Lakis Fourouklas's Blog, page 29

Book Review: The Golden Scales by Parker Bilal

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This book could be read as a melancholy song for Cairo. The author, using a simple case of a disappearance, or maybe abduction, for his starting point, he travels the reader back in time and he show-lights to him the everyday life of the Egyptian capital. He does that in a somewhat light way, using a sense of humor that borders to irony, but that's not enough to hide the reality; a reality that's as bleak as the lives of the poor people in the country.
     So, he talks about dirty cops and corrupted state officials, who have a lot of close ties with the rich the powerful, about the new dirty money that has been laundered in the country for the sake of some questionable characters from the former Soviet Union, and which allows certain people to make or to follow their own rules, about the city poor whose lives get from bad to worse, about the rich that reside in huge fortress-like houses, choosing to ignore all the suffering in the streets, and about the fear and the darkness that surrounds the local show biz, the sex and the drugs trade.
     This novel reminds me of a crime story and a social commentary at the same time, and it's just as well that it does, if I may add. The epicenter of the plot is not so much the crime, as is the society in which it took place. A society, that back then, in 1998, was just as divided as it is now.
     It all begins when some bodyguards of sorts, arrive at the boat where Makana, an ex-cop from the Sudan and now refugee lives. The men simply state to him that he has to follow them because their boss wants to meet him, and he just obeys, since he knows too well that he has no word in the matter anyway. As he'll soon come to find out, the boss is none other than Saad Hanafi, a man rumored to be so rich as to own the biggest part of the aristocratic suburb of Heliopolis. Makana knows Hanafi is one of those men that "sell dreams", one of which is his football team, the most popular in Egypt. Now he wants him, of all people, to discover the whereabouts of Adil Romario, the biggest star of the team, who's gone missing ten days ago. Makana, though reluctantly, accepts the mission, since he could really use some money right now, and of that his new employer has aplenty.
     Thus he starts his investigation; an investigation that will bring him time and again face to face with danger, but which will also lead him into some of the most infamous streets of the city, into dens and into luxurious establishments, and that will also make him realize that the people who really cared about Romario were but a few; most of the ones who knew him actually were not that hurt that he was gone. As the case will start getting more and more complicated and the good detective will find himself moving from one dead end to the next, something else will happen that will complicate things even more; he'll meet a woman from England, who's been searching for the last seventeen years for her missing daughter and who'll soon end up dead, murdered perhaps by the very same man who took her child. But who would that be? That's the big question that Makana sets himself to find the answer to.
     This is a very good crime novel, written in a nice straightforward manner, and which travels the reader to some places that look familiar and strange at the same time. The author seems not only to pen the psychological profiles of his characters, but of a whole city as well. And he talks about that city's essence, the one which as foreigners to its culture, we are by ourselves unable to see. A job well done.
 

Maria Polidouri - Young Man

Young man, with the colorless glance, with the tight lips

Your sorrow has made my dark heart blossom.

But I did not dare reach to you then and now I do not dare

And thus I've followed the familiar path into my darkness.



Some other hopes I see happily dance around you;

A sweet smile full of promises you carry.

But farther away all the time I drift, so no one will be able to see

In my telling eyes my vain secret.



And if she took me not onto her light wings

The belief of joy, so that I could dream,

I can see you sweetly smile to her call

And I wish that that was not but an illusion.



Your melancholy that I have loved, I wish to never see

Against you rise as an inevitable catastrophe,

And, my futile love, as a joy of the wind I wish

It will again someday be and of an unappeased mania's the fuel.





Copyright for the translation: Lakis Fourouklas

Book Review: What It Was by George Pelecanos

 

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 As we read in the preface, the inspiration for this book came from a conversation Pelecanos had with his friend and co-author of the cult, yet hugely successful TV series The Wire, Ed Burns. It's been written at a feverish pace during the summer of 2011, and thus not long after the release of The Cut, that great crime novel, yet another book by this acclaimed writer hits the stands.
     The main characters in this story, as in many others by Pelecanos, are: private investigator Derek Strange, the city of Washington, D.C. and music. A minor role falls to Nick Stefanos, yet another one of his famous creations.
     At the beginning we meet Derek and Nick, now partners in a P.I. firm, as they sit in a diner eating, drinking and talking about things. But as one topic leads to the next, all of a sudden the former finds himself in a need to tell the latter a story from the distant past. The year was 1972, and back then there were a lot of things going on in the city; a lot of things, but not so strange. It was a time of change in everything; in politics, in fashion and in crime; in violent crime. However, the criminals that Derek is about to describe remind the reader of some infamous people from the past, Bonny and Clyde; a couple that modern day psychologists would refer to as sociopaths. The villains in this story are Robert Lee Jones, a trigger-happy psycho who's known as Red Fury, and Coco Watkins, an impressive looking woman who owns a brothel.
     Derek will cross paths with them while investigating a seemingly trivial case, and before too long he'll come to realize that what started off as a walk in the park is going to turn out to be something completely different. So, all of a sudden he'll find himself in the epicenter of a circle, or rather, a cyclone of events that will culminate in a crime spree, unlike any other, during which murder, in the lips of the killer, will come to sound just like any other word. This case however will also give him the opportunity to meet again with an old friend, police detective Frank Vaughn, a meeting that will bring to him a little bit of joy, but at the same time awaken in him some dreadful memories. Now the two of them have to put their heads and their individual talents together to stop Jones, who seems to be more interested in his every day glory and his future legacy, than staying alive or becoming the city's crime boss. As the action will be heading for its peak the author will go on doing what he does best, which is, talk about the city and describe its neighborhoods and its politics and habits, through the music, the people and their interactions. Here we meet cross-dressers, hookers, drug-addicts and drunks; people who are trying to hold on to life and people who have nothing to look forward to; hopeless and hopeful.
     A very good novel, well-written and with a fine story to tell but, in my humble opinion, not as good as The Cut. I'm sure the fans will love it though, not only for its action and pace, but also because it provides some useful info about the background of one of Pelecanos' favorite heroes.

Book Review: Catch Me by Lisa Gardner

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This is the first book by Lisa Gardner that I've ever read and I can honestly say that I've enjoyed it. The author has a unique way of carrying away the reader into the dangerous worlds of her own creation and of misleading him and, of course, of making him feel a kind of sentimental bond with her heroes, or rather her heroines.
     I say Heroines, because it is indeed the women who rule the day in this well-crafted thriller: Detective D.D. Warren, her younger and overeager colleague Detective O and Charlene Rosalind Carter Grand, who's supposed to die in four days time. D.D. used to declare with pride that nothing, absolutely nothing, could ever surprise her, but as Charlene narrates her story, as she explains to her that she's bound to be murdered on the 21st of January at 8.00 PM, just like her best friends were, during the last couple of years, she'll start to question herself and all her certainties. The woman even describes to her the way of the murder, strangulation, and she even points out that during the investigation that will follow they will find no defensive wounds on her body and no forensic evidence whatsoever.
     D.D., at the very beginning, when this short and seemingly weak woman approaches her with her story, and pleads with her to investigate her future murder, thinks that she's crazy, but her curiosity takes over and so she decides to take a look into the case. The more she investigates though, the more she finds out, and thus little by little she comes to believe what the woman told her was the truth.
     However, her time these days is very limited and no matter how much she'd like to spend more of it on this case, it's impossible to do so. On the one hand she has another open investigation concerning a serial killer that only targets pedophiles, and on the other she's expecting her parents to arrive in Boston any time now, and thus make her life miserable. Truth be told, she'd rather hunt down psychos and killers, or psycho killers, day after day, than spend a single hour at the same table with her mother. It's not that she has something against her; it's just that the latter never stops trying to impose her own precious rules into her daughter's life. D.D. and her partner have recently become parents and her mother believes the time has finally come for her to get married. She, however, likes her life and her relationship just the way they are, and wishes not to make things complicated.
     The story though doesn't only speak of the relationship of D.D. and her mother, but also of that between Charlene and the woman who gave birth to her. I say it like that, because no one in his right mind would describe that woman as a mother. She was a psycho, who abused her and her sisters time and again over the years, making their short lives a living hell; a nightmare. Well, that nightmare still haunts Charlene and decades later she continues to feel guilty for the things that she's done and for those that she was never able to. Now, as she only has four days to live she revisits the past and tries to seek there the answers to her many questions. The answers are indeed to be found there, however by the time she reaches the point of perception, it will probably be too late to do something to change the course of events.
     If one asked me what is the strong point in this novel I would say it's the characters. The author creates masterful psychological portraits and she seems to perfectly understand the inner world of her heroines. She describes their ways of thinking and acting in detail and she paves with a light hand the way that will either lead them to salvation or to catastrophe. If there's a weakness, I'd say that it's the fact that the careful reader will come to realize a bit early who the perp is, but I wouldn't say that that takes even an iota of the reading pleasure away. I'm sure that the fans of the genre will love it.
 

Book Review: Ragnarok by A.S. Byatt

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If you enjoy taking a ride into the ancient myths and into the worlds of fantasy, you will surely enjoy this book.
     Byatt, one of the great masters of the English language, tries with a certain amount of success, to reinvent here for us the Norse myths, while at the same time drawing parallels with the modern day world. What she's most interested in, as it seems, is not to retell a story that's been told so many times before, but rather explore whether we've learned something from humanity's past mistakes, if we somehow became a little wiser. Besides, as she points out: "…They (the gods) are human, because they are limited and stupid."
     The narration drives the reader back and forth in time, talking to him/her about the wars of the gods and those of men. It all begins with a thin girl, who's trying to survive the war, hiding in a shelter. At the start she feels kind of bored -"The thin girl, despite the war that was raging, was more afraid of eternal boredom," as we read- until a book full of wonder and awe falls into her hands; a book that talks about Asgard and the gods, and which for her becomes a passion. Through that book, she comes to discover an amazing world, where magic exists, and where the gods are full of weaknesses and prone to mistakes, who sometimes look kindhearted, but most of the time are just petty and vengeful; they somehow remind her of the gods of the Old Testament.
     The thin girl is encouraged by these stories to look deep inside her own being, to discover herself, and to ask questions about the what's and the why's of modern day reality. It all comes tumbling down, day after day the world heads straight towards total destruction, she seems to think, and no one can or maybe wants to do anything to stop it from happening. Even when the war comes to an end, the thin girl cannot feel happy, because she thinks that she saw the future, and she already misses the illuminatingly dark world of the book.
     Byatt, using the myths as her stepping stone, sets off to create a parable about today: about the world of plenty, where more and more people starve to death, where the powerful still play their dirty games at the expense of the weak and the poor, where one catastrophe follows the next as the earth seems to takes its revenge on people, and where, as usual, the ones who have the less to lose, are the ones called upon to pay the price.
     She tells a story in exquisite prose and she gives the reader food for thought in an almost poetic way. I'd recommend this book not only to just every fan of good literary fiction, but also to every thinking person out there. The gods blew it, the author seems to think, so now it's up to us to make things right; we'll either correct their mistakes or we'll just be drawn into the abyss, which they have created (with our helping hands, of course) for us.

 

To a girl without a name

What is your name; Sophia, Aishe, Julia or Katarina;
I do not know.
What I do know though is that I've seen your face, I've heard your voice,
Distinctive as a joyful howl.
I've seen you in the streets of Tunis asking for democracy
And in the Cairo squares looking for freedom from tyranny.
I have heard your voice, yelling at me: Wake up!
-From Syria's imperial ruins
From Iran's theocratic prison cells-
Wake up!
I've seen you bleeding into Africa's oilfields
And the deadly mines of South America
I've seen you dying while traversing the roads of the silk
And coming back to life, crying out loud: Enough!
Enough, you cried; enough;
Before raising your weak, your feeble banners
Of dreams and of the current European desperation.
You armed yourself with your youth and a smile,
With two open arms and three friends of the heart,
With a neighborhood, with your entire little world,
And you set out to speak your mind to the vultures
Of the socio-economic-political order.
But your voice carried no strength.
It could not be heard over the horns of the cars
And the ridiculous cries of joy of the TV personas.
Your presence was too small, your tears of no importance,
You could not draw on you the looks of
The modern day robots passing restlessly by.
But you didn't give up:
Here I shall remain, you said.
And here you stayed. There.
There, in the middle of a street of the city; a city.
There, where the enforcers of the laws of the few met you:
In Athens and in Lisbon, in London and in Dublin, in Barcelona.
There, where they hit you and they gassed you and they made you bleed.
Your blood and your tears travelled the world over
Through YouTube and plasma TV screens,
Through mobile phones and Facebook pages;
They were tweeted now and again.
A lot of people saw them; a few felt them; a handful got upset.
But most, the big crowd, just chose to look somewhere else
And forget.
One way or another though, you've managed to achieve your goal;
To give a helping hand to the building of the Temple of New Hope.
And you have pointed the way to a different path,
Old at the same time and new,
Ordinary and unique,
A path that's hard to follow,
Which as such before too long it will once again become
A phantom trail of a long lost world.

Book Review: The Cyclops Conspiracy by David Perry

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 This is one of the best thrillers that I've read during the last few months. Its action moves at a cinematic pace and it easily takes hold of the reader's attention, an attention it never lets go.
     On first sight there's nothing much going on in the world that the author invites us to enter; things look normal; extremely normal one might think. But as time goes by and as we turn one page after the other, things begin to change; or rather things start to become illuminated. So just under that picture of normalcy that we see at first, we soon come to discover a different one; one so bleak that's hard to believe.
     It all begins with the death of a man called Thomas Pettigrew. Thomas was an old-style pharmacist, one of those people that loved their job a lot and cared for their customers just as much, and a sometimes successful businessman. His death comes as unwelcome news to everyone who ever met him. Among those people is Jason Rodgers, his once time protégée, who because of an unfortunate turn of events had to part ways with his mentor. Now, for the first time in years, he is back for the funeral, and before too long he comes to meet the only person he ever wanted to see there; Thomas' daughter Chrissie, an ex lover. That meeting leads him to a walk down memory lane, but at the same time opens up a portal back to his old world, as a woman named Lily Zanns, who now heads Thomas' pharmacy, offers him a job, which he gladly accepts. And it's exactly then that the plot begins to unfold.
     As Jason finds himself once again in Chrissie's circle, he starts to feel kind of happy. The old feelings between seem to rise back to life and he really loves his new job. With the new job though come new responsibilities and soon enough, new meetings. A young, pretty and bright doctor called Jasmine Kader seems to crave for his attention, something which, because of his feelings for Chrissie, puts him in an awkward position. But, as he's soon to find out, that's the least of his problems; something seems to really stink in this new world of his, but he can't exactly say what. Probably there's a scum with some prescriptions going on; but is that all? Obviously not, otherwise there wouldn't be any hidden cameras in the store. Right? But why exactly are they there? And who knows about them? Well, the more he finds out, the more he'll start to think that the world he's entered is no more than an illusion. Nobody seems to be who he or she claims to be, and as the secret parts of the story will start to come to light, Jason and Chrissie will find themselves in the epicenter of a virtual cyclone, of a conspiracy that threatens to blow the whole world apart. Who is who and who does what? Who to trust? These are the main questions that they have to ask at some point or another. The answers are not so easy to come by, and when they do they are just as hard to comprehend.
     In this book we once again read a story about some ordinary people, who find themselves in extraordinary situations and who somehow discover within them the necessary wealth of psychological stamina to endure all the ill fortune that life throws at them. The second half of the book is so fast-paced that it leaves the reader almost breathless, something that adds some points to the overall affect of the narration. If there's a weak point in this book I'd say it's the similes. The author obviously loves them a lot, but the reader maybe not so much. However, one should never forget that this is the author's first book, and as such it comes very close to genre perfection. 9/10.

Edgar Award shortlists announced

The shortlists for the Edgar Awards have been announced yesterday. Below i give you the nominated titles in three major categories:



BEST NOVEL



The Ranger by Ace Atkins Gone by Mo Hayder The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino 1222 by Anne Holt Field Gray by Philip Kerr   BEST FIRST NOVEL BY AN AMERICAN AUTHOR  Red on Red by Edward Conlon Last to Fold by David Duffy All Cry Chaos by Leonard Rosen Bent Road by Lori Roy Purgatory Chasm by Steve Ulfelder   BEST PAPERBACK ORIGINAL  The Company Man by Robert Jackson Bennett The Faces of Angels by Lucretia Grindle The Dog Sox by Russell Hill Death of the Mantis by Michael Stanley Vienna Twilight by Frank Tallis The winners will be announced on April 26th. To take a look at the full list visit The Edgar website

Ebook Review: No Time Left by David Baldacci

I never thought that there would ever come a day, when I'd have to say that David Baldacci has written something not worth reading, but here you go. Thankfully, this is but a short story, which only came out as an eBook, because if it were a novel I'd feel really disappointed.

     The protagonist in this story is a man called Frank Becker, a professional assassin, who likes to undertake the most complicated, or rather challenging missions. When it comes to killing he is a man full of surprises. We first meet him as he shadows a man, in the crowded streets of an unnamed city, whom he ends up killing with a lethal injection. That takes place on the 5th of May of the year 2000, and so far so good.

     In the pages that follow the author talks about the personal history of the assassin, his complicated background and his unhappy childhood. He's been abused as a child not only by his father, but also by his evil stepmother, a fact that left him scarred for life and created a dangerous void in his psyche.

     Becker, who's spend the last twenty years killing people, is now ready to undertake a new, exciting, but extremely unorthodox mission: he is to assassinate a woman, whom he has never met, for which he knows nothing about, and whose whereabouts are completely unknown to him. The man who hires him though tells him not to worry about a thing and that when the time comes everything will be illuminated. And he's proven right. And that's exactly when the reader finds all of a sudden him/herself reading a fantasy story, which is bound to dissolve all and any expectations for a great ending. That doesn't come to pass because the narration changes genre, but alas because the end of the story seems rushed and, honestly, badly written. As it seems the good author has decided, in his effort to surprise the reader, to walk into Stephen King territory. However, as great as he may be in writing action-packed thrillers, the fantasy game doesn't seem to suit him. And thus he disappoints.

The Books of 2012

I can only hope that 2012 will prove just as good a year as 2011 has been as far as reading books is concerned. I already have some of the books that will come out in the next few months, some of which I've already mentioned in my A Year in Reading post. The list that follows is divided into three parts consisting: A) Of the books that I already have; B) Of those that I expect to get; and, C) Of the ones that I haven't been able to read last year. So, here we go:



A



Hilda Twongyeirwe – I Dare to say. It comes out on the 1st of February.

Parker Bilal – The Golden Scales. It comes out on the 6th of February.

Lisa Gardner – Catch Me. It comes out on the 7th of February.

David Constantine – The Pillars of Hercules. It comes out on the 6th of March.

Riikka Pulkkinen – True. It comes out on the 20th of March.

Dave Thompson – Hearts of Darkness. It comes out on the 27th of March.

Joseph Wambaugh – Harbor Nocturne. It comes out on the 3rd of April.

Sayed Kashua – Second Person Singular. It comes out on the 3rd of April.

Donna Leon – Beastly Things. It comes out on the 17th of April.

Roddy Doyle – A Greyhound of a Girl. It comes out on the 1st of May.



B



Harlan Coben – Stay Close. It comes out on the 20th of March.

David Baldacci – The Innocent. It comes out on the 17th of April.

John Sandford – Stolen Prey. It comes out on the 14th of May.

Jeffery Deaver – XO. It comes out on the 12th of June.

Kathy Reichs – Bones Are Forever. It comes out on the 21st of August.

Jo Nesbo – Phantom. It comes out on the 4th of September.



C



George R.R. Martin – A Clash of Kings. I'm currently reading it.

Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis – The Boy in the Suitcase. I'm currently reading it.

Roberto Bolaño – Amulet. I'm currently reading it.

Jose Saramago – The Elephant's Journey

Don DeLillo – The Angel Esmeralda

Lars Kepler – The Hypnotist

Miyuki Miyabe – ICO: Castle in the Mist

Miyuki Miyabe – Brave Story

Yu Hua – Brothers

Hakkan Nesser – The Unlucky Lottery

P.D. James – Death Comes to Pemberley

Michele Halberstadt – Pianist in the Dark

Orhan Pamuk – The White Castle

Taichi Yamada – I Haven't Dreamed of Flying for a While

Kyung-Soon Shin – Please Look After Mom

Colm Toibin – The Empty Family

Dai Sijie – Once on a Moonless Night

Mikkel Birkegaard – The Library of Shadows

Arnaldur Indridason – Hypothermia

Elif Shafak – The Bastard of Istanbul

Gillian Flynn – Dark Places

Yukio Mishima – The Decay of the Angel

Roddy Doyle – Bullfighting

Yrsa Sigurdardottir – Last Rituals

Alexander Maksik – You Deserve Nothing

Arne Dahl – Misterioso

K.O. Dahl – The Fourth Man

Various Authors – Las Vegas Noir. I'm currently reading it.

Various Authors – Bangkok Noir

Various Authors – Mexico City Noir

Various Authors – Barcelona Noir

Koji Suzuki – Dark Water

Carlos Fuentes – Happy Families

Kjell Eriksson – The Princess of Burundi

Tishani Doshi – The Pleasure Seekers

Liza Marklund – The Bomber

Ake Edwardson – Sun and Shadow

Paul Auster – Timbuktu

John Banville – The Infinities

Arturo Perez-Reverte – The Painter of Battles

Junichiro Tanizaki – Quicksand

Natsume Sōseki – Kusamakura

Natsume Sōseki – Sanshiro

Mari Akasaka – Vibrator

Mitsuyo Kakuta – Woman on the Other Shore

Leonardo Padura – Havana Black

Arthur Spevak – Honor & Entropy

Tomas Eloy Martinez - Purgatory



Of course these are not the only books I'm going to read. Everything depends on the when, the where and the why, or probably I should say, the mood. However, I'd dare state that all of the above will be part of my "have read" list at the end of the year.



P.S. Publication dates refer to the U.S. market