Categories
2010 Crime

Pocket Notebook – Mike Thomas

Pocket Notebook is written by a serving policeman and describes the life of Jacob Smith, a tactical firearms officer, who begins to loose control of his life. He abuses steroids, has relationship problems and can no longer cope with his demanding job.

It doesn’t sound like my sort of book at all and I have to admit that I would never have picked it up. It arrived unsolicited from the publisher and I was quite prepared to leave it on the shelf unread. One day I decided to sort out my book shelf and started to read the first page of this book – I couldn’t put it down!

It gives a fascinating insight into the life of a police officer. I loved learning about the detail of their job – the little things that they do in order to get through the day. Of course we will never really know how much of it is true, but I suspect that most of the events described in this book have happened to some extent. I assume that many in the police force will be upset by the release of this book – they won’t want the controversial behaviour to become public knowledge, but I was reassured by what I read. They have an incredibly difficult job and if “black dogging”* makes their life easier then I’m all for it!

The plot of this book isn’t that earth shattering, but that just reflects the mundane life of the average police officer:

I’m neither surprised nor exhilarated by anything I’ve done or any call I’ve been to in the last week. Just constantly shocked by the pettiness of it all, how the people I’m supposedly serving are so inept as to be virtually  incapable of looking after themselves. I’m society’s garbage man, just here to take out the trash, to spoonfeed these spastic sink-estate dwellers, the trolls and inbreds in their shellsuits with their state-funded cinema-sized surround-sound tellies, these women – these girls – who think spewing out babies by different and now absent fathers qualifies as an occupation.

The characters are well drawn and there are some really emotional scenes in there. I’m not sure how interesting this book will be to people in other countries as it is very British, but perhaps those from overseas will enjoy reading about dysfunctional people living in the UK!

Recommended to anyone who’d like to find out what police officers really get up to!

*Black dogging is when a police officer ‘sees’ a black dog crossing the road and so brakes sharply, throwing anyone in the back of the police van against the wall. It is pure coincidence that dogs tend to cross the road when the detainees in the back of the van are being disorderly and abusive.

Categories
2010 Crime

Blacklands – Belinda Bauer

Blacklands was the second selection for the TV Book Club. I couldn’t decide whether to read it or not, but although the rest of the show was poor, the short discussion they had on the book actually persuaded me to check a copy out of the library.

Blacklands is set in Exmoor and centres on Steven, a twelve-year-old boy whose uncle  was murdered 18 years ago. He is trying to find the body, so that his Grandmother can finally have some closure. After a fruitless search Steven decides to write to his uncle’s killer in the hope he will reveal the location of the body.

Blacklands is a very quick and easy read – I completed the whole book in one sitting, proof of how gripping I found it. Unfortunately I found the book too light for me and I was left feeling slightly disappointed.

Lots of interesting issues were introduced, including how a tragedy can continue affecting a family many years after its occurrence, but I felt that these issues were not investigated properly. The real heartbreak was skimmed over, producing a fast paced book, with no emotional depth.

Steven’s character was well drawn and I found the child’s perspective to be realistic and touching, but his letters to the serial killer went beyond reality. I struggled to believe that any correspondence between a murderer and child would be allowed and the cryptic replies were just too convenient.

I don’t think I’ll remember much about it in a few years time, but it entertained me for a few hours. Despite these criticisms it is a good page turner and is ideal for anyone who enjoys lighter crime novels.

 

Did you enjoy Blacklands?

Did you think the letters were realistic/would ever be allowed?

Categories
2010 Crime Recommended books

Rupture – Simon Lelic

Note: This book is released as A Thousand Cuts in the US

Rupture is set in a London comprehensive school, where a teacher walks into an assembly and shoots three pupils and a colleague, before turning the gun on himself. The book follows the young policewoman who is in charge of investigating the case. She quickly realises that the incident is not as simple as it first appears and sets out to find what motivated a quiet teacher to become a murderer.

The book begins with some truanting boys hearing a disturbance at their school; they sneak past the teachers and police they try to discover what has happened. The boys don’t actually see anything, but in many ways I found their observations more disturbing, as my imagination was left to conjure up the horror for myself.

I see what I had for lunch the day before, a pile of pork all glistening with fat like it’s been run over by a herd of slugs, just left on a tray in the sink. And there’s stuff all over the floor, lettuce gone soggy and brown, and peas with their guts splattered and smeared all over the tiles. I almost throw up.

I’d like to say that Rupture is a cross between Notes on a Scandal and We Need To Talk About Kevin but I think that would be unfair, as Rupture has it’s own unique voice. Much of the book is written as half a conversation, leaving you to fill in the police officer’s questions yourself. Some people may struggle with this writing style, but I found it to be very effective.

This book is gripping throughout and I was very impressed that by the end I had a great deal of sympathy for the murderer. I loved the way my initial opinions were slowly changed, leading me to question the way I look at crime and how often the perpetrator is often a victim too.

This book has everything I love to see in a book: fantastic characters, an impressive writing style, a compelling plot and a list of things to think about for weeks to come.

Highly recommended.

 

Have I persuaded you to buy a copy?!

There seem to be a lot of books about school shootings. Which is your favourite?

Categories
Books in Translation Chunkster Crime Mystery Thriller

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – Steig Larsson

Translated from the Swedish by Reg Keeland

I’m confused. Please could someone explain why everyone raves about this book; why it has sold millions of copies around the world and why people are describing it as the best crime novel ever. I just don’t understand it – I found it to be just average, with quite a few flaws.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo does have a reasonably complex plot, with several different threads running parallel to each other, but the basic premise involves solving a murder, which remained a mystery for almost 40 years.

My main problem with the book was that I guessed the ending very early on. In my view, a fantastic crime novel will leave little clues along the way, continually leading you to think one thing, then doubt yourself and guess again.  This book failed to do that – I just found my initial suspicions becoming stronger, until I was disappointingly proved right.

I also found the pace of the book to be slow. The beginning especially, contained far too many facts. I found myself becoming bogged down in the details, so was unable to find the reading experience enjoyable in several places.

I have heard a few people mention the negative portrayal of women in the book, and have to agree that this is another flaw. The original Swedish title can be translated as Men Who Hate Women, so I can see why it was changed for the international audience!  The poor treatment of women in this book was a minor problem, but I think that reading books like 2666 recently has dulled my sensitivity to these issues and other people may be far more offended than I was.

I did find the writing to be of a good quality, and the translation was excellent, but the plot was a big disappointment. It contained nothing ground-breaking, or particularly clever – it was just an average crime novel, no better than the thousands of other ones produced each year. Am I missing something? What makes this book so special?

stars3h

 

Did you enjoy The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo?

Are the sequels better?

Categories
2000 - 2007 Books in Translation Chunkster Crime

Grotesque – Natsuo Kirino

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Translated from the Japanese by Rebecca Copeland

Out is one of my favourite books and so I was very excited about reading Kirino’s second novel, < ?php echo amazon('0099488930','Grotesque’); ?>. Unfortunately, it failed to live up to my expectations.

Grotesque is very different in style to Out. It is slower, less gritty and without the moral dilemmas that made Out so special.

Grotesque centres around the murder of two prostitutes in Tokyo. The unnamed narrator was the sister of one of the victims and the best friend of the other. Her life becomes dominated by their deaths, as it is all anyone wants to talk about with her. We find out who the killer was very early on, so this book isn’t really a thriller, it is more like a character study. It deals with the motivations for prostitution and the process of grief following the murders of people who are close to you.

It sounds like a fascinating book, but unfortunately I found it quite boring. Some people think it is clever that the narrator was unreliable and meandered from one reflection to the next, but I found it very frustrating. There was no plot thread to drive the story forward and the ending was disappointing.  I think this quote gives you a good sense of the apathetic attitude present in this book:

You imagine Yuriko’s death shocked me, but it didn’t. Did I hate her murderer? No. Like my father, I didn’t really care about learning the truth.

I felt as though I was wading through depressive thoughts and didn’t see the point of the seemingly random snippets of their childhood lives.

There were several theoretically shocking scenes in this book, but they had no effect on me as I hadn’t bonded with any of the characters.

The writing was of a high quality and I didn’t find any of the jarring Japanese translation problems that I encountered with Out. I also loved the first chapter and her imaginative predictions of what her children would look like if she decided to sleep with various men. There were many other good paragraphs, but I’m afraid that overall the book was disappointing.

If you are interested in reading an investigation into the thoughts of a disturbed young woman then you might enjoy this book, but if you are looking for the best thriller on the planet I suggest you try Out.

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Have you read any of Natsuo Kirino’s books?

What do you think of them?

Categories
2009 Crime

The Brutal Telling – Louise Penny

 

The Brutal Telling‘); ?> is set in a remote, artistic community surrounded by the forests of Quebec. The book begins with the discovery of an unknown hermit’s body in the town’s bistro. Chief Inspector Gamache is called in to investigate the crime, in this, the fifth book in the series.

I haven’t read any books written by Loiuse Penny before, but I am always on the look out for a great new crime series to follow. Unfortunately this book failed to live up to my expectations.

The pace of the book was very fast, as a high percentage of it was dialogue. I wanted to know what the characters were thinking and feeling, but instead I only witnessed a string of events.

I found the writing to be quite passive and the characters failed to engage me. My problem in connecting with the characters could be due to the fact that this is the fifth in the series, but I was assured that this book would work as a stand alone novel, and many other people have enjoyed it with out having read the first four books.

The title implies that this will be a very dark novel, but it felt more like a cozy mystery to me, with very little menace. The plot itself was quite basic and lacked the cunning twists and turns that I love in crime fiction. I guessed the murderer quite early on and was disappointed to discover that I was correct.

The writing was of a high standard and there were many good sections in the book, but overall it failed to impress me.

Recommended to people who enjoy fast paced, simple cozy mysteries.

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I seem to be one of the only people who didn’t enjoy with this book though: Kittling Books, Ms Bookish and Bibliophile by the Sea all loved it.

Did you enjoy The Brutal Telling?

Have you read any of Louise Penny’s other books?