Matt Rees's Blog - Posts Tagged "if-you-read-only-one"
If you read only one Martin Cruz Smith, read Polar Star
Isolated on an arctic ship, Cruz Smith’s detective is even more heroic
What? If you read only one thriller by Martin Cruz Smith, it's not Gorky Park, one of the biggest hit thrillers of the last 40 years and the basis of that great movie with William Hurt? No, not even one of Martin Cruz Smith’s books set in Moscow. Polar Star is the Cruz Smith novel with the greatest tension and the biggest challenges to his hero, Arkady Renko.
After Gorky Park, Renko goes into self-imposed exile gutting fish in the frozen Arctic Ocean. On the creaking Polar Star he uncovers a murder that becomes a bigger conspiracy. By putting Renko on the isolated ship, Cruz Smith highlights his heroic and honorable qualities. The same traits he showed in Gorky Park and which have carried him marvelously through six subsequent novels.
Cruz Smith has some wonderful Renko novels. Which is your favorite? Let me know.
Click to get a FREE ebook of my crime stories.
What? If you read only one thriller by Martin Cruz Smith, it's not Gorky Park, one of the biggest hit thrillers of the last 40 years and the basis of that great movie with William Hurt? No, not even one of Martin Cruz Smith’s books set in Moscow. Polar Star is the Cruz Smith novel with the greatest tension and the biggest challenges to his hero, Arkady Renko.
After Gorky Park, Renko goes into self-imposed exile gutting fish in the frozen Arctic Ocean. On the creaking Polar Star he uncovers a murder that becomes a bigger conspiracy. By putting Renko on the isolated ship, Cruz Smith highlights his heroic and honorable qualities. The same traits he showed in Gorky Park and which have carried him marvelously through six subsequent novels.Cruz Smith has some wonderful Renko novels. Which is your favorite? Let me know.
Click to get a FREE ebook of my crime stories.
If you read only one Lee Child thriller, read '61 Hours'
Child’s evocation of the Dakota winter shows how well he writes
Lee Child is justly famous for creating a compelling main character in the loner Jack Reacher and for building plots that turn the pages for you -- and fast.
In 61 Hours Lee Child shows how well he can create an atmosphere and a location. The frozen tundra of Dakota is the setting and it’s almost a character in the plot. After I read 61 Hours I went back to some other Child novels and saw that he had written just as strongly about the often lonely locales of Nebraska and Indiana in other Reacher books. But it hadn’t struck me quite as forcefully as the chilly reaches of Dakota. Still it was there and it demonstrates the quality of Child’s work.
It also highlights the deftness of Child's writing in general. Reviewers write about Child as the ultimate page-turner. It's a guilty pleasure, writes one chap in The Guardian, that comes out in conversation only when you realize that others are addicted.
I don't see it that way, and 61 Hours demonstrates why. Page-turner, I think, implies that the writing doesn't get in the way. It doesn't make you pause to think: "What does the writer mean by this phrase?" Yet without bogging down in too much description, Child creates a visceral sense of the Dakota winter.
In fact the sense of place in Child's books is at least as strong as the sense of Reacher as a character. Often the titles of Child's novels are a bit forgettable (though '61 Hours' is memorable because it relates to something specific within the plot). So the way I remember them is, "Oh, that's the one that takes place in Boston and in a remote spot in Maine." You see, the anchor is the place.
Perhaps that's because Child is a Brit living in America. Maybe it gives him a heightened awareness of place.
All the Jack Reacher books are wonderful. Which is your favorite? Let me know.
Get a FREE ebook of my crime stories.
Read more If you read only one... For the indispensable book by each big thriller writer.
Lee Child is justly famous for creating a compelling main character in the loner Jack Reacher and for building plots that turn the pages for you -- and fast.
In 61 Hours Lee Child shows how well he can create an atmosphere and a location. The frozen tundra of Dakota is the setting and it’s almost a character in the plot. After I read 61 Hours I went back to some other Child novels and saw that he had written just as strongly about the often lonely locales of Nebraska and Indiana in other Reacher books. But it hadn’t struck me quite as forcefully as the chilly reaches of Dakota. Still it was there and it demonstrates the quality of Child’s work.
It also highlights the deftness of Child's writing in general. Reviewers write about Child as the ultimate page-turner. It's a guilty pleasure, writes one chap in The Guardian, that comes out in conversation only when you realize that others are addicted.I don't see it that way, and 61 Hours demonstrates why. Page-turner, I think, implies that the writing doesn't get in the way. It doesn't make you pause to think: "What does the writer mean by this phrase?" Yet without bogging down in too much description, Child creates a visceral sense of the Dakota winter.
In fact the sense of place in Child's books is at least as strong as the sense of Reacher as a character. Often the titles of Child's novels are a bit forgettable (though '61 Hours' is memorable because it relates to something specific within the plot). So the way I remember them is, "Oh, that's the one that takes place in Boston and in a remote spot in Maine." You see, the anchor is the place.
Perhaps that's because Child is a Brit living in America. Maybe it gives him a heightened awareness of place.
All the Jack Reacher books are wonderful. Which is your favorite? Let me know.
Get a FREE ebook of my crime stories.
Read more If you read only one... For the indispensable book by each big thriller writer.
