socialite and a well-known businessman and spreads quickly to touch Vaara's family and that of his ablest lieutenant.

The plot is strong, the characters three-dimensional and Thompson is clearly a great story-teller who writes with snap and wastes few words (perhaps that's the Finnish influence). Snow Angels has a very strong sense of place and depicts Finland and the Finns with accuracy and clear affection.

I would have enjoyed Snow Angels if it had been set in Norway or Denmark - it's a cracking mystery. I ejoyed it more because it was set in Finland. There is no reason why those readers who have flocked to other Nordic mystery writers who are enjoying such popularity now should not also enjoy this new Finnish twist.

I loved it, and I'm looking forward to the next installment already.

Snow Angels was published by Putnam in the US in January.

Gadget Inspector solves Wallander ringtone mystery

Hats off to Harry Wallop, Consumer Affairs Editor of the Telegraph, and one of the paper's intrepid Gadget Inspectors: he has tracked down the elusive ringtone used by Swedish detective Kurt Wallander in the BBC's adaptation of Henning Mankell's bestselling crime novels.

Material Witness turned to Twitter friend Wallop to assist in the quest to find the ringtone, as outlined in Material Witness on Friday, after other avenues of investigation, including the SonyEricsson press office, failed to produce the answer that thousands of visitors to the site - the highest ever for a story - were looking for.

In this piece published at the Telegraph today - surely an early contender for Investigative Journalism of the Year -  Wallop offers good news to those seeking the ringtone: it will be available soon as Wallander producer Left Bank Pictures, which composed the tune, plans to make it available.

The final episode of the excellent Wallander airs on BBC One on Sunday December 17.

Post-apocalypse is so now - Survivors returns

There's really no escaping the end of the world as we know it. First of all its a strange adaptation of The Day of the Triffids - with Eddie Izzard emerging as an unlikely dictator - on the Christmas schedules of all things. Next we have the release of the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, depressing, horrifying and apparently impressing cinema audiences the world over. There was even 2012, memorably described by Mark Lawson on Front Row on Radio 4 as "the comedy version" of The Road.

And now, if anyone has any shred of hope for our collective futures remaining, we have the second series of the BBC's series Survivors, a remaking of a 1970s series.

Series One, which I bought from iTunes and largely watched on a 2 inch screen somehwere over the Baltic ewas surprisingly entertaining. The premise was simple - and particularly germane in the wake of bird flu, swine flu and various other pandemic-threatening viruses - humanity (or at least the portion that lives in and around Manchester) is stricken by a flu like virus that spreads rapidly and destructively, killing all but a handful of the population.

Those that remain are left to fight for their lives and over dwindling supplies of energy and food in a landscape that is bleak and a society that is Hobbesian and increasingly dangerous.

If the path of Survivors was largely predictable - battles for food, for territory and for power - it was also very entertaining. The series fcouses on the battle of one particular group, led by a woman, Abby, searching for her lost son and including a violent career criminal, a Muslim playboy and the devout child he finds while racing an Audi supercar around the devastated city and a doctor who loses her faith in her profession.

A sinister background is provided by a former minsiter running an authoritarian compound which aims to recreate civil society using a combination of the jackboot and a Stalinist five year plan and a group of scientists in pristine who may or may not have been involved in the spread of the virus - or in trying to control it.

It's not The Road, but it's not 2012 either. As many of the critics have said, it is entertaining.

Series Two started with the spectacular and explosive destruction of a hospital in which some survivors were searching for the tools with which to repair the shotgun-impaired of the myserious Greg, who was wounded during the finale of Series One as Abby was kidnapped by the sinister scientists. She is now in their lab - the only person known to have contracted the wound and survived - a guinea pig for whatever plan they are putting into effect.

And even if the second half of the show was a rather slow Earthquake-rescue scene, It should be another good ride, with the poltico-medico plot to the fore. I may need a bigger iPod for those cross-Baltic flights.

2010 - A Criminal Odyssey

With a past record in New Year's resolution keeping that is mixed at best, I can't help think that my ability to keep with the 2010 programme, which boils down to "Read More, Review More", is going to require a steady supply of compelling content from the publishing industry, and in particular the crime departments.

A second resolution, of sorts, came up today when I signed up for Dorte Jakobsen's excellent 2010 Global Challenge, which requires me to be geographically diverse in my reading. Bearing in mind last year's rather pathetic efforts in the reading and reviewing stakes I have signed up for the medium challenge: two novels from six continents (and covering 12 different countries). This seems to me to be demanding enough to be a real challenge and yet not out of reach. If I get to October and have covered that perhaps I'll move on to the ultimate challenge and try and find two novels set in Antarctica.

Some of the catalogues that have been hurtling in from publishers suggest there's some terrific stuff coming, and so while I know there will not be time to read it all here are the 10 I'm looking forward to most in 2010.

Snow Angels by Jim Thompson

I have spent so much time in Finland in the last two years that it has come to feel like a second home, and I have enjoyed getting to know the people and the place. But it has been a great source of frustration that beyond, Jan Costin Wagner's Ice Moon, I have not been able to find Finnish crime stories. So chancing across the website of Jim Thompson and finding that he is about to publish the first in the series of the Kari Vaara novels was a great moment. The first trip of the year to Helsinki is imminent. If I can find a copy (Thompson does not appear to have a UK publisher yet) Snow Angels will be in the bag.

The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag by Alan Bradley (April, Orion)

If a precocious 11-year-old girl with a passion for poison and amateur detective work does not sound like a recipe for great crime fiction, think again. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Alan Bradley's debut novel featuring Flavia de Luce, was the great surprise of 2009, a joyous reading experience. In April 2010 we find out what Flavia did next. I've had a sneak preview and I can tell you it does not disappoint. Review coming soon.

Truth by Peter Temple (Quercus, January)

The Broken Shore was the best crime novel I read in 2007 and an instant entrant to the top ten books of all time list. Any book billed as the second in that series was never going to sit on the shelf for too long before I bought it and it now sits waiting for me to finish the latest John Irving epic, Last Night at Twisted River. Maxine's excellent review over at Petrona adds to the delicious anticipation.

Heartstone by C.J. Sansom (Macmillan, August)

After a two year gap since the publication of Revelation, Tudor lawyer Matthew Shardlake is back in the fifth installment of a series as rich and satisying as a Hampton Court banquet. The pre-publicity for Heartstone has Henry fighting a war in France and the honourable Shardlake engaged in legal battle at home. If there is a better historical crime fiction series out there at the moment, I have yet to find it. (See also review of Sovereign)

A Question of Belief by Donna Leon (Heinemann, April)

One day I will fulfil my desire to visit Venice but it will be a disappointment as my one major reason for going - to sample Paola Brunetti's cooking will not be realised. Alas I shall have to content myself with the latest adventures of her husband Commissario Guido Brunetti in the 19th book of this charming and consistently excellent series. By way of a bonus there is a  cookbook coming on the same day A Taste of Venice - At Table with Brunetti, to be published on the same day. (Review: The Girl of his Dreams by Donna Leon).

Saints of New York by R.J. Ellory (Orion, September)

Ellory is one of the great literary success stories of the last few years. When I first reviewed his breakthrough novel A Quiet Belief in Angels in autumn 2007 his literary future was, apparently, far from secure as his previous novels - all excellent - had failed to gain traction in the market place. I'd like to say it was the Material Witness review that sparked the extraordinary success he has deservedly enjoyed since, but I can't as it was the Richard and Judy Book Club whose recommendation projected Ellory into the best seller lists. (The review has been the most viewed page on Material Witness since). Ellory followed up AQBIA with the excellent  A Simple Act of Violence in 2008 and then the serial killer thriller The Anniversary Man last year. Regrettably my intention to write a review of the latter fell victim to my need to work for a living, but in a nutshell: a superior, claustrophobic and dark thriller from a writer at the top of his game.  I look forward to Ellory's eighth novel. (10 Questions with Roger Ellory)

Captured by Neil Cross (Simon & Schuster, January)

I could not honestly describe reading Burial, Neil Cross' last novel, as a pleasure. It was an uncomfortable experience, but creepily compellling. Captured, which arrived this week, promises the same.

Gone by Mo Hayder (Bantam Press, February)

Speaking of creeping. Here's the new Jack Caffrey novel from the queen of the queasy, Mo Hayder. I was late to the Caffrey books, picking up the brilliant Birdman in a second hand store a year or so ago. Hayder has a huge, enthusiastic following for very good reason: her books are fearless and ground-breaking.

The First Rule by Robert Crais (Orion, March)

Crais' legion of fans will have missed him in 2009, the first year since 2004 without a new novel. The First Rule picks up the hugely successful Elvis Cole / Joe Pike series of novels, with the second of the 13 books which focused on Pike rather than Cole - the first being The Watchman. Crais has skilfully evolved this series from its light-hearted roots in which Cole was as much a comedy act as he was a serious detective. But there is now a good deal more gravitas and emotion in these stories, and the arrival of the new Cole and Pike novel is a highlight of most years.

 Afterlight by Alex Scarrow (Orion, May)

It remains a source of some mystery to me that Alex Scarrow's 2007 novel Last Light, a post-oil Apocalaypse novel was not more widely read as it explored themes with a great deal of resonance in these seemingly fragile times. Afterlight picks up the story from the end of that novel and I look forward to seeing how Scarrow moves it on. His last outing, October Skies, is a terrific book and confirmed Scarrow as a storyteller of skill and ambition.  

The unsolved mystery of the Wallander ringtone

LATEST: Mystery Solved

It is time for a little detective work of our own here at Material Witness as we seek to solve one of television's small but infuriating unsolved mysteries: what is Kurt Wallander's highly distinctive mobile ringtone?

In December 2007, I opened a review of the BBC's first series of Wallander with the following: "The ring tone of Kurt Wallander's mobile phone is shrill, insistent, impossible to ignore and just a little bit hypnotic. As such the phone represents the pull of the job on Wallander's life: it is always on; liable to go off at any second; it has an unbreakable hold on him."

If the the ringtone was interesting, I did not expect it to become one of the major sources of traffic to this site in the following months. But the close correlation of the words "ringtone" and "Wallander" did beging producing a very steady stream of traffic to Material Witness.

The airing of the first episode of the second series on Sunday has produced a similar effect. Wallander's ringtone is unchanged and the traffic from Google searching on the two words has resumed.

Last time around I made a half-arsed effort to find out what the ring tone was. But to no avail. Others have tried also, including this poster at Digital Spy, one at Booktalk & More (a good site I've not found before) and another at PBS in the US who admires its "defeated simplicity", which I think is a rather nice turn of phrase.

This time I am not to be foiled. The phone is clearly a SonyEricsson - compulsory equipment in Sweden, where you probably get the same death stares when carrying something else that you do when using something other than a Nokia in FInland - and an email to the press office should be able to reveal the secret of the tone. Watch this space.

In the meantime if anyone else can shed light on this topic, please leave a comment below.

 

REVIEW: Three Weeks To Say Goodbye by C.J. Box

Just as Dan Brown spawned an army of copycats penning pseudo-religious mystery novels featuring secret societies and hidden ancient truths, so Harlan Coben's success seems to have triggered an avalanche of novels in which the central theme is one of seemingly ordinary people having to deal with utterly extraordinary events that turn their lives upside down.

It's a relatively simple formula, but devilishly difficult to pull off, relying as it does on the maintenance of nerve-shredding tension over 300 pages as well as making the implausible seem credible. Coben's first stand alone novel, Tell No One, is the best example of this I have ever come across and although he has written one or two since that have been very good, none have quite been the perfect 4am-page-turner that that was.

Of those who have followed in his foosteps, whether deliberately or not, Canadian author Linwood Barclay - Too Close to Home and No Time for Goodbye - has come the closest to writing the perfect page turner.

On the basis of Three Weeks to Say Goodbye, American author C.J. Box is a contender for the "keep you up all night" sweepstakes.   

Three Weeks, which was published in the UK last month by Corvus, tells the story of Jack and Melissa McGuane, who are told at the beginning of the story that they are to lose their adopted daughter on a legal technicality to her biological father nine months after taking her in. The couple are, naturally, devastated. After the shock wears off, however, and on meeting the wastrel 18-year-old father of Angelina they decide to fight back, despite the fact they know they have no legal redress.

What matters most in these "ordinary - extraordinary" stories is the quality of the hook and Box has a good one. What parent would not fight for their child? What reader could fail to sympathise with their plight?

And if the characters are not developed as fully as they might be? Or the story disappears up the odd strange blind alley? So what. Box keeps the narrative rattling along at a good rate and cleverly draws together the strands to a tense standoff.

Three Weeks is a good suspense novel. And even if it's not Tell No One great, it's well worth a look. Just don't start too late on a night you need sleep. You might never get it.

* As an aside, check out Box's piece in the Guardian about US novellists who "own" their patch: "From Carl Hiaasen's Florida to Sara Paretsky's Chicago, novelist CJ Box identifies the US's best criminal tour guides."

 

The lost year: 2009 in review

In most respects, 39 is a perfectly good number. A good number of steps, perhaps, and a good age for those keen to put off public acknowledgement of graduation to the one that follows.

It is, however, a lamentable number of books to have read in a calendar year, coming in at just over half the number I managed in 2008 and so far below the three figures achieved in 2007 to be quite depressing.

The main cause of this was pressure of time. Never have I been so busy at work, and when not working three kids are gluttonous devourers of spare time. Naturally, the whole "not reading" thing has caused a downturn in blogging output: less reading = less reviews. So one of my two resolutions for 2010 is: Read more. (For those who care about such things, the other is to try to avoid flying to Helsinki on the highly depressing late Sunday evening flight).  

Anyway, there were just enough great books I did manage to read to make a review worth while.

Crime Novel of the Year: The Way Home by George Pelecanos. The arrival of the latest Pelecanos has become my most anticipated literary moment of the year. Just as The Turnaround was my book of the year in 2008, so The Way Home steals this year's honours. Another thoughtful, suspenseful masterclass from Pelecanos. An honourable mention goes to The Complaints by Ian Rankin, which I thought was perhaps his best book in a decade. Many Rankin fans will have feared that the disappearance of the irascible Rebus might have prompted a beginning of the end for the prolific Scot, but the thoroughly enjoyable debut of his new creation Malcolm Fox will have assuaged many of those fears.

Discovery of the Year: Simon Kernick. I know he has a gazillion fans out there already, so this is not exactly finding the lost temple of the Aztecs buried deep in the jungle, but Kernick is new to me and I have enjoyed going through the catalogue, particularly on audio where the reading of the new novel Target by Paul Thornley was particularly good.

Audio book of the year: In the crime category, loosely, When will there be good news? by Kate Atkinson, read by Steven Crossley, and featuring the most memorable character of the year, Reggie, part teenage, part unstoppable force of nature. And on the non crime side, Joe BArrett's extraordinary reading A Prayer for Owen Meany in which the reader does what I thought impossible and brought Owen Meany's unimaginable voice to life.

Event of the Year: The UK publication of the final part of Stieg Larsson's MIllenium trilogy, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest was eagerly awaited by the millions of us who had so enjoyed The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. We were not let down. I never quite got round to completing and publishing a review of the book, but will publish this one extract of the unfinished review: "While there is a sense of enormous sadness and loss when turning the final page of this great book - this wonderful trilogy - there is consolation in the thought that Larsson's voice has been heard. His ideas, views and stories have been read, digested and discussed by millions of people all over the world. He has left a great literary legacy and a powerful body of work."

Later this week, I'll look forward to some of the books I'm anxiously awaiting in 2010.