In this book women are always fussing with their hair, they just can’t stop
She sat down, running a hand through her hair (p29)
Marie ran a hand throughIn this book women are always fussing with their hair, they just can’t stop
She sat down, running a hand through her hair (p29)
Marie ran a hand through her hair and sat down (p32)
She sat down on the edge of the bed and ran a hand through her hair (p38)
Maria swept her long hair away from her neck (p45)
She puffed on a cigarette and pushed her blonde hair away from her face (p55)
The footsteps receded and Stephanie ran a hand through her hair (p128)
Suzi Gray pushed a hand through her hair (p246)
[It’s suspicious that no woman seems to have pushed her hand through her hair for 120 pages – I think I may have missed a couple as the hair fussing is not abandoned…]
She brushed the hair away from her face, re-adjusting her Ray-Bans (p291)
She took a comb from her handbag and began running it through her hair (p293) (moving on to combs from hands, an interesting technological development)
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Occasionally a man starts up fussing too
He ran a hand through his hair (p76)
Finlay ran a hand through his hair (p173)
And one of the villains has a ponytail which he constantly pulls from his neck to which sweat is perpetually sticking it, I forgot to mark those as I read, but I think that gets about ten mentions.
Shaun Hutson has a couple of other verbal tics :
The girl was particularly attractive (p4)
Smiling at a particularly attractive receptionist (p19)
Glancing at a particularly gorgeous young woman (p89)
And there are many scenes in heavy London traffic when drivers get annoyed and start “banging their hooters”.
And there are moments of breathtakingly corny writing that made me run my hands through my hair :
Now he was being forced to face the most potent opponent ever. Death itself.
It took him only seconds to realise it was his sister.
“Let’s get out of here,” he shouted, and he and his two companions bolted for the door.
How I got suckered into reading this tosh was that I really like a booktuber called Criminolly and yes, he’s a great lover of what he cheerfully calls trash and pulp, and, you know, what was I expecting, but Shaun Hutson is one of his top favourites and silly me I was hoping for something better than this daft snuff-film tough guy kidnap plot with its Reservoir Dogs ending.
(view spoiler)[Not a complete washout because the last page actually made me laugh out loud, as the freed kidnapped girl crawls across multiple bodies spurting rivers of blood to her dying private investigator father and says “I love you Dad” and as he faded into the arms of the grim reaper Nick Ryan was smiling(hide spoiler)]...more
I stumbled on a Booktuber called CriminOlly. He reviews horror fiction very enthusiastically and I immediately liked him. I saw that he’d given himselI stumbled on a Booktuber called CriminOlly. He reviews horror fiction very enthusiastically and I immediately liked him. I saw that he’d given himself the daunting task of reading the Most Disturbing Books Ever. He came up with the following list based on discussions with his followers :
120 Days of Sodom by The Marquis De Sade The End of Alice by AM Homes* The Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille* Exquisite Corpse by Poppy Z Brite* Birdman by Mo Hayder* The Summer I Died by Ryan C Thomas The Room by Hubert Selby Jr* The Melting by Lize Spit Cows by Mathew Stokoe* The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh Pretty Girls by Karin Slaughter Tender is the Flesh by Augustina Bazterrica Child of God by Cormac McCarthy* Woom by Duncan Ralston
I had already read the asterisked ones and I was most curious what Olly would make of Cows which is let us say unusual. and makes you wonder about Mathew Stokoe. He came up with a review of that one quite quickly and called it “The Least Disturbing Book I’ve Read”. Ha! He was exactly right about it, explaining why when authors try too hard to shock and disgust they end up with unintentional puerile comedy. (I would like to link these videos but GR doesn’t allow that kind of outrageousness anymore.)
So I thought CriminOlly would be a good person to get some recommendations from and I checked out another video called “10 short horror books that left me shaken” because sometimes I get tired of profound highminded literature which is good for you, and of those I picked this one first, Dear Laura, a self-published novelette by Gemma Amor. That’s the preamble. Next comes the amble.
DO PEOPLE REALLY ACT LIKE THIS?
There are two possible answers: Yes or No. If Yes, then I’ve been sadly misled all my life. If No, then why do thriller & horror & crime writers write about people who act like nobody really would? Movies love to give us ridiculously contrived situations and brilliant evil geniuses like the Jigsaw guy in the Saw movies or John Doe in Se7en. There are no such people in real life. No Jokers or Batmen either. In Dear Laura the bad guy is no kind of genius but still quite unbelievable. So this pedophile guy charms away a 15 year old boy in front of his 13 year old girlfriend Laura. This leaves her unsurprisingly traumatised. The boy vanishes off the face of the earth but on every one of Laura’s subsequent birthdays she finds a creepy note apparently from The Killer asking her to do stuff and dangling a CLUE in front of her. So far so unlikely. Years roll round and her whole life is blighted by this creep. She is obsessed with Wanting to Find Out. What happened to Bobby? She must know. (I mean, she realises he must be dead, but still, she must know.) And on the one occasion she collects up all the creepy letters and decides to go to the cops, The Killer is right there to conk her on the head and put a stop to her police visiting activities. Because The Killer is obsessively watching her every move, morning noon and night. For year after year.
I didn’t buy Laura and I especially didn’t buy the pedo guy. Nobody is like this, at least, not in the very many true crime books & docs I have shamefully consumed. Nobody plays these elaborate teasing mind games so beloved by so many authors. Sorry, Olly, and even more sorry Gemma....more
Annotating a classic is a great way to make me buy it and read it all over again. * The experience is like a buddy read if your buddy is a wildly enthAnnotating a classic is a great way to make me buy it and read it all over again. * The experience is like a buddy read if your buddy is a wildly enthusiastic Wikipedian** who constantly interrupts you with things you didn’t know you didn’t know. Occasionally this does go too far, and I could feel the rush of blood to the heads of our three lovely annotators when they started defining words like jalopy, highball, chivalry, croupier and rake – rake? Yes, “the long L- or T-shaped stick that the croupier uses to sweep chips across the table”. I might probably have blue-pencilled those.*** But I loved the photos, maps, 1930s adverts, pulp magazine covers and so forth (what exactly did lounging pyjamas look like in 1935? It turns out they looked terrible) and especially the mini-essays about such matters as casual racism
As with much of American literature, the reader is faced with the challenge of reading work that is deeply flawed, but which is also the product of a racist and deeply flawed society. This challenge surfaces with canonical works by such authors as Jack London, Ezra Pound and Ernest Hemingway as well as most early crime fiction
or the ambiguous mortality of Philip Marlowe (is he really a knight errant?****); or what were the big differences between the book and the famous Bogart/Bacall movie*****; the common crime novel trope of the descent into hell; and ending with the most curious question of all.
Because when the last mournful, wry page is turned, the smoke clears and the mirrors are put back in the drawers a discombobulating feeling creeps upon the reader which is - what exactly does Philip Marlowe achieve in The Big Sleep? And the answer is (spoiler alert) not that much. Everything that does happen – a blackmails b, x shoots y, z kidnaps j, j escapes and shoots m, b kisses c – would have happened if Philip Marlowe had never heard of General Sternwood and his two crazy daughters. Marlowe might as well have stayed in bed.
In conclusion, I’m glad to report that a reread of The Big Sleep is a delightful experience, the femmes are as fatale as an autopsy, the similes still startle like a butcher’s kindness and the plot still makes not too much sense to me. The death of the chauffeur is still famously unexplained. (Chandler didn’t know who did it.) But it’s not for the plot, Chandler is why we read Chandler
Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride's pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. Her smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.
and however many dead bodies litter these pages Raymond Chandler will always be alive and well and living in L.A. in the late 1930s.
****
*Other annotated versions I have got are I have got are Alice in Wonderland, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Ulysses and HP Lovecraft.
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**Someone who contributes to Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia which anyone can edit, even lamebrains, but their edits don’t last long. For instance, when Jean-Luc Godard died on 13 September I checked his entry to clarify something and came across the statement “He was an anti-semite all his life.” What?? I noticed there was no source referenced & so I thought this is the work of some idiot. When I checked back five minutes later the statement had been deleted.
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(Jean-Luc Godard channeling Peter Sellers)
***Blue pencils were used by editors in pre-digital times to indicate text to be removed before printing.
****Errant in this phrase means “wandering”, that is, no longer tied to one feudal lord. He is free to go forth and seek adventure. Philip Marlowe blah blah blah. Blah blah blah.
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*****This is a whole complicated story, but how about this – the principal screenwriter was William Faulkner, yeah, that guy. The other thing is that the movie was filmed in 1944 but held back from release because Warners wanted to get some war pictures out first. While that was happening Bogart and Bacall became Hollywood’s Hottest Couple [TM] and so Warners dragged them back and shot some more scenes with them to add into the movie, then released it in 1946. But still they didn’t get any Oscar nominations & neither did the movie. The Oscars suck....more
This is an early Ellroy from back when he was following normal rules of grammar and constructing sentences that had more than four words in them. It’sThis is an early Ellroy from back when he was following normal rules of grammar and constructing sentences that had more than four words in them. It’s a serial killer story told in the first person, in the form of a long written confession, and Ellroy really lumbers himself by telling us on page three that “school records indicate genius-level intelligence” & so everything this nasty guy Martin Plunkett does has to be very very smart and, worse, his manner of writing has to demonstrate a genius-level mind, and this is not easy to do. And in fact it becomes tiresome.
It might be worth mentioning that your average serial killer is not especially bright, and one of the all time worst, Gary Ridgway, was thought by everyone as a very dumb guy. But he was able to avoid the cops for decades.
Anyway, this novel wasn’t especially convincing, all the simmering homosexuality-as-motivation psychology was plain weird.
However, peak Ellroy was just around the corner, starting the year after this one with The Black Dahlia. So forget this, start with that....more
The Shangri-Las’ follow-up to “Leader of the Pack” was a jaunty song called “Give Him a Great Big Kiss”. Considering the tormented psychodramas of theThe Shangri-Las’ follow-up to “Leader of the Pack” was a jaunty song called “Give Him a Great Big Kiss”. Considering the tormented psychodramas of their other singles, this was their happiest moment. In the song lead singer Mary is bragging about her new boyfriend ("Tight tapered pants, high button shoes/He's always looking like he's got the blues"). The other Shangri-Las pepper Mary with sceptical questions (they always had talking bits in their songs):
“Well, what colour are his eyes?” “I don’t know, he’s always wearing shades”
You can hear them thinking “Oh yeah?” One of them asks “Is he a good dancer?” Mary gets irritated: “Whaddya mean, is he a good dancer?” “Well how does he dance?” And Mary after a pause says softly
"Close. Very very close..."
When I was reading The Maltese Falcon I was waiting for someone to ask me how faithful the famous film is to the book. Nobody did, but I would have said
"Close. Very very close."
Every scene was filmed, every line of dialogue I could hear issuing forth from the mouths of Humphrey Bogart, Peter Lorre, Mary Astor and Sidney Greenstreet. And this became so intrusive that I thought well, there is no point in reading this book if you have seen the movie. Dashiell Hammett’s prose is as plain as plain can be – it’s his characters and dialogue that are engaging. The movie (thanks to John Huston and his cinematographer Arthur Edeson) turns this plain prose into the signature style of the quintessential noir thriller, which is a great improvement. There’s no doubt, the film is better in every way.
So I stopped halfway. First time I abandoned a book for that reason.
Well if I had a time machine that could go back nine days (therefore useless for assassinating Hitler) I might use it to tell myself not to bother wit Well if I had a time machine that could go back nine days (therefore useless for assassinating Hitler) I might use it to tell myself not to bother with Long Bright River even though its heart is in the right place.
Our narrator is a female cop who tells us the whole 450 page long story in a flat, sour, dour, plodding, downbeat, dulled, constrained, constricted, infarcted, morose and gloomy trudge. There is not one glimmer of a smile to be found anywhere.
There’s a solid reason for all this misery. There were two sisters – their mother died of a drug overdose, their father vamoosed. One sister grew up and became a cop, the other took after her parents and became a junkie sex worker. And now the Good Sister thinks that the next OD she finds on her beat will be the Bad Sister. Oh, and the usual serial killer is knocking around, so there’s that too.
This novel is all about the sisters and kind of about the opioid epidemic, although that’s really just background noise. Mostly it’s all about the horrible self-inflicted under-achieving that keeps the lower parts of the working class in America or anywhere else from climbing out of their hardships and leaving the rowhomes and tenements behind. The great character here is the grandmother Gee who is relentless. She hates anyone who tries to improve their situation (“she thinks she’s better than us”) and refuses to sign papers to allow the Good Sister to get a student loan to go to college. Gee says :
They’ll take your money and they’ll spit you out on the sidewalk. They’ll have a laugh at your expense and then get rid of you. That’s what they’ll do. And if you think you’ll ever see a return on that investment, well I’ve got a bridge to sell you. I’m not filling that out, she said, nodding at the financial aid forms. I won’t help you dig yourself into debt for some useless piece of paper at the end of it.
It’s chilling, and totally believable. One step down from this family are the ones where the parents actively prevent the kids from going to school at all. Unfortunately our author Liz Moore seems to have thought she needed to fit all these workingclass family dynamics into the standard thriller story with corrupt cops and dangerous pimps and a boring serial killer and wrongly accused honourable types and bleurghhhhhh. For me that was the wrong way to go.
2.5 stars. Could have been really something. ...more
Yeah, baby. A step by step descent into a very private hell. Four stars from me. This was a hundred per cent better than most thrillers & crime fictioYeah, baby. A step by step descent into a very private hell. Four stars from me. This was a hundred per cent better than most thrillers & crime fiction I ever read because it didn’t ask you to suspend any one tiny part of your disbelief, there were no outrageous circumstances, no floridly crazed villains, no coincidences, no corpse that did not follow on logically from the corpse before it. Scott Smith comes up with a felicitous phrase to describe what I mean on page 237:
It had the disorderly verisimilitude of reality
It’s true we have seen this kind of thing before. The plot is like the almighty screw-ups in Fargo (the movie and the tv series) – and the setting, too, winter in the midwest. The device that kicks all this mayhem off is the same as the one in Charley Varrick and Shallow Grave, two great little movies, and probably many others too – ordinary guys discover a huge bag of money. Will they keep it? Of course! Will they begin to think their pals will betray them & try to steal it all? Sure thing! Will the bad guys whose money this is come looking for it? You betcha. Will things just keep getting more entangled and violent? Need you ask.
As well as a strong plot that drags the reader on to the bitter end, this is also a study in how ordinary people given the right circumstance can find their inner Macbeth quite easily, it’s there inside their minds all the time, waiting to be roused, like a sleeping cobra. When I say ordinary people I mean me and you – yes, you. Everyone is included in this indictment. (Another great demonstration of how an ordinary guy becomes a terrible criminal is Breaking Bad.)
In my second hand copy of A Simple Plan there were a couple of pages with round brown stains on them, drops of something or other. I have not sent them off for laboratory testing yet but if it’s dried blood it would be most appropriate....more
The man behind me reminded my right kidney of his gun. He had an office down the hall. Sometimes he was even in it. The dead girl didn’t look dead enoThe man behind me reminded my right kidney of his gun. He had an office down the hall. Sometimes he was even in it. The dead girl didn’t look dead enough. It was depressing not to be able to hit him again. This was the fifth time. My second marriage lasted sixteen days. She gave me the twice over. I picked up his gun and put it in my pocket. I explained again. I leaned into an easy left and he went down hard enough. He half-lowered thick lids over his bulging eyeballs and the sharp pink point of his tongue lasted sixteen days. I explained again for the sixth time. Speed knew Johnny who was McCoy’s first wife’s pusher. But he didn’t know he knew him. That was where I came in. The gun was empty when I took it away. It wriggled like a worm. I’m glad I didn’t kill you, Archer, she said. That made two of us. The body behind the door was a problem. Her passionate mouth behind the door was the other problem. You’re losing your looks, she said. You’re losing your looks, I said. I explained for the seventh time. She didn’t like me, the cops didn’t like me, the mob didn’t like me, I didn’t like me. The thin girl the fat guy. I couldn’t make the connection. Dowser was Mosquito’s source. That was obvious. I dragged him to a sitting position. He wasn’t co-operative. I persuaded him for ten minutes, then I got tired. I explained for the eleventh time....more
Sometimes this Tony Burgess guy takes flight and swoops exulting into a fiery firmament of linguistic legerdemain, really lovely brilliant stuff, I loSometimes this Tony Burgess guy takes flight and swoops exulting into a fiery firmament of linguistic legerdemain, really lovely brilliant stuff, I love it – he did it in Ravenna Gets and he does it here – example –
A torn cloud grows sideways along the moon’s eye. A fine oil is scattered out from the white crawlspace of a half galaxy. The oil is orange and green and gold that sprays behind the moon and emerges towards the unseen sun as a brief map. Black scratched lines that hold for a second then scatter as a million tiny viruses vibrating on the scalp of a whale.
The whole thing teetering on the edge of a derisory snort that will never snort forth from the reader’s orifice because another bullet has just entered the back of the next victim’s skull. So yes, rather disappointingly, this short sick novel is yet another dose of all American ultra violence, like we needed it, and once again we are stuck in the mind of the psycho killer qu'est-ce que c'est from start to finish.
I think Mr Burgess could write us one of the great modern American novels if only he could be unhooked from his chosen horror genre dripfeed and given an actual plot to work on....more
I’m struggling to figure out why so many readers were knocked out by the originality of this book. Comments like
An intense, unforgettable, and grippinI’m struggling to figure out why so many readers were knocked out by the originality of this book. Comments like
An intense, unforgettable, and gripping journey into the harrowing motives behind a gruesome act. Impossible to put down; absolutely brilliant.
And I’m Uh? What was that again? For a start there’s only one single dead teenager. That’s not very many. I prefer more than one dead teenager – three is usually when the fun really begins. But that’s just me. Secondly, there were a lot of characters interviewed about the events leading up to the murder. Now, isn’t that what Hercule Poirot does, or Miss Marples? Sure, they didn’t do it for a podcast, but I thought, same thing really.
This podcast thing, I had to find out about that. I listen to the radio when not reading/watching movies/listening to music/feeding cats/etc and I thought what is this big deal about a podcast. Then I realised 2 things –
1 – podcasts are radio programmes for modern people who don’t listen to the radio. It’s a way of getting their radio from iTunes. 2 – the podcast format in Six Stories is a big riff on (or : rip-off of) a real life one called Serial which I had not heard of but is I now realise a Big Thing. I may be barking up the wrong tree here but Serial sounded quite like the radio version of Making a Murderer (Netflix series) and The Staircase Murders before that. These shows investigate real life crimes & tease out all the complexities and interrogate witnesses and evidence.
Now – about 10 years ago I stumbled on a documentary called Capturing the Friedmans. And that one really was
An intense, unforgettable, and gripping journey into the harrowing motives behind a gruesome act. Impossible to put down; absolutely brilliant.
Yes, it had the same impact on me then that Six Stories seems to have had on its readers now.
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What happened was that a guy called Andrew Jarecki decided to make a documentary about children’s party entertainers in New York. It was going to be called Just a Clown. He met one such clown, David Friedman. And during his filming and research, he found out to his horror that 15 years previously David’s brother and father had been jailed for multiple acts of sexual abuse of children. He also found out that the Friedmans had a vast collection of home movies going back many years which they had kept. They had been obsessed with filming everything. So Jarecki decided right then to junk the clown stuff – his documentary was now going to be about the Friedmans. What was their terrible story?
There were many twists and turns and the whole thing is a MUST SEE. All fans of Six Stories will surely love it. And it’s all true.
Well, so there is a lot of precedent for fictional investigation of crime through a patchwork quilt of interviews – this was also what Truman Capote did in In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer in The Executioner’s Song – both brilliantly.
Six Stories is okay – I ain't saying it ain't. It tells its angsty tale of teenage rivalry, insecurity, bullying and Marilyn Mansonlite posturing very well and there’s the readerly pleasure of the twist at the end (in retrospect surely a bit implausible for reasons too spoilerish to go into). All the interviews, however, are so believable, so repetitive, so backtracking and stuffed full of so many meanderings and lapses of memory that you end up wishing a few more of these people had been found dead in the Northumbrian bog so we wouldn’t have had to listen to them any more. They are really very annoying! But that’s life....more
Birdman is a solid genre crime thriller and fans of this kind of novel will be happy to see the following old favourites present and correct:
Sexy mid-Birdman is a solid genre crime thriller and fans of this kind of novel will be happy to see the following old favourites present and correct:
Sexy mid-ranking but fuckedup policeman hero with deeply troubled past – check!
Who meets during the investigation a babelicious middle class artist so that both of them know something’s gonna happen soon – check!
Gruesome crimes the like of which are never seen in real life – check check check!
Yards and yards and YARDS of police acronyms, police tech-speak, police management-speak, police humour, police casual sexism, police cups of tea, all things police – check!
The wrong guy arrested – check!
Hero’s new girlfriend ending up being menaced by the killer – check! Need you ask!
Psycho killer as dumpy middle aged nobody with a big gut but really remarkable sexual vitality who surprisingly seems to have more moves than Batman as he manhandles and incapacitates both his victims and his pursuers with contemptuous ease even though COME ON REALLY he’s a dumpy middle aged nobody who hasn’t done any physical exercise for the last 40 years – check!
Hectic every-second-counts chase at the grand finale – check!
Eventually I almost began to like this silly slice of tough tough London kinky killer thriller fol-de-rol but then the big climax (ahem ahem sorry vicar) dragged on and on and, oh yes, on, with so many arcs of arterial blood on the walls and splashes of that other well known bodily fluid all over the dinner plates and just everywhere that I found myself frankly guffawing.
I think the sun has set on my relationship with tough British police thrillers....more
Rayner drove up into the high desert. Passed through some sort of encampment. Old concrete slabs set into the earth. Campers and homemade shacks set uRayner drove up into the high desert. Passed through some sort of encampment. Old concrete slabs set into the earth. Campers and homemade shacks set up on the slabs. Piles of old keyboards. Trash everywhere. Old needles, surgical masks, prosthetic limbs. Spray paint pentagrams. Totem poles with shrunken author’s heads. ARCs skewered to trees with animal bones. Name of the place set out in broken green glass – SLABTOWN. The unmistakeable smell of reviews being written from every shack. Rayner felt cold down to his prostate. So this was it, this was where the reviews came from. This junkpile, the beating heart of Goodreads Nation. He stopped the car.
A pit bull came round the corner, scarred face, torn off ears. Old guy sauntering after it. Dog crashed into the car door, slavering to take Rayner’s right arm off him. Old guy just stared, then with one hand gesture made the dog go away.
Rayner wound down the window.
“Here to see karen,” he said.
After a while the old guy said, “They ain’t no karen”.
More time passed. Time enough to get a tattoo.
“Was once. Ain’t now.”
The old guy left.
Okay, enough parody for today. But Jordan Harper does kind of ask for it. His short sentences. His bulging muscles. His tough tough guys with their tough tough tattoos. And his cute but damaged but resilient tough tough eleven year old girl. Who by the way has enough ninja power to take down the pit bull mentioned above. I must say that scene caused my eyebrows to embed themselves in the ceiling, from where they were retrieved with some difficulty. Hmmm – 11 year old girl vs pitbull? Any given Sunday, I got to say, all due respect, I’m going with the pit bull.
I loved Jordan Harper’s mad violent hair-raising tales of Aryan Steel methheads detailed in the collection Love and Other Wounds. When it comes to a whole entire novel, though, he finds himself cruelly exposed.
She touched the red flesh on her wrist where Nate had held her. At the thought of him her cells all rubbed together, a low and beautiful drone all through her.
I’m just not sure about all her cells rubbing together. I really don’t think that’s a thing.
Nate broke Magic’s grip. Magic fell on top of him. Magic felt Nate’s face. He fumbled for Nate’s eyes. Nate hugged him close. He pressed Magic’s face into his chest. Magic bit through Nate’s shirt. He broke skin. Nate rode the pain. He got a knee under Magic’s stomach. He gouged Magic’s eyes. He was very happy. Next day it snowed. Magic and Nate got married.
No no no, stop! I’m so sorry Mr Harper, it’s just irresistible!
Well – for the suckmouth with a sawnoff in your life, A Lesson in Violence speeds along like the Aryan Steel are after it. I was expecting a frankly appalling saga of degradation and horror and what I got instead was real good American fun....more
A car is a thing that has to have wheels, an engine, seats and at least a steering wheel and a brake otherwise it isn’t a car. And you have to have fuA car is a thing that has to have wheels, an engine, seats and at least a steering wheel and a brake otherwise it isn’t a car. And you have to have fuel. Otherwise it will still be a car but it won’t go anywhere. The manufacturers change all the external details around and make us think that this car is different to that car but they’re all cars, so basically the same. I think detective thrillers are like cars. You have to have a minimum of one dead body; you have to have red herrings whereby the detective (and therefore the reader) thinks it’s that but really it’s this; you have to have the investigator get into at least one romantic thing with somebody, which in many cases marks that person out for certain death; there has to be some fisticuffs and the detective has to get biffed; you have to finally expose the villain and provide a motive for all this. The fuel, so to speak.
So I’m thinking that detective thrillers are really very repetitive, but fans of this genre don’t mind, just as I don’t mind that all Neil Young songs sound very similar. This one combines the above standard plot gubbins with a science fiction twist. A giant asteroid is on its way to Earth and will probably annihilate civilisation in around 9 months from the start of our story. It’s all a bit upsetting. Makes some people chuck in their jobs and rush off to do their bucket list things. For other people, they’re already doing their bucket list things – as the pathologist says as she dissects the corpse “this is what I want to be doing”. Our hero Detective Henry Palace is another such. He just likes detecting and getting beaten up and being misled but eventually figuring it all out.
The fun of this book is the observations of society beginning to crumble round the edges as the scientists announce the probability of Maia the Asteroid colliding with Earth - it’s 100% ! I wanted more of that but there were just glimpses.
This is not an original idea – there’s current BBC series called Hard Sun which is about how the sun will explode in 5 years - but authors seem to need to distract us from the unthinkable horror of their scenario by all this running about and falling down and shooting. But I didn’t want to be distracted.
Captain Renault : What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca? Rick : My health – I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain Renault : Waters? WhaCaptain Renault : What in heaven’s name brought you to Casablanca? Rick : My health – I came to Casablanca for the waters. Captain Renault : Waters? What waters? We’re in the desert. Rick : I was misinformed.
*
Thinking Dashiell Hammett would be the go-to guy now that I have run out of Chandlers, I thought : let’s read the very famous The Thin Man. The movie is great, what could possibly go wrong?
*
Well, for starters, Chandler’s prose is graced with genius where Hammett’s prose is graced with deadlines.
*
Everyone comments on the insane amount of drinking that is detailed on every page here. Even the dog drinks manhattans. Take out all the references to hooch in The Thin Man and it would be 70 pages shorter, easy. So that was kind of silly and then irksome and then really irritating in a harrumph! kind of way.
*
They’ll tell you that Nick and Nora, our charming lushes, later to die of cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 55 and 46 respectively, are possessed of this witty banter. But you know, not that witty. The witty is all in the movie.
FROM THE BOOK
Dorothy patted the dog’s head and left us. We found a table. Nora said : “She’s pretty.” “If you like ‘em like that.” She grinned at me : “You got types?” “Only you, darling... lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.” “And how about the redhead you wandered off with at the Quinn’s last night?” “That’s silly,” I said. “She just wanted to show me some French etchings.”
SAME SCENE FROM THE MOVIE
Nora (referring to Dorothy): Pretty girl.
Nick: If you like 'em like that.
Nora (grinning at him) : You got types?
Nick : Only you, darling... lanky brunettes with wicked jaws.
Nora : Who is she?
Nick : I was hoping I wouldn't have to tell you. Dorothy is really my daughter. You see, it was Spring in Venice, and I was so young. I didn't know what I was doing. We were all like that on my father's side.
Nora : By the way, how is your father's side?
Nick : Much better, thanks.
Nora : How many drinks have you had?
Nick : Six Martinis.
Nora (to the waiter, ordering) : Six Martinis. (then to Nick)You're not going to have anything on me.
*
Then there was the plot. I couldn’t muster up the energy to wonder who clobbered Dr Plum in the library with the blunt instrument.
*
So in answer to the question what could possibly go wrong, sort of everything did all at once....more
Readers of genre fiction have got one big advantage over readers of literary fiction. They know that in every one ofGENRE FICTION VS. LITERARY FICTION
Readers of genre fiction have got one big advantage over readers of literary fiction. They know that in every one of their novels something happens. Whereas in literary fiction trying to find an actual event is like looking for Amelia Earhart. I refer to Thomas Bernhardt, Italo Calvino, Haruki Murakami – the usual suspects. There are plenty of others. In Cold Kiss a broke young couple give a lift to a guy with a real bad chest infection – or has he?- only to have him die in the back seat – or is he? – and then discover a whole lot of money in his suitcase – or is it?
THE USUAL RIGMAROLE
So this is a familiar plot which we have seen many times before in such excellent movies as Charlie Varrick and Shallow Grave. Someone unwittingly stumbles upon a shedload of hot money and then has to figure out how to keep it and stay alive when the bad guys come after it.
HEALTH AND SAFETY DISREGARDED
People in thrillers have not yet quit smoking. This one was published in 2010 and everyone is puffing away in blithe disregard of all the available information about the proven link between smoking and various life-threatening health conditions. Maybe they think that they’re already in such a dangerous genre that what the hell.
USEFUL ADVICE FOR LIFE
Do not go into business with a meth-head who has found God, or, more accurately, who says that God has found him.
USEFUL ADVICE FOR READING AND FOR LIFE
When you encounter a description of a dream in a novel, you can skip it. Just like when someone actually tells you about a dream of theirs. You don’t need to listen. You can just tune out and after they have stopped say “Oh wow, last night I had a dream where I was walking down a street and trying to dodge watermelons which people were hurling at me from their bedroom windows.” Or some such rubbish.
UNTHRILLING THRILLERS
If you’re expecting to be surprised by the unexpected plot twists of the modern thriller then the surprises will not be surprising as you’re expecting them. Suspension of disbelief is one thing, but suspension of the expectation of thriller-type surprises when you’re reading a thriller is really impossible. This is a conundrum for the reader....more
I looked at her legs. It was only 10 in the morning but she had legs to look at. She had brought them into my office with her. Her legs looked at me bI looked at her legs. It was only 10 in the morning but she had legs to look at. She had brought them into my office with her. Her legs looked at me but I never found out what they thought. She balanced all of next year’s expense account on her little finger and blew smoke over it. She was wearing the kind of perfume you could invade countries for. The rest of her was what your imagination wasn’t any use for any more. I’d had a tough night that day so I only looked in her right eye. She offered me a cigarette. She offered me a drink. She offered me the Pacific Ocean. She offered me ten different futures, in all of which I ended up at the bottom of a lift shaft with both feet at the wrong angle and no health insurance. I looked at her legs. They were probably a metaphor but I never read French novels. There was a guy in the sedan behind us. I turned right then right again on Ventura. Now he was only three cars back. Her legs looked at me. I unhooked her clothing. “You have to help me, Marlowe,” she said. She said, “You’re speeding, Marlowe, this is a residential zone and there’s a school somewhere round here.” Then she was naked and I poured all over her like moonlight. The sedan in the mirror was as subtle as a Nazi at a christening. I took a right then another right. He took a left and I was down on the floor, my jaw felt like Carnegie Hall after the 1812 Overture. He looked a lot taller from down there. But at least I could look at her legs without interruption. I was happy about that then all the lights went out....more
The good Benjamin and the bad Myers have their hands round each other’s throats here.
GOOD BENJAMIN
There are lovely thrilling passages all about the haThe good Benjamin and the bad Myers have their hands round each other’s throats here.
GOOD BENJAMIN
There are lovely thrilling passages all about the harsh beautiful world of Yorkshire in the winter.
He pictures the reservoir rising rushing surging gushing. Underwater underground. Unseen. Through tunnels and runnels and channels and fissures. Running and spurting and flowing and flushing. Down the hidden concrete conduits through the earth and out the storm-drain exit points. He sees streams swelling into rivers that flow down the flanks and into the valley. Down the dale.
BAD MYERS
There is really horrid cliché dialogue
A guy is confessing to a murder to a bunch of sleazy guys:
Will you tell the authorities? The man in the cap starts laughing at him… Son, we are the authorities.
Cue : audience groaning & saying to each other ironically whoah, never saw that coming.
GOOD BENJAMIN
There is the heart, the kernel, the throbbing ventricle of what could have been one of the great English crime novels in these pages.
BAD MYERS
But it’s rushed through and tossed away, as if Bad Myers did not know what he had here.
GOOD BENJAMIN
He grabs hold of the recent Jimmy Savile scandal, in which one of Britain’s most beloved showbiz entertainers turned out to be a child rapist, sexual abuser and necrophile during a 40 years career and was only discovered to be so phenomenally depraved after he was safely dead. You see, Sir James Wilson Vincent "Jimmy" Savile, OBE, KCSG raised millions for charity and was a friend of the royal family as well as being a serial sex abuser of his many pre-teen and teenage fans. It was a hell of a story and here we have a pretty good fictionalised version of it, and I think that fiction is the only place such a horror story can be fully explored. To do the whole thing justice this book needed to be twice the length.
BAD MYERS
He combines the Savile story with a more standard plot involving a cabal of corrupt businessmen and coppers who like to torture girls to death and film the proceedings. Then all of this is used as the background to the sorry tale of Steven Rutter, the barely literate pig farmer who is the almost-equivalent of Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant creation Lester Ballard in my favorite CM novel Child of God (read it!!). It’s too much for one medium sized novel.
GOOD BENJAMIN
He infuses a near-prose poetry into almost every description. Have I already said that? Okay, I’m running out of things to say about Good Benjamin.
BAD MYERS
He has this really bad bromance thing going between the clichéd uncorruptible loner cop and the clichéd drunk wannabe-a-real-writer journalist which takes up way way way too much time.
***
So maybe this was like listening to Neil Young, his lyrics are stupid and incoherent and his voice is whiney and not good but ooo that guitar solo, don’t turn it off....more
I didn’t even have time to mark this as currently reading because I read it so fast! Which made me realise how some readers on GR can race through so I didn’t even have time to mark this as currently reading because I read it so fast! Which made me realise how some readers on GR can race through so many books per week, if they stick with a steady diet of genre fiction which has only the plainest vocabulary and deals in characters, scenes and plots we have encountered already a bajillion times in tv shows, movies and other genre fiction books. So even though this was about busting open a hardcore paedophile ring it was easy reading. One’s eyes simply melted through each page, one did.
AND THEN AND THEN AND THEN
Plot : it hardly exists in proper grown-up literature. The more plotty a book is, the further it is from real literature. E.g. anything by Thomas Bernhard, Underworld, Ulysses, The Sound and the Fury, Proust, Sentimental Education - all stone-cold 500 carat literature; a little more plotty – Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Jonathan Franzen, still literature but only 50 carat; then totally plotty genre fiction : not literature.
(Then you get the 15-tentacled giant squid-beasts that are TV soap operas, the plottiest things ever, and the trashiest.)
So you see how this thing goes.
For example “Can I Come Over Tonight” by The Velours (1962)
Even though the story could only go one or two ways at each twist, and even though each of these ways would have been unrelated to any form of originality, still, I kept glomming though this book. Glom, glom, read, read.
But I do understand the pleasures of genre, being a fan of doo-wop music, the American pop harmony groups which flourished between 1956 and 1962. They only ever used four chords, their lyrics and tunes were interchangeable, at 1 minute 15 seconds there was always a saxophone break (never guitar), and there were only ever four varieties of doo wop : fast, slow, black and Italian American. I imagine fans of detective thrillers have the same kind of relationship, and love the similarity and the microtonal differences – a great falsetto, a pyrotechnic hero-gets-beaten-up scene. Same kind of thing going on.
NOTE ON ENGLISH ALCOHOLISM
Every other scene in this entire novel, apart from when they’re in prison, features alcohol. Susan Hill, you may not want to acknowledge this, but I think your book has a problem. Let us pick a random few pages:
The drinks cupboard was well stocked and the supper straightforward… they cleared everything , plus a bottle and a half of burgundy p274
The drink had gone to his head faster than usual p276
Will held up a bottle of beer, smoking with cold from the fridge… “Gin and tonic? Vodka?” p296
Morson got up and refilled his own glass, handed Will a second bottle of beer without asking p297
“Make yourself comfortable, Johnno. What can I get you to drink?” The vodka bottle came up from the fridge. P300
A soft knock on his door. “Brought you a beer.” P308
“Want me to slip down and get you a Scotch to chase the beer?” p310
“I’m in need of a drink. Can I get you a glass of wine or a beer?” p 323
And on and on and on.
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Don’t bother to get up. I can see myself out. Oops! Never mind, I'm okay. ...more
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