Oliver Clarke's Blog: Little Slices of Nasty, page 18

The Chemical Detective by Fiona Erskine #BookReview

Dr Jaqueline Silver blows things up to keep people safe. 

Working on avalanche control in Slovenia, she stumbles across a delivery problem with a consignment of explosives. After raising a complaint with the supplier, Zagrovyl, a multinational chemical company and her ex-employer, her evidence disappears. She is warned, threatened, accused of professional incompetence and suspended. Taking her complaint to Zagrovyl head office, she narrowly escapes death only to be framed for murder. Escaping from police custody, she sets out to find the key to the mystery. 

From the snowy slopes of Slovenia, to the wreckage of Chernobyl, Jaq attempts to expose the trade in deadly chemical weapons, while fighting for her life.

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Title: The Chemical Detective | Author: Fiona Erskine | Publisher: Point Blank | Pages: 432 | ISBN: 9781786074928 | Publication date: 4th April 2019 | Source: ARC .mobi from NetGalley

I really wanted to like ‘The Chemical Detective’, but I really, really didn’t. It has a fun compromise and an engaging and refreshingly different heroine, but the prose completely failed to grab my attention.  

Let’s start with the good stuff. It begins strongly, with protagonist Jaq suspecting something is fishy with a delivery at her work. Jaq works as a scientist at a company that monitors and tries to improve the quality of the snow at a ski resort. She has the makings of a great heroine, intelligent, passionate and determined. She also takes time out from her investigating to have lots of sex with a younger man. The fact that she is an older woman was refreshing, especially in a book with a straight up thriller plot, but it wasn’t enough to save the book for me. 

I was gripped by the first few chapters, but as the plot developed I found myself less and less engaged by it. Part of the problem is that while Jaq is interesting, there are also loads of chapters dedicated to Frank Good, the ruthless CEO of a mysterious chemical company that is wrapped up in the shady goings on. Frank is a far less interesting to read than Jaq, and I found all the detail on corporate life in his chapters really dull. At 432 pages the book isn’t exactly short, and I can’t help feeling that a shorter edit that focussed much more on Jaq would have been more fun to read. 

To be fair, things do pick up later on, with a fairly gripping section set in the ruins of Chernobyl, but by then I’d pretty much lost interest. On paper, an international investigation into chemical weapons sounds like a topical and promising plot. In reality I’m afraid I found it implausible and not at all gripping.  

I think there’s a really good book in here somewhere, and I’ll be interested to see what author Fiona Erskine writes next. Unfortunately, ‘The Chemical Detective’ is too long, too slow and too bogged down in unnecessary detail to really thrill. 

2/5

Hunting Evil by Chris Carter #BookReview

As roommates, they met for the first time in college. Two of the brightest minds ever to graduate from Stamford Psychology University.
As adversaries, they met again in Quantico, Virginia. Robert Hunter had become the head of the LAPD’s Ultra Violent Crimes Unit. Lucien Folter had become the most prolific and dangerous serial killer the FBI had ever encountered.
Now, after spending three and a half years locked in solitary confinement, Lucien has finally managed to break free. And he’s angry.
For the past three and a half years, Lucien has thought of nothing else but vengeance.
The person responsible for locking him away has to pay, he has to suffer.
That person … is Robert Hunter.
And now it is finally time to execute the plan.

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Title: Hunting Evil | Author: Chris Carter | Series: Robert Hunter #10 | Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK | Pages: 496 | ISBN: 9781471179525 | Publication date: 2nd May 2019 | Source: ARC .mobi from NetGalley

The cover of ‘Hunting Evil’ claims that it is “as addictive as a TV box-set”. It’s certainly a weirdly compelling read, but one that requires so little effort on the part of the reader that it ends up feeling insulting rather than satisfying. The box-set comparison is an appropriate one, because like many modern TV shows, ‘Hunting Evil’ spins a couple of okay ideas into something far longer than they really deserve. In this case that’s a novel of almost 500 pages that would have worked better at half that length.  

This is the tenth book in a series featuring flawed genius LAPD psychologist/police detective Robert Hunter. I haven’t read any of the others, but Chris Carter clearly has his fans. The book does start brilliantly, with a first chapter that is shocking, immediately gripping and neatly constructed. It details the aftermath of a prison escape, the fugitive being Lucien Folter, an old friend turned arch nemesis of Hunter’s. The rest of the book (some 109 chapters) is an extended battle of wits between the two, with Folter setting fiendish puzzles for Hunter to solve.  

It manages to feel fast paced whilst not actually containing much in the way of incident (there are only really four significant events in the whole book). As a result, it’s offensively bloated with pointless detail and repetition to boost the page count. Take this paragraph from an early chapter:  

At that exact moment, Kennedy felt his cellphone vibrate inside his pocket, but this time it vibrated only twice and in quick succession indicating that he had received a text message. 

Not exactly lean prose is it? 

Carter also uses cheap tricks to ramp up the tension, like writing scenes to lead you to believe one thing has happened when actually the opposite is true. Naturally he then writes the scene again from the different perspective to milk twice as many words out of it. Characters have a tendency to repeat themselves too, like the hosts on TV shows helping viewers with short attention spans remember what happened before the ads.  

The book’s biggest failing of all though, is the fact that Hunter triumphs in the end through dumb luck rather than any insight or effort on his part. Carter repeatedly tells us he is brilliant, but never gives us any real evidence of this. Instead the hero plods through the book, following the villain’s lead, as seemingly in the dark as the reader is. 

The problem is, that despite its many flaws I found myself eagerly reading the book, even while it slapped me round the face with another stupid twist or bad piece of writing. It’s frequently ludicrous and feels like it is set in a universe that looks kind of like ours but has subtly different laws of physics and chance. But at the same time, it’s so damn easy to read that I found myself turning the pages despite myself. Like the villainous Lucien Folter, I suspect Carter is a genius of manipulation, tricking his readers into thinking they’re reading a masterpiece of suspense when in reality the book is anything but that. 

2/5

Thriller Corner: Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp #BookReview

High atop a Los Angeles skyscraper, an office Christmas party turns into a deadly cage-match between a lone New York City cop and a gang of international terrorists. Every action fan knows it could only be the explosive big-screen blockbuster Die Hard. But before Bruce Willis blew away audiences as unstoppable hero John McClane, author Roderick Thorp knocked out thriller readers with the bestseller that started it all.

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Title: Nothing Lasts Forever | Author: Roderick Thorp | Publisher: Graymalkin Media | Pages: 245 | ISBN: 9781935169185 | Publication date: 1979 | Source: self-purchased

As good as it is (and it is good), ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ is one of those books that would probably have vanished from the shelves completely if it hadn’t been made into a blockbuster movie. It was written in 1979 and is the sequel to a 1966 book called ‘The Detective’ (which itself was filmed with Frank Sinatra). In 1988 it was filmed as ‘Die Hard’. Yep, that’s right, ‘Die Hard’ is based on a book and is the sequel to a Sinatra movie. I first came across a copy of the novel in my local library in the late 80s/early 90s, thought I’d give it a try because I liked the movie (who doesn’t?) and was surprised to find something which is very similar to the film in many ways but also quite different. 

Rereading it with a few more years under my belt I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I did first time around, but it’s still a gripping read. If you’ve seen the movie you know the plot (and if you haven’t, go watch the movie!). A New York cop travels to LA to visit his ex-wife at the Christmas party in the office where she works. The office is taken over by terrorists and the cop fights back, taking them down one by one. The plot in the book is pretty much identical for the first three quarters at least, and many of the incidents are exactly the same. We get the desperate lift shaft climb, the bloody feet, the dead terrorist with the “now I have a machine gun” sign around his neck, and a whole a load more.  

Some key details are different though. The hero is Joe Leland not John McClane and he’s a lot older, a veteran of WW2 who is visiting his daughter rather than his ex-wife. He’s also a security consultant rather than a cop, and therefore has inside knowledge on the terrorists. The main difference though is the tone. ‘Die Hard’ the movie, as gripping and violent as it is, is also light-hearded and fun. Bruce Willis famously cracks wise as he takes down the bad guys. By contrast, Joe Leland is an angry man and the ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’ is an angry book.  

The age of the character plays a large part in this, as does the 70s origins of the book. Leland harks back to his glory days as a pilot in the war and it feels like the world has got away from him in the decades that has passed since then. Like Clint Eastwood in ‘Dirty Harry’ or the hero of Brian Garfield’s ‘Death Wish’ he is a man who is bitter that the world isn’t what he expected it would be. The terrorists in the book are all Europeans, as in the film, but here they are repeatedly described as naïve youngsters trying to make a better world without having a clue about how the world actually works. Leland feels like a man who is trying to save his way of life, not just his nearest and dearest, and that desperation comes across again and again as he ruthlessly dispatched the baby-faced villains.     

That reactionary anger gives the book an entirely different feel to the movie. It’s just as tense and action-packed, but it’s far darker and ultimately quite depressing. Thorp is an accomplished thriller writer and the book moves at lightning speed, with sparse prose to match. That makes for a gripping quick read, but don’t go into it expecting anything life affirming. It is, in fact, just as bleak as the title suggests. 

4/5 

Twisted by Steve Cavanagh #BookReview

BEFORE YOU READ THIS BOOK
I WANT YOU TO KNOW THREE THINGS:

1. The police are looking to charge me with murder.
2. No one knows who I am. Or how I did it.
3. If you think you’ve found me. I’m coming for you next.

After you’ve read this book, you’ll know: the truth is far more twisted…

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Title: Twisted | Author: Steve Cavanagh | Publisher: Orion | Pages: 352 | ISBN: 9781409170709 | Publication date: 24th January 2019 | Source: ARC .mobi from NetGalley

Who doesn’t love a great twist? ‘Twisted’ is a book that sells itself on the fact that it has great ones. It’s right there in the title and it’s pretty clear that author Steve Cavanagh has spent a lot of time coming up with devious ways to trick and surprise his readers.  

The set up is interesting. JT LeBeau is the world’s bestselling crime writer. His work is beloved by millions of fans but nobody knows his real identity. When a woman and her lover discover papers in her husband’s office that suggest he is LeBeau, a mystery kicks off that is filled with as much betrayal and as many twists as the title suggests,   

Being a book about a writer, Cavanagh spends some time reflecting on the craft and on what makes a good twist. Reading the book I found myself thinking of truly great twists in novels and movies. Things like ‘Psycho’, ‘Fight Club’, ‘The Crying Game’, ‘The Usual Suspects’, ‘Behind Her Eyes’. It occurred to me that what the twists in those works have in common is that they change your perception of what has gone before. They make the reader or viewer reflect back on the story and characters and replay it with the new knowledge they have gained. That’s a really powerful thing because it makes you obsessively analyse the story. It’s why all the titles I’ve mentioned above are so memorable.   

None of the twists in ‘Twisted’ did that for me. They change the direction of the plot, but they didn’t have that kind of revelatory impact. To put it simply, I never had a “whoa!” moment.  

The other thing great twists have in common is that you don’t see them coming. You’re so wrapped up in the story that they hit you without warning. Because ‘Twisted’ sells itself on its twists I found myself constantly looking for them, so that when they did come, they weren’t that unexpected. Often, I’d spent so much time thinking about them that I’d already figured out what they were going to be.  

The biggest problem though, is that ‘Twisted’ really feels built around the turns in its plot. The characters and events are just there to carry you from one twist to another. As a result, I found myself not caring at all about what happened to the people I was reading about. That is the kiss of death for any book, no matter how good the twists are.  

2/5

The Quaker by Liam McIlvanney #BookReview

The Quaker is watching you…

In the chilling new crime novel from award-winning author Liam McIlvanney, a serial killer stalks the streets of Glasgow and DI McCormack follows a trail of secrets to uncover the truth…

Winner of the 2018 McIlvanney Prize for Scottish Crime Book of the Year

A city torn apart.
It is 1969 and Glasgow has been brought to its knees by a serial killer spreading fear throughout the city. The Quaker has taken three women from the same nightclub and brutally murdered them in the backstreets.

A detective with everything to prove.
Now, six months later, the police are left chasing a ghost, with no new leads and no hope of catching their prey. They call in DI McCormack, a talented young detective from the Highlands. But his arrival is met with anger from a group of officers on the brink of despair.

A killer who hunts in the shadows.
Soon another woman is found murdered in a run-down tenement flat. And McCormack follows a trail of secrets that will change the city – and his life – forever…

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Title: The Quaker | Author: Liam McIlvanney | Series: DI McCormack #1 | Publisher: HarperCollins | Pages: 400 | ISBN: 9780008259945 | Publication date: 28th June 2018 | Source: ARC .mobi from NetGalley

‘The Quaker’ is a genuinely gripping, atmospheric and convincing crime story set against the back drop of late 1960s Glasgow. It’s inspired by a real-life series of killings committed by a man christened ‘Bible John’ by the press. Author Liam McIlvanney wisely uses the case as a starting point for his story, rather than attempting to recreate it accurately. The result is a really compelling mystery that I couldn’t put down. 

McIlvanney’s hero is DI McCormack, a determined young detective with a secret. McCormack has been sent to audit the investigation into a number of killings by serial rapist and murderer ‘The Quaker’ which has failed to yield any results. There’s a palpable tension between McCormack and the officers whose work he is checking, and the setup makes for a great twist on the normal investigative routines that are familiar from so many other crime novels. As the plot progresses and McCormack sees through the failings in the investigation to date, he begins to take control of the case. As you might expect, the truth ends up being far more complex than it at first appears.   

McCormack is an utterly believable and sympathetic hero. His struggles against the engrained flaws and prejudices in the Glasgow police force are more than just a plot device. I found myself really rooting for him and caring about him as a character as well as the agent through which the mystery would be solved. 

The surrounding characters are similarly convincing. McIlvanney manages to give them rich lives without getting bogged down in detail. There’s a big subplot about a safecracker which is almost as enjoyable as the main story, and which really helps to flesh out the city and the criminal gangs that run it. 60s Glasgow comes alive on the page and McIlvanny’s portrayal of the city is as accomplished as his writing of the human characters.  

That sense of place and time is key to the success of the book. It reminded me a lot of the excellent ‘The Long Drop’ by Denise Mina, which is also set in Glasgow around the same time.  For me, ‘The Quaker’ isn’t quite as good as that book, but it’s still definitely worth your time. It’s thrilling, the unravelling of the mystery is wonderfully satisfying and McCormack is a brilliant protagonist. 

4/5

Cross Her Heart by Sarah Pinborough #BookReview

When you think you’re safe,
YOU’RE NOT.

When you think the past is over,
IT ISN’T.

When you think you know someone,
YOU DON’T.

When you think you’ve guessed this twist,
YOU HAVEN’T.

One moment will change three women’s lives forever.
 

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Title: Cross Her Heart| Author: Sarah Pinborough | Publisher: HarperCollins | Pages: 384 | ISBN: 9780008132040 | Publication date: 14th May 2018 | Source: ARC .mobi from NetGalley

I’ve read a few domestic thrillers that really sucked lately, I’m pleased to say ‘Cro...

Murder on the Moon by Mark Robinson #BookReview

Detective Inspector Tom Blake is woken one night with a case like no other. Four months into their mission to establish a new lunar colony, one of the astronauts has been found dead. Blake is under pressure to work out what happened before the press find out or worse, any of the remaining crew members meet a similar end.

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Title: Murder on the Moon | Author: Mark Robinson | Publisher: Self-published | Pages: 291 | ISBN: 9781721962662 | Publication date: 15th July 2018 | Source: review copy pro...

The Girl Next Door by Jack Ketchum #BookReview

A teenage girl is held captive and brutally tortured by neighborhood children. Based on a true story, this shocking novel reveals the depravity of which we are all capable

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Title: The Girl Next Door | Author: Jack Ketchum | Publisher: 47North Classics | Pages: 320 | ISBN: 9781503950566 | Publication date: 1989 | Source: Self-purchased

It’s always interesting reading a book with a reputation, and ‘The Girl Next Door’ certainly has one. I know a number of people who refuse to read it or who gav...

To The Lions by Holly Watt #BookReview

A journalist must follow the clues, no matter how far that takes her.

Casey Benedict, star reporter at the Post, has infiltrated the lives and exposed the lies of countless politicians and power players. Using her network of contacts, Casey is always on the search for the next big story, no matter how much danger this might place her in, no matter what cost emotionally. 

Tipped off by an overheard conversation at an exclusive London nightclub, she begins to investigate the apparent suicide of...

Thriller Corner: Anthrax Island by Danny Marshall

I’ve always intended to do occasional reviews of straight up thrillers as well as crime fiction on CriminOlly, but other commitments have meant that I haven’t managed to until now. When I say “thriller” I don’t mean psychological thrillers, or the kind of domestic noir that is so popular at the moment. I mean novels packed with adventure and espionage, where brave men and women fight dastardly foes for the good of mankind.

I’m really thrilled then (no pun intended), that my first such review...