Blog Tour! - The Fighter by Michael Farris Smith - Blog Tour!

I have to admit to having a bit of a thing for novels, television and films set in the American Deep South. There’s a long litany of fine fiction coming from the region - in television we have True Detective (the first series, obviously); in cinema we have Hell or High Water,  just the latest in the genre, there are many other examples I could give; while on the written page we have novels by the likes of John Stonehouse, Jedidiah Ayres and Donald Ray Pollock, to name just a few. Michael Farris Smith’s novel, The Fighter, joins this August company.

Jack Boucher (pronounced Boo-shay) is a fighter on his last legs. He’s suffered one two many punches, knees and elbows and and has suffered for it; there are yawing gaps in his memory and he needs to keep a notebook at all times to record the names of people he’s met, whether they are friend or foe. He’s addicted to painkillers, his foster mother - the only person he ever loved - is in a nursing home with late stage Alzheimers, the house she left Jack now in hoc to the banks. Worse still, he’s in debt up to his eyeballs to Big Momma Sweet, who runs all the rackets and who you don’t want to cross. 

Luck is not something which stays with Jack for very long, so when he wins enough money at a casino to settle his debt with Big Momma Sweet and maybe pay off the banks, it’s little surprise that things go awry. Big Momma Sweet has put a bounty out on Jack’s head and he’s waylaid. I wish to avoid spoilers, but needless to say he loses the money and thus is left in an unenviable position. Unable to cover his debts, his only hope looks to be a return to the fighting pits, but will his battered body and damaged brain hold out?

This is raw and visceral writing, the author bringing to life Jack’s desperation. I’ve never been to the Deep South, but reading this book, the description, the atmosphere, I really had a feel for a region that’s on it’s knees - economic decline and poverty having ravaged the land. In many ways the two - Jack Bouchet and the Mississippi Delta - complement each other, both two sides of the same coin, certainly, Jack is a product of his environment. The other characters in the novel are equally vividly drawn, especially Big Momma Sweet, who while occupying relatively little space on the page, is larger than life and someone I won’t forget.

At just 223 pages, The Fighter is not a long novel, but Michael Farris Smith is such a gifted writer that he doesn’t need more to tell his tale. Powerfully written and compelling in its intensity, this is not a novel to be missed.

5 out of 5 stars

BLOG TOUR! - Two Little Girls by Kate Medina - BLOG TOUR!

 

To be honest I kind of borrowed this book from NetGalley by accident. Some years ago, I read Kate Medina’s brilliant debut, White Crocodile, a thriller set in the legacy mine fields of Cambodia and loved it (she was writing under K.T. Medina then). I’ve read nothing from the author since and was unaware that she had turned to psychological thrillers (which perhaps explains why she now writes as Kate rather than K.T.). Personally, psychological thrillers have always left me a little cold and so despite the cover and title – which perhaps I should have taken as a hint that this was a psychological thriller – I borrowed Two Little Girls expecting something more akin to White Crocodile.

That said, once I started reading I decided to plough on. It wasn’t just that I hate to leave a book unfinished, it’s also that Two Little Girls, while not strictly my cup of tea, is well written and compelling. Apparently, this is the latest in a series of novels to feature psychologist Jessie Flynn and DI Bobby “Marilyn” Simmonds of Surrey and Sussex Major Crimes.

In Two Little Girls, Jessie has just been invalided out of the army where she was a psychologist (I presume in previous books she was still in the army) and is now in private practice. When a young girl, Jodie Triggs, is found strangled on the beach, it transpires that the murder is similar to that of Zoe Reynolds, an unsolved homicide that haunts DI Simmonds. One of Jessie’s patients, Laura, turns out to be Zoe’s mother and the chief suspect in her death (her real name is Carolynn Reynolds). Jessie and DI Simmonds now work together to solve the latest murder and in turn the former.

The novel is structured in alternating chapters told from the perspective of the various characters. Some of these are straightforward, such as those chapters that are from Jessie’s perspective or that of DI Simmonds. Others, especially those from the perspective of Carolynn are less so; we quickly realise that she is an unreliable narrator.

At heart, as with most psychological thrillers, Two Little Girls sits firmly within what’s been called “domestic noir”. The Reynolds – Carolynn, her husband Roger, their murdered daughter Zoe – was a dysfunctional unit, especially so after Zoe died; we, the readers, turn the pages wondering if either husband or wife killed their daughter, whether they have gone on to kill Jodie, and if so, why?

The characters in Two Little Girls are well-crafted and believable, and the author plots her tale deftly. Despite liking my crime novels a little harder-edged and noirish – as indeed White Crocodile was -  I read this quite quickly and enjoyed it. So, if psychological thrillers are your thing, and they’re incredibly popular, then you’ll love this.

3 out 5 stars

The Chalk Man by C.J. Tudor

Anyone who’s seen the hype around this book will know it’s being compared to the work of Stephen King. If I recall correctly, even the great man himself compared it to his own work on Twitter. Point is, it will be the most unoriginal comparison I can make, if I say The Chalk Man is comparable to something that Stephen King might write. Well, apologies, but I’m gonna, for the comparison is apt.

CJ Tudor has written a coming of age story that can easily stand aside the master’s work. In Anderbury, we have a small market town in England, comparable with those King conjures in Maine. In Eddie, Fat Gav, Metal Mickey, Hoppo and Nicky, we have child protagonists the like of which King populates his novels, such as IT. And in the chalk man drawings that sinisterly litter the narrative we have the kind of fiendish motif he might have conjured.

Unlike King’s writing this is a crime novel, rather than horror, but like IT we have child protagonists trying to solve the mystery and plagued by evil. It’s not a straightforward crime novel, this is no police procedural, psychological thriller or serial killer tale. Rather it is both a coming of age story – the narrative is split between alternating chapters set in 1986 when the protagonists are ten, and the present day when they are adults – and chiller/thriller, if that makes sense. Both narrative strands work well, though those chapters set in 1986 are by far the best, the author perfectly encapsulating a child’s eye view and managing to conjure up how it felt to grow up in the 80’s.

What’s the central crime the plot revolves around? I really don’t want to say - albeit the book’s description gives that away, telling the reader that the children find a body. In many ways however, this misses the point. A plethora of crimes, both hinted at and explicit, occur in this story; there are multiple characters who may or may not be involved. I want to resist divulging spoilers because this is a MUST read, a really enjoyable experience; there are twists galore and a really eerie sense of foreboding that seeps from each and every page.

Read this novel. You really won’t regret it.

5 out of 5 stars

  

London Rules by Mick Herron

A group of gunmen drive into a rural English village and go on a shooting spree. Various other terrorist outrages follow. Meanwhile, in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, the populist MP who led the Brexit charge is looking to usurp the Prime Minister, while a Muslim politician with the popular touch is looking to become Mayor of a major city in the West Midlands - but does he have something to hide?

This is the fifth in Herron’s  series of satirical spy thrillers based around the activities of the slow horses of Slough House. I’ve read all the previous novels int he series, though this is just the second I’ve reviewed. It can be read as a standalone, though reading the series is so much better. The novels centre around Slough House, a satellite station of MI5 where the Service’s misfits and disgraced members - so called Slow Horses - are sent to serve out their time until they retire or resign. Lording it all over them is Jackson Lamb, an overweight, flatulent bully of a man, albeit one who deep down cares for his underlings. The Slow Horses themselves are a selection of well-drawn characters, who the author imbues with individual character flaws and foibles. Each is loveable and repellent in his or her own way.

Once more, the Slow Horses are thrust into the centre of things, becoming embroiled in the various strands of the plot.  As with the previous books it’s all good fun, though once again the plot is rather weak. It’s something I’ve noticed about this series of novels, the plots are pretty forgettable. What makes the books enjoyable and well worth reading are the character’s antics and the fact that this is subtle satire; it’s not laugh out loud funny, but it makes the intelligence services and the whole war on terror seem slightly ridiculous. As with all the best satire this is subversive stuff and one can’t help but wonder how accurate it might be- after all, while most of what the intelligence services get up to is hidden from view, what little gets into the public domain isn’t always so complementary and the spies aren’t strangers to blunder.

4 out of 5 stars

Spook Street by Mick Herron

This is the fourth in Herron’s  series of satirical spy thrillers based around the activities of the slow horses of Slough House. I’ve read all the previous novels int he series, though this is the first I’ve reviewed. It can be read as a standalone, though reading the series is so much better.

The novels centre around Slough House, a satellite station of MI5 where the Service’s misfits and disgraced members - so called Slow Horses - are sent to serve out their time until they retire or resign. Lording it all over them is Jackson Lamb, an overweight, flatulent bully of a man, albeit one who deep down cares for his underlings. The Slow Horses themselves are a selection of well-drawn characters, who the author imbues with individual character flaws and foibles. Each is loveable and repellent in his or her own way.

Each novel in the series takes on the same format: something happens, a plot or disaster, and against all the odds the Slow Horses become embroiled and have to save the day. In Spook Street it’s a suicide bombing in a shopping centre, a flash mob having been organised only for the organiser - the bomber - to blow themselves up amidst the crowd. In a seemingly unrelated event, the grandfather of River Cartwright - perhaps the most “normal” of the Slow Horses -  a MI5 legend has an attempt made on his life and River takes it upon himself to find out why. Needless to say, these two plot threads link up and soon the Slow Horses find themselves in the middle of the investigation into the bombing. I won’t give away spoilers but needless to say that the bombing is not all it seems either and there’s a fiendish plot behind it all.

Supposedly there’s a distinction between “plot driven novels”, often dismissed as “genre” novels, and “character driven novels”, which are supposedly “literary”. This series of novels shows such a distinction to be meaningless. I’m sure most critics would class them as plot-driven, but to my mind the plots are always rather weak. Spook Street is no different, the plot is almost a MacGuffin, a device just to get the characters running around the place, chasing their tails. The fun is had in seeing the Slow Horses themselves, reading Jackson Lamb’s latest outrageous, non-PC statement. This isn’t a criticism at all, but an observation.

All in all this novel, as with the rest of the series, Spook Street is good fun and fresh take on the spy genre.

4 out of 5 stars

Blog Tour! The Extremist by Nadia Dalbuono Blog Tour!

This is the fourth book in Nadia Dalbuono’s Detective Leone Scamarcio thrillers, and I’ve been lucky enough to have read and reviewed them all. This means that I’ve seen Leone Scamarcio grow as a character, and have followed his story arch throughout the series. While this undoubtedly heightens my enjoyment of the series, each book is a self-contained story in its own right, and unlike some series, you don’t have to have read the previous outings to enjoy each book. 

The Extremist begins with coordinated jihadi attacks on the streets of Rome: gunmen storm a McDonalds, a school, a coffee bar near the coliseum, taking hostages at each location.  Leone Scamarcio works in the Rome Flying Squad, nothing to do with terrorism. So it’s a shock to him and his colleagues, all gathered around the television watching the horrific events unfold, when a phone call comes in to say that the hostage takers have demanded to talk to him and him alone.

Scamarcio is whisked to the scene of the coffee shop where he’s hustled inside. There a young terrorist, Ifran, demands he travel to a villa in a town thirty kilometres outside of Rome, go to the end of the back garden and dig up a box. He’s then to bring the contents of the box back to Ifran. Oh, and have a CNN film crew in tow to witness the handover of the contents which can be beamed to the world.

This is an intriguing premise and sets up the rest of the novel. Scamarcio is suspicious of the Italian intelligence agencies for reasons made clear in the previous novels. The reader of The Extremist doesn’t need to know the specific reasons for this, but it is made clear that it’s due to previous cases he’s worked on. The Intelligence agencies are crawling all over the scene and he decides to go it alone.  What follows is a pursuit thriller where Scamarcio tries to find out what’s in the box, why Ifran wanted him in particular to bring it to him, all the while evading the police, the Carabinieri and the intelligence agencies who’ve listed him as wanted.

A criticism of this novel might be that’s it’s unrealistic that Scamarcio would go it alone, that it would have been easier for him to alert his superiors to what Ifran wanted, that they could have collected the box. Perhaps the siege could have been brought to a close, special forces dressing as a CNN film crew and launching  a raid to rescue the hostages. This criticism would be valid and to be sure that’s how things would probably play out in real life. But Nadia Dalbuono writes very Italian thrillers, where conspiracies are around every corner. Her previous books have tackled the infiltration of Italian society by organised crime - the Sicilian Mafia, the Camorra, the ‘Ndrangheta; Operation Gladio, the stay behind armies set up by the CIA in the case of a Soviet invasion which soon morphed into far right terror; VIP child sex rings and more.

Like its predecessors, The Extremist tackles big subjects. There are innumerable thrillers which deal with terror attacks, but without giving away spoilers, this book is more than that, a conspiracy thriller which dares to ask big questions. It’s one of the reasons that I’m such a fan of Dalbuono’s work, her books are head and shoulders above the usual run of the mill police procedurals. They dare to look beyond the headlines and question what we take for granted. While I’m not a conspiracy theorist myself, to be sure the theories she posits in her thrillers all have a kernel of truth. There really was an Operation Gladio ( a central theme in her novel The American), Italian organised crime really is a pernicious influence on Italian politics and society, while VIP child sex rings have been investigated in a number of countries. The conspiracy at the heart of The Extremist has a similar basis in fact, whether or not it really has the influence portrayed here.

So would I recommend The Extremist? Yes, absolutely. While it’s not strictly necessary, I would also recommend readers get hold of copies of the earlier books in the series. They won’t be disappointed.

5 out of 5 stars