Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty, page 17
May 6, 2019
News: The Hard Case Crime Humble Bundle is a great addition to your pulp library
Anyone who has read CriminOlly for any length of time will know that I love vintage and pulp crime fiction. When I got a mail from Titan Books announcing a Humble Bundle for their Hard Case crime I jumped on it fast and hard.
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For those who don’t know, Humble Bundle is a site that sells bundles of video games, software and e-books. Customers pay what they want, with some of the proceeds going to charity, but the more you pay the more you get. Hard Case is the best pulp imprint going right now, publishing a mix of rediscovered classics and new works.
The bundle contains over 30 novels and graphic novels from great authors like Ed McBain, Donald E Westlake, Lawrence Block and Christa Faust. The comics include ‘Tyler Cross: Black Rock’ and the ‘Mike Hammer’ collection, both of which I’ve reviewed here.
Get it while you can!
https://www.humblebundle.com/books/pulp-fiction-books?hmb_source=navbar&hmb_medium=product_tile&hmb_campaign=tile_index_7
May 3, 2019
The Never Game by Jeffrey Deaver #BookReview
A young woman has gone missing in Silicon Valley and her father has hired Colter Shaw to find her. The son of a survivalist family, Shaw is an expert tracker. Now he makes a living as a “reward seeker,” traveling the country to help police solve crimes and private citizens locate missing persons. But what seems a simple investigation quickly thrusts him into the dark heart of America’s tech hub and the cutthroat billion-dollar video-gaming industry.
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Title: The Never Game| Author: Jeffrey Deaver | Series: Colter Shaw #1 | Publisher: HarperCollins | Pages: 400| ISBN: 9780008303723| Publication date: 16th May 2019| Source: NetGalley
I read the first few of Jeffrey Deaver’s Lincoln Rhyme books
back in the 1990s/early 2000s and really liked them. I was also a big fan of his
WW2 thriller ‘Garden of Beasts’. I was excited, then, to read ‘The Never Game’,
which is being touted as the first in a new series from him. Unfortunately, my excitement
was misplaced. 20 years ago, ‘The Bone Collector’ felt fresh and compelling; by
comparison, ‘The Never Game’ is tired and distinctly uninvolving.
The plot is okay, but no more than that. Someone is kidnapping
upstanding citizens and imprisoning them in bizarre locales where they have a
slim chance of escaping. Deaver’s new hero, Colter Shaw, is an investigator who
finds missing persons for a reward. He’s also a slightly weird survivalist type
with a lot of back story and a bad case of much better at most things than
anyone else. In other words, he’s like the heroes of a thousand other low rent
thrillers. That’s disappointing, because Lincoln Rhyme was such a great creation,
by comparison Shaw is massively uninteresting.
The kidnappings are linked in some way to a popular video game,
and the book ends up adopting a structure similar to levels in a game. This was
reasonably successful, but the overload of information about gaming that
accompanies it was not. It feels like Deaver decided that the video game
industry would make a good backdrop for a mystery, set his researcher off to
find out about it, and then felt compelled to use every single fact they came
back with, whether it was relevant to the plot or not. We end up with tonnes of
detail which slows the story down.
I feel like I often end up saying this in my reviews, but I think a good editor could have tightened it up enough that I’d have enjoyed it more. That wouldn’t have solved the problems with Shaw, but it might at least have meant that I got to the end of the book actually caring whodunnit.
2/5
I feel like I often end up saying this in my reviews, but I think a good editor could have tightened it up enough that I’d have enjoyed it more. That wouldn’t have solved the problems with Shaw, but it might at least have meant that I got to the end of the book actually caring whodunnit.
April 26, 2019
Conviction by Denise Mina #BookReview
It’s just a normal morning for Anna McDonald. Gym kits, packed lunches, getting everyone up and ready. Until she opens the front door to her best friend, Estelle. Anna turns to see her own husband at the top of the stairs, suitcase in hand. They’re leaving together and they’re taking Anna’s two daughters with them.
Left alone in the big, dark house, Anna can’t think, she can’t take it in. With her safe, predictable world shattered, she distracts herself with a story: a true-crime podcast. There’s a sunken yacht in the Mediterranean, multiple murders and a hint of power and corruption. Then Anna realises she knew one of the victims in another life. She is convinced she knows what happened. Her past, so carefully hidden until now, will no longer stay silent.
This is a murder she can’t ignore, and she throws herself into investigating the case. But little does she know, her past and present lives are about to collide, sending everything she has worked so hard to achieve into freefall.
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Title: Conviction Author: Denise Mina |Publisher: Harvill Secker | Pages: 384| ISBN: 9781911215257| Publication date: 16th May 2019| Source: NetGalley
‘Conviction’ has pretty much everything you might want from a thriller. It’s
gripping, funny and has an enjoyable mystery running through it. It’s also
wildly different in tone and subject matter to the last Denise Mina book I read,
‘The Long Drop’, which speaks to her talents as a writer. I didn’t like it quite
as much as ‘The Long Drop’, but then that was one of my favourite reads of
2018, so the bar was set high. That book was serious and fairly bleak, ‘Conviction’
is a much lighter read.
It opens with heroine Anna confronted by a double whammy of revelations.
She discovers, via a true crime podcast, that an old
friend of hers is dead and may be responsible for the deaths of his family. Her husband announces he is leaving her for the woman
next door.
Those two things set Anna off on an international investigation into the
deaths and her own past with the man next door, anorexic pop star Fin.
Whilst it relies on a couple of reasonably unlikely coincidences, the book
manages to be quite convincing on its own terms. It’s a fun read and I suspect not
meant to be taken too seriously, although there is some effective and thought-provoking
commentary on how rape victims are treated by the police and the press.
The plot rattles along at breakneck speed and the amateur investigation is enjoyable.
Anna’s sardonic narration and plain speaking is often amusing and added a lot
to my enjoyment of the story. It’s perhaps not quite as funny as it might have
been, but Mina does have a deftly comic turn of phrase at times.
What really makes the book, though, is the relationship between Anna and Fin.
It’s touching, funny and believable. I found myself really rooting for the
unlikely pair and I hope that Mina will consider giving them another outing. It
might sound like damning with faint praise, but I’d heartily recommend ‘Conviction’
as a holiday read. It’s packed with enjoyable European locations and a bit of
glamour, it’ll make you laugh and keep you guessing, and the characters will
stay with you.
4/5
April 19, 2019
Jigsaw by Ed McBain #BookReview
Detectives Brown and Carella answer a call to a double homicide. One guy broke in and another defended himself and now they both are dead. The case seems open and shut. Except for one piece of evidence: a torn picture in one of the dead men’s hands. When insurance investigator Irving Krutch turns up at the squadroom with another piece of the photograph, Brown and Carella realize their tidy little case isn’t so tidy after all. In fact it leads back to a six-year-old bank robbery that left the four robbers dead and $750,000 missing. Now they must search for the next missing piece of the picture…
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Title: Jigsaw | Author: Ed McBain | Series: 87th Precinct #24 | Publisher: Pan | Pages: 160 | ISBN: 9780330231725| Publication date: 1970 | Source: Self-purchased
‘Jigsaw’ is the 24th book in Ed McBain’s 87th
Precinct series. If you’re not familiar with the books I give a brief overview in
my review of the previous entry in, ‘Shotgun’.
They remain my favourite mysteries, even if ‘Jigsaw’ fell a bit flat for me.
This time, the 87th’s bulls are approached by an
insurance investigator trying to track down $750,000 from a robbery that took
place in the city 6 years earlier. The criminals were all killed in a shootout
but the proceeds of their crime have never been recovered. The only clues are a
torn scrap of paper which appears to come from a list of names, and a fragment
of a photograph cut in the shape of a jigsaw piece. The book follows detectives
Arthur Brown and Steve Carella as they try to find the other pieces of the
photograph and locate the missing loot.
The mystery element here felt a bit too contrived to me, and
massively at odds with other elements of the book. Like some of the previous
novels it has interludes where McBain details other crimes happening in the
city. These include murders and a particularly brutal gang rape and I couldn’t
help feeling that the treasure hunt the detectives were on shouldn’t have been
their priority.
That’s probably missing the point a bit, and the mystery is
kind of fun. McBain uses visuals to show the jigsaw slowly assembling as more
pieces are found and I enjoyed trying to figure out what it was showing alongside
Brown and Carella. There’s no secondary case to back the main one up though,
and it didn’t really have the weight to carry a whole book.
Black detective Arthur Brown takes the lead in this book, I
think for the first time in the series. The focus on him is both a strength and
a weakness for ‘Jigsaw’. As you’d expect from an author who has shown himself to
be as socially conscious as McBain has in previous books, he uses Brown’s ethnicity
to comment on racism and for the most part this works well. The ending of the
book turns on it as well, and that’s where it fell apart for me. We end up with
a scene which was, I think, well intentioned, but which I found pretty
uncomfortable.
Overall then, this is a weaker entry in the series. It has its moments, but its certainly not one I’d recommend for a first time reader.
3/5
April 12, 2019
A Paper Mask by John Collee #BookReview
A nail biting thriller in the tradition of “Ripley’s Game”.
Hospital orderly Matthew Harris is every bit as smart as the junior doctors he works alongside. He’s also trapped, bored, ambitious and ruthless.
When a medical intern dies, Matthew assumes his identity and takes the dead man’s next job, on the far side of the country, as a junior Emergency Room physician.
As the deception starts to unravel, the young nurse who falls for him is the one person standing between the newly-minted bogus doctor and the exposure of his lethal charade.
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Title: A Paper Mask | Author: John Collee | Publisher: DeWinter Snow | Pages: 256 | ISBN: 9780792700890 | Publication date: 1987 | Source: Self-purchased
I was familiar with ‘A Paper Mask’ through the excellent 1990 film adaptation of it with Paul McGann and Amanda Donohue (and no ‘A’, it’s just called ‘Paper Mask’). When someone recently asked me to recommend a medical thriller I remembered that the film was based on a book and suggested this. Once that thought was in my head, of course, I had to buy myself a copy too. Incidentally, author John Collee also wrote the screenplay for the film. In fact it’s as a screenwriter that he is more widely known, having also penned ‘Master and Commander’ and ‘Happy Feet’.
The story of ‘A Paper Mask’ is straightforward and effective. A hospital orderly, Matthew, who has picked up a passable knowledge of medicine through his job, masquerades as a doctor. It’s a great concept, so great in fact that it was comprehensively ripped off in 2017 for a BBC show called ‘Trust Me’. The plot is as you’d imagine it, as the deception continues the risk of discovery increases and Matthew has to take more and more extreme measures to protect his secret.
Whilst the book is short and the story simple, it leaves an impression. In John Collee’s capable hands, the tale as it unravels feels grimly inevitable rather than predictable. It’s written in the first person and Matthew’s narration is compelling and often chilling. Over time it becomes obvious that he is deceiving himself as much as anyone else. There is a disturbing sociopathy to his relation of the events, a lack of empathy that is as convincing as it is troubling.
It’s Matthew that makes the book as effective as it is. If he were a sympathetic hero (as the protagonist in ‘Trust Me’ became) the book wouldn’t be nearly as memorable as it is. Instead his constant self-justification in the face of the unintended consequences of his actions is thought provoking. The book makes us think about our own choices and how they shape us and change our lives and those of the people around us.
So despite the fact that I hadn’t read the book when I recommended it, I’m glad that I did. It’s tense and thoughtful; easy to read but surprisingly deep. In other words, everything a crime novel should be.
4/5
April 9, 2019
Blog Tour: Downfall by Will Jordan #BookReview
‘My name is Ryan Drake and this is just the beginning.’
‘My name is Ryan
Drake and this is just the beginning.’
Ryan Drake and his team are in hiding, having become sworn enemies of states and agencies around the world. When a CIA operative is killed in a car bomb, Drake is shocked to see an old enemy felled. Further still when a video is released claiming responsibility for the attack… under the name of Ryan Drake.
Forced out of hiding, Drake
embarks upon a mission to confront his past. When the stranger from the video
reaches out, hinting at secrets just out of reach, he leads Drake on a
high-octane journey through the slums of Rio to the deserts of
Afghanistan.
Following in the wake of his trail of destruction, the team must pursue Drake as he stops at nothing to find the key to his past.
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Title: Downfall | Author: Will Jordan | Series: Ryan Drake #8 | Publisher: Canelo Action | Pages: 434 | ISBN: 9781788634632 | Publication date: 21st January 2019 | Source: self-purchased
‘Downfall’ is an enjoyably cinematic, wildly melodramatic thriller that reads a bit like a Robert Ludlum novel reimagined as a telenovela. It’s the 8th book in the Ryan Drake series and the first I’ve read. I went into it expecting something that could be read as a standalone book and it kind of can, but I can’t help feeling I’d have enjoyed it a lot more if I’d read the other books first.
The core plot is pretty standard action movie stuff – Drake is a part of an elite team of special forces spy types. When a terrorist starts a series of attacks and uses Ryan’s name, Drake starts a desperate globe-trotting mission to identify the attacker and save his name. Throw in a load of backstory about secret experiments, some Washington intrigue between the different security agencies and tempestuous relationships within the team and you have all the makings of a readable and enjoyable thriller.
The real strength of the books is the efficiency of the action scenes. That’s good news because there are a lot of them. They’re punchy and tight, with a visual flair that really jumps off the page and I found them genuinely gripping. What worked less well for me is the plot that ties them all together. I always knew what the characters were doing, but I didn’t always know why they were doing it, which led to a bit of head scratching. I think a large part of the problem is that this was the first Drake books I’ve read. There were numerous sub-plots that obviously continued from previous novels in the series and a lot of the detail of the relationships between the characters was lost on me.
That’s a shame, because I think there’s a good chance that had all that been clearer to me this would be a 4-star rather than a 3-star review. There’s an enjoyably heightened sense of emotion to everything that happens that’s really fun. It all has the crazy energy of a manga series, where everything that happens is either the worst or the best thing ever and every double cross is met with gasps of horror. I think it would have enjoyed it even more if I knew the full back story and could enjoy the multiple twists and turns without worrying that I didn’t really know what was going on.
That’s a roundabout way of saying that this was a fun, over the top read that’s packed with action and incident. If you’ve read the other books I expect that you’ll love it, but if you haven’t it might be best to start with the first, as I now intend to.
3/5
This post is part of a damppebbles blog tour. If you’d like to check out other reviews of the book, you can find them at the blogs below.
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You can purchase ‘Downfall’ at the following sites:
Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Will_Jordan_Downfall?id=_Pp9DwAAQBAJ
iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/downfall/id1434758502?mt=11&ign-mpt=uo%3D4
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/downfall-41
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April 6, 2019
Tyler Cross: Black Rock by Fabien Nury, Bruno and Laurence Croix #BookReview
Fearless and effortlessly suave, Tyler Cross proves crime does pay in the thrills of living life on the edge.
No man is an island – except for Tyler Cross. A criminal for hire, he’s the best at what he does, whether he’s trafficking drugs or spraying bullets in a shoot-out – everyone’ll pay big bucks for Tyler. Follow his embroilment with drugs, women and gangsters in a violent adventure that he may not survive.
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Title: Tyler Cross: Black Rock | Author: Fabien Nury, Bruno and Laurence Croix | Series: Tyler Cross #1 | Publisher: Titan Comics | Pages: 100 | ISBN: 9781785867309 | Publication date: 11th September 2018 | Source: Review copy received from publisher
‘Tyler Cross: Black Rock’ is amoral, brutal, lean and wryly amusing, just like a noir should be. It draws on familiar tropes from decades of movies and books, but manages to do so in a way that feels fresh and exciting rather than lazy. The end result is a satisfying, blisteringly fast paced graphic novel with enough heart to offset the violence and enough violence to make it fun.
Tyler Cross is a gun for hire in 1950s America. The job he’s on goes bad in a big way, leaving him on the run in the desert with 17 kilos of heroin and 20 dollars to his name. He ends up in small town run by men who are badder than him and who mistake him for an easy target. The rest of the tale pretty much writes itself.
It’s a plot that is so familiar it feels like the stuff of legend rather than a simple story. It’s one that has been told and retold in countless westerns and thrillers over the years because it satisfies in so many ways. It reassures us that one person can make a difference and that no-one is beyond redemption. What makes this version of it work as well as it does is the attention Fabien Nury pays to the incidental characters. Cross is absolutely the lead, and his hardboiled third person narration is a delight to read. For instance, in a gunfight near the start:
The first two are killed by their own stupidity. Tony should have held his tongue. Ike should have held his fire. Got down and let his partners deal with it. The next few are killed by Tyler and CJ. Shotgun and a pair of forty-fives. A deadly combination.
But he is a cipher, a deliberate noirish cliché. The richness of the book comes from scenes and back stories that come from the people of the town Cross ends up in. Even in one memorable page from a snake. These interludes make the reader actually care about what is happening rather than just lapping up the relentless action.
I’ve always been more about the words than the pictures when it comes to comic books, but it’s worth mentioning how great the artwork from Bruno (art) and Laurence Croix (colours) is. The simple, cartoonish style brings to mind the old Dick Tracy strips and it works perfectly for the story.
All the above is a wordy way of saying that if you’re looking for some comic book noir with the bite of Jim Thompson and the visual flair of a John Woo movie you need a bit of Tyler Cross in your life. In fact even if you think you don’t like comic books I’d recommend giving it a go.
4/5
Note: I received a copy of this for review consideration in my role as a reviewer for scifiandscary.com – given that it’s subject matter doesn’t fit with the scope of that site (SF and Horror), I am reviewing in on CriminOlly instead.
April 1, 2019
Dead in the Water by Penny Farmer #BookReview
In July 1978, two bodies were discovered in the sea off Guatemala. They were found to be the remains of Chris Farmer and his girlfriend Peta Frampton, two young British graduates. Having been beaten and tortured, then thrown, still alive, into the sea, their bodies had been weighted down and dumped from the yacht on which they had been crewing. For nearly forty years, no one was charged with these brutal murders.
This is the shocking and compelling story of how Chris’s sister, Penny, and her family tracked down his and Peta’s killer. For decades they painstakingly gathered evidence against Silas Boston, the yacht’s American owner, working alongside police in the UK and the USA, as well as the FBI, until he was finally arrested and charged with two counts of murder in 2016. Astonishingly, Penny was able to track down Boston’s son, whose bravery in testifying against his own father was the key to bringing down Chris and Peta’s killer after so many years.
Dead In The Water is the story of a murder almost unimaginable in its cruelty and one ordinary woman’s unwavering determination to find justice for her brother.
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Title: Dead in the Water | Author: Penny Farmer | Publisher: John Blake | Pages: 304 | ISBN: 9781786069665 | Publication date: 9th August 2018 (UK) / 2nd April 2019 (US) | Source: Review copy received from publisher
‘Dead in the Water’ is a fascinating, gripping and often moving account of a brutal double murder and the impact of that crime on the families of both the victims and the perpetrator.
In 1978, Chris Farmer and his girlfriend Peta Frampton, were murdered whilst travelling in Central America. Although there was a clear suspect in the case, Silas Duane Boston, the American captain of a boat they were travelling on, the crime went unsolved for almost four decades. The book is written by Penny Farmer, sister of Chris, who tracked
Boston down via Facebook in 2015 and, through her determination to see justice
done, got the case reopened.
‘Dead in the Water’ is a really compelling read, and the challenges of the investigation of a 38 year old crime by police forces from more than one country are skilfully described. What really comes across is the vast cultural differences that exist between 1978 and the present day. At the time Chris and Peta’s families relied in intermittent letters for updates on the couple’s travels and the agony of waiting for more information when it becomes clear that something is wrong is palpable.
Also fascinating is the role that Boston’s sons play in the story, the stark contrast between the two main family units in the book is subtly brought across, but very impactful.
Boston was a suspect in the Golden State Killer crimes that were the subject of Michelle McNamara’s book ‘I’ll Be Gone in the Dark’ and ‘Dead in the Water’ serves as an interesting companion piece to that book. Farmer’s prose isn’t always as immediate as McNamara’s, but ‘Dead in the Water’ is a better structured and paced book, with a passion and emotion that hooked me again and again.
It’s a brave and very personal account, and all the better for that. Farmer doesn’t spare any detail in her description of the crime, or the terrible impact that it had on her family. Her tenacity and drive are quite inspirational, and the love she and her family felt for Chris is clear on every page. I couldn’t put it down and am very glad to have read it.
Note: The focus of CriminOlly so far has been on crime fiction, and that will definitely be the majority of what I cover here. I will occasionally review True Crime books though, and ‘Dead in the Water’ is the first of those.
March 28, 2019
Blog Tour: The Golden Hour by Malia Zaidi #BookReview
London 1927
Lady Evelyn Carlisle has barely arrived in London when familial duty calls her away again. Her cousin Gemma is desperate for help with her ailing mother before her imminent wedding, which Evelyn knew nothing about! Aunt Agnes in tow, she journeys to Scotland, expecting to find Malmo Manor in turmoil. To her surprise, her Scottish family has been keeping far more secrets than the troubled state of their matriarch. Adding to the tension in the house a neighbour has opened his home, Elderbrooke Park, as a retreat for artistic veterans of the Great War. This development does not sit well with everyone in the community. Is the suspicion towards the residents a catalyst for murder? A tragedy at Elderbrooke Park’s May Day celebration awakens Evelyn’s sleuthing instinct, which is strengthened when the story of another unsolved death emerges, connected to her own family. What she uncovers on her quest to expose the truth will change several lives forever, including her own.
With the shadow of history looming over her, Evelyn must trust in her instinct and ability to comb through the past to understand the present, before the murderer can stop her and tragedy strikes again.
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Title: The Golden Hour | Author: Malia Zaidi | Series: Lady Evelyn #4 | Publisher: BookBaby | Pages: 398 | ISBN: 9781543959499 | Publication date: 26th March 2019 | Source: Review copy provided by author
‘The Golden Hour’ is a solidly enjoyable period whodunnit that wears its influences on its sleeve. It has an engaging heroine, a decent plot and a little bit of social commentary to keep things interesting.
This is the fourth of the ‘Lady Evelyn’ mysteries from Malia Zaidi and the first that I’ve read. It’s easily digestible as a standalone work and I enjoyed it enough that I might check out the first three next time Amazon have a deal on Kindle Unlimited subscriptions. This volume sees Lady Evelyn, a plucky young woman in 1920s Britain, heading up to Scotland to visit her aunt and cousin in their mansion. Before too long there’s a murder and Lady Evelyn sets about investigating that and a previous crime in the same village.
If it sounds a bit like an Agatha Christie novel, that’s because it is. In fact, it’s a lot like an Agatha Christie novel. It would be pretty remarkable if the book was as good as Christie, and it isn’t, but the good news is that Zaidi borrows well from the grand dame of the murder mystery. The mystery here is well laid out, the setting and characters (especially Lady Evelyn) are fun and after a slightly slow start the plot moves on at a pretty decent pace. Like Christie’s books, this isn’t a “cosy” mystery. The mansion it is set in is used as a halfway house for soldiers still recovering from shellshock after the First World War and the denouement is pretty dark. The PTSD theme was well handled, managing to be both appropriate for the time, and still topical today.
Zaidi is clearly well aware of the debt she owes to Christie, and has the heroine reading one of her novels on the train to Scotland. She also throws in a Poirot-style scene before the final act where Lady Evelyn makes a list of suspects and motives. All this makes for a book that is honest about the fact that it isn’t desperately original, and which is readable and fun. I read the whole second half on a rainy Sunday with copious cups of tea, which suited it perfectly.
If I had a criticism other than the slow start, it would be that it’s a fair bit longer than it needs to be. At nearly 400 pages it’s about 30% longer than many of Dame Agatha’s books, and the content just doesn’t justify that many pages. That aside, it’s an entertaining read and definitely worth your consideration if this kind of thing is your cup of tea.
3/5
This post is part of a damppebbles blog tour. If you’d like to check out other reviews of the book, you can find them at the blogs below.
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March 25, 2019
The Island by Ragnar Jónasson #BookReview
Elliðaey is an isolated island off the coast of Iceland. It is has a beautiful, unforgiving terrain and is an easy place to vanish.
The Island is the second thrilling book in Ragnar Jonasson’s Hidden Iceland trilogy. This time Hulda is at the peak of her career and is sent to investigate what happened on Elliðaey after a group of friends visited but one failed to return.
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Title: The Island | Author: Ragnar Jónasson |Series: Hidden Iceland #2 |Publisher: Michael Joseph | Pages: 350| ISBN: 9780718187255 | Publication date: 4th April 2019| Source: NetGalley
‘The Island’ is an Icelandic mystery novel, the middle book
in the ‘Hidden Iceland’ trilogy. I’ve not read the first book, but this one
made sense regardless.
It starts well, with a genuinely creepy prologue and then an
enjoyably mysterious murder. The chronology is
interesting as well. The prologue takes place after the murder and the action
then skips forward 10 years. The main story examines a group of friends, with
connections to the murder victim, who are meeting for a reunion in the countryside.
Whilst the Icelandic setting gives the book a pleasantly
different feel, it’s not enough to really lift it above the crowd. The
descriptions of the remote, deserted landscape are rich and give it some
atmosphere but often feel like window dressing. I never got a great sense of
place from it, there’s little description of Icelandic culture, just lots of
fjords and hot springs.
Unfortunately, the plot is pretty standard fare too and the
characters aren’t massively engaging. There is an elongated subplot about detective
Hulda Hermannsdottir’s search for the truth about her absent father, but I struggled
to work up much enthusiasm for it. The same was true of Hulda’s rivalry with
another member of the local police force. It may be that if I’d read the first
book in the series I’d have had more emotional engagement with Hulda, but I
suspect not. Unfortunately there just didn’t seem to be much of interest going
on with her.
Sadly, the central mystery suffers from exactly the problem.
I really didn’t care about it, and got the impression that Hulda didn’t either.
She seemed to solve the case through unfocussed plodding and blind chance
rather than any determination or insight on her part.
That’s not to say that the book isn’t readable, it’s an enjoyable enough piece of crime fiction even if the prose is a bit stilted (which may be the fault of the translator rather than the author). The locations are nice enough and I didn’t guess the ending. If that sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise that’s because I probably am. It’s fine, but no more than that.
3/5
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