Number 18- The Cutting Season- M W Craven

 

These quick reads books are a bit of a lottery. This is my first taste of an MW Craven book and I'm not convinced I want to read another.

This opens with a detective named Poe strung up on a hook in a meat packing warehouse waiting for a serial killer to arrive. We then flash back to the events leading up to his predicament.

Although I did kind of enjoy the story, I have a lot of issues with this book.

The style of writing is very very basic. That seems to be a common factor in these Reading Agency quick read books. It wouldn't kill the editors to allow some style in the wring.

The characters in this are drawn with very very broad strokes.  They're complete caricatures. Poe is your good cop who can't stick to the rules, permanently at odds with his superior officers.

His assistant in crimefighting, the civilian Tilly Bradshaw is an autistic genius to a ridiculous degree. You might as well say she's a magician, the number of impossible things she does that are just explained away as "she's a computer genius". She can do literally anything with computers, it takes her 4 seconds to open a complete stranger's laptop, she has no special equipment to do this, she's just a genius. It takes me 10 seconds to log in to my laptop and I know the password. It really does take the mickey. The author has decided that computers can do absolutely anything and that she doesn't need to explain how in anything but the most surface level detail.

The gangsters have the most ridiculous nicknames. they're comically bad and make it very difficult to take them seriously as a threat to our intrepid inspector.

Despite all this, Craven manages to make an interesting story with a twist in the tale and overall I enjoyed the read, despite cringing through most of the pages. I am probably going to read something full length by Craven and hope that the issues in this book are not typical.

Number 17- Men At Arms- Evelyn Waugh

 

A bit of culture for a change...

Waugh on war. 

The back cover of this copy, that predates my existence by several years- you can see that just from the price (I was born in the age of decimal currency)- states that this books and its sequels are the only piece of fiction about the 39-45 War which is certain to survive...

I'm not so sure about that. 

I know all about not judging old books by today's standards, but this has not aged well IMHO.

Guy Crouchback is a middle aged man from a semi aristocratic background.  At the outbreak of WWII, he is desperate to enlist but finds he's not wanted by most regiments. After a meeting in a hotel with a high up from the Halberdiers regiment, he finally gets his wish.

The Halbadiers are a strange lot, made up of the upper middle classes and above, living and doing their officer training in absolute luxury for most of the book.

Whereas something like Spike Milligan's war diaries take on the war from the front, showing exactly how dirty and nasty it is, at the same time as being hysterically funny, this is a satirical snook at the ruling classes who become officers regardless of ability. 

In this book at least, the reality of war barely affects any of the characters. They crouch back in their luxury barracks, and wander off to the local hotels for drinks every evening. I don't know if the war actually makes an impact in the second two books in the trilogy, but it certainly seems to be mostly absent here, and I suppose that's the point of much of the satire.

I struggled with Waugh's writing style. I needed several pages to tune in every time I picked the book up. I really don't think I cared about anyone in the book. Some sequences were high farce but I struggled to raise  a smile- I suppose if I'd known a thunder box was some type of portable latrine, that segment might have been funnier than I found it.

Overall I was pretty disappointed by my first foray into Evelyn Waugh. I'm not 100% I'll bother with another. 

Number 16- Mother Nature- Jamie lee Curtis, Karl Stevens, Russell Goldman

 

A quick cheat read to get the numbers up.  

This is a graphic novel based on a film script written by Jamie Lee Curtis. Published in 2023, this says from the upcoming feature film, but I must say I haven't heard of this as a film yet.

The artwork by Karl Stevens is occasionally excellent.  I'm not sure it's ever bad, but I didn't feel it had the wow factor of a lot of the graphic novels I've read in the last few years.  

The issue with this book is the story, which really doesn't make that much sense- and I say that coming from reading a book about a man who travels back to his own birth every time he dies. This is an attempt at an eco conscious horror story.

There's Native American folklore, there's weird radioactive creatures from under the ground, there's global conspiracy, and a rebellious teen who is somehow transformed into Mother Nature and goes on a random killing spree, and JLC as a very human villain.

It's all a bit of a mess tbh. Too much happening to quick, the artwork isn't always clear as to what's actually happening. Luckily it was short. Maybe the film will be an improvement if it happens.

Number 15- The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August- Claire North

 

I picked this up somewhere cheap several yonks ago because of that intriguing cover. This year's theme of occasional books where the number matches the title seemed like a good excuse to finally pick it up and read it.

Harry August is no ordinary man.  Every time he dies, he's born again as himself and has to live his life all over again. On his deathbed in his 11th life, he's met by a young girl, another of his type, who tells him that the end of the world is happening faster than it should, and Harry can help prevent it.

This is a high concept thriller, although you could describe it as a long form Groundhog Day if you were feeling mean.  I'm not though since I enjoyed this book a lot.

Harry is an intriguing narrator, guiding us through his many existences with aplomb. The various characters he meets in his lives are well drawn, especially the recurring ones. The Cronos Club is a brilliant invention.

The logic of how it all works is admittedly a little fuzzy around the edges and there is a lot of discussion in the book to obfuscate and contemplate the matter still further. I loved the deep dive into how this type of repeated existence would impact a person. When death becomes an annoyance at having to go through puberty again, what is it going to do to you?

It's one of the most unusual thrillers I've read. This was my first Claire North book and certainly won't be my last.  She has a clear easy style of writing that makes the most ludicrous concepts seem logical inside their framework. There's a sly humour running through it as well (the going through puberty again line I used earlier is taken from midway through the book) that cuts through some of the deeper discussions about the meaning of existence when doomed/fated to repeat it endlessly.

An easy 8/10, maybe edging to a 9.

Number 14- The Starless Sea- Erin Morgenstern

 

Books like this are the reason I go to book groups. This is not a book I would ever have given a second glance to, despite the pretty cover and the cool spredges.

When the unlikelily named Zachary Ezra Rawlings finds an uncatalogued book in the university library containing a short story that tells of an incident in his childhood in perfect detail, he goes on a quest to discover the origin of the book.

This leads him to find the mysterious Mirabel and handsome Dorian, and he's led through a painted door into a strange underground world which may be the source of human storytelling.

This world is facing a threat and they embark on a perilous journey to find the end of their story.

I adored this book from the first chapter.  This is the first book i years where I deliberately slowed my reading pace near the end so I could stay in the writer's world that bit longer.

The story alternates between chapters from books within the book with the ongoing narrative. As the book moves on, all the storylines start weaving together.

 

The prose is just gorgeous throughout.  The overlapping storylines and different layers of storytelling, could have felt contrived or confusing but they never did. This is a book that will reward multiple reads. There are so many subtle little touches that I spotted first time around and others that people at the book group highlighted. I'm sure there are dozens more to spot on a second time around.

There was a sly humour running through the story, along with some genuine shock moments. One particular incident in the final act of the story left me feeling completely shell shocked. This was one of the least predictable novels I've read in recent years.

This is best book I've read this year so far and I've already bought myself a rather lovely copy of The Night Circus online. I recommend this unreservedly.

Number 13 - The Writing In The Water- John Ajvide Lindqvist

 

The newest book from Lindqvist- still best known for Let the Right One In- is a marked departure from anything else he's written. He's switched genre altogether and written an international crime thriller.

This is very much a gender switched version of the Millennium books and he leans into the similarity with gusto. 

Julia Malmros is an ex cop,  50 something crime writer who is offered the contract to write the new book in the Millennium series. She's not the most computer literate so enlists the help of  Kim Ribbing, a 28 year old hacker with a dark past, as an advisor on the computer side of the story. Things become intimate between them both very quickly.

When the book deal falls through in a blaze of publicity, she retreats to one of the islands in the archipelago for a break.  Unfortunately, whilst there, she and Kim witness a shooting on the neighbouring island. This catapults them both into an international scandal and a dangerous plot that threatens both their lives.

Mixed into the plot is Julia's ex husband and local senior police officer, the man in charge of the investigation from an official viewpoint. the Chinese mafia and evil billionaires with blood on their hands.

This is all very entertaining.  The whole Millennium storyline is meta to the point where I was wondering if Lindqvist actually was asked to write one which was rejected. After Julia's book is rejected, she toys with the idea of gender swapping the book she's written and sending that out into the world instead... 

The sex scenes are probably some of the worst sequences JAL has ever written. There's one that is particularly cringeworthy.  Thankfully, they're short and don't detract from the overall quality of the book.

Being a crime thriller with a somewhat humorous take on the subject, this is obviously not the dark and scary Lindqvist that we're used to. However, it is still a very good read- sex scenes excepted. The epilogue does promise a darker edge to the sequel, with Lisbeth's, I mean Kim's, character potentially taking a less heroic role.

There were some verbal tics that annoyed me in the prose, especially where certain characters were referred to almost exclusively by their full name, first name and surname, sometimes multiple times in individual paragraphs. But that's still a minor irritation.  I already have the second book of this trilogy on preorder.