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Return of the Original Albino Villain There seems something slightly perverse about publishing a series of stories about one of the villainous antagonists of a series of stories whose hero and central character has already passed largely from popul...
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The big list of Stuff I Like includes Doctor Who, David Bowie, historical fiction, seventies telly and classic crime novels (a combination of all of these in one would be the perfect product for me). So I'm inclined to be attracted to things like Joh...more
The big list of Stuff I Like includes Doctor Who, David Bowie, historical fiction, seventies telly and classic crime novels (a combination of all of these in one would be the perfect product for me). So I'm inclined to be attracted to things like John Gardener's 'Moriarty', the third and final book in a series which tracks the career of Sherlock Holmes' nemesis after he (allegedly) survived his encounter with the Great detective at the Reichenbach Falls.
Don't be put off by the fact this is the end of the series, btw. The first two books were written in the 1970s and the main connections between those and this book are explained by the author's preface. It's enough to know that Moriarty is back in London after a spell in the States and is looking to take his criminal empire back from one Sir Jack Idell ('Idle Jack') who has taken his place as London crime Kingpin.
Having read one of Gardner's Bond books and finding it...unassuming at best, I picked up this book cheaply in an excellent remainder bookshop just outside Manchester, attracted by the subject matter far more than the writer. And I'm glad I did. It's the sort of book I find myself gobbling up greedily, delaying putting the kids to bed to finish the chapter, walking slowly to the shops so I can read another couple of pages on the way, hiding in the bedroom to read just a little more. The writing is assured and never descends to pastiche and Gardner has clearly done his research (even including a glossary at the end).
What sets this apart form many other Holmes' sequels I've read (apart from the almost complete absence of Holmes!) is the set of characters who inhabit the book like very slightly shop-soiled Dickensian figures. Armies of punishers and dippers, lurkers and cracksmen create a backdrop against which Moriarty and his Praetorian Guard plot and scheme against Idle Jack and his minions, and in which disfigurement, torture and death seem a commonplace, even if love and humour also flourish in the most unlikely of places. It's a wonderfully immersive book, and an easy one to get lost in, as all good books should be.(less)
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There's one truly shocking line in the otherwise brilliant Erasing Sherlock, a sentence so unbelievably bad, so implausible and unlikely, that it suspends belief for a second, jerks the reader out of the narrative and leaves him glaring at the page,...more
There's one truly shocking line in the otherwise brilliant Erasing Sherlock, a sentence so unbelievably bad, so implausible and unlikely, that it suspends belief for a second, jerks the reader out of the narrative and leaves him glaring at the page, daring the words to re-assemble themselves into something which more nearly approximates to a sensible universe.
'After 3o years of writing short stories, Kelly Hale has had two published'
The Author's Note also mentions one novel co-authored for the BBC Doctor Who range and, of course, the current volume, in the copy to hand the penultimate novel in the Faction Paradox range of loosely linked novels.
One and a half novels and two short stories (actually now three, after I had the pleasure of publishing the quite lovely 'Big Horn Casino' in 'Iris: Abroad' last year) in 30 years for a writer as talented as Kelly Hale? That's horrible.
Anyway, enough of the soapbox stuff - what about Erasing Sherlock?
First thing to point out is that if anybody's worried that they don't know a bloody thing about this Faction Paradox malarkey, don't worry. As with all the best Faction stories, ES has only the most tenuous link to anything else in the series and, in truth, the actual Faction stuff occurs only very late on and has a very 'tacked on' feel to it (presumably the new Kindle version of the book removes the Faction entirely which will, I suspect, make it an even better book).
The second thing worth noting is that it's a fabulous novel, not a fabulous science fiction novel or a fabulous Sherlock Holmes sequel. True enough, it's the story of a modern day academic who goes back in time to study the real life Sherlock Holmes as part of her doctoral thesis into 19th century crime. But, no matter how that sounds, this is neither merely competent genre fiction nor simple above average pastiche.
Holmes and Watson live and breathe in this book in a way that brings to mind Conan Doyle himself rather than the ranks of hacks and cash-in artists who followed him, and Hale has clearly studied the more seedy elements of Victorian society and demonstrates that study on the page to great effect. Gillian Petra is a believable heroine and the story itself is a fascinating one, moving from serial killing in smog bound London to torture and murder near Krakatoa as it erupts and covers the world in ash.
But at the heart of the book is the relationship between Holmes, Watson and Petra. Hale thankfully doesn't shy away from...well, from anything. Actually, maybe it's that which prevented this novel from being a deservedly massive hit. Where it should have picked up impetus from Sherlockians desperate for new Holmesian adventures, it possibly scared them away by talking about - the horror! - periods, rape and masturbation, and by depicting the Great Detective as a sexual human being. But the fact is that, as with Hale's portrayal of Watson, nothing in the characterisation of Holmes feels askew. Rather, Holmes suddenly feels imbued with a third dimension (for reference, playing the fiddle and being a bit of a junkie do not a genuine personality make) and Watson becomes more than a mere cypher.
'I have a fondness for the game - the challenge and the chase - which I fear will fade once the puzzle of you has been pieced together...It is craven of me to want you the way I do, when I know I will not when you cease to be a mystery to me.'
I drew one hand dramatically across my brow. 'You have no affection for me? Mon Dieu. I shall die!' His mouth pursed in annoyance. 'If this is supposed to be an apology, it's a piss-poor one.'
Erasing Sherlock is a more up to date and modern take on Sherlock Holmes than the recent Robert Downey Jr movies or anything from the past 100 or so years of sequels, parodies and pastiches (though you can spot certain similarities with the new BBC tv series written, co-incidentally, by another couple of Doctor Who writers). As demonstrated by it's change from a prize winning entry in the North American Fiction prize in 2000, to its existence as a Faction Paradox novel in 2008 and now a Kindle standalone novel in 2011, it's good enough to work on any number of levels and with any amount of different emphases.
Seriously though - three short stories and one and half novels in thirty years? That's a bloody disgrace. Someone give this woman a three novel contract, now!(less)
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Instruction Manual for Swallowing is Adam Marek's first collection according to his website, but I can only assume that he had written pretty widely before creating this compilation of his work. There's little flab on show here, and absolutely no sig...more
Instruction Manual for Swallowing is Adam Marek's first collection according to his website, but I can only assume that he had written pretty widely before creating this compilation of his work. There's little flab on show here, and absolutely no sign that Comma simply collected up every short story he'd ever written, threw a front cover on it and released the new book into the world.
Instead, what we have is a series of highlights, a set of stories where each successive tale trumps the one before it in some respect and where the very best stuck in my mind and popped back up as I lay in bed in the dark.
Like Paul Magrs' Salt Publishing collection, 'Twelve Stories', this is a book about a universe gone slightly and unexpectedly askew. Futuristic tales about metal wasps with red LEDS in their heads and Godzilla rising from the waves and destroying an un-named western city jostle for space with grotesque tales about a woman giving birth to thirty-seven foetuses and suicidal cheerleaders.
These are surreal stories in the proper sense of the word: placing the bizarre into the mundane world, juxtaposing the impossible with the probable, scattering hints of the banal in a universe gone mad. Zombies roam middle England, a man dresses in tea towels and gardening gloves to fight deadly robotic insects and nine foot tall Gilbert and George step out of stained glass into the Tate Modern, wielding giant willies.
It's actually this contrast and the presence of a prosaic background which prevents the book becoming a little too one note for comfort. There's a fine line between 'askew' and 'wacky', but luckily Marek stays on the right side of that line and if the occaisonal story dips a little, it tends to be when - as with the slight tale, 'Sushi Plate Epiphany' - he forgoes this surreal strand and attempts straight-forward story-telling in a straight-forward setting.
At times, I was reminded of John Irving ('Thanks to the monster, he'd stopped dying for a second' ponders the titular hero of 'Testicular Cancer vs the Behemoth'), at others of a more restrained Philip K Dick ('Robot Wasps' and 'A Gilbert and George Talibanimation' in particular) or even David Cronenberg (the slice of gross out horror, best exemplified by 'Belly Full of Rain'), and at others still, of nobody in particular, which was best of all.
Marek is apparently working on a second collection and a novel - can't wait.(less)
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By now you'd think that reading a new Iris story would be like pulling on comfy slippers. After all, it was back in the last millennium that I first came across the character shining out of the pages of a Doctor Who book like the sudden beautiful vie...more
By now you'd think that reading a new Iris story would be like pulling on comfy slippers. After all, it was back in the last millennium that I first came across the character shining out of the pages of a Doctor Who book like the sudden beautiful view across the hills that you sometimes get on the road to somewhere dreary. And since then there have been novels, short story collections and audios. You'd think I'd be bored.
But not at a bit of it, as this new Iris novel proves. True, Iris has recreated herself again, but that's part of the charm of the character as well as the perfect way to keep things fresh. Paul Magrs is incapable of writing dully and Iris, Panda and the Bus are the ideal foil for him, even more I think than his other fabulously mad series with Brenda and Effie. Actually, it's a bit surprising that Brenda doesn't make an appearance in here; almost everyone else does as Magrs pulls off the clever trick of introducing a plethora of new characters to first time Iris readers, while making their various introductions intetesting for more seasoned dabblers in the Magrs' universe.
Like one of those Hollywood spectaculars of the fifties and sixties, if you name a star from a previous Magrs' book he or she probably makes an appearance (even if only in cameo) in 'Enter Wildthyme'. Unlike those movies, however, I was never left thinking 'why the hell is John Wayne playing a Roman centurion?' Here everyone has a part to play and so, rather than over-filled or gratuitous, this book feels like a party to which we've all been invited by Iris, the reader included.
It'd be a bit pointless to go into detail about everyone who turns up and what role they play, but I can't let pass the opportunity to mention that Barbra the Vending Machine from 'Sick Building' and 'The Dreadful Flap' returns in all her stale-crisped glory. Even if the rest of the book were rubbish (which it isn't - it's great!) it'd be worth buying this just to see Barbra on the Bus.
They should invite Paul Magrs to write for Doctor Who on telly. This is the one sort of story missing from the series since it came back, a proper, mental, funny, sometimes sad, often daft extravaganza.(less)
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Zombies are boring. Sorry, but it's a fact.
You can do the George Romero thing of having a small group or community menaced by hordes of the shuffling bastards, but other than that all you have is over-reaching gimmicky pap like those Pride and Prejud...more
Zombies are boring. Sorry, but it's a fact.
You can do the George Romero thing of having a small group or community menaced by hordes of the shuffling bastards, but other than that all you have is over-reaching gimmicky pap like those Pride and Prejudice and Zombies novels, and humorous uses like Michael Jackson's Thriller video.
The problem is that they only really do a couple of things well. Menacing shambling can be pretty effective if there's enough of them or if the intended victim is in some way hemmed in (which is why 'The Walking Dead' works best in scenes featuring hundreds of swarming undead). And they can look pretty good lunging forward out of dark corners to take a quick, gory bite out of the neck of some passer-by. But other than that...
Until now, that is. I'd never heard of Mira Grant or 'Feed' until it featured on the internet's most enjoyable podcast, Writer and Critic. I'm so glad I have now though. Grant's taken a genre which was tired and hackneyed almost from the moment it was born and - somewhat ironically - injected new life into it. Zombies still hirple round biting and infecting people in Feed's 2040 but they're not the story in any sense.
In fact, actual zombies as zombies play a very minor role in the book, although it's made clear that the threat they pose is the single most important thing in the life of every person. Instead, the virus which has infiltrated every person's (and every other large mammal's) bloodstream is the central danger. Designed as a cure for the common cold, but mutated into a lethal virus which can either randomly turn a person into a zombie (or, 'amplify' them) during life or, invariably, upon death, the Kellis-Amberlee virus is incurable, easily contracted via contact and invariably and swiftly lethal.
That last is fairly important actually - the virus is only 'swiftly' and not, say, 'instantaneously' lethal, primarily because it can be weaponised and injected, shot in a dart, swallowed and so forth. So instead of zombie victims disappearing under a mass of rending, tearing flesh, it's possible for people to be infected at a distance from the actual danger ('I was dead the second the hypodermic hit my arm', as one character says matter-of-factly). As a result they then have time for effecting final words and, more importantly, to pass on information vital to the plot.
Because this is a book with a proper, fairly convoluted plot, which at a stroke pushes it beyond even Romero's movies. Put in a single sentence, Feed is a political thriller as good as any other, but set in a world where zombies are a reality. It's a brilliant idea and Grant really runs with it. The possibility of infection informs literally everything that the characters do. There's no death penalty except for terrorism, for instance, which makes sense in a world in which the newly dead are as likely to rip your face off as lie there quietly. Apple make the very best infection testing kits (not called 'iZombie', sadly), Alaska has been abandoned, the most popular children's names are George and Georgia (after Romero), notification of death by zombie is automatically uploaded to the CDC, nobody under 40 is comfortable in a crowd and, crucially for the story, online bloggers have replaced traditional newspapers as the primary source of news.
It's a crucial consideration because the reader's viewpoint is that of one of the top news bloggers covering the Republican favourite candidate in a US presidential election (there's little mention of the Democrats, which quite neatly highlights the increasingly right-wing, paranoid America created by the zombie threat). Gonzo journalism is the norm - maintaining a distance from the news is seen as a negative in many ways - and Georgia and Shaun, brother and sister bloggers (he an Irwin who throws himself directly into harm's way to get the story, she a straight Newsie) and their team are amongst the very best. The invitation to join front-runner Senator Ryman's campaign catapults them to the top of the pile, but at the same time exposes them to deadly danger as they unearth a widespread and potentially life-threatening conspiracy.
Grant keeps a fairly tight rein on her story, with a series of reveals which seem, in retrospect, to be pretty standard for the genre but on which she puts an interesting spin. And she's also not afraid to put her characters at risk, even to death, which keeps the zombie threat to the fore. If I had one complaint it's that an editor should have caught the couple of times when she repeats the exact same information within a page or two (about the Sacramento State Fair, for example), but that's a minor quibble amongst an ocean of positives.(less)
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Edmund Crispin is - with Marjory Allingham - the best writer to have a pop at crime fiction in the golden era of British crime in the 1930s and 40s. His Gervase Fen, unlike Allingham's Campion, is a supremely confident, often arrogant man, who makes...more
Edmund Crispin is - with Marjory Allingham - the best writer to have a pop at crime fiction in the golden era of British crime in the 1930s and 40s. His Gervase Fen, unlike Allingham's Campion, is a supremely confident, often arrogant man, who makes no attempt to hide either his confidence or his arrogance, but his actions - like Campion's - wholly justify any preening he may do. I like him loads, but this is the first time I've read the first book in the series, The Case of the Gilded Fly.
There's nothing surprising on show - Fen arrives fully-formed in the first few pages, and I see little character growth between this and other Fen books I've read. He's bad-tempered, arrogant and a smart-arse, delights in knowing more than anyone else, and there's never any doubt he'll solve the puzzle at hand. That puzzle is fairly straight-forward in itself, although the specific solution to the crime is in some ways even more esoteric and unlikely than that in Crispin's masterpiece, The Moving Toyshop.
What is missing is a lot of the humour of the latter books, which is a shame since there's been at least one laugh out loud line in each of the other Fen novels I've read. I did like the meta-fictional touches though: Fen muttering that he was getting bored of the entire plot and various references by both Fen and Sir Richard, his police officer friend, about the proper use of characterisation in detective novels and just how many clues (and how interesting) need be left for the reader. Amusing if perhaps not entirely necessary (and even a little over-used to be honest).
Crispin has an inventive touch with metaphor and a very readable tone (even if attitudes to class and sex have move don since the forties), which is fairly impressive for a novel written while he was still at University, but he perhaps has less control over the story than in succeeding books. Even for a relatively short novel, there's what feels like padding as an elderly guest tells a ghost story which Fen rationalises and explains later on. Like the rest of the book it almost works and you can see what Crispin was trying to do in creating a b-mystery for Fen to show off with, but it doesn't quite click.
By the next book in the series, though, the author is far more confident and Fen never looks back.(less)
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You know what's particularly annoying about most alternate Britains, especially steampunk ones? It's the fact that the author seems far too often to think that all that's required is to stick a Zeppelin or two in the sky and allude to brass instrumen...more
You know what's particularly annoying about most alternate Britains, especially steampunk ones? It's the fact that the author seems far too often to think that all that's required is to stick a Zeppelin or two in the sky and allude to brass instruments a lot and that means he's done his job. The flip-side of this overly lazy approach is no better either: the type of book which doesn't really have a story as such, just a series of carefully constructed non-electronic machines, described in lovingly autistic detail, with a plot of sorts hazily sketched in between clockwork robots and steam powered spaceships, like an inconvenient addendum.
So, the fact that George Mann's alternate England is one where the machinery complements rather than swamps the story puts him ahead of the game from page one. This world is one where steam-driven machinery is everywhere, but only mentioned when the exploits of Sir Maurice Newbury and Miss Veronica Hobbes require it. The same goes for the Revenant (for which, basically, read 'zombie') plague which lay at the core of the first N&H book. There are still revenants wandering about London, but they remain in the background, because they're not needed in this book. Miss Hobbes may mention a zeppelin on the horizon in passing, but she feels no need to delineate the exact mix of hydrogen to helium required to make it float, or to give us a potted alternate history of flying machines. Like the maps at the beginning of epic fantasy novels, such concerns have their place, but are only of fleeting interest - they might provide what marketeers refer to as Added Value, but they're not the reason for purchase.
As a result, Mann's London feels like a real place, with a real (if different) history and a cast of real (if different) people, who step forward and back into and out of the narrative when the situation requires and not simply to show how clever the author can be,
Queen Victoria in this world, for example, has existed since the first novel as a malevolent spider at the centre of a web of tubes and coils, piping and pumps, all designed to artificially extend her life. In The Immorality Engine she achieves centre stage while rarely actually appearing as it becomes crystal clear that everything which has happened to date is a consequence of her altogether selfish machinations. Newbury and Hobbes, meanwhile, continue their will-they, won't-they dance round one another and Charles Bainbridge (in many ways my favourite character in the series) continues to struggle between what he'd like to be true and what evidently and actually is.
On which subject, this book successfully addresses one minor failing (if you can call it that) of the earlier books. There's far more emotional depth to the characters here than before. There was always a sneaking suspicion in the two earlier novels that Newbury and Hobbes' mutual attraction was more a matter of authorial fiat than growing naturally from two characters in real sympathy with one another, but here Mann treats the relationship (and that between the two and Bainbridge) with a wonderfully deft touch. That Newbury's opium addiction, initially obviously reminiscent of Holmes' cocaine habit, is overcome under Miss Hobbes' ministrations is refreshing in itself, as it sets Newbury apart from that too famous detective. Better still, however, towards the end of the book it seems possible that Newbury will have to re-addict himself for the good of Miss Hobbes and her ailing sister. Layers pile upon layers in a relationship which could easily have appeared artificial until it's clear that Mann intended this slow growth in affection all along.
Don't be fooled however; this is not a novel of romance only. Mann is one of the best writers of action sequences in any genre, and he never fails to impress here, with several set pieces which glory in quick shifts of perspective, sudden bursts of activity and sundry feats of derring-do. Bainbridge under attack from rockets and ruffians; robotic horses at the charge; and more than one mechanical spider armed with razor sharp blades - Mann treats the reader to all this and more with apparently effortless skill.
Like Paul Magrs' Brenda and Effie series or George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman, this is a book which can be read as a standalone or, more profitably, as one in a series of increasingly impressive volumes. If you haven't tried any Newbury and Hobbes yet, this is the perfect time to jump on, while the series is still young.
Trust me, this is a series that could run and run...(less)
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I really hate being disappointed in a book. Not that I don't get annoyed at a disappointing movie or album or whatever, but there's something particularly unexpected and irksome about a poor book from a trusted writer. Note - not a disaster from a fa...more
I really hate being disappointed in a book. Not that I don't get annoyed at a disappointing movie or album or whatever, but there's something particularly unexpected and irksome about a poor book from a trusted writer. Note - not a disaster from a favourite writer; that'd be a cause for real concern, not my current feeling of vague irritation. Don't get me wrong, this is not John Irving's descent from the majesty of 'A Prayer for Owen Meaney' to that dull one about tattooists (or, on a muscial note, Bowie managing to go from 'Scary Monsters' to 'Never Let me Down' in a few short years), but still I found myself turning each page with an almost audible grunt of dissatisfaction and a sense of being very ineptly mugged.
It'd be too tiresome to go into some sort of line by line breakdown of what's wrong with this book (and besides, it's fairly clear no editor ever bothered such an analysis prior to publication, so why should I?), but it'd be facile to just shrug and say 'it didn't work for me' when there is actual stuff which can be pointed at accusingly.
It's not very well written but anyone coming to one of Beaton's cosy mysteries expecting scintillating dialogue and subtle characterisation is in for a nasty shock. As with all the other Agatha Raisin mysteries, every character uses the exact same voice, the heroine and her coterie of friends and admirers are so sketchily, well sketched, that were it not for someone occasionally baldly stating their ages the reader would struggle to pin them down to within a couple of decades. At times even that doesn't really help much - Agatha herself is at times described as a pensioner and middle-aged and jumps in and out of bed with the gay abandon of a teenager, while I still have no idea what age her occasional paramour, Charles, is supposed to be.
More importantly though, the actual solution to the mystery is both extremely obvious from the very beginning and, crucially and disappointingly, is solved by Charles taking 'a lucky guess' and thus discovering the murderer. Throw in a small village in which - because it suits the plot - there lives a sound engineer who can also set up bugs on people, about fifty unhappily married and easily seduced women and a seeming innocent who just happens to have connections in the Glasgow underworld...oh never mind. I can already feeling myself considering looking up a few examples of utter stupidity and I said I wasn't going to do that.
Suffice to say that usually Beaton turns out uninspired but comfortingly cosy mysteries - this, however, falls well below even that standard.
Like Agatha and any of her tediously uncaring lovers I'm horribly disappointed...(less)
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First off, this is a beautiful looking book. The cover features a painting of Van Thal, the original of which can be seen hanging on the back cover, behind author Johnny Mains on the wall of his study. Inside, the frontispiece contains another image...more
First off, this is a beautiful looking book. The cover features a painting of Van Thal, the original of which can be seen hanging on the back cover, behind author Johnny Mains on the wall of his study. Inside, the frontispiece contains another image of Van Thal, above the signatures of author and artist (Les Edwards, incidentally), and a note of which number of the limited run of 100 copies you currently hold (mine is 11). Even the paper the publishers have used feels richer than the norm, and - although I don't know if this is standard - a bookmark of the cover had been slotted inside my copy. This is a really lovely artifact...
It's also a fascinating little study of someone who most horror fans could name, but of whom most presumably know nothing beyond his name and the fact he was editor for most of the Pan horror series. Fortunately Johnny Mains - in many ways Mr Pan Horror, and a genuine book loving eccentric of the sort I always worry are disappearing in this electronic age - is on hand to tease out every possible fact about the man, and then present them in a relaxed, readable (and thankfully not entirely hagiographic) manner.
I'd read an earlier, shorter version of the essay which serves as the basis of this book in an earlier Mains tome, but there's sufficient new information in this extended version to make the update worthwhile. Better even than the new info, though, are the reprints of letters from Van Thal to various Pan authors, and the series of interviews Mains carried out with many of the surviving Pan authors. The book is rounded off by a reprinted article, written by Mains, from SFX magazine, charting the history and possible future of Van Thal's most famous creation, the Pan Book of Horror Stories.
Highly recommended, if you can get your hands on a copy...(less)
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