Review: The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle is a high concept crime novel. Its one-sentence pitch is "Groundhog Day crossed with Agatha Christie".

Our hero wakes up without memories, with a single word on his lips: "Anna". He's in a forest and witnesses a young woman being chased by a villain. He hears screams and a gunshot. And then someone pursues him, gives him a compass, whispers a word in his ear, and allows him to flee to the nearby country mansion Blackheath.

In Blackheath, he finds people who know him, but his memories stay out of reach. All he recalls is the violence he witnessed that morning. The day progresses with an unsettling feeling that there are dark secrets lurking in the house and the people who are gathered here. However, he manages to make one single friend, Evelyn Hardcastle, who sees possibility and potential in his blank state. A promise of renewal, a new start, a chance to become a better man (for there are unpleasant rumours about his profession...)

The next morning, our hero awakes again, but in a different body, reliving the same day, looking at it through different eyes. It is the day of Evelyn Hardcastle's murder, and our hero's task is to solve it.

Seven Deaths is a novel that manages to build up intrigue and tension relatively gradually. If it weren't for the title, a reader might find the first chapters a bit slow, confusing and frustrating. (We don't even find out that Evelyn Hardcastle dies until he has gone through the day several times!) Fortunately, the title tells us the grand drama that the narrator does not know, and therefore adds tension even in moments when the narrator is bumbling along gormlessly.

Each body he inhabits is different, and each body comes with different emotional patterns, instincts, and physical limitations. After the first day, our narrator is in a constant battle between his own mind and the habits of the person he occupies. Short-tempered people, calculating people, flighty people, sometimes his hands do things before his conscious mind notices them. It's a very interesting idea, and I think in the hands of a virtuoso, it could have been gobsmackingly brilliant to read. Stuart Turton is a good writer, but not a prodigy, so he tackles this deftly but not very immersively  or subtly by having our narrator tell us about his struggles. The same goes for the rest of the book: it is written well, but the genius is in the concept, not so much in the execution. Characters may have secrets, but they don't tend to have much complexity. The basic crime story has peril, but is thin on authenticity. The end result is a book that is immensely readable and good fun, but which feels like you can glimpse a hint of a magnificent could-have-been through the text that is. A good novel that feels like it might have been great.

Definitely worth a read.

Rating: 4/5

Book Review: The Elusive Elixir by Gigi Pandian

The Elusive Elixir is the third novel in the 'Accidental Alchemist' series. This sort-of-urban fantasy set in Portland, Oregon, is a pleasant romp. Using alchemy as the driver of its supernatural aspects is a different approach - even if, ultimately, it is used quite similarly to magic.

Zoe Faust is the 'accidental' alchemist the series is named after. Having discovered the philosopher's stone, she does not age, and has lived for several hundred years as a young woman. (All alchemists can discover the secret to eternal life, except it is a different one for each and its method cannot be transferred to any other)

In the first book, a living gargoyle, Dorian Robert-Houdin, turned up at her (newly acquired) door and turned her life upside down. Since then, she's discovered that a sinister group of alchemists have been using 'backwards alchemy' and a 'death rotation' to take alchemical shortcuts, which is Evil. Dorian, however, owes his life to it, and as backwards alchemy has started to crumble around the world, so Dorian, too, is rapidly losing life force.

The Elusive Elixir is therefore a book about Zoe's continuing quest to save her friend. The first two books were primarily (murder) mystery novels. The Elusive Elixir, too, is bound to please fans of Jessica Fletcher / Murder, She Wrote, but the urgency of Dorian's deterioration is more in the foreground than before.

The Accidental Alchemist series is pleasantly entertaining fun. Murder, mystery, magic (well, alchemy) and an incorrigible living gargoyle and an equally incorrigible teenager provide plenty of diversion. Meanwhile, as Dorian is a chef by training and Zoe is a vegan, the series is unique in its focus on vegan food, which features heavily. The foody descriptions throughout are plentiful, and each volume includes a bunch of vegan recipes at the end.

The one thing that Gigi Pandian has not quite mastered yet (in my opinion) is the art of exposition. There's quite a lot of it in each novel, mostly delivered by Zoe reminiscing. If you have not read the first book in the series, rest assured, all its plot points are delivered in each subsequent volume by means of slightly clunky exposition To make matters worse, there is an awful lot of repetition. If I didn't know any better, I would think Gigi Pandian is a fairly elderly writer, as it does have a bit of a nattering habit of self-repetition. (She's not elderly, at least not according to the 'About the Author' text in the back). Perhaps the Accidental Alchemist series is aimed at an older reader demographic (like the Brenda & Effie Mysteries series) - for me, it was a bit annoying.

If you like light entertainment murder mysteries, (urban) fantasy and a dash of vegan cuisine, and if you can forgive a little clunky repetition, you'll enjoy this book (and its predecessors) very much.

Rating: 3.5/5

After Atlas by Emma Newman

After Atlas is set in the same universe as Planetfall, but it is neither sequel nor prequel. It can be read as a standalone novel, but I rather suspect that it is the start of a separate strand of story, which will eventually meet up with story strand from Planetfall - I think Emma Newman is planning some huge opus in this universe.

Anyway.

After Atlas is the story of Carlos Moreno, a hard-nosed far-future homicide detective with a complicated personal history, who is assigned a gruesome case that is intimately interwoven with that history. He's the left-behind son of a woman who was on the interstellar Atlas spaceship that left Earth 40 years ago. He was, briefly, member of a cult that turned its back on the internet and technology. And, after fleeing from the cult, he became a refugee and ultimately a slave.

Stories don't get much more noir than After Atlas. Not only is our (enslaved) gumshoe a cynical lone wolf, not only is the locked room mystery grim and brutal, but the world is cruel and unforgiving, and the grotesquely gory case is just a bloody symptom of a larger, deeper corruption in the world.

After Atlas is very different from Planetfall. Where Planetfall is dominated by its psychological angles (tackling mental illness in a character trying to colonise a planet), After Atlas is much more conventional. There is a tangential element of mental health stuff going on (Carlos uses meditative practice to ground himself when he gets into situations he struggles to cope with), but for the first half of the book, solving the crime is really the be-all and end-all of the story. The second half - well, let's say that the story simultaneously widens out and narrows down in very unexpected ways.

What it does have in common with Planetfall is that this is not a feel-good novel. It's an intelligent, well-written and tense one, but it puts you through the wringer. Ultimately, its view of humanity and society is much more bleak than that of even the grimmest film noir. Worth a read, but be prepared for a tough time.

Rating: 3.5/5

Fuchskind von Annette Wieners

An einem nebligen Herbsttag kommt Friedhofsgärtnerin Gesine Cordes einfach alles unheimlich vor. Der Pförtner scheint nicht zuhause zu sein obwohl das Licht an ist, irgendwo im Zaun muss ein Loch sein, denn ein Fuchs ist in den Friedhof eingedrungen, und es klingt, als schlich da jemand durchs Gebüsch...

Zu ihrer vollkommenen Überraschung findet sie dann ein unterernährtes, frierendes Baby. Kaum gefunden, erleidet es dann Krämpfe, as wäre es vergiftet.

Unterdessen findet man um die Ecke eine nackte Frauenleiche, und als kurz danach auch noch ihr Ex-Mann auftaucht, passt gar nichts mehr zusammen.

Fuchskind ist ein Krimi-Thriller, der zweite in einer Serie. Man merkt schon, dass es nicht der erste Roman über Gesine und eine ihr inzwischen befreundete Komissarin ist. Es wird oft auf die traumatischen Ereignisse des vorherigen Sommers hingewiesen.

Am effektivsten ist der Roman, wenn Gesine sich um das Baby kümmert, denn die Empfindlichkeit des schwerbehinderten Babies und die Fürsorge der Friedhofsgärtnerin, deren Sohn in ihren Armen verstorben ist, wirken zusammen sehr Einfühlsam (obwohl ich selber Babies nicht besonders mag).

Allerdings gelang es dem Roman in anderen Gebieten eher weniger zu überzeugen. Die Sache mit dem Ex-Mann klingt eher nach Seifenoper als nach Krimi. Zudem gibt es viel zu viele Täter und nicht genug Gründe für ihre Taten. Das Netz der Verbrechen, das die Autorin hier gewebt hat, hält leider nicht zusammen - es zerfällt wenn man es mit dem geringsten Zweifel anhaucht.

Das hochspannende Finale kann den Roman daher leider nicht retten - er ist zwar mehr oder weniger unterhaltsam, aber letztendlich nicht sehr befriedigend.

Bewertung: 3/5

Die Lebenden und die Toten von Nele Neuhaus

Ich lebe schon mein halbes Leben in Großbritannien. Daher rostet mir langsam die deutsche Sprache aus Unnutzung ein - also muss ich im voraus um Entschuldigung bitten, falls ich den einen oder anderen Fehler begehen sollte.

Die Lebenden und die Toten ist ein Kriminalroman, der in der Umgebung Frankfurts spielt. Es ist der siebte Roman der Bodenstein & Kirchhoff Krimiserie, allerdings der erste, den ich aus jener Serie gelesen habe.

Wie jeder gute Krimi, beginnt auch Die Lebenden und die Toten mit einem Mord. Eine alte Frau wird beim Hundegassigehen durch einen Kopfschuss von einem entfernten Scharfschützen umgebracht. Pia Kirchhoff, eine Komissarin bei der Kriminalpolizei, bekommt den Anruf obwohl sie eigentlich Urlaub gebucht hatte, weil sonst niemand zu erreichen ist. Ihr Pflichtgefühl zwingt sie, zum Tatort zu fahren. Ihr frischverheirateter Ehemann (besagter Urlaub war zwecks Flitterwochen gebucht gewesen) hat kein Problem damit, aber Pia ist natürlich nicht sehr begeistert...

Anfang des Falles scheint es, daß es kein Motiv für den Mord geben kann. Das Opfer hatte keine Feinde, keine Bedeutung, und niemand hat von ihrem Tod etwas zu gewinnen. Wenn eine zweite alte Frau ebenso durch Kopfschuss von einem Sniper ermordet wird, beginnt die Polizei eine Mordserie zu befürchten. Schlimmer noch, eine Serie von Zufallsmorden, begangen aus großer Entfernung, von einem Täter der keine Spuren hinterläßt - ein Albtraum für Polizisten. Das halbe Team hat Grippe, es ist Weihnachtszeit, und ein Irrer macht die Gegend unsicher: Pia beginnt, daran zu zweifeln, ob sie es verantworten kann, wie geplant nach Ecuador zu fliegen...

Man merkt dem Roman schon an, daß er Teil einer langen Serie ist. Zum einen gibt es reichlich Kollegen im Polizeirevier, die eine Rolle spielen. Zum anderen gibt es hin und wieder Stellen, wo der Text Hintergründe und frühere Fälle zusammenfasst. Nicht nur Fälle - frühere Verlobungen und Exfrauen und Exgatten sind auch reichlich vorhanden. Andererseits funktioniert der Roman problemlos, auch wenn man nicht jede Kleinigkeit der Vorgeschichte der Polizisten kennt. Es wird eher zuviel in Infodumps abgeliefert als zu wenig. Es hat allerdings den Anschein, daß, nach sechs anderen Romanen mit Happy Ends, innerhalb der Teams weniger Funken fliegen als vielleicht zu Anfang der Serie. Pia denkt an ihre ersten Fälle mit Bodenstein zurück, und daran, wie unterschiedlich sie damals waren, und wie sehr sie sich inzwischen aneinander angepasst haben. Dieses Team ist eine gut geölte Maschine.

Kein Wunder, daß neue Berater hineingeworfen werden. Einer, dessen Zweck es ist, zu nerven, und eine, die anscheinend nach diesem Roman Mitglied des Stammtischs werden soll.

Ein Krimi soll spannend sein. Nach und nach stellt sich ein Motiv fest, und dann gewinnt der Roman auch an Spannung, denn wenn die Polizisten ein Motiv kennen, dann gibt es bald auch Verdächtige zu ermitteln...

Die Lebenden und die Toten is ein durchaus unterhaltsamer, spannender Roman. Teilweise habe ich ihn mit Genuß verschlungen. Leider gibt es auch ein paar Plotlöcher und Fehler. Das Motiv einer der Morde macht keinen Sinn, und ganz am Ende wird glatt ein Augenzeuge vollkommen vergessen (bzw ein Opfer, daß wohl doch wissen musste, wer ihm etwas angetan hatte). Manche Charaktere scheinen eher künstlich in das Buch gezwungen und sind dann leider zu eindimensional. (Die Nervensäge ist zu nervend). Ich hatte den Eindruck, daß inzwischen alle Polizisten so kollegial, professionell und gut mit einander auskommen, daß die Autorin sich neue Problemchen ausdenken musste, um ein bisschen Zoff zu schaffen - und diese Problemchen wirkten nicht immer überzeugend. Hauptsache ist natürlich die Spannung, und die liefert dieser Krimi.

Alles in allem, ein recht guter Krimi.

Bewertung: 3,5/5

PS: Als ausgewanderter Deutscher fiel mir auf, daß die deutsche Sprache dabei ist, sich zu anglisieren. An einigen Stellen schien es mir, daß englische Begriffe sich seit meiner Zeit in Deutschland eingedeutscht haben. Zum Beispiel wird an einer Stelle "darauf insistiert" statt "darauf bestanden". Ich weiß nicht, ob das Internet daran Schuld ist, oder Fernsehsendungen (CSI?), aber es hat mich doch etwas überrascht, wie sehr die Sprache sich in den paar Jahren schon verändert hat.

PPS: Es freut mich, daß deutsche Buchcovers inzwischen teilweise um einiger schöner sind, als noch vor ein paar Jahren. Britische Covers sind weltklasse - da war es eher enttäuschend, wenn man in einen deutschen Buchladen ging, und die vergleichsweise anspruchslosen Covers dort sah... endlich mal etwas Farbe und Style!

The Severed Streets by Paul Cornell

The Severed Streets is the second book in a new series which began with London Falling. You could describe this series as a darker, grittier sibling to Ben Aaronovitch's Peter Grant novels: Paul Cornell's London is also full of magic, but bereft of humour and warmth.

Our four police officers who have been blessed / cursed with The Sight, which lets them perceive the supernatural, have just about recovered from the traumatic events of the previous novel. They work from their little portakabin and wait for a new case to arise which requires their expertise. Lo and behold, a LibDem MP gets brutally eviscerated in his locked limousine. There's no weapon in the car, the driver insists he didn't do it, and CCTV shows no one getting in or out...

Paul Cornell makes some interesting choices in the writing of this novel. For one, he instantly dates it by setting it during the Con-Dem-Nation coalition government. He creates thinly veiled replicas of real people and events: a media baron who is a thinly disguised Viscount Rothermere (called Russel Vincent in the novel), protests based on the London Riots but set in post-Olympic-Games-London, masks based on the V for Vendetta Guy Fawkes masks made popular by Anonymous, but consistently and irritatingly described as 'Toff masks'... but then real people also appear in his book. Frankie Boyle makes a cameo. Neil Gaiman makes an appearance that seemingly starts out as cameo and then develops into a full blown story arc. I thought it's more common for age-defining authors to get fictionalised posthumously (Shakespeare, Dickens, Austen etc.), so the appearance of Neil Gaiman was a bit of a surprise, and when he got involved in the plot, well, let's just say Paul Cornell had better be a good friend of Neil Gaiman...

There is something mischievous and a little transgressive about this aspect of the book, but also just a tiny bit frustrating. Paul Cornell's Neil Gaiman talks about similar sorts of things as the real one (stories, Neverwhere, bees), but he does not quite sound like real Neil, or perhaps the opposite - perhaps he sounded a bit too matter-of-fact and authentic, and I sort of expected something a little grander.

OK, Neil Gaiman out of the way, the Severed Streets is a grim dark, horror-filled urban fantasy. The Smiling Man continues to be behind things, and the attacker eviscerates quite a few people using the riots for cover (wearing a protester's mask, rising from crowds & flying off, invisible to those without The Sight), while two of our police officers are obsessed with their own problems - getting a father out of hell, and trying to avoid going to hell, respectively. There are some betrayals, some schemes, a lot of individual actions - basically, if our team finally learnt to work as a team in book one, they are now again working quite independently and with serious obstacles to fully trusting and sharing information with each other. They keep running off without telling any of the others what they're up to.

The book may spill more blood than the first, but is a less gruelling read: this time, no children get boiled alive, and while there's plenty castrations, the horror is less emotional than it was in London Falling. There's a lot of work in creating something uncanny, but it feels a little uncanny-by-the-numbers. If it's ever turned into a movie, I think Terry Gilliam should direct it.

The Severed Streets is an engrossing read, relentlessly grim, with a few emotional gut-punches, but none that equal those surprises that made the first book so harrowing towards its finale. The series is definitely worth a look for people who like urban fantasy, but not perhaps the series of choice if you're in the mood for something cheery and light. While The Severed Streets does explain and sum up some of the key events from the first book, I doubt it works very well as a standalone - start with London Falling if you have not read that yet.

Rating: 3.5/5

Lock In by John Scalzi

Lock In is a science fiction novel set in a near-future. Cars drive themselves, but other than that, the world is very similar to our own. One key difference: after a devastating side effect of a global flu pandemic, a significant number of people suffer from lock in syndrome. They are unable to control any aspect of their bodies, but their minds are fully functioning. So a huge programme of funding has created three solutions to give them fuller lives:

1. They can link up remotely with a robot avatar, which interacts with the world on their behalf. The robot feeds them sensory input, and they control it, to a point where their experience of the world is similar to that of a human - except they have the internet more or less built-in, so they can access information internally, make voice calls to others without making a sound, and control how much pain they actually want to feel if the robot gets damaged. These avatars are called Threeps (after C-3PO), or, derogatory, clanks.
2. A tiny number of people had a different side effect from the flu: their minds have become open to let others in. So the locked-in can, if they have the cash, download their own minds into a real human body, and experience the world through a human avatar. However, the owner of the body is never entirely gone, and can take control back, and this is much more expensive than using a threep.
3. There is a virtual reality just for Locked In people, called The Agora, where they can meet, interact, and have their own personal space.

Our hero, Chris Shane, is one of those locked-in people. (They're called Hadens in the book, as their condition is called Haden Syndrome, after the US president whose wife got the condition while he was in office). We start the story on his first day working for the FBI, joining another agent to form a team of two focused on Haden-related cases. It's also a day of a Haden strike, as the government is changing the subsidies and funding for Haden sufferers (threeps are, after all, not cheap).

Of course, his (or her?) very first case is a murder. (While reading, I was sure that Chris is a guy. I'd swear that it was explicit at some point. Except, a review by Pat Rothfuss suggests the audio book exists in two version, one with a female narrator, one with a male one. This makes me wonder whether our narrator's sex might have been left more ambivalent than I thought... after all, "Chris" could be short for Christine.)

The world is introduced in a clear, concise infodump, right at the start. Basically, before the story starts, we get a school text book revision notes of the history of Haden's Syndrome, and within two pages or so, we know pretty much all the background that's needed. The rest is revealed casually and deftly, but easily accessible. It's not the sort of scifi novel that throws you in at the deep and and enjoys your disorientation.

The story is, of course, a whodunnit. Along the way, we learn more about the world, more about the different perspectives (of Hadens about others, and of others about Hadens). Characters occasionally discuss politics and change and what should or should not be done for Hadens. Should there be work to 'cure' the condition, or should all efforts be about enabling people who have it to function without physically altering them? It's a debate that reflects one about deaf culture (should there be more work aimed at enabling deaf people to hear, or more recognition of sign language, lip reading and deaf culture as just one different culture living in a multicultural society, with efforts to enable deaf people to live independently and successfully among us, but no efforts to make them hear the rest of us?). 

Lock In is a novel with simple, straightforward prose, clear dialogue, people discussing things - it is not a book that dazzles you with style, but it is a book that draws you in with ideas. One very obvious thing is that it doesn't present the locked in characters as victims. They may have some vulnerabilities, and they may have been badly afflicted when the condition first arose, but by the time of the story, they have successfully become fully functioning citizens.

Our hero is rich, his threeps are ultra-modern models, and he isn't shy to download himself at a moment's notice into a borrowed threep in a different part of the country, or use his internal gadgets to record video and audio and 3D scans. He is living in his parents' mansion, but looking to move his threep into a flat share with other threeps. Some Hadens might have to survive with unreliable threeps, parked in depressing wardrobe-like boxes to recharge, but that's a rich/poor divide, not an inherent victimhood. And just as the Hadens aren't victims, but highly capable individuals who can be very empowered by technology, they are also mixed people. Our hero is smart, brave and good, of course, but we also encounter firebrand campaigners, selfish egomaniacs, and at the very heart of the murder case, a cold-blooded murderer. Hadens, in short, are people. Good people, bad people, rich people, poor people. Some aspects of their lives are quite different from the rest of us, but in a way those are mere logistical matters. (Perhaps that is all 'culture' boils down to: the logistics of interaction - the rest is just humanity).

I enjoyed reading Lock In. It's thoughtful, engaging, and entertaining. Some things are never really expanded upon to the extent I had expected (I had expected more things about / in the Agora), and there are never really enough suspects in the story (it's not like those TV crime shows, where every character would have a motive), but it's a thoughtful book packing complex ideas into an entertaining whodunnit (without telling us what to think).

Rating: 4/5

My Sister's Grave by Robert Dugoni

Tracy's sister Sarah has been missing & assumed dead for twenty years. In that time, Tracy has left her small home town and become a detective working in Seattle. Then, one day, Sarah's remains are found, and Tracy returns to her former home town, seeking closure.

My Sister's Grave is a thriller told in parallel timelines. We get the aftermath of Sarah's remains being discovered, but we also get the aftermath of her disappearance. Chapters are very short - scenes, really - and the story is engaging and entertaining all the way through.

Pretty soon, we learn that Sarah's disappearance has not been an unsolved mystery as far as everyone else was concerned: someone has been prosecuted and imprisoned for her murder. The aftermath of Sarah's death has been devastating for Tracy's family, and there is a sense that, more than the collapse of the town's main industry and employers, it's Sarah's disappearance that has killed the sense of community.

For all the years since Sarah's disappearance, Tracy had doubts about the trial, and it looks as if the local sheriff had some secrets...

The thriller is competently told and engaging when it comes to the central plot - a teenage girl's disappearance and the mystery of her murder. Where the story felt less than great is the romantic sub plot, which felt out of place to me. It felt like reading Mills & Boon: everything is too easy, too simple, too smooth.

If what you're looking for is a quick, entertaining thriller, briskly told and pleasantly entertaining, then this book is great. If you're hoping for something a bit richer, deeper, and likely to stick in your memory, then this isn't the novel for you at this time.

A perfectly satisfying airport paperback - great for whiling away a plane ride. And thanks to Amazon Prime's "Kindle First" programme, it's free for every member this month (October 2014).

Rating: 3.5/5

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Dark Digital Sky by Carac Allison

Dark Digital Sky is a novel about a Private Investigator, initially hired to find a Hollywood powerbroker's progeny - three men who grew from his donor sperm.

While his investigation swings into gear, America finds itself subjected to a series of crimes - heists and theatrics seemingly motivated by some kind of political agenda - and our detective tracks not just his own case, but keeps aware of the news.

There are many things to like about this novel, but also some which are a bit frustrating. Let's start with the frustrations: the plot takes quite a while before there's real tension. For a good third of the novel, our PI basically stalks and manipulates three men and people connected to them, without anything other than an easy paycheck driving his ambitions. The plot does pick up, and eventually there are stakes - higher and higher stakes - but at the start, things aren't as mysterious and intriguing as you'd expect from a thriller.

With regards to our detective's work, there is a split between the technical and the human stuff: he's utterly convincing when using technology, hacks, botnets, and other digital methods to track down, investigate, spy upon, disrupt or manipulate. But when it comes to the human interactions, the story seems to be outside its comfort zone. Our hero's method is basically: find source. Ask source questions. Get all the answers. It's true that his angle of attack varies - slightly - between the people he approaches, but every single one of them ultimately answers all his questions with all the information in a single interview. A reader willing to suspend their disbelief would argue that this is the reason why our detective is so successful, why he can afford a Porsche and being quite particular about his methods and very direct when interacting with his clients. Personally, I wasn't convinced - our hero is way too blunt with almost every character, and I simply did not believe that no one disengages from his confrontational approach, when flustered. If someone met me under false pretences and revealed their lie, I'd walk away. None of the characters in this novel do. It felt too much as if each human character was treated as an information repository, which, queried by our detective, spills out all its data, exactly as laptops and hard drives spill their secrets once cracked.

The writing is to the point. Our hero is somewhat cynical, like a detective should be. He does have a tendency to opine about things that one does not expect a detective to be waxing lyrical about: he wears a different black rock band t-shirt each day and briefly describes each motif at the start of each day. He has read hundreds of books and watched many movies, and every evening he winds down simultaneously watching films, re-reading novels and keeping track of the news, in a multi-screen set up that could be straight from Back To The Future 2. Oh, and our hero is bipolar, with a keen interest in his medication (and a habit of describing it, and his brain, with the sort of attitude that wouldn't be out of place in a car enthusiast, fine tuning the engine of his most precious, if somewhat temperamental, classic sports car).

Having a bipolar detective as hero is not something I've encountered before. I guess after OCD detective Monk, in-care detective Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, a schizophrenic detective in Perception, a deaf detective in F.B.Eye, a paraplegic detective in The Bone Collector, and many, many arrogant geniuses with flaws where social niceties would be (cough, Sherlock, House, Lie To Me, cough), there isn't going to be any disability, physical or otherwise, that isn't going to have a detective series dedicated to it. That said, the manic episode is the most interesting and well-crafted part of the novel: it allows the detective to remain convincing while making decisions that would be out of character for a super-competent hero, so his condition certainly earns its narrative keep and does not feel like a gimmick.

The novel moves quite quickly, and while it takes its time to build up tension, it never gets boring. It's entertaining and smooth to read, comparable to thrillers by Michael Crighton, Jeffrey Deaver, Robert Galbraith and especially Michael Marshall (with a sub plot that slightly echoes the Straw Men mythos being built up by Marshall). It's a satisfying popcorn read, technologically convincing, and very smart when it comes to the baddies' attacks & the wider repercussions of those deeds. It's not as satisfying when it comes to character interactions, and every now and again the plot construction feels a bit forced, but to be fair, neither Dan Brown nor Michael Crighton worry too much about these things.

It's got a good pace and an interesting hero - it's certainly a promising start to a series. For comparison, I'm more likely to continue reading this series than I am to continue reading Jim Butcher's Dresden Files after trying the first two.

Rating: 3.5/5

Three Graves Full by Jamie Mason

Three Graves Full is a novel that really wants to be a comedy movie. Jason, our protagonist, is a meek man who, in a rare fit of rage, has murdered someone and buried him in his back yard. A year later, someone discovers a skeleton - in his front yard.

The book continues the tale of hapless Jason, and adds various other characters (the ex-girlfriend of one of the victims, two police officers, a dog...), and creates a web of unlikely events that have the general feel of a Guy Ritchie movie (or perhaps an indie movie) - except it's all set in America.

It's a pleasantly diverting, vaguely entertaining yarn, marred by being somewhat overwritten. The writer seems to be a beginner - the prose itself is frequently clunky and over-reaching, but there's also a tendency to give detailed back stories of each character and event, often filling in details that weren't really needed. It's also a book that yearned to be laugh-out-loud funny, but wasn't.

A promising premise, not quite lived up to.

Rating: 3/5

Kingdom of Strangers by Zoë Ferraris

Kingdom of Strangers is the third crime novel in a series set in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. It follows from The Night of the Mi'raj and City of Veils. Some of the characters from the first two novels make appearances, but the novel could probably be read on its own. (That said, the novel is much more enjoyable when you know the history)

By now it is clear who is the undisputed hero of this series: Katia, a female forensic scientist, working for the police, mostly stuck in a lab, but keen to have a more active role in the investigations. (The first novel centred more around Nayir, a Bedouin desert guide who got involved in a murder investigation and met Katia, but by now, Katia is the central pillar of the stories)

Kingdom of Strangers starts with the gruesome discovery of 19 dead bodies in the desert. A serial killer in Saudi Arabia - almost unheard of. And he's been busy, undiscovered, for ten years...

Meanwhile, the newly arrived inspector Ibrahim, tasked with leading the investigation, is having an affair outside marriage - and, when he turns up at his lover's flat, she is missing.

The novel is quick to set up its main plot strands, but chisels away at them at a pace that is steady, confident and not too rushed. It's not the sort of novel where each chapter ends on a cliffhanger, and each cliffhanger is more unbelievable than the last. Instead, the tension is amped up at a steady, confident pace, and the novel is engrossing all the way through. For a few chapters, I thought it might descend into stereotypes (serial killer toying with his pursuers, making it personal, etc.), but thankfully, the story stops feeling as if it were following a template soon enough.

One of the big attractions of this series has always been that it is set in Saudi Arabia - a country most of its readers might never set foot in (I doubt I ever will), and a country with a culture that is about as far away from Western philosophies as it is possible to get. The book treats its characters with a credible level of complexity, and the reader with a degree of respect. As Westerners, the readers would miss a lot of information if it was not spelled out, and so it is, but never in an obtrusive way. Exposition is handled masterfully. We are simply part to characters' thoughts and analyses - and those thoughts are often determined by the expectations of the society around them, and their own internal conflicts whenever they chafe against the limits (or when they transgress). There is an awful lot of chafing in this novel, but it seems quite credible that regular people in Saudi Arabia have to tightrope walk on a very thin line for much of their lives...

The book is not entirely without flaws. Coincidence, that cheat, does affect the plot, and one revelation is preceded by a cloaked premonition in a dream. Both are forgiveable - the novel would have worked just as well without the latter, and the coincidences are small in number, and occur early in the timeline of the novel.

Of the three Jedda murder novels written by Zoe Ferraris, this has become my favourite. I breezed through it in two days (which is fast, for me), and was completely hooked all the way through. Encountering an actual adulterous character - and his unique crises of conscience, challenges, and the threats hanging over his head - was an incredibly effective source of tension. It made the serial killer mystery pale by comparison, and turned this book into a real thriller.

I enjoyed the story so much, I would recommend the entire series to anyone. I would definitely recommend reading the first two books before tackling Kingdom of Strangers, just so this one can be appreciated fully. The preceding novels are both good books in their own right - but this one is absolutely brilliant.

Rating: 5/5

City of Veils by Zoë Ferraris

City of Veils, the sequel to The Night of the Mi'raj / Finding Nouf is another crime novel set in and around Jedda in Saudi Arabia. It could probably stand on its own without the first novel - but it does continue some of the character relationships that were slowly established previously (after a gap of 8 months or so).

The two heroes from the first novel are once again central to the plot: Nayir, a desert guide and very devout Muslim, and Katya, a woman working in the Forensics department of the Saudi police force. Two other big new characters are now part of the plot: Osama, a police officer who is more confident and less spiteful around women than many other men, and Miriam, an American woman who lives in Jedda.

The story starts when a female body is found on the beach: badly burned, stabbed, beaten and decaying. Meanwhile, Miriam returns from a month-long holiday in America to be reunited with her husband, who promptly forgets to pick her up at the airport, and then, barely having brought her home, disappears.

This is the tale of an investigation into the murder - and also the tale of an American woman suddenly isolated and alone in one of the scariest places on Earth to be a woman in. The premise is interesting, to say the least.

The novel is a smooth read. This time, there is more tension worked into the plot. We're still not in serial-killer-territory, but there is a sense of peril around Miriam. The murder, this time around, is very obviously a violent murder rather than a possible murder. (In the first novel, it is an unexplained death for the longest time, and there is not much of a sense that more violence might occur). More tension in this book means a brisker pace - but there are also more characters, and this imbalances the novel a little. Not every plotline is as tense as every other plotline, so it can sometimes feel like one chapter is hitting the accelerator, while another is shifting down a gear and meandering a little.

By far the most awkward angle of the novel is when it strays dangerously close into The Da Vinci Code territory. Its heart is never in it, and this is not a novel about religious conspiracies - yet there is a sprinkling of this in the plot, and as reader, I felt myself cringing and hoping that it would not develop into a Dan Brown clone. It never does - but it dabbles with the idea.

Much of the attraction of Night of the Mi'raj was that it introduces an alien land that not many people experience. City of Veils feels even more immersive in Saudi Arabian culture - sometimes intentionally straying to the sort of scene a Western reader might have expected, but found missing in the first novel. Does it always convince? I'm not sure - the police is written about in a respectful and competent manner, and in many ways, these could be investigators in any country. Yes, there are cultural differences, but there are no fundamental differences in the characters of the people. Are people really more or less the same, all around the world, just adapting their lives into different behavioural patterns, but without deep-rooted differences? I don't know - this book makes it feel that way. It does not help that it's all written in English, so characters use swearwords like "f***" when things go wrong. Basically, everyone's speech patterns are American (with a few common Arabic words thrown in), while their behaviour patterns are Saudi.

I enjoyed this book a lot. I enjoyed it more than the first novel - it has more tension and peril in it. I also think it would probably make a fantastic movie. But it is somehow not quite perfect: characters are a bit too self-analytical, a bit too explanatory, the narrative tone a bit too removed to be fully immersed. It's a novel that comes within grasping distance of genre-defining greatness, but can't quite capitalise on its great ideas and concept to their fullest potential. Well worth a read, definitely, but probably not a second, third or fourth read.

Rating: 4/5

The Night of the Mi'raj by Zoë Ferraris

In the Saudi Arabian desert, a body of a young girl is found, after a search of nearly two weeks. The rich and influential family have some words with the authorities, and the death is quickly declared an accident.

But of course, that is not the whole story in Night of the Mi'raj (later retitled 'Finding Nouf'). The tracker they've asked to help them find the girl is now secretly tasked with finding out what happened. He's a Palestinian, devout, a single man, and conservative / obsessed with modesty. Now he's looking into the circumstances around the tragic, possibly violent death of a teenage girl...

It's a compelling backdrop to a crime drama. Inspired by inspector Columbo (our hero, too, soon finds himself wearing a trenchcoat and questioning people who have things to hide), and working together with a woman working in a forensics laboratory, he slowly reveals layer upon layer of mystery.

This is not a thriller: there is not much of a sense of threat around the story developments. Instead, it is a murder mystery in the most classical sense. It took me a while to adjust to this - perhaps I am too used to cliffhangers at the end of each chapter, and heroes being chased, conspiracies, dark shadows around every corner. Once I adjusted to the more sedate pace, this was a compelling read. I'd bought it because I wanted to get a sense of Saudi Arabia, and I feel that I did get a glimpse - told in functional, but undecorated prose. It was not quite as atmospheric as I had hoped.

So, if you like TV murder mysteries like "Murder she wrote" or "Diagnosis: Murder", or Agatha Christie novels, and you want to combine that sort of plot with a bit of cultural sightseeing into countries you might never visit, and attitudes that you might find quite alien, then this is an excellent book for you. Personally, I would have preferred a bit more tension, a bit more of a sense of urgency, and perhaps more of a presence for the religious police, but I found the book pretty good.

Rating: 4/5

(Addendum: this book turned out to be the start of a series which improved massively with each subsequent book: the second one is very good, the third is superb.)

The City & the City by China Mieville

The City & the City is a crime thriller set in a slightly alternative reality, in the cities of Besz and Ul Koma. It is also a work of significant imagination: Besz and Ul Koma are two cities that cover the same ground, but choose to act as separate, independent city states. People in Besz "unsee" people and buildings that are in Ul Koma and vice versa. Enforcing this strict regime of selective tunnel vision is a mysterious force called Breach.

One day, a murdered woman's body is found in Besz, and a police detective from the extreme crime squad is set on the case. But there is something strange about it, and her, and soon he finds himself in over his head in conspiracy theories, corruption, and international liaisons...

China Mieville has an enviable imagination. Perdido Street Station was a benchmark, and while his other novels are not always up to the same standards of tour-de-force-ness, The City & The City is absolutely, on many levels, a work of genius. The satirical premise is almost credible, the detail is impressive, and the story is gripping.

The things that work against it, in the end, are the resolution of the crime (I was a little disappointed), and the fact that he does stray from a perfectly realistic world into the borderline supernatural (especially when it comes to Breach), without being entirely consistent about it. In some scenes, reality is stretched in the same way that a wire-fu action scene in a movie might stretch it, or Watchmen the comic book. Not all the way into definite super-reality, but enough to make suspension of disbelief an issue in an otherwise painfully realistic novel.

I'd definitely recommend this book as a fantastic, standalone example of Mieville's power of imagination, and a decent noir crime thriller. For anyone who has never read any Mieville before, this novel might be a perfect one to try - it's not as intimidatingly huge (nor as linguistically adventurous) as Bas Lag, but it still sizzles with ideas and intelligence.

Rating: 4/5