A year in books

​I should be getting used to it by now, I guess. Back on January 1, set my annual target of reading 52 books in the year. Failed miserably. Again. I'll have one finished by the time the witching hour arrives tomorrow night, which will eek the total up to 31 for 2015. Which is frustratingly slack-arse, and one less than last year. I blame the top-quality TV that's around these days. And work. And the kids, of course. In an alternative reality, I'm paid to read books. Anyway, here's a list of the titles that I did manage to pluck from the to-be-read bookcase beside my bed - in chronological order:

A Clash of Kings (Game of Thrones #2) - George RR Martin

The​ Cut - George Pelecanos

The Double - George Pelecanos

The Bat - Jo Nesbo

Dark Matter - Michelle Paver

Broken Dreams - Nick Quantrill

A Song of Shadows - John Connolly

The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

A Web of Air - Philip Reeve

Dark Streets - Andrew Ravenscroft

Scrivener's Moon - Philip Reeve

The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon - Stephen King

The Executioners - John D MacDonald

Morality Play - Barry Unsworth

The Martian - Andy Weir

Outer Dark - Cormac McCarthy

Farewell, My Lovely - Raymond Chandler

Iron House - John Hart

Finders Keepers - Stephen King

The Zoo - Jamie Mollart

The Ice Dragon - George RR Martin

English Passengers - Matthew Kneale

Make Me - Lee Child

Stardust - Neil Gaiman

My Swordhand is Singing - Marcus Sedgwick

Railhead - Philip Reeve

Night Music - John Connolly

A Monster Calls - Patrick Ness

Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King

How to Steal a Dragon's Sword - Cressida Cowell

Bazaar of Bad Dreams - Stephen King

Not a bad list, and pretty varied too - fantasy, ghosts, crime, sci-fi, historical, and a few short story collections (unusual for me). There are always repeat authors on each year's list. I used to blast through series without pausing for other authors, but have cured myself of that, although not entirely, as the double entry for Pelecanos proves - The Cut and The Double are the first two books featuring his latest MC, Spero Lucas, an Iraqi war veteran turned private eye.

Overall, it's been a fine reading year - there's not one title on there that I didn't enjoy, and of course there are standouts, including both Pelecanos titles, in particular the latter.

I finally read English Passengers when we secured Matthew Kneale to appear at Manx Litfest 2015 - and it was an absolute delight. Not an easy read; it's not the kind of book that you can blast through 100 pages in a single session, but it's a quite beautiful piece of writing.

 

Full length ghost novels can be notoriously tricky to pull off, but Michelle Paver's Dark Matter is one of the finest examples of the genre I've read in a long time. The Grapes of Wrath - first time reading it (I know, shocking), and it didn't disappoint. Slow in parts, but powerful, and as with English Passengers, one that says with you long after you finish the last page.

Connolly's Charlie Parker came storming back in A Song of Shadows, set against the backdrop of Nazi war criminals living in the US; A Clash of Kings was great fun, and Martin's children's novella - The Ice Dragon - is a damn fine little thing.

Farewell, My Lovely dripped cool and style; Stardust was... well, it was Gaiman, and enough said; A Monster Calls was my first taste of Patrick Ness, and it certainly won't be the last; Philip Reeve has another hugely successful series on his hands, if Railhead is anything to go by; and Morality Play was an unexpected and rich find.

As for Stephen King, Tom Gordon was good(ish); Finders Keepers was better than the first book in the series (Mr Mercedes), but I still feel that King is finding his feet with 'crime' (if that series of books can be classed as that); Full Dark, No Stars (four novellas) was superb, and Bazaar of Bad Dreams, which I'm close to finishing, is a mix of great, good and so-so, as tends to happen with short story collections.

 

Two debut novelists to note - Jamie Mollart's The Zoo is a dark and disturbing plunge into the world of corporate advertising, while Dark Streets by Andrew Ravenscroft (a Manxman now based in the US) is part Blade Runner/part urban London thriller. Looking forward to more from both authors.

 

If there was one disappointment, it was Iron House - a decent enough read, but as a second taste of Hart's work after the brilliant The Last Child, it didn't satisfy as much as I expected it to. That said, I've another of his books on the TBR shelf.

What's in the pipeline for 2016? There are several Cormac McCarthy titles I've not read, and I really want to dig deeper into Margaret Atwood's back catalogue. I've got a real taste for King now - have had for several years, after largely ignoring his books as a teenager, when most of my peers were devouring them. I've caught up a bit in recent years, but thankfully there is still a long list left to read.

There will likely be more Gaiman, and I want to get back into James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series, which I stopped reading a few years back (as part of that cure), but he's too damn good to ignore any longer. Deon Meyer too - only read one book by him, and mighty fine it was too.

And there are several authors I want to try for the first time - including Joe R Lansdale, Bernard Minier and Noah Hawley, who also happens to be the brains behind the Fargo TV series that I'm trying to convince everyone to watch.

So here we go again then - target 52 books. Check back here in 12 months.

Patience, young grasshopper

We are in a golden age of television. Not everything is a home run, but there are so many damn fine programmes on our TV sets these days. Last night I brewed up and settled down for 70-odd minutes of pure brilliance - episode two of the second series of Fargo.

The first series had to live up to the Coen Brothers' dazzling 1996 movie, and did just that. Series two has to live up to series one, and is doing just that. Surpassing, possibly. The acting is top notch throughout. The direction assured, the writing confident. I said to a friend after watching last week's series opener that it was such a bloody pleasure to know you are in the hands of a cast and crew so confident in what they are doing.

The story will be told over ten or so hours, same as series one. And that, as with so much TV these days, is the beauty of it. I've never had much patience. (My mother would replace 'much' with 'any'). But as I get older, I am learning more, and in particular the satisfaction of enjoying a story well told, at a measured pace.

The last film I saw at the cinema was The Martian. Perfectly reasonable entertainment, nicely put together, if not as gripping as I’d hoped it would be, having read the book. The movie ran for two hours and twenty minutes – in that time, Matt Damon had (SPOILER ALERT) been stranded on Mars, recovered, grown a shit-load of potatoes (and an unfortunate beard), worked out how to get in touch with NASA, who sorted out not one, but two rescue plans, while our hero was hauling ass across the surface of the red planet, at the same time as the crew who had believed him dead made an audacious attempt to save him before his potatoes ran out. All in just over two hours.

I'm struggling to think of the last movie that really blew me away. And I know why that is - movies seem so rushed now, compared with the rich storytelling and character development on show in TV, where plots are allowed to breathe, unfurling at just the right pace (maybe not in every instance, but you get my drift).

I’m bored of hearing those movie-goers who don’t have the attention span to sit through a film that dares to run past the two-hour mark. If a movie hits three hours they are ready to rain fire and brimstone down on the cinema world. I just don’t get it. Is our attention span as a species so shot that we need everything in small fixes?

I was looking on Rotten Tomatoes a few weeks back, at what movies were coming up. One was the latest Spielberg/Hanks collaboration, Bridge of Spies. It had the running time down as 95 minutes. There are a few movies of that length which do tick all the boxes for me – The Usual Suspects was around 90, and that’s a lean mean machine. But by and large, if a movie by Spielberg and Hanks comes in at 95 minutes, the alarm bells start ringing. It's so bad, I thought, they've had to hack it to pieces.

When I checked back a few days later, I realised they’d made a mistake and changed the running time to 155 minutes. Now we’re talking. Sure, there are some lengthy movies that would have worked better with a little nip tuck here and there. But to my mind they are the exception, not the rule.

It's one of the reasons why movie adaptations of beloved novels don't tend to fare well when compared; they can work, of course - One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, Jaws, LA Confidential, The Silence of the Lambs, to name a few. But again, exceptions rather than rules.

A book unfolds at its own pace, but all that story has to be crammed into a couple of hours on the big screen. Unless, of course, a book is adapted for TV. Where, in the hands of astute showrunners, directors and writers, it can receive the treatment it deserves. And that's what we're seeing these days. My Sky planner can't cope, that's for sure.

Five (or so) of the finest reads

A little late, but here goes. My favourite reads from 2013. I managed just 32 books last year, which is pants, as I try to average one a week. Anyway, my top five(ish) reads from last year, in alphabetical author order:

The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie
 A good friend of mine had been mithering me for a few years to read this, praising Abercrombie as the best fantasy novelist writing today. I've not read much fantasy over the last ten years, certainly nowhere near as much as I did in my teens and early twenties, when every other novel would be fantasy. Must have fantasised myself out of the genre. But I finally succumbed, and so glad I did. Book one of Abercrombie's The First Law trilogy, this is dark and bloody. And bloody well written too. On the dust jacket, the author says he was tired of the usual fantasy fare of quests/wizards/dragons and wanted to write 'fantasy with the edges left on'. And that he did. Three very different main characters come together over the course of the book, each flawed, displaying few of the traits we would normally associate with heroes. Book two - Before They Are Hanged - is in my to-read pile for 2014

The Shining/Joyland - Stephen King
The first of three cheats in the top five. Joyland, released last year, was touted as a pulp crime novel, but the crime is secondary. It's a beautifully-crafted coming of age story about Devin Jones, a student who takes a summer job at an amusement park, where a girl was murdered several years before in the haunted house. The second King book was The Shining, which I'd never read. In fact, I'd never read any of King's books from the 70s and 80s. Not sure why - horror stories bored me as a kid and teenager, probably because I'd gorged myself on horror movies (unknown to parents) as a young lad. But I knew that when I started making inroads into early King, The Shining would be where I started. There's not much left to say about it, other than it is a quite brilliant read. I'm still a little uneasy taking baths, particularly if there are any old women around... and right now I'm in the middle of the sequel, Doctor Sleep.

Blood Meridian/No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy
I'm a latecomer to McCarthy, having first found The Road a few years back and I've been building up his back catalogue to read them in a short space of time. Last year it was these two books - and hell, if they aren't incredible. Very different, Meridian is an almost poetical blood-soaked meditation on man's fascination with violence, while No Country is a leaner, more streamlined novel, which the Coens converted into Oscar glory. Of all the characters I read last year, I think Judge Holden from Blood Meridian is the one most scorched into my memory. Wonderful stuff. This year's McCarthy books are Child of God and Outer Dark.

Shame the Devil - George Pelecanos
I'm close to catching up on Pelecanos's back catalogue and I find myself eeking out the books in order to make the experience last longer. Pelecanos writes about the underbelly of Washington DC and he is one of those authors whom I annoy the hell out of other readers by insisting they must be deranged if they've not tried him. Devil is the final book in Pelecanos's 'DC quartet', following on from The Big Blowdown, King Suckerman and The Sweet Forever, and it brings together two of his most enduring characters, Dimitri Karras and Nick Stefanos. It's a beautiful and haunting tale, as two killers return to the city three years after disappearing following a hit that went wrong, leaving a young boy dead and a cop wounded. I still find it hard to understand why Pelecanos isn't a household name around the world - this is a guy who has other crime authors such as Michael Connelly, Dennis Lehane and Lee Child drooling.

Mortal Engines quartet - Philip Reeve
Yes, even more of a cheat then entries two and three - four steampunk books in one. I started the year with the first, Mortal Engines, and devoured the next three - Predator's Gold, Infernal Devices and A Darkling Plain - in quick succession. Wonderful storytelling aimed at readers aged 12+, a post apocalyptic world of moving traction cities and airships, with war looming on every front. The books follow the adventures of Tom and Hester from teens to parents, and there's no let-up across the four books. A wonderfully imagined world, and apparently Peter Jackson has had the rights to the movies for some time. Let's hope that now he's got The Hobbit out of his system, he can bring a lumbering, caterpillar-tracked vision of London to life.

A sense of impending doom

Review - A Single Shot, by Matthew F Jones (Mulholland Books, £9.99)

Sometimes you know that whatever you write when reviewing a book isn't going to get anywhere near to doing it justice. And that applies equally to books you love more than, well, maybe not your children, but pretty close, and books that are so bad you'd happily take a scalpel to your brain to erase them from your memory. So I write these words in that knowledge.

I'd not heard of Jones prior to cracking the spine of A Single Shot, although it turns out I was aware of his work, having wanted to watch the movie Deepwater for several years, not realising he wrote the novel upon which it is based.

It's a thing of wonder, discovering an author who writes this beautifully for the first time, more so when you realise there's a skutch of books on his backlist for you to read.

A Single Shot tells the story of a week in the life of John Moon, a lonely, awkward man who's lost his family farm, his wife and child and now earns a crust laying driveways and spending his spare time hunting on the forested mountain where he lives. Out stalking a deer one day, he hears a rustle in the bushes and shoots, a single shot. Instead of a deer, the bullet takes the life of a young woman. Panicking, Moon checks the area - she was holed up in a quarry, and he finds her campground, a stash of drugs and many thousands of dollars in cash.

Moon has a choice - and decides to bury the body and take the cash. He thinks there's nothing to link him to the corpse, and if he possessed a more astute brain, he might be right. But Moon is a simple man, who doesn't always think through his actions. The consequences of those actions bring those who own the drugs and the money after him and soon the hunter is the hunted, having to draw on his survival skills to stay alive. The small backwater town, the forested mountain, the one man trying to stay one step ahead of his pursuers; this has a feel of First Blood mixed with Deliverance, as the net is drawn tighter around Moon.

This is a book about choices, and, as a reader, you can't help but make your own decision as to what you'd have done in a similar situation, not you as you live your life now, but if you were in Moon's shoes, experiencing the shitty life he is. Despite his faults, Moon is an intensely proud man, a man of honour driven to desperate measures by the hand of fate and the dark deeds of those around him.

Jones doesn't waste many words, if any. It's a short book, 240 pages, but it packs one hell of a punch. It gets under your skin; the supporting characters, the town, the mountain itself, but none more so than Moon himself, a superb study of a man who has lost almost everything, but is damned if the bastards are going to take what little he has left.

A fine, fine read. It comes as no surprise that the movie is being filmed - but director David Rosenthal and stars Sam Rockwell (Moon), William H Macy and Forest Whitaker have their work cut out to come anywhere close.

Dark and bloody inspirational

Review - Lord Loss, Darren Shan

I first stumbled across Shan's work after asking some advice over at Litopia. My query was simple - as a spot of research, I needed the names of authors who wrote young adult books that pushed the boundaries in how dark a story can be when written for children. If the book I'm working on at the moment holds true to how I envisage it, it's going to be dark. And bloody.

One of the titles fired my way was Lord Loss, which is the first in a series of ten, the Demonata, and it doesn't take a Mr Spock-like intellect to work out what the books are about.

The book opens with Grubbs Grady - come on, you know you're on solid ground with a name like that - enduring the teenage hell that is family. An elder sister who makes his life misery, parents who just don't get him; poor Grubbs just wants a break.

The break he gets is perhaps a little more than he asked for - his family are killed by the demon, Lord Loss, and his two demonic sidekicks. Grubbs manages to escape, but soon finds himself locked in a padded cell, trying to convince everyone that it wasn't your average Joe serial killer who wiped out his folks, but monsters from another plane.

Grubbs is saved when his Uncle Dervish visits, and seems to accept what he says, and Grubbs finds himself holed up in Dervish's large country house in the remote village of Carcery Vale. There, he befriends one of the local boys, to whom Dervish seems to give the run of the house, and the two of them start to piece together what happened, including the big question - why was Grubbs' family targeted by demons?

That's about all I want to reveal by way of plot, other than to say it's good - well worth a read, and I'll be making a date with book two, Demon Thief. What was of more interest to me was how Shan developed the characters, and just how far into depravity he took his young readers. Whether intentional or not, twenty pages in and I didn't like any of the Grubbs family. I was struggling to connect, not convinced I could tag along with the characters for another 240 pages. Then the demons attack, and literally rip Grubbs' family to shreds. And as the young lad tries to recover in his padded cell, the sympathy - and understanding - came. By the time the enigmatic Dervish appears on the scene, I was hooked.

I'm not sure if Shan set out to make Grubbs (and his family) as initially unappealing as I found him. It seemed a strange tack to take - the family I could understand, but the hero? Of course, reading is subjective, and maybe it was just me. Yet it worked, ultimately, because Grubbs changes during the course of the story, and that's what all good writing is about - developing characters, watching them grow and adapt to the challenges that are put in front of them. What helps is having strong supporting characters, and Shan has them in Grubbs' new friend, Bill-E, and in particular Dervish, who is one of the coolest characters I've met in children's fiction.

So just how dark does the book get? We're talking headless corpses, blood-splattered walls and bodies split open by page thirty. It doesn't quite reach such graphic violence again, instead changing focus and ratcheting up the tension.

And what does it tell me about my own work? That what I've got planned will (assuming it's anywhere half-decent) work, and, given the success of Shan and others of similar ilk, that there is a market for it. Kids, it seems, want to have the bejesus scared out of them, just like I did when I was a kid. Consider me inspired.

Yet this last point opens another can of cliched worms; should we really be scaring youngsters with tales of demons, vampires, murder and blood-letting? Over at the Manx Litfest Facebook page, there's been a discussion on this very topic, sparked by an article in the Wall Street Journal, which claimed that YA fiction is too dark. I don't see a problem, generally speaking. Kids have always wanted to be entertained by such stories, whether it's Dad telling a creepy story around the campfire, watching the latest teen horror on a sleepover with mates or reading about rampaging zombies eating people's brains.

Of course, there is a limit to everything, although it's hard to say what that is. There's dark, and then there's sick. Or perverse. Or both. One person on FB suggested elements of society are viewing such books as the equivalent of video nasties, with the natural progression to assuming that any kid who reads about a demon killing his sister is going to follow suit. Should we sterilise our writing for children in order to ensure they read only nice, happy stories and are falling over themselves in a bid to help the elderly across the road? There is a place for such positive, happy tales. But I sincerely hope we're not heading down such a restrictive path, where darkness is, well, confined to the shadows.

Ass-kicking justice, Reacher-style

Review - Worth Dying For, Lee Child

Ah, Jack Reacher. The 6ft 5in Terminator-like bringer of justice, who's up righting wrongs while Spider-Man and Superman are still pulling on their knickers and fighting over the Weetabix. For his latest ass-kicking session, Child deposits Reacher in Nebraska, where he sticks his nose into the business of the Duncan family, three ageing ex-farmers who rule their home county with a mafia-style grip.

When Reacher busts the face of one of their sons, suspecting him of beating his wife, the Duncans call in their heavies and send them in Reacher's general direction. If you've read any Reacher before, you know what's coming - pain for anyone in Jack's way, and a complex web of intrigue, a dirty great scab the Duncans want to keep hidden, and, well, Jack just can't help but pick at it.

I finished Worth Dying For several weeks ago, but as I started to think about a review, I realised there wasn't a whole lot to say. Not because it's a bad book; far from it, I think it's one of the finest of his fifteen adventures. But if you've already fallen for Reacher's charms, then you know you can't delve into the plot without removing the joy for others of watching the big man piece it together.

No, the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to talk about Reacher himself, and what it is that has enthralled millions of readers around the world.

Six years ago, when I read the first Reacher (Killing Floor) and blitzed through the back catalogue at a pace which had me believing I had true stalker potential, I thought of each book as one of my small guilty pleasures. It wasn't just because they were selling by the shitload, and so could be viewed as overly commerical; it was because the writing seemed too straightforward, Reacher a blunt vengeance-wreaking tool, almost superhero-like in his quest for justice. He was Batman, without the cape. And that was fine with me, but the impression I got from reviewers (and punters) was that it wasn't cool to admit it.

As the years, and books, passed, I realised I'd pegged it all wrong. The more I studied writing, and publishing, I began to see the beauty, and subtlety, of what Child was doing.

Sure, it all seems fairly formulaic - Jack gets caught up in some intrigue, sometimes of his own doing, other times because he's in the wrong place at the wrong time, nothing is quite as it seems, there's usually a woman involved somewhere along the line, and Jack is usually two steps ahead of the villains (and three ahead of the reader).

And it's easy to understand the attraction. Reacher is part Bond, part Batman, part Man With No Name, and all hero. In fact, if Eastwood was forty years younger, and forty pounds heavier, he'd be ideal for taking Reacher to the big screen. Reacher wanders the US, moving on once the problem has been solved and justice meted out, carrying nothing but the clothes he wears, a toothbrush and, reluctantly, a bank card.

It's a brilliantly simplistic idea that Child forged and developed. There is something in Reacher's lifestyle that appeals to everyone. MrsQ is no doubt going to read me the riot act, but would I like to live the kind of life that Reacher does? Hell, yes. At least, part of me does. And I defy anyone, man or woman, to say otherwise - even if it's just one per cent, even if you know there is absolutely no chance of you doing so, there's always that thought - wouldn't that just be so damn cool?

What fascinates me about Child's writing is the intricacies of the reveal. I picked up Worth Dying For as I lay in bed one night and when I stopped for breath, even thought about anything other than what I was reading, I was on page eighty. It must have been an hour, maybe an hour and a half, and it felt like ten minutes. It was half two in the morning, I was wide awake (I'd been dead on my feet getting into bed) and I had to keep reading. I eventually quit half an hour later, but only because I knew I was looking after the kids the next day, and they'd be pouncing on my head in about four hours' time.

It's page-turning expertise of the highest order. Child is a master at coaxing you on, not just with another bit of action, or the promise of seeing Reacher taking down a few of the bad guys. It's those morsels of info that he reveals, delicately placed throughout to ensure you're cursing his name when the kids demand a viewing of Spongebob at half six in the morning. That in itself is a prized skill for any writer to attain, and one that - to my mind - puts Child right up there with the best authors working today.

Returning to Worth Dying For, and indeed its predecessor, 61 Hours, I've noticed a change in Reacher. His time on the road might be numbered. Avoiding spoilers, he's focused on one thing now - both books follow his path back to Washington DC - yet, at the same time, his thirst for justice and willingness to put himself in harm's way seems to be more intense. At the start of Worth Dying For, there's a point where Reacher knows he can just keep on walking. He's not embroiled in anything yet, there's no 'event' which lands him where he is. He can avoid everything and not get involved in what he believes to be a domestic situation. But he can't help himself. It's as if the bomb that has been ticking inside him all these years is ready to detonate.

I've no idea what Child has in store for Reacher. When I interviewed him for the Litopia e-zine, Muse, fifteen months ago, he said that as long as people want to keep reading about Reacher, he was happy to write the books. Folk seem happier than ever to read them. But I can't help but feel that Reacher is being steered towards some kind of climax. Whichever way it pans out, I'll be right there with Jack, striding into danger, no matter what time of the morning it is.

A loss of innocence

Review - The Last Child, John Hart

There are few more emotive crimes than the abduction of a young child. On a personal level, it resonates with us because we have children, or grandchildren, or nieces and nephews. And on a wider canvas, it brings home to us all just how fragile an innocent life can be. Indeed, it’s one of those crimes that many criminals find abhorrent.

It’s a subject to which novelists continue to return, which for more delicate readers might appear to be somewhat insensitive; and this in turn makes it imperative that a writer treats the issue with care and strikes a fine balance between engaging the reader’s emotions and not sensationalising the story for the sake of cheap thrills. With The Last Child, it’s a balance that John Hart has found with considerable skill.

The story opens one year on from the abduction of thirteen-year-old Johnny Merrimon’s twin sister, Alyssa. The intervening twelve months has seen his father walk out and not return, and his mother languishing in a drugs and alcohol-fuelled pit of despair and now sharing her bed with Ken Holloway, local bigwig entrepreneur and vicious bastard. Johnny, meanwhile, spends his nights trawling the streets, delving into the town’s seedy underbelly, convinced that he will find the person who has his sister.

Johnny’s only allies are his best friend, Jack, who follows him like a faithful hound, and a cop, Detective Clyde Hunt, who has two obsessions eating away at him from the inside – his failure to find Alyssa, and his love for Johnny’s mother.

Out by the river one day, Johnny witnesses a hit-and-run and becomes convinced that the victim was killed because he knew what happened to Alyssa. Everyone else is convinced he’s losing it. When another girl disappears, a lot of people suddenly become very interested in what young Johnny might have found out.

Hart sets up two or three threads early on, and you’re never quite sure whether they will come together, and if so, how. They ebb and flow in their significance, but his plotting is effortless, particularly the way in which the lumbering giant convict, Levi, comes stumbling into the story and impacts on everyone in some small way.

As Clyde and Johnny conduct separate investigations into the missing girl (Clyde because he is seeking redemption; Johnny because he believes the same person has his sister), their paths cross, both in their search for the girl and their bid to save Johnny’s mother from Holloway, who seems capable of just about anything.

It’s rare to find a book where the beautiful craft evident in the storyline is matched by the richness of its characters. On the face of it, the standout is Johnny – he carries the thrust of the narrative and he’s the natural one to root for. However, the real success here is Clyde, who early on comes over as the clichéd obsessed cop, and a single parent to boot, complete with teenage son with whom he can’t hold a conversation any longer than five seconds. But that opinion soon fades. Clyde might not be the sharpest cop in the precinct, but he’s dogged, and his dedication to Johnny’s mother – and Johnny – is real lump-in-the-throat material.

Despite the warmth Hart generates with his leads, and the beauty of his prose, make no mistake; this is a bleak story, one in which you will most likely demand vigilante justice several times over. Ultimately, it’s a tale about enduring love, the strength of family and the remarkable resilience of the human heart, and mind, to overcome devastating events. Regardless of how dark it might get, this is a story about hope, and how those closest to you will carry you when that hope fades. Highly recommended.

Shunned and overlooked

A few weeks back, I was in the audience at the Erin Arts Centre for Mannslaughter and Mayhem, which saw three leading Scottish crime novelists entertain a full house with plenty of insight (and no little wit) into the life of a writer.

Stuart MacBride, Donna Moore and Allan Guthrie were brought to the Isle of Man thanks to the efforts of Chris Ewan, Island resident and author of the Good Thief’s Guide novels, and the support of the Isle of Man Arts Council.

It was a fine night, despite the fact that I’d not read any of the authors’ books (something I’m in the process of remedying), but I don’t think it is essential for such an event anyway, particularly if you are as fascinated by writers talking about writing as I am. (This, of course, is not the same thing as a journalist turning up to interview an author and not having read any of his material, which should be a shooting offence)

First up, kudos to Chris (and his team of helpers) for pulling such an event together; it worked very well, particularly the nice touch of having the children’s crime writing award results on the same night, with the youngsters present. I’m not sure whether this is the kind of event Chris wants to repeat on a regular basis, but the full house at least showed the Manx public’s hunger for such events is there.

It’s a shame, then, that the Island’s literary scene is so poorly served. You can’t seem to swing a guitar around your head for fear of hitting a music festival, we have a thriving theatrical scene and artists have their exhibitions. Mainstream bands and singers are brought to the Island, along with a regular supply of comedians.

But when it comes to us lowly writers, there’s barely a ripple in the Manx literary scene, if indeed there is a scene in the first place. Maybe sitting listening to authors talk about writing and reading out extracts from their books isn’t considered sexy when compared with comedians forcing you to cough up a lung, or jumping up and down screaming and throwing your knickers at some heartthrob singer. But, hey, us fanatical readers – and writers – can get just as excited, in our own little way.

I can only hope the Manx literary scene is better served in the years to come. Hopefully, Mannslaughter and Mayhem will be just the beginning. I have one or two ideas of my own, but that's all they are for now, vague notions. But one day, by Manannan's mighty sword, we'll show 'em.

A close encounter of the spectral kind

What follows is a true story. It happened three or four months back, but I resisted the urge to write about it at the time, wanting to allow 20/20 hindsight to come up with some logical explanation. It hasn't. So here we are - I've not dressed it up in any way whatsoever; it happened exactly as follows:

A regular route of mine when out on a jaunt to clear the old cobwebs takes me down towards the back of the Kentraugh Estate, which overlooks the sea just along from Gansey beach. Kentraugh is one of the most intriguing estates on the Isle of Man. I'm not sure how far it dates back, but certainly two or three hundred years, and Kentraugh Mill is mentioned in records dating back to 1506.

As you approach from the rear, the entire estate appears to be shrouded in trees, the skyline broken only by the mansion house. The road leading to Kentraugh forks at the very back of the estate, with the two roads winding round to meet up with the main road that crosses in front of the estate, with tree-lined driveways at both east and west boundaries.

From the rear of the estate, the left fork in the road takes you past some huge decrepit old gates, beyond which you can glimpse what I imagine are old farm buildings. In years past it must have been a bustling hive of activity, but now looks like the kind of place you'd expect to see Peter Cushing sticking a stake through Christopher Lee's heart. I've never set foot in the estate, but have long wished to.

One chilly night last autumn I set off about nine o'clock to walk to Kentraugh and do a lap of the estate, before returning home. I'm not, it has to be said, the kind of person who spooks easily; by the age of ten or so I'd pretty much devoured the entire catalogue of Hammer horror films, including all the Cushing/Lee Dracula yarns, and by the time the early 80s arrived, with their slasher movies, I sat oblivious, as a young teen, to the gore and supposed chills served up by the likes of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street.

The autumn night in question was dry, but overcast, with not a star in sight. I'd done about half a mile when I realised that I'd forgotten to bring a torch, which isn't normally a problem on my walks, as the roads I usually trek at night have streetlights. But this night I had my heart set on a lap of Kentraugh, and I knew the two roads that encircled the estate would be pitch black. No worries, I thought. I knew the place well, if I took it slowly I'd be fine.

As I approached the fork in the road, I left the streetlights behind and plunged into the darkness ahead. There are some cottages at the fork, so there was a bit of light, but this was soon lost as I turned left, heading down the slight incline towards the ruined gates and farm buildings. I had to slow to a gentle pace, almost feeling my way ahead with each step. After about fifty yards I glanced up and saw what looked like a figure to my left, walking by the wall, heading in the same direction as I was. I was in the middle of the road and as I drew nearer I got the impression it was a little old man, walking very slowly. This was merely guesswork, because all I could make out was a shape, a black outline against the dark grey/black of the wall and the night.

I don't know why I thought it was a man; something about his gait, perhaps, but I just knew it was a man and not a woman. And he had to be old to be moving at that speed; either that or he was a younger man on his way home after the mother of all sessions at the Colby Glen pub.

As I drew nearer, I kept glancing between the figure and what I could make out of the road in front of my feet. I was keeping an eye on the man because I didn't want to scare the bejesus out of him, so was waiting till I was up level, at which point I planned on saying a measured 'hello' as I passed. I'd almost reached him when the tall old gates appeared on my right. I looked at them, back down at my feet and then up at the old man. I was right up by his shoulder now. I took another look down, then glanced back up, preparing to greet him as I drew level.

When I looked up, he was gone. It remains the only time in my life where the phrase 'stopped dead in my tracks' can apply. I looked behind, and ahead, and then back at the wall where the figure should have been. Nothing. Then, what felt like every single hair on my body began to tingle. Back of the neck: check. Along my arms: check. It felt like there was electricity running down from my shoulders to my forearms. I looked around again, at the other side of the road, and moved over towards the wall where the old man was just a moment before. Nothing. I even checked along the ground, to make sure he hadn't fallen over.
'Hello?' I said, turning around in a full circle once more. 'Hello?' Silence.

At this point I wasn't sure what to do. So I did the only thing that made any sense; I started walking again, past the old gates and out towards the main road. The rest of the walk was spent trying to come up with an explanation as to what had happened. When I completed the lap of the estate, and stood again at the fork in the road, I was tempted to head off on a second lap, to see if I encountered the man again.

Something made me head home. Was I scared? I don't think so, but I was certainly unnerved. I'd never seen anything that could be classed as a 'ghost'. The nearest thing to a supernatural experience came in 1995, when I was staying the night at an inn in Blackburn, which a friend of mine from the town had told me was haunted. I was playing pool in the bar, one of those rooms with chairs lined up along each of the walls, and it was a busy night, with most of the seats taken as I played a game against one of the locals. It was about halfway through the game, and I was about to take a shot down at one end of the table. I could see the black out of the corner of my eye, and needed to screw the white past the black to get down to the other end of the table for my next shot. As I was about to hit the cue ball, I saw the black move. It rolled for about an inch, maybe two. It wasn't on a spot, so hadn't 'rolled off'. There was no one else anywhere near the table, there was no breeze blowing in from an open window, and my arm wasn't near enough for me to have hit it accidentally. I looked up at my friend, who, along with one or two of the locals, merely gave a wry smile and shrugged, as if to say, hey, told you so.

Other than that encounter, I'd never experienced anything like the events that occurred at Kentraugh. Nothing physical, nothing visible. My initial reaction was that it had been my shadow, but when the figure disappeared I checked; it was overcast, there was no streetlight, or moonlight, and besides, you know when you're looking at your shadow. This wasn't it.

Maybe it was merely a trick of the night, or perhaps my eyesight, which was strained with trying to see potholes and obstacles in the road, saw something that wasn't there. I've always been somewhat skeptical about folk who regale others with tales of ghosts and other supernatual encounters, which is why I've left this tale to stew for a while.

Yet it won't go away. And it could be because of this; the day after it happened, I shared the tale with a few work colleagues. They suggested I do some research on Kentraugh. I said I would. When I got in that night, a colleague's wife had beaten me to it. She sent me a note on Facebook, suggesting I check out a website link. I did. It told the story of a ghost that supposedly haunts Kentraugh and the surrounding lands. Again, I felt the hair rise on my neck and arms. What kind of ghost? A white lady? A headless horseman? A pale little girl in a flowery dress?

Of course not. It is an old man.

Fear and loathing in the Arctic Circle

Review - Revolver, Marcus Sedgwick

Fear. Whether you’re fifteen or fifty-five, fear is one of those constants in life that we all experience. The passing years may change that which causes you fear, but when in the grip of it, age is taken out of the equation.

Fear lies at the heart of Revolver. It may have ‘Orion Children’s Books’ on the front cover when it’s released later this month, but Sedgwick’s latest novel will resonate as much with adults as it does teenagers.

The story centres around fifteen-year-old Sig Andersson who we meet, in the year 1910, in a remote cabin north of the Arctic Circle. He’s alone, or at least he would be if it wasn’t for the dead body of his father, Einar, lying on a table. Inexplicably, Einar had tried to take his dogs across the frozen lake by their home at a time of year when he knew it would be melting. While Sig’s waiting for the return of his sister and step-mother, who have gone for help, and trying to figure out why his father would have risked his life, there’s a knock on the front door. It’s a stranger, a monster of a man called Wolff, who carries a gun and tells tales of hidden gold... and who is calling in the debt that Einar owed him.

Having set the scene beautifully, teasing the reader with half-morsels of information on which to chew, including the existence of his father’s revolver – ‘a gun is not a weapon’, Einar had told a young Sig. ‘It’s an answer to the questions life throws at you when there’s no one else to help’ – Sedgwick rewinds eleven years to tell the story of how the Andersson family reached this point.

The book weaves between the two timelines, with each revelation in the earlier story increasing the tension in the cabin as the threat from Wolff grows with each passing hour. Sedgwick takes great care in detailing the back story and the development of the relationship between Sig and Einar, particularly in the case of the revolver, which lies hidden in the store room just yards from where Wolff is holding the boy, so much so that the gun becomes a major character in itself, almost calling to Sig, pleading with him to be used.

At a 170-odd pages, Revolver is a lean, mean exercise in menace. Few words are wasted as Sig searches deep within himself for the courage to make a play for the revolver, while trying to buy time from Wolff. The stand-off between the two is like a game of chess, each probing for weaknesses.

Sig is a superb creation, a boy who wants to be a man who finds himself thrust into a situation which offers him that opportunity, and Wolff is a fine sparring partner, although there is a feeling that perhaps Sedgwick held back a little, despite the brutality his antagonist exudes.

Revolver is dark, no question, and as the tension mounts the turning of its pages soon becomes a necessity rather than a desire. But more than that it’s a coming-of-age tale, and an example of how a family’s love can endure against the greatest of odds, including overcoming a fear that leaves you stricken, unable to act in the face of death.

The forgotten author

It's funny what happens to our reading habits, and those favourite authors who we read religiously, hunting down every new release the moment it hits the shelves.

I was reading Nick Stone's blog earlier - Nick wrote the ultra-cool Max Mingus thrillers Mr Clarinet and King of Swords - and he mentioned that he was reading the new James Ellroy, Blood's a Rover, the final installment in his American Underworld trilogy.

Ellroy has fallen off my radar. Having devoured everything up to and including his utterly brilliant LA Quartet - The Black Dahlia, The Big Nowhere, LA Confidential and White Jazz - I bought American Tabloid, the first in the Underworld trilogy, but struggled to get into it.

In his early novels, and the trilogy featuring brutal cop Lloyd Hopkins, Ellroy had a sparse writing style, but it flowed beautifully. As the LA Quartet progressed, that style changed, until by White Jazz he was writing in what has been termed 'telegraphic prose', omitting all connecting words and using short sentences.

White Jazz, while a great book, had grated on me slightly, and I was coming off a run of particularly stylishly written books when I picked up American Tabloid. I read a few pages and put it down, aiming to return at some point in the future. That never happened, and I don't think I can find a reasonable answer as to why; Ellroy just slipped off my must-read list.

But Nick's post has rekindled a fire. I dismissed American Tabloid far too easily, and Ellroy's back catalogue deserves more. I've retrieved Tabloid from the bookshelf and dusted it off. It now sits with new friends, in a pile of to-be-read books. It's a fair chunk of a size, and the second in the series - The Cold Six Thousand - is even bigger. So this could take some time.

Maine's very own dark knight draws closer to the truth

Review - The Lovers, by John Connolly

Lovers of literature and film are suckers for a tortured soul, and souls don't come any more beaten and crushed than Charlie Parker, the dark hero of this, the seventh offering in Connolly's series about the Maine-based private investigator.

Forget last year's The Reapers, which focused on Parker's deadly sidekicks, Angel and Louis, with Parker supplying a third person cameo. While entertaining and faster than a speeding bullet, The Reapers was Connolly-lite, like supping a shandy when you what you really need is the most potent ale on the menu.

The Lovers opens with Parker working in a bar in Portland, having lost his private investigator's licence at the end of the last fully-fledged Parker novel, The Unquiet. He's been told by the authorities to keep his nose clean - spotless, in fact - and he's doing his best. But this is Parker we're talking about. Spurred on by revelations made by the dangerous and enigmatic Collector in The Unquiet, Parker begins an investigation into his father's suicide three decades ago in an attempt to understand what made Will Parker kill two unarmed teenagers, a boy and a girl.

Perhaps the greatest of Connolly's skills in developing this series has been the way he has balanced the undercurrent of supernatural influences on Parker's life with the possibility that we, the readers, are being totally suckered by an unreliable narrator who is slowly losing the plot following the death of his first wife and daughter, and the estrangement of his second love and daughter. The books have grown in intensity and the bleak mood of The Unquiet suggested a resolution to this issue was coming. The Lovers delivers it, and then some.

As Parker interviews his father's former colleagues, it becomes clear that there was a cover-up into the circumstances that led to his father killing the two young lovers, and indeed his suicide. The Collector had hinted at Charlie having secret 'friends', that even he doesn't know about, and as he peels away the layers of the cover-up, he learns that everything he thought he knew about his family - indeed, his own origins - has been an elaborate, but necessary, deceit.

Running parallel to Parker's first person-related investigation is the emergence of the lovers of the title, as they close in on Parker. This element is told third person, a device that Connolly has used increasingly in the Parker books, and further evidence to undermine the unreliable narrator theory.

The Parker novels have always had strong themes running throughout - loss, revenge, redemption, hope - and they are again present, but it's betrayal that forms the focus of The Lovers, and the strength of character to forgive that betrayal.

Be in no doubt - this isn't a James Patterson easy-to-digest thriller you're reading here. Crime novels, although that is far too broad a term to define this series, don't come any bleaker. There is humour, of course, and as usual it's bang on the money. But Angel and Louis, whose banter with Parker lights up the darkest night, are mere footnotes in The Lovers. And that is how it should be; this is Parker's story, or rather his father's story.

This is also not a book for newcomers to the Parker series. It does stand alone, as much as it can, but there is so much rich backstory here, with characters from earlier books making reappearances, that I can only imagine that, as an introduction to Parker, it would be something of a hollow experience.

For Parker fans, that is not an issue. The Lovers might just be the best Parker novel yet. It may not have a Mr Pudd, Brightwell or Caleb Kyle for a villain, or have the pace and action of earlier novels, but Connolly's writing is sensational. Much of the story is told either in flashback or recounted by characters to Parker; little happens in the here and now, and it takes some writing chops to create such an intense story with Parker, by and large, being talked at by others.

Connolly has hinted that he has the end of the Parker series in his mind. He knows how it will be resolved, it's just a question of how long it takes to get there. Given the developments in The Lovers, there is a sense that we are building to a crescendo and I don't think there will be too many books left. Three, maybe four. And this, too, is as it should be, as Parker deserves some closure. Still, it will be one hell of a ride getting there.

A love letter to Afghanistan

Review - Born Under a Million Shadows, by Andrea Busfield

The bottom paragraph on the back cover for this, Busfield's debut novel, describes it as a 'humorous and harrowing love letter to a troubled land' and you'd do well to remember that phrase - love letter - as you read it.

Sage advice to would-be novelists looking to snare an agent or publisher is full of 'show, don't tell', particularly early on in a manuscript, and the need to hook the reader immediately, to produce the goods and induce that 'move to the sofa' moment for said agent/publisher. And go easy on the back story, whatever you do.

But they say rules are there to be broken, and Busfield seems intent on doing just that. Million Shadows is narrated first person by eleven-year-old Fawad, a boy born in Kabul during the time of the Taliban. It opens very quietly, as Fawad describes life with his friends on the streets of Kabul, working the foreigners, his fractured home that he shares with his mother, his aunt and her brood.

It's scene-setting - beautifully done scene-setting at that - but after ten or fifteen pages I had one thought in my head... when's this thing going to start? What I hadn't realised was, it had. And it had the hooks in, too, but all with such subtleness that by the time the 'story' kicked in I was unaware that the author had slung a bag over my head and carried me off into her world.

The event which sparks the plot into action comes when Mariya lands a job as housekeeper for Georgie, an intelligent and sexy western woman who shares a home with two friends, James, a journalist, and May, an engineer. Fawad, understandably, develops a huge crush on Georgie, who has relationship issues of her own - she's in love with an Afghan warlord, Haji Khan, who Fawad soon learns isn't the kind of bloke you want the girl you love so achingly to be hanging around with.

The story unfolds slowly - Fawad tries to act as matchmaker between his mother and a guard; he gets a job working in a small store with a blind shopkeeper; the three westerners take Fawad under their wing and introduce him, unintentionally, to alcohol and sex education; and he watches, helpless, as Georgie's love for Haji intensifies before, inevitably, their world threatens to break apart around them.

Busfield first experienced Afghanistan while working as a journalist for the News of the World covering the fall of the Taliban. In interviews she does not hide the fact that she fell in love with the country, so much so that she made it her home, and this knowledge permeates everything that transpires to Fawad and his friends. It also explains the 'love letter' reference, because that's exactly what this is. Plot is secondary here; it's a look at a year in Fawad's life, a momentous year during which he grows from a child into a young man. A love letter from Busfield to a trouble-torn but beautiful country.

Her style might not suit everyone, but for those who are happy to wait for their riches there is much to admire here. She manages to give a history lesson without preaching, and outlines the politics without being political. Fawad isn't just a fully-rounded character, he all but steps from the pages and grabs you by the hand. The relationship between Georgie and Khan is deftly handled, when it could have come across heavy-handed and cliched, and most of the supporting cast - particularly Pir Hederi, the blind shopkeeper - are a delight. There's also some real humour on show here, and not just the obvious situational comedy, such as the incident involving Fawad, a knife and a Frenchman's ass.

There are issues which detract. Some of the word choices for Fawad's internal monologue feel awkward and out of place and at times the dialogue, especially between the westerners, doesn't work; it feels clumsy, almost forced in order to propel the story onwards, and this is in stark contrast to the exchanges between Fawad and friends, not to mention some of the long descriptive passages which bring the country and its natives to colourful life.

As debut novels go, Million Shadows is a fine effort, a beautiful, slow-burning story of unconditional love, tragedy and, ultimately, life-affirming hope. Well worth a read.

Murder. Adultery. Facism. Rotting hearts sent by post. Just your average day in the mind of author Andrew Taylor

Review - Bleeding Heart Square, by Andrew Taylor

There is something so beautifully sinister about Taylor's work that makes me hope I never have the pleasure of meeting him in person. Sure, he comes across as a perfectly sound bloke on his website (other than the dodgy one-eyed photograph), and he's married with children and a couple of cats and all that. But having read first The American Boy (the one featuring a young Edgar Allan Poe) and now this, I wouldn't recommend being stranded alone with the man.

Bleeding Heart Square is set in mid-1930s London and, as with The American Boy, Taylor has spun another complex web of intrigue and deception: A woman flees her abusive husband, seeking refuge with her father in a gloomy lodging house in the eerie-sounding square. The owner, a middle-aged spinster called Miss Penhow, hasn't been seen for four years, and a plain-clothes policeman lurks in the shadows, watching everything that happens in the square. And someone is sending parcels of rotting hearts to the house, addressed to Miss Penhow's estranged husband, the wonderfully menacing Serridge.

At the core of the story are two threads. Lydia lives in upper class splendour on a vast country estate. On the surface, she has everything. Beneath the surface, she's a prisoner to her manipulative bully of a husband, Marcus, a rising young politician within the British Union of Fascists. The book opens with her taking one beating too many, prompting her to flee to London and her father.

The second thread revolves around Rory Wentwood, a struggling journalist just returned from India, who is engaged to Fenella, the niece of the missing Miss Penhow. Snooping around Bleeding Heart Square under orders from his fiancee, Rory is coerced into taking a room at the lodging house by Detective Sergeant Narton, an enigmatic cop who is investigating Serridge and the disappearance of Miss Penhow.

When Lydia and Rory meet, they become embroiled in each other's stories as Rory tries desperately to hang on to Fenella, Lydia learns the disturbing truth about Marcus and both of them fall deeper into the murky world that Serridge inhabits and the evil that pervades Bleeding Heart Square.

Taylor isn't just one of the best crime writers around. He's one of the best writers, period. Bleeding Heart Square is a slow-burn. It has a measured pace to it - not for Taylor the short, sharp edge-of-your-pants cliffhanger chapters that James Patterson churns out. Taylor lands the hook in your mouth without you realising it and before you know it you're turning those pages, drawn into the gothic atmosphere that all but rises from the page to devour your senses.

Part of the story's intrigue is down to Taylor opening each chapter with a present tense, first person passage (the rest of the book is third person), in which the reader takes on the increasingly sinister persona of one of the characters who is following Miss Penhow's missing journal. It's a clever ploy, but one which could have backfired in the hands of a lesser writer.

The time and place that Taylor evokes is frighteningly vivid, a period of social and political uncertainty, with the fascist subplot adding to the suspense that gradually builds throughout the book. All this work would, of course, be wasted if Taylor had dropped the ball with his characters, but he can't be faulted here either.

Lydia's slow transformation from aristocratic wallflower who is waited on hand and foot to independent, streetwise woman is a masterclass in character development, and each of the supporting cast are given ample room to breathe and come to life. It's Serridge, however, whose memory lingers longest, a wonderful creation of charm, mystery and utter villainy, although the wretched Marcus isn't too far behind.

The beauty of coming late to an established author like Taylor is that you have a backlist of books to catch up on. It's been four years between reading The American Boy and Bleeding Heart Square. Rest assured I won't wait as long next time.