Think of a Number - John Verdon

Dave Gurney was best known for his capture of some of the East Coast's most infamous serial killers; in his retirement a chance art class, taken at the behest of his wife Madeleine, is allowing his an outlet related to but not directly connected with his police work. He's quite content to work, pixel by pixel, on digital images of his successes, to the disappointment of Madeleine, who had hoped for a murder-free life. Gurney's content, that is, until a former classmate contacts him.
Gurney was never friends with Mark Mellery, much as the latter's letter tries to imply the contrary. What is clear, though it is thinly masked, is that the other man is frightened. An alcoholic to the point that he blacked out while his wife drowned only feet away, Mellery has turned his life around to become a guru of personal transformation. Everything was fine - new career, wonderful house, acclaim, a loving wife - until the first letter.
Penned in red ink, the cryptic note alludes to a connection with the past and is written by a former, unnamed confidant so close to Mellery that he is able to predict what number Mellery would chose when asked to pick one between one and a hundred. The number (658) has no significance for Mellery, and the idea that this number (sealed inside an included envelope) could be known by another person totally disturbs him. It's the next stage, however, that causes him to contact Guerney - to find out who knows him so well, the second note says, Mellery must send cash or a cheque to a PO Box in the name of X. Arybdis ("not always my name"). Mellery sends the cheque, which is returned as unknown by the PO Box holder. The returned cheque is soon followed by two eight-line poems, also in red ink, that hint at past misdeeds and an impending threat.
I was attracted to Think of a Number (the first in what will clearly be a series) by the premise of a stranger being able to guess what random number another person would pick. I began reading it soon after, only to put it down after a couple of pages because I found the writing style irritating. I have, however, entirely too many unread books and so I took the opportunity of a long-haul flight to make inroads on some of the backlog. I'm glad I did - the mystery is interesting and unique, the character of Guerney interesting and flawed (I do believe that's mandatory in contemporary novels of the genre), and I really liked the way Madeleine's quite different perspective illuminates aspects of the case.
However, there were several times where I got ahead of Guerney, often by several chapters - these included how the killer guessed another number (ridiculously obvious answer that occurred to me immediately but not to Guerney until 240 pages later), the meaning of his pseudonym (X. Arybdis), and the identity of the killer a couple of chapters ahead of out hero. Fortunately, posing over the book for this review I now have an answer to something I had been thinking of as an unanswered loose end: a fish ("Was it a flounder?" Madeleine asked) was left at one scene to link it to another murder.
My biggest issue with Think of a Number (Numb3r in some editions), though, is the tone. The writing has a literary quality at odds with the genre - sentences are not only over-long but unnecessarily descriptive, and Guerney is introspective and self-reflective to a ridiculous extent. Opening the book at random I found:

He closed his eyes, hoping the goodness of the moment would counteract those mental energies that were always propelling him into puzzle solving. For Guerney, achieving even a little contentment was, ironically, a struggle. He envied Madeleine's keen attachment to the fleeing instant and the pleasure she found in it. For him living in the moment was always a swim upstream, his analytical mind naturally preferring the realms of probability, possibility. He wondered if it was a genetic or learned form of escape. Probably both, mutually reinforcing....
Jesus!
He caught himself in the absurd act of analyzing his propensity for analysis. He ruefully tried again to be present in the room.

Gurney notes, assesses and weighs every characters' every aspect, and Verdon faithfully records it all. In case tone, word choice and description are inadequate, utterances are also qualified - glints in eyes shout, lips are pursed "by way of complaint"
There's also something of a laziness of description despite this gratuitous detail - a pathologist strongly resembles Sigourney Weaver (occasionally adopting a Mr Rogers-like tone, which no doubt has more resonance for American readers than I), two functionaries are reminiscent of Tom Cruise, and Guerney himself "looked like Robert Redford in All the President's Men" at college and "Still do - haven't changed a bit!".
I could also have done with more shades of grey - the supporting cast, primarily senior law enforcement, lawyers and politicians, are almost without exception relentlessly blustery, vainglorious and incompetent.
Despite this I finished Think of a Number, primarily because the mysteries (how did the footprints in the snow abruptly end? And most pivotal, how was the number 658 guessed?). I was also pleased that one thing I predicted (Madeleine leaving) didn't occur, though there's at least one sequel to come. I don't think I like Guerney much - his family come a distant second to work, despite the tragic death of his young son (in no small part due to Guerney's distraction about a case) - even when he doesn't have the potential death of future victims as an excuse he still fails to pay attention to his wife, or to do things that he knows would please her, in a passive-aggressive way I found markedly off-putting.
I did enjoy Think of a Number more than I suspect this review indicates. If you're interested in a mystery that combines an unusually literary feel with violent murder and a few good tricks you could do worse than pick this up. I suspect that, should I return to Verdon's work, which may well mellow with experience, it will via the library - I see that the sequel, Close Your Eyes Tight is available for loan. - Alex

Good Book – David Plotz

Bored during his cousin’s bar mitzvah service, “Proud, but not very observant” Plotz idly picked up and opened the Torah in front of him. It opened to Genesis, and Plotz began reading the story of the rape of Dinah. Her rapist, Sechem, son of “an idol-worshiping chieftain,” decides he’s in love with Dinah, and asks to marry her; Dinah’s father and brothers acquiesce, with a couple of conditions, then attack the chieftain’s tribe while its’ men are incapacitated. The story shocked Plotz -

The founding fathers of Israel lying, breaching a contract, encourage pagans to convert to Judaism, only to cripple them for slaughter, massacring defenseless innocents, enslaving woman and children, pillaging and profiteering, and then justifying it all with an appeal to their sister’s defiled honor? Not on the syllabus

For a while, the story of Dinah preoccupied Plotz – he talked about with women named Dinah, and found different versions of the story (maybe Dinah went willingly with Sechem) and varying interpretations of the lessons the story was intended to teach.
Plotz had thought he knew the Bible, at least broadly – in addition to Hebrew School he attended an Episcopalian high school that included religious education in the syllabus, and he’d had the usual popular culture exposure to Bible stories, from testaments Old and New. Reading this section of Genesis caused him to reconsider – what else had been edited out? He decided to read the Torah, or Old Testament, verse by verse, in order, noting his responses to each chapter as they were read. Good Book is those reflections, bound.
Amazon recommended Good Book when I added several of AJ Jacob’s accounts (reviews forthcoming) to my basket. I’ve long been intellectually interested in religion, which is what attracted me to both Jacob’s Year of Living Biblically and Good Book in the first place. In my youth I read the Bible cover to cover three times over a six- or nine-month period, though clearly not with the rigour of Plotz and, I suspect, quite a big of skimming, particularly over the begetting sections. I certainly didn’t make the connections Plotz did, and I’m impressed by his connection of events and people from one book with intersections and recurrences in subsequent sections.
What kept me reading, though, was Plotz himself. His writing is snarky, thoughtful, shocked, considered, and above all else intelligent. I made note of so many examples that my copy of Good Book is markedly thicker at the bottom (where I’ve turned over corners) than the top, and were I to cite even a quarter of them this review would be excessive. However it would be a disservice not to give at least a flavour of Plotz’s style.
Fittingly, I’ll start with Genesis, and the story of Abram (who becomes Abraham) and Sarai/Sarah, who flee famine and attempt to con first Pharaoh and then a king by pretending to be siblings instead of spouses; God sends a plague to the former for admiring Sarai’s beauty (which “seems unfair of the Almighty. It’s Abram and Sarai who tricked Pharaoh – why should the Egyptian get punished for ogling Sarai?”), and warns off a lecherous King Abimelech in a dream (“Not explained – why would Abimelech want to seduce Sarah, who is at that point nearly ninety years old?”)

God makes a covenant with Abraham, promising him “all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding.” God is a kind of celestial Donald Trump: He can’t go a chapter without a new real-estate deal. By my calculations, He promises land to Abraham at least four separate times, and each time the boundaries are different. (Promised land, indeed.)

I’m sure most people are familiar with the sacrifice of Isaac, where God tells Abraham to kill his beloved son on an altar to demonstrate his religious fidelity. Isaac is spared at the eleventh hour, but

As a father I find this nearly impossible to read. The repetition of “my son” is devastating. Abraham does not try to distance himself from Isaac, to separate himself from the child he must kill. Isaac remains “my son,” “my son.”… This is, of course, another story adopted and repurposed in the New Testament; but in the Christian version, God does sacrifice the son. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, so I’ll take the Genesis version, complete with deus ex machina and the saved child.

Chapter 23 gets the (natural) death of Sarah out of the way before using eighteen verses to discuss land negotiations, a theme common throughout the text, which Plotz points out is as relevant and consuming in that region now as it was 3,500-odd years ago. Chapter 25 causes him to reflect on why antediluvian people were so long lived, and even after the flood it is not uncommon for Bible characters to live for over a century, usually with little or no infirmity -

The obvious answer, and the one I believe, is “It’s not true, that’s why.” But I wonder why the authors of the Bible *believed it to be true. At the time Genesis was written down, 1,000 years after Abraham was supposed to have lived, the Israelites who drafted it had normal life spans. Why did they credit their ancestors with such superhuman health? Was their theory that man got weaker the farther he got from creation? Modern scholars of folklore would probably attribute [it] to the normal process of mythmaking… the heroes grow grander and grander. Their towers reached the sky; they fought giants and met angels; and they lived almost forever.

This is only half of the extracts I’d like to cite, from Genesis alone; there is no way to include everything I’d like to without substantially breaching the Copyright Fair Reproduction Act! A few areas of note that I found particularly amusing, insightful or otherwise interesting – there are several instances where Plotz discovers that even things he knows he knows about the Bible are false (like the Ten Commandments); his discussion of why there are so may prostitutes is scattered through the text and insightful; there’s startling cruelty, violence and murder, much of it directed by a sadistic and often irrational God, particularly in Judges; and there’s the refrain of land – in the “morally repellent” Book of Judges
Jephthah tells the king, “Do you not hold what Chemosh your God gives you to possess? So we will hold on to everything the Lord our God has given us to possess.”

And there, my friends, you have practically the entire history of Israel, of the Middle East, and of planet Earth, in two short sentences. Your God says it’s yours. Our God says it’s ours. Meet you at nine AM on the battlefield.

Chapters 5 – 7 of the Book of 1 Kings:

A hilariously magnificent passage pays tribute to Solomon’s wisdom. It’s essentially a list of everyone he’s smarter than… He writes 3,000 proverbs and 1,000 songs. He’s a botanist, an ichthyologist, and an entomologist; a poet, a musician and a judge; a joker, a smoker, and a midnight toker.

In chapter 18 of the same book, there’s a showdown between the prophet Elijah and Jezebel’s priests. Elijah, by the way, is a forerunner of Christ, performing the same miracles of food from nothing (in his case oil and wheat), and resurrects a child from the dead. But back to the battle of the gods:

My god versus your god, for all the marbles. “How long will you keep hopping between two opinion? If the Lord is God, follow him; and of Baal, follow him. Elijah proposes an incineration contest. He’ll get one bull and 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah will get another,. Each side will call on its god or gods, and whichever wide can make the animal go up in flames worships the true Lord.
The rival priests go first. They shout to Baal all morning long, to no effect. Elijah interrupts their fruitless prayers with a ripsnorting insult-comic routine, a hilarious, sardonic attack on Baal and his silence. When noon comes, “Elijah mock[s] them, saying, ‘Shout louder! After all, he is a god! But he may be in conversation, he may be detained, or he may be on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up.’” Reading this, you can imagine exactly what kind of man Elijah was – brilliant, blunt and sarcastic. (Oh, and even better: “on a journey” is an ancient euphemism for “in the bathroom.” Baal is on the pot!)

Above all, Plotz highlights

how often the Bible shows its seams. My childish notion was that the Bible was a singularity, a unified whole, but the more I read it the more I see it wrestling with itself.

When I was an adolescent I saw this as evidence of an inconsistent and inconstant deity, and I viewed the insistence on paying homage (have no other gods but me, honour the Sabbath and keep if holy) as the hallmark of a jealous and insecure Lord. I wonder now how biblical literalists reconcile these discrepancies, but my point is that Plotz’s narrative illuminated the connection between these instructions and the survival of Judaism – following the letter of the Torah, engaging with the text, the Talmudic precepts and laws, have kept the Jews coherent, unassimilated and viable for over three millennia, and that’s not by accident.
It takes Plotz 184 pages to address the fact that, claims to the contrary, there’s no archaeological evidence for a long-lasting, significant Israelite civilisation in the Ancient world – far from the Bible accounts of “a mighty nation that destroyed Pharaoh, killed 185,000 Assyrians in a night, and exterminated every non-Jew in the Promised land, the physical evidence suggests that Israel-Judah was a tiny, short-lived nation. It existed for a few hundred deeply troubled years, buffeted by mightier surrounding civilizations.”
This is not a scholarly work, but it is considered, thoughtful, researched (increasingly, as Plotz delves deeper in to the Torah), and there's some additional information at the end of Good Book about his process and progress. Most of all I was interested in how reading the Torah from cover to cover, complete with reflection, discussion and context, affected his own belief system. If any of this sounds interesting to you, go forth and read! I've already loaned my copy to a friend. - Alex

The Bone Yard – Jefferson Bass

Bill Brockton is called away from his home under the University of Tennessee’s bleachers to Florida in the height of summer, at the request of forensic analyst Angie St. Claire – she’s convinced that her sister’s death, attributed by the coroner to suicide, was really a murder committed by the dead woman’s husband.
What promises to be a relatively quick trip is lengthened when an adolescent skull is found in the panhandle – decades old and damaged by time and predation, it bears the unmistakable signs of violent death. When a second skull, of similar age, vintage and trauma, appears Bill has to investigate. What he discovers reopens a dark and disturbing chapter in Florida’s history – and reveals a cycle of abuse that persists to this day.
I found this the most powerful in this six-part (to date) series. This is in part because it’s stepped away from the family aspect of Bill Brockton, which I was finding distracting, but mostly because of the subject matter. The heart of The Bone Yard is institutional child abuse, and the novel is a strong argument for change to a system that, particularly for young back men, compounds misfortune, poverty, youthful indiscretion and poor parenting, creating a perfect breeding ground for abuse, escalating crime, diminishing options, and a growing prison population. For anyone inclined to dismiss this as a problem of the past, disturbing contemporary cases are also discussed.
This is a novel, and the key message, along with a plea for better financing of forensic technology, is interwoven with a strong novel. There are also some light notes; I particularly liked the scene, clearly influenced by experience of police phone lines, when a press release about the first skull asks for anyone with information about a missing child (white, aged ten to twelve, and missing for months or even years) to call:
“We’ve had a few calls, including one from a guy who says that he’s the missing child.”
I laughed. “Did he say how he manages without his skull?”
“No,” Vickery deadpanned, “but I’m guessing the lack of a skull makes it a lot easier to go through life with his head up his ass.”
I was a little disappointed with the fifth novel in this series, and was relieved to find that my return was worth it - The Bone Yard combines an interesting mystery with a strong social message, including enough forensic detail to be genuine without becoming overly technical. The discomfort I had in Brockton's personality last time is not in evidence this time around, and the slightly more soapy aspects of the character arc (father/son issues and a pregnant ex-girlfriend fleeing from the law) are mercifully backgrounded. It is with relief and genuine excitement that I look forward to the release of book seven. - Alex

The Bill Brockton series:
Carved in Bone
Flesh and Bone
The Devil’s Bones
Bones of Betrayal
The Bone Yard
The Bone Thief

R & R Heller: The 13th Apostle

From the back of the book-
In the ruins of a medieval monastery in Dorset, the diary of an 11th century monk is uncovered-and the murders have already begun...
Cybersleuth Gil Pearson and expert translator Sabbie Karaim are thrown together to decipher the ancient text, rumoured to contain the location of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls-and unimaginable riches.
But what they discover is far more shocking. In their hands lies a document written by Jesus's fabled '13th apostle' which could rewrite history iteslf, sparking international terror.
Pursued by those intent on controlling the past, their frantic quest takes them across the globe as they stop at nothing to expose a two-thousand -year-old conspiracy.
Just who can you trust when you hold the fate of mankind in your hands?
I have a well-documented delight in stories based around conspiracy theory, particularly those with a religious focus. So whenever one comes my way I anticipate a great read. Since the publication of the Da Vinci Code and the lowering of standards therein entailed, I have been consistantly disappointed with the quality of the books on offer. Here I think we have hit a new low.
Every genre has its standards and expectations but that is a long way from the overt, shall I say homage, this title does to its mediocre predecessor. That is crime enough on its own but add in flat characters, poor pacing and possibly the worst dialogue ever and you have that new low I spoke of earlier.
The book opens with way too much back story and continues to, paradoxically, give too much detail and yet not enough. I could go on but the problems I had with it almost read like a beginners' guide as to what not to do and there are plenty of book on the market that go there. I was expecting much better from authors the front of the book claims are New York Times No. 1 bestsellers. I should have turned to their biography hidden in the back of the book where it clarifies that their previous work has been nonfiction dieting guides.
I understand the urge of authors who read a badly written book and think they could do better, I really do. But this pair should have stuck with what they know and left fiction well alone.-Lynn

About Last Night – Adele Parks

When cool new student Philippa-call-me-Pip Foxton decided she was her new best friend it transformed Stephanie Amstell’s life- formerly invisible and destined to a life of suburban mediocrity, she was now popular and interesting, and she had the confidence to go with it. It was a change that Steph would forever be grateful for.
Thirty years later Steph and Pip’s roles have reversed –Steph’s happily married to hard-working Julian and following their life plan; they moved to the country to raise their three boys, and Steph’s days area busy whirl of perfection creation. Pip, however, is a single mother,abandoned after three years of fighting and affairs by the father of her only child and virtually penniless. Mired in depression, furious at her cheating and untraceable ex, and lost for purpose, it’s only thanks to Steph’s emotional and financial support that she and Chloe are okay.
Steph loves her life, and she loves her best friend, but the one-way street is starting to get old. Why can’t Pip take some responsibility? She knew the meeting Steph encouraged her to make with a buyer from Selfridge’s would mean she couldn’t drop Chloe off at school, for example, but waited until morning to ask Steph to do it for her.
For Pip, so overwhelmed by anger, grief, shock and betrayal for the past two years, just functioning has been hard, but she’s ready for a change. In one day,, thanks to a combination of her artistic ability and chance, she not only gets a commission from the buyer but also meets a man – a man different from those she’s been attracted to in the past, a man who could possibly be her future. And on the same day Steph’s life changes forever, when she discovers her husband is having an affair.
About Last Night was engaging from a psychological perspective, but I was disappointed by its predictability – while there were certainly a couple of small surprises, but no twists and for the most part I guessed what was going to happen early on. For example, as soon as I read about how Steph replaced one set of perfectly functional crockery for another, and how Julian didn’t notice this or other domestic changes, I knew that she was replacing fulfilment and happiness for consumerism and the pursuit of a perfect-appearing life, and that Julian was having an affair.
There’s a lot of description and not a lot of dialogue, and the shifting third person perspective (primarily Steph, Pip, Julian and the thoroughly unlikeable mistress, Kirsten) allowed for different points of view but reduced my engagement.
This certainly isn’t to say that I disliked About Last Night, but I would have liked to be surprised more often. Certainly the plot device of “incomplete information leading to (contextually believable but avoidable) misunderstanding that changes everything” was disappointing, though a reflection of a number of issues.
There were several things that I really liked, from the idea of having a day (or perhaps just a meal) where every food begins with the same letter (“Chocolate, cherries, croissants, cake, crisps. Cashew nuts.”), to a really lovely scene that retrospectively redeemed Julian for me - experiencing the familiar symptoms of pregnancy after three boys, Steph doesn’t take a test and attributes minor differences between this and her previous pregnancies to it finally being a girl. She and Julian discuss names, focusing on Dairy, Rose and Lily. Sudden, crippling pain brings the unwelcome revelation that, rather than “growing a beautiful baby girl” Steph has ovarian cysts and will be unable to conceive again. The response of everyone around her is that there wasn’t a baby, and thus no need to grieve; Julian takes her to the beach, where he’s laid out a picnic feast par excellence, complete with Krug to toast themselves,and a bouquet of roses, daisies and lilies.
Kirsten is portrayed throughout the book as shallow, self-centred and immature; I was disappointed to have her redeemed in the final pages, by the love of a good man who's inexplicably interested in her. It was almost as though an editor told Parks she couldn't have an unwrapped end, and it didn't fit with the rest of her character arc - had that been the intent all along I think better ground work could have been laid.
Certainly I kept reading About Last Night 'til the end, and it's not a bad choice if you're going on holiday and want something moderately more substantial than your average beach book, but that won't make you work. I just wish there'd been a little less predictability about the whole thing. - Alex

A River in the Sky – Elizabeth Peters

The nineteenth in the Amelia Peabody series, about a pair of British Egyptologists and their growing family of blood and choice set in the first decades of the twentieth century. A River in the Sky and moves us back in time to 1910, before the production of grandchildren, but with the shadow of the Great War looming. Though Egypt is where Amelia and archaeologist husband Emerson’s hearts lie, they are persuaded to go to Palestine in pursuit of the inept Morley, who is hell-bent on discovering the Ark of the Covenant.
I do wish I could do justice the complicated, beautifully crafted, eminently readable world Peters has crafted – I like the setting, but i love the characters, particularly the relationships between Peabody and Emerson, and between them and Ramses. Sadly, in no small part because my reading pace has far exceeded the pace of my reviews, I have only a few fragments of specific memory from which to reconstruct a cohesive whole.
Emerson is, it will surprise nobody familiar with him, atheist, and his vehemence about the tissue of lies that comprises the Old Testament is profound. The opening pages also provide the first time, to my recollection, that Peabody has been mistaken, albeit in an area where the truth is only recently known; she says that:

If it is history you want, you had better skip on to the books of Kings and Chronicles. The historical validity of Exodus has been much debated – no, Emerson, I do not care to debate it now – but the lives of the kings of Israel and Judah are based on solid historical evidence.

Or made out of whole cloth.
I do admire the way Peters has created characters who, like Greenwood’s Phryne, have modern attitudes while retaining compatibility with their own era, rather than being contemporary characters in a historical setting.
As in, I think, all the novels featuring Ramses of age, the first-person Peabody narrative is intertwined with extracts from Manuscript H (because the series are presented as the publications of contemporary journals) that let us know what he’s up to in the absence of his parents. I found myself a little distracted on this occasion by who might have authored them in this scenario, which hasn’t previously troubled me, but that quickly passed as I became more fully emerged in the narrative.
I think the finest of this series is the first three books, and though there is enough context for the new reader to pick the series up at any point, I would strongly recommend beginning with Crocodile on the Sandbank to get the most out of the depth and richness of this quite lovely series. - Alex

Gwen Rowley: Knights of the Round Table-Lancelot

From the back of the book
Lancelot du Lac is the greatest knight of a peerless age, blessed by the Lady of the Lake with extraordinary military prowess. His fight ability has earned him a place at King Arthur's side, but the powers the Lady has given him come at a terrible price.
Elaine of Corbenic is struggling to hold her impoverished family together. The keep is a wreck and the peasants, starving, are on the brink of rebellion. Elaine's father is obsessed with finding the Holy Grail, and her older brother, maimed by Lancelot in a joust, is a bitter drunkard. Without a dowry, she has little hope for the future.
Incognito, Lancelot rides into Corbenic on his way to the king's tournament. He finds the practical Elaine irresistible. Thoroughly dismayed when she reveals her contempt for "Lancelot", he must face his own arrogance to win her hand. For only with Elaine at his side will Lancelot have the strength to free himself from the enchantments that bind him...
This was an interesting reworking of an old tale, reversing common assumption and casting a traditional hero in a poor light and a traditional anti-hero(ine) is a positive role.
The medieval world building is good and I thought that there was just enough magic introduced to place the story firmly in the legend category (as opposed to fictionalized history) but without tipping it over into pure fantasy.
The romance was believable, due to the very well developed characters.
I enjoyed this spin on a familiar story and look forward to finding copies of further books in this series.-Lynn

Phil Rickman: The Remains of an Altar

From the back of the book-
In high summer, darkness descends on Elgar's England.
Shadowed by the Malvern Hills, the village of Wychehill is no rural paradise but an uneasy mix of embittered farmers, escapees from the city and a pub with a reputation for drug dealing. Called in to investigate an unsettling series of road accidents, Merrily Watkins stumbles into a barbed tangle of alienation, murder...and the fatal pursuit of an archaic secret.
Another winner from mystery master, Phil Rickman. Here the story focuses more on local politics than the spiritual and could have been a bit dull and preachy but great pacing and larger than life characters make this a page turner. I particularly liked the secondary plot where we get to see some very good character development for Merrily's daughter Jane. Here she finally seems to be learning that she's not as mature and capable as she has previously thought and that there's no shame in seeking help.
As always the sense of place is haunting and the mystery complex but not convoluted. Truly a wonderful read.-Lynn

Gail Carriger: Soulless

From the back of the book-
First, she has no soul. Second, she's a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire-and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia is responsibe. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London's high society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?
I was almost put off this book in the first chapter when the heroine is found at a ball with a parasol. It just seemed so very wrong. However, I gave it a chance and I'm glad I did, things improve as the story goes on.
The world building is very good. Here paranormal creatures are recognised members of society. And just like the rest of society they are neither all good nor all bad but each species has its mixture of both. Cultural differences between the old and new world attitudes to the paranormal are wide but believable. Best of all, to my mind, the author doesn't get bogged down explaining the technology but focuses on the structure of society and her characters place within it.
The overall tone is light-hearted and there are some comic moments thanks to a vapid mother and half sisters and a best friend with no taste in hats.
I quite enjoyed this steampunk with a paranormal twist and I will be following up the rest of the series, with one tiny caveat. I'll be leaving quite some time between tales. Though I found the book vastly entertaining I feel that too much of this author's voice too soon would get irritating and I don't wan to spoil my fun.-Lynn

Maybe This Time – Jennifer Crusie

Andromeda Miller left her husband, North Archer, after only a year of marriage – after his uncle died North became increasingly absorbed in the family law business and Andie felt less and less important to him. Andie’s ready to wed again, to author Will Spenser, a man who is North’s antithesis in every way – he not only looks different (tall, blond) but unlike North Will’s genial, amiable, stable, and won’t forget about her because of the demands of his job. All Andie needs now is to return to North the decade’s worth of monthly alimony cheques she never wanted, and she can have the grown up, settled adult marriage she knows is right for her.
Despite her certainty and clarity of purpose, Andie somehow finds herself agreeing the take care of North’s orphaned wards for a month, with the assistance of a housekeeper. Their mother died delivering Alice, now eight, and their father, then grandmother, then aunt died in relatively quick succession, and none of the nannies North hired would stay on. Carter has been kicked out of the schools he was sent to, and the children are apparently decidedly odd. School teacher Andie feels quite sure there’s nothing here that she can’t sort out, with the aid of a plan, love, kindness, compassion, acceptance, structure and good food.
Within minutes of arriving, and clashing with housekeeper Mrs Crumb, Andie finds herself asserting her position as North’s wife. There’s no question the mansion is spooky, and the children are a little stranger than one might expect, even given their unhappy lives to date, but there’s more going on here that Andie realises, and before it’s all over she’ll be haunted, possessed, and invaded by a cast of unwanted family members and extended hangers on.
It’s not easy to capture the flavour of Crusie’s most recent novel; like all her recent work it combines a romance narrative with multiple other story lines to provide a deep, textured, satisfying whole. Maybe This Time is also peopled with some outstanding characters, including the couples’ mothers, hippy Flo and society matriarch Lydia, psychic Isolde and searcher Dennis, North’s brother Sullivan and his reporter girlfriend Kelly, and the spirits of the dead. Second only to Andie and North are Alice and Carter, who are more fully fleshed than the plot moppets that usually stand in for children in this genre.
I also like the dialogue – for some reason Andie’s response to another insight from Flo on how she and North are astronomically compatible really resonated:
“You know what I’d like for Christmas, Flo? Boundaries. You can gift me early if you like.”
I thought the way Andie began disconnecting from Will without realising it was beautifully done, and I also really liked the way Crusie set up and depicted the biggest difference of opinion between her hero and heroine – the existence of spirits. How? You’ll just have to read it to find out! - Alex

Sister’s Keeper – Randye Lordon

Private investigator Sydney Sloane has mixed feelings about her sister Nora coming home to Manhattan to visit – she loves Nora, but her sister disapproves of Sydney’s orientation, and isn’t too pleased about her profession, either. They put that all to one side, however, to attend an AIDS fundraiser catered by Nora’s lifelong best friend, Zoe Freeman. The evening is a stunning success, but when Zoe fails to meet Sydney, Nora and dashing André Masire at a bar afterward, Sydney decides to call it a night – only to pass the scene where Zoe’s been killed in a hit-run.
Curiously, Zoe was carrying credit cards of a Louise Carson – a woman nobody can find. Sydney senses that something is a little off, and before she knows it she’s embroiled in a complicated puzzle involving a sadistic misogynist, secret identities, off-shore bank accounts, a missing ex-husband/stalker, unrequited love, giant water bugs, bad Argentinian wine, scheming rival caterers, and several more deaths.
Along the way Sydney realises that she might be in love with her current partner, Leslie; becomes reacquainted with the only man who’s seriously tempted her (former co-cadet, now detective, Brian); and, with the aid of her aunt Minnie, brokers a relationship between Nora and Leslie. She also, somehow, commits to going camping.
Published in 1994 and the second in a series, Sister’s Keeper has only slightly dated – I don’t know how much AIDS fundraising there is in this post-antiretroviral world, but people still die of HIV/AIDS, and there’s still a disturbing amount of homophobic discomfort. What has changed since Sister’s Keeper was released: Italy is part of the European Union, so there’s no Italian currency; the dart board in Sydney’s partner Max’s office includes photos of Idi Amin, George Bush senior, Nancy Reagan, Newt Geingrich, and the very then-topical but now defunct Mike Milken and David Duke; and there’s a little technology lag – not only no internet and mobile/cell phones, but even cordless phones are a novelty. These are small elements, and had I not been looking for them I probably wouldn’t even have noticed. More significantly, though, a substantial plot element involving a very good false identity (complete with passport) would attract significant official attention now, but is of only passing interest to anyone but Sydney and Max. In our post-9/11 world, and particularly as I write this review sitting in a lounge at LAX, the idea of police being blasé about false documents is strikingly discordant, and telling about how much the world has changed in little over a decade.
These are most certainly not weaknesses, particularly in a novel that has managed to retain most of its original narrative power. There are a few flaws in the plot, most significantly, the question of how the unconnected Zoe managed to directly contact a master forger. I also found it just a little hard to swallow that not one but two characters with pivotal information are murdered in front of Sydney, just as they’re about to reveal vital information.
These few quibbles aside, however, Sister’s Keeper is as strong and compelling as I remember from my first reading, the better part of two decades ago. The characters are well crafted and distinct, particularly Sydney. There’s a little sex, conveyed very much in the Greenwood vein of just enough information to give the reader a sense of what’s happening without any detail (a pleasant contrast to contemporary romances, though I grant you this is a different genre as well as a different era). The plot certainly has its occasional creative leaps, but all in all it was a pleasant rediscovery. And it’s not relevant, but I also liked that one of the two books Sydney has on the go (one for public consumption, the other for home) is by a favourite author overdue for a reread and review, Sandra Scoppottone’s Donnato and Daughter. As I said, nothing germane but nice for me.
Sister’s Keeper is the second in a perhaps five book series – though I read Brotherly Love I can’t find it in my great wall of book-filled boxes, but the background is woven skilfully enough through this instalment that it’s not a requirement. I do have the next two sitting at home, accessible, and may well pick one up in the next wee while. - Alex

Anonymums – anonymous

Subtitled Three women, the truth and a whole lot of dares, Anonymums is an account of three Australian women (Mums A, B and C) – Mum A had met one of them several times at an annual writers’ festival, and the other online. In both cases the women clicked, and she suspected that they, like her, might be diminished by their lives as suburban wives and mothers. “Most days I felt like a zombie – a mindless, animated slave to two needy, demanding kids...” The final straw came when Mum A realised she had a cleaning sponge preference. And thus was born the project – for three months each Mum would get a dare from one of her friends and have to respond truthfully to a question from the other, with twist that the last months’ truth and dare had to be self-set.
There were guidelines – no skydiving, no affairs, nothing that could wind up on Jackass, no salsa – and the dares seemed relatively mild. In December Mum A had to go to a shopping centre, line up, sit on Santa’s knee, ask him for a steam mop and buy a photo for posterity, Mum B had to wear siren-red lipstick for a week, and Mum C had to have a Brazilian wax.
The truths were a little more challenging – tell me about the worst mother you know, tell me your most used sexual fantasy, tell the truth about how you sometimes wish you’d never have children. And in all cases the women found themselves changing, expanding, and challenging aspects of lives that had been mundane.
Anonymums is a recognition of the unrelenting monotony of motherhood, the inequality of parenthood, the frustration and resentment of the stay at home parent, and a realisation that this doesn’t have to be the case – I found Mum A’s self-imposed Big Dare, to change the running of the house and reduce the resentment she felt toward her husband, possibly the most interesting.
I also found her response to the question “tell me about the worst mother you know” fascinating, because of the way it challenged her to look at the truth of this woman’s life rather than her (admittedly distressing) behaviour born of compromise.
I also liked Mum B’s observation, on day 3 of a week-long dare to abstain from both chocolate and alcohol,

8AM
I have a headache. Could it be withdrawal? And if so, from what?
More likely it’s from hearing all about episode 24 of Ben 10. What happened to the Wiggles? That’s what I’d like to know. Then, we knew where we were: a bit of Hot Potato, a rock or two of the bear, point your fingers, do the twist and jump in the Big Red Car. But now, I’ve got ‘diamond-head guy’ and 'four-arm guy’ and eight other guys to deal with. If Big Boy actually knew anything about this cartoon I wouldn’t mind so much – but he’s never even seen the actual show. Won’t let him watch it because I think he’s too young.
Instead, I was watching firsthand the power of word-of-mouth advertising. Kids, it turns out, are naturals at it. Some kid came to pre-school with an enormous plastic omitrix-watch-thingy, and voila! The Game Has Changed.

I’m not a mother, though most of my friends are, and I have in my life children ranging in age from infants through to Lynn’s teens. I also remember the experience of co-parenting my younger siblings. I believe the hype about parental love being transformative and encompassing and amazing, but I also know it’s exhausting, unrelenting, consuming, never-ending and unrecognised. Anonymums redresses this somewhat, and I like the ending, where they are not only reinvigorated by vow to continue challenging themselves and each other.
I don’t need to re-read it, though, and have left it at the airport, hopefully to be picked up and perused by a mum in need of a reminder of her own identity outside the mum label. – Alex

Delete This At your Peril - Neil Forsyth

Bob Servant, something of a ne’er-do-well in Dundee, is an unlikely hero – in his sixties, with a somewhat shady past, a self-proclaimed lover of skirt and jazz mags, he is nonetheless a champion of the people.
Or at least a champion of those of us (which is almost everyone) who have received unsolicited emails promising us a percentage of a fortune, exotic friendship, or offers of highly-paid work. Forsyth presents Bob’s emails with only a brief introduction (giving a little of Bob’s background as a window cleaner with a decreasing clientele, preceded by his position as head cheeseburger creator in the period leading up to Broughton Ferry’s renown Cheeseburger Wars) and the occasional annotating footnote (“This is entirely untrue. Dundee’s Evening Telegraph newspaper carries a precise reflection of the day’s exchange rates.”).
Bob’s work is otherwise allowed to stand on its’ own, in a series of exchanges between Bob and eleven spammers. For those unfamiliar with the world of spam-baiting, it’s the practice of wasting the time, effort and occasionally money of spammers. Though the phrase isn’t used in Delete This At Your Peril, that is unquestionably what the series of emails do.
If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you clicked ‘reply’ to requests for the transitory use of your bank account to launder hidden riches, check out ‘Lions, Gold and Confusion,’ ‘Uncle Bob’s African Adventure,’ ‘Bobby and Benjamin are New Friends’ and my favourite, ‘The Hunt for Jerren Jimjams,’ in which Bob has the spammer tracking down and apprehending a fictitious rip-off merchant. What about offers of friendship by beautiful women from far off lands? See ‘Alexandra, Bob and Champion,’ ‘Olga, Sasha and the Jamaican Lakers’ and ‘Natalia and her grandmother’ – my favourite part of this last exchange is when ‘Natalia’ begins working her grandmother into her emails and Bob responds:

I’m sorry to hear about your grandmother. I hope she doesn’t get ill in such a way that would mean you’d have to ask me for a few quid. Though I’m sure that won’t happen...

which is immediately followed by a tale of woe, imminent surgery and medical expense, and poor Natalia is alone in the world apart from Bob and her grandmother.

This is terrible, terrible news. Who could have seen this coming? It’s a bolt from the blue Natalia, no doubt about it. Your Grandmother is a fantastic little chap. Tell her to be strong and, for all out sakes, hang on. Because...........I’M COMING TO SAVE YOU That’s right Natalia, I’m coming to Russia!

Natalia protests that Russia is entirely too dangerous, and that sending the $450US would be far less expensive. Bob is undaunted by danger, until h bangs into Cruncher McKenzie (“yes, that Cruncher McKenzie”) who is also concerned about the risks of peril in Russia. Sadly Bob is compelled to rescind his offer of aid but, in consolation, includes the lyrics of Billy Oceans’ hit “When the going gets tough.” Natalia now believes Bob is not serious, and the exchange ends:

From: Bob Servant
To: Natalia
Subject: re: Can we save Natalia’s grandmother? No we can’t
I share your suspicions

The fun of the book is watching the increasing lengths to which the spammers will go, the outrageousness of Bob’s emails, and the increasing frustration of the spammers before they decide to call it a day. In ‘The hunt for Jerren Jimjams’ the initial enquiry from Dr Mammadou Kouassi offers Bob 30% of $US25 million, but Bob doesn’t trust anyone from Senegal. Though he initially claims this is because it sounds so similar to ‘seagull’ he agrees, when the insightful Dr Mammadou suggests it, that this is because a Senegalese man previously did him wrong. Keep to redress this harm, Dr Mammadou offers to track down the offender, armed only with his name (Jerren Jimjams) and the vital information that he lives by the sea and has long hair. Mammadou also gives Bob the contact information of Youssou Ba, a gendarmerie, who is keen to apprehend the assailant. Not only do they manage to find him, they also identify another victim, Randy Whytyng, an American from Westbrook who lost $72,000 and has offered Youssou $12,500 for the apprehension of Jimjams. Bob is so impressed by the herculean efforts of the gendarmerie that he decides to fly out to Dakar with money, but his attached itinerary shows his end destination as Dhaka (Bangladesh instead of Senegal), which causes to end of hysterical, capitalised emails, to which Bob responds:

I have just landed in Dhaka and, quite frankly, I’m absolutely furious with you. Why the hell did you tell me you lived in Dhaka if you wanted me to come to Senegal? I’ve wound up in Bangladesh.

There’s a happy ending after all, though – Bob doesn’t respond to Mammadou’s requests for “just £500” but does find love, with a bouncer named Kazi in Dhaka. They send a wedding announcement to Mammadou, Youssou and Randy, hoping

that you can get time off from the hospital and the police station and Randy can extend his trip. It won’t be the same without the three of you, because you are such distinctive, completely separate characters.

I did enjoy Delete This at Your Peril, a book I’ve had on my to read list for a while (and that I bought at the airport instead of reading any of the three books I brought with me from my very high to be read pile). However, though the character of Bob is engaging, there isn’t anything here that you couldn’t read for free online, at any of the dozens (or more) of 419 spam baiting websites. My very favourite of these is here. – Alex

Adams + Clamp:Touch of Evil

When a local Vampire Queen knows she is dying she decides to take the ultimate revenge on a mortal enemy by turning her into the next Vampire Queen. Needless to say, our heroine isn't up for it and soon finds herself fighting off a whole hoard of vampires all attempting to bring her in at the orders of their dying, and totally insane, Queen.
These vampires will stop at nothing, and their most effective weapon is to threaten the family and friends of their victim. This they do until they force a showdown between the dying Queen and her chosen successor that results in the woman being infected with the vampire parasite.
Fortunately, with the help of her family and friends, she fights off the parasite and avoids a fate worse than death.
But the death of the Vampire Queen leaves a vacancy that is filled by another woman with a personal vendetta against our heroine. One can only assume that things are going from bad to worse from here on in.
This is the first book in a trilogy and despite the semi-cliff hanger ending could be read as a stand alone novel.
The story sets itself up with a summary of previous events. This is a peculiar choice for the first book of a trilogy. I immediately felt on the back foot. So much so that I went and double checked that this is indeed the first book of the series (it is). Perhaps these characters had a short story somewhere, it certainly felt like I'd missed some crucial action somewhere along the way.
Other than that I really liked the world building. Here vampires are the result of a parasite that somehow nests in the hosts brain and makes use of the person until they eventually die (usually about four years later). This is a unique idea as far as I am aware and very well presented. The world building is worth the admission price.
Sadly the story is let down by extremely poor characterisation. The heroine is, of course, beloved by everyone. In fact, most of unrelated male characters have been her lovers at some point in the past, and still care for her deeply. Though I am pushed to see any particularly likable behaviour, let alone lovable. Putting aside the fact that she treats her brother very badly, I lost all sympathy for her very early in the piece. When she goes to hospital after a minor accident and puts herself before a head injured child with active bleeding (justifing the action with the thought that she was unhurt and so would only take a moment) there was nothing she could do for the rest of the story that redeemed her in my eyes.
A great world populated by unlikable, and unbelievable, characters, I will not be following up the rest of this trilogy-Lynn

Gone Tomorrow – Lee Child

Drifting righter of wrongs Jack Reacher is in New York City for, as usual, no particular reason. At two AM there are half a dozen people in his subway carriage – and passenger number four, a black-clad white woman in her forties, is making Reacher’s intelligence-trained alarm bells ring. Though it seems bizarre, because of the timing if nothing else, she meets enough points on the Israeli eleven-point checklist (twelve for men) to mark her as a possible suicide bomber.
Reacher’s attempt to stop her desperate action has far-reaching consequences – though his read was a false positive, a woman dies and that starts Reacher off on another mission, to uncover why an ordinary suburban woman would attempt something drastic and markedly out of character.
Like the author who introduced me to the genre, the estimable Bagley, Childs combines a seemingly EveryMan (who is far from average) with a tense, topical plot, a little sex and good writing to create a coherent, absorbing, readable whole. And, like Bagley, he includes tidbits of fascinating information, some of which is relevant to the plot ahead and some of which appears to be there just for the joy of knowledge. In Gone Tomorrow these nuggets include subway surfing, rats, and a disturbing insight into the startling sadism of Afghan women against their enemies, with a quote from Kipling:

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,
And go to your God like a soldier.

As is so often the case in Childs’ work, there are occasional scenes and passage that shine, like this:

“And I read a book that figured the part about the virgins is a mistranslation. The word is ambiguous. It comes in a passage full of food imagery. Milk and honey. It probably means raisins. Plump, and possibly candied or sugared.”
“They kill themselves for raisins?”
”I’d love to see their faces.”
…”And why would a woman want virgins anyway? A lot of sacred texts are mistranslated. Especially where virgins are concerned. Even in the New Testament, probably. Some people say Mary was a first time mother, that’s all. From the Hebrew word. Not a virgin. The original writers would laugh, seeing what we made of it all."

In Gone Tomorrow those are the things I remember more than the plot - though I was left with a strong sense of New York City, sufficient that I could navigate parts of Manhattan quite well, the plot itself is considerably fainter. The arc of some of Childs' novels has stayed with me for quite some time after I closed the page; this is not one of those, but I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels
Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For

Nothing to Lose - Lee Child

Jack Reacher only bothers those who bother him, or others. Directed where the winds, chance and his inner compass take him, Reacher is Colorado, in the small town of Hope. Twelve miles away lies Despair – motivated by nothing more than curiosity, and unable to get a lift, Reacher sets out to walk the empty road that joins them. All he wants is a cup of coffee and a bed, and he’ll be on his aimless way come morning, an uneventful moment in a criss-crossing meander across the continent.
When Reacher is refused service, accosted by deputies, charged with vagrancy and escorted out of the township back to Hope, he’s pissed. Despair, it tuns out, is a company town – dirt poor but for an enormous metal recycling plant, everyone is directly or indirectly dependent on its owner, Jerry Thurman. Reacher senses that there’s more than that, though. He thinks Thurman’s hiding something, and it’s something big – which explains the military post nearby.
Less layered than some of Childs’ other works, Nothing to Lose includes the elements fundamentally part of the series – a protagonist with a strong moral compass, a sharp sense of curiosity and a dogged determination not to be told what to do, sniffs out a situation that seems slightly questionable on the surface but hides a significant issue. He investigates, connects disparate clues through a combination of arcane knowledge and intellect, and uncovers the wrongdoing. He incapacitates the peons, disables the architect, and empowers the disenfranchised, enjoying a little no-strings interlude on the side, before returning to his endless journey. The later novels tend to have wider-implication mysteries (dirty bombs, large scale conspiracies) in contrast with the first dozen or so, and occasionally Child drifts from the far-fetched to the implausible.
This sounds as though the series is formulaic, and that would be an injustice. Nothing to Lose is a little further fetched than some of its predecessors, and I missed some of the subtler elements of the very best of his works, but what sets his work a notch above is the utter immersiveness of the series, the austere attraction of the clear-sighted Reacher, and the crystalline beauty of his writing. Those aspects remain, and make this series one well worth continuing with. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels
Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For

Makita Brottman: The Solitary Vice-Against Reading

From the back of the book

Mikita Brottman wonders, Just why is reading so great? It's a solitary practice, one that takes away from time that could be spent developing important social networking skills. Reading is not required for health, happiness, or a loving family. And, if reading is so important, why are catch and juvenile slogans like "Reading Changes Lives" and "Champions Read" needed to hammer the point home?
Fearlessly tackling the notion that non-readers are doomed to lives of despair and mental decay, Brottman makes the case that the value of reading lies not in its ability to ward of Alzheimer's or that it's a pleasant hobby. Rather, she argues that like that other well-known solitary vice, masturbation, reading is ultimately not an act of pleasure but a tool for self-exploration, one that allows people to see the world through the eyes of others and lets them travel deep into the darkness of the human condition.

This book captured my attention right from the introduction with the combination of fascinating material and an easy going style. Sadly it was unable to hold my interest past chapter three.
The first third of the book contains a spookily familiar childhood reminiscence (and coincidentally reading list). Here the author also manages to articulate feelings about reading, specifically Literature, that I would never be able to express so succinctly. But sadly after this the book runs off at a tangent that I was unwilling to follow.
Chapter 4 sings the merits of celebrity tell-alls, and while I am uninterested in the subject (a situation the author believes impossible) I persevered in the hope of a return to the delight of the earlier pages. It wasn't to be. The beginning of chapter 5 offered little of interest. Skimming the rest of the book I simply found more of the same. Chapter after chapter devoted to various incarnations of 'gossip' pages. I would allow that the subject has a place in a book of this nature but I put it that it is unworthy of a book in its own right (which is what this book, to all intents and purposes, becomes). At the end of each chapter an attempt is made to relate the contents back to the original theme of the book. I believe these attempts to be singularly unsuccessful.
This is not a book I would recommend but if the opportunity arose to read the first three chapters I would say go ahead and have a look but be willing to do as the author suggests and put it aside as soon as you find yourself no longer engaged. I think you can guess where that point was for me.- Lynn

Bad Luck and Trouble – Lee Child

Though he hasn’t a home, Jack Reacher isn’t homeless, he’s a drifter – since leaving the army he moves as the spirit takes him, carrying nothing but the clothes in his back. And, since tightening regulations in the aftermath of 9/11, a passport and an ATM card. Always interested in playing with numbers, Reacher keeps track of his account balance, down to interest paid and fees charged. So when his balance unexpectedly swells by $1,030 he not only notices, he analyses its’ meaning, and his present intersects with his past.
All of Reacher’s time in the army had been as an MP; for a decade he headed an elite team, the Special Investigators – a handpicked four-man, two-woman squad he knew better than his family. Bad Luck and Trouble takes Reacher, and the reader, back to those days – someone’s picking off members of the Special Investigators, and though the squad has been long disassembled their motto endures: you do not mess with the Special Investigators.
The eleventh Reacher novel has all the series trademarks – a protagonist who is both everyman and superman, short sentences packed with action, military insight in a civilian world, a short-lived relationship where both parties leave happy, justice done, the bad punished and the good at least no worse off than they were, and our hero strolling toward the horizon.
It this makes it sound like I think the novel is formulaic then I’ve done Child a disservice – one of the things I enjoy about the Reacher series is the author’s ability to make each installment fresh while maintaining consistency, to balance a developed character with a minimum of back story for new readers.
I’ve been glutting a little on Child this week, as I procrastinate about more serious reading, and for the first time realised that the novels alternate between first and third person perspectives; this is the latter, which allows scenes like the arresting prologue, where Reacher doesn’t feature.
Child is usually very good at conveying specialised information without being obvious – I did find myself jerked out of the narrative just a little at the explanation about a cryptic note reading “650 at $100 per”:

The k abbreviation meant thousand and was fairly standard among U.S. Army personnel of Sanchez’s generation, coming either from math or engineering school or from having served overseas where distances were measured in kilometres instead of miles. A kilometre was nicknamed a klick and measured a thousand metres, about 60 per cent of a mile. Therefore $100K meant one hundred thousand dollars. The per was a standard Latin preposition meaning for each, as in miles per gallon or miles per hours.

Perhaps if I came from a background where the concept of a kilometre wasn’t second nature this section wouldn’t be so dry. That’s only a quibble, though. For the most part Bad Luck and Trouble is not only a great escapist novel but also gives the interested reader a new level of insight into Reacher’s character and past. I find myself no closer to understanding why being rootless is so important to him, but that’s not essential to enjoying the narrative. For the fastidious it is, however, essential not to think too deeply about the ramifications of a travelling man who carries neither spare socks or jocks, nor deodorant. Provided you can, and if you’re looking for a novel that will involve you without requiring great intellectual investment, this is for you. I thoroughly relished my vicarious visit with characters almost as different from me as it would be possible for a contemporary westerner to be. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels
Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For

The Coroner's Lunch - Colin Cotterill

Tran, Tran, and Hok broke through the heavy end-of-wet-season clouds. The warm night air rushed against their reluctant smiles and yanked their hair vertical. They fell in neat formation, like sleet. There was no time for elegant floating or fancy acrobatics; they just followed the rusty bombshells that were tied to their feet with pink nylon string.
Tran the elder led the charge. He was he heaviest of the three. By the time he broke the surface of the Nam Ngum reservoir he was already ahead by two seconds. If this had been the Olympics, he would have scored a 9.98 or thereabouts. There was barely a splash. Tran the younger and Hok-the-twice-dead pierced the water without so much as a pulse-beat between them.
A quarter of a ton of unarmed ordnance dragged all three men quickly to the smooth muddy bottom of the lake and anchored them there. For two weeks, Tran, Tran, and Hok swayed gently back and forth in the current and entertained the fish and algae that fed on them like diners at a slow-moving noodle stall.

From its arresting opening The Coroner's Lunch is a fascinating and very different mystery. Set in Laos in 1976, just after the triumph of Communism, it introduces a unique detective - the drafted, septuginarian coroner of Lao, Dr Siri Paiboun.
At 72, and after almost a lifetime of service to the Party, Dr Siri Paiboun was looking forward to retirement. There is, however, no such thing as a pension in Communist Lao – from each according to his ability, to each according to his need, after all, and Siri can still work. In fact, he has been drafted in to the role of national coroner – and his lack of either educaton or equipment to adequately fulfil that role is irrelevant.
Though a member of the Party since his student days in Paris, Siri's embrace of Communist was initiated not by political fervour but lust - the object of his desires, his eventual wife, nursing student Boua made it clear that only through the red flag could her heart be won.
He is ably aided, at least, by two assistants – nurse Dtui is stolid and dedicated, primary carer for her unwell mother, and possessed of hidden depths; the meticulous Mr Geung is revivled by the rank and file, who fear and shun the diabled, but despite his Down syndrome Siri's morgue attendent is through, dedicated, and often provides unique uinsight into cases.
Another thing that adds to Siri's uniqueness is his intermittent visits from the spirits of the dead, soemthing this rational scinetist at first rejects, but which helps him to unravel the causes of death in patients where he'd otherwise be lost.
There's a lovely scene where Siri is speaking to the young daughters of a woman who has recently died.

"Manoly, do you know where your mother is now?"
"Yes."
"Where?"
"In the temple."
"That's not your mommy."
"Yes, it is."
"No. In the temple is just the package your mommy was kept in." The smallest sister giggled at this. Manoly seemed angry.
"It's Mommy."
Siri reached out for her hand and put it against his face.
"This skin, this hair, all this outside stuff. It isn't me. It's just my package. It's like the wrapper around the sweet; it isn't the sweet itself. What we really are is all inside the package. All our feelings. All our good moods and bad moods. All our ideas, our cleverness, our love, that's what a person really is.
"It's called a spirit. Your mommy's spirit has left her package already. I met your mommy's spirit when I was in your room that night."
"Is that like a ghost?"
"No. A ghost is just something in make-believe stories. A spirit is really her. Some people can see it, but most people can't."

A lot of Laotian culture and tradition is woven through the novel. I particularly liked the way of determining if a child is old enough for school - when your arm can reach over your head to touch the opposite ear. The combination of history, mystery, spirituality and location make the Coroner's Lunch a novel unlike any i've read before, and I've already started on the second in the series. - Alex

The Enemy – Lee Child

In 1989 Jack Reacher was an MP – as the New Year, and the last decade of the century, dawns the political landscape is set for a power shift, for the Berlin Wall is coming down, and with it the end of the Cold War. Recently relocated to North Carolina, Reacher has every expectation of an uneventful segue to 1990, until gets a call from the local police – a soldier’s been found dead in a nearby hourly rate motel.
When the body turns out to be that of a two-star general – one who should have been in Europe, no less – Reacher’s antenna pings. This becomes an alarm bell when his death knock to the general’s widow instead turns up another body. Ad thus begins a covert investigation into the armed forces itself – an investigation that starts the career-oriented Reacher on his path to roaming righter of wrongs.
The Enemy is something of a departure from the seven preceding Reacher novels – the first to entirely flashback, it gives us a far more fully fleshed picture of the often enigmatic lone wolf regular readers have come to almost know. We meet Joe, his older brother (previously encountered in the first Reacher novel, Killing Floor, under very different circumstances):

I hadn’t seen him for more than three years. The last time we’d been together was for our father’s funeral. Since then we had gone our separate ways.
…He was two years older than me, and he always had been, and he always would be. As a kid I used to study him and think, that’s how I’ll look when I grow up. Now I found myself doing it again. From a distance we could have been mistaken for each another. Standing side by side it was obvious that he was an inch taller and a little slighter than me, But mostly it was obvious he was a little older than me. It looked like we had started out together, but he had seen the future first, and it had aged him, and worn him down. … I didn’t know what he did for a living. He had probably told me, it wasn’t a national secret of anything. It was something to do with the Treasury Department. He had probably told me all the details and I probably hadn’t listened. Now it seemed too late to ask.
“You were in Panama,” he said. “Operation Just Cause, right?”
“Operation Just Because,” I said. “That’s what we called it.”
“Just because what?”
"Just because we could. Just because we all had to have something to do. Just because we’ve got a new Commander in Chief who wants to look tough.”…
“You got Noriega yet?”
"Not yet.”
"So why did they post you back here?”
“We took twenty-seven thousand guys,” I said. “It wasn’t down to me personally.”

I know this doesn’t look like much, but there’s so much foreshadowing here, for The Enemy (even the title) and for Reacher, that I found it a really clear example of how intelligent Childs’ writing is – though the books look like fairly standard action novels there’s really subtle layering there.
Joe and Reacher are flying to France, in response to an uncharacteristic summons from her doctor. The scenes here, and the occasional passing reference to her in chronologically later books, are the only glimpses we have of Josephine Reacher née Moutier and her effect on our hero; they serve to contextualise Reacher’s unwavering commitment to doing the morally right thing as a family tradition, while embedding the presence in the present of the past.
Josephine is dying, of cancer she chose a year ago not to treat. The scenes where Joe and Reacher talk about intervention and, a page later, where she talks about ho and why she made her decision, are beautiful. They articulate no only generational and cultural differences in attitudes to life and death but also grief, loss, and mourning.

“Won’t you miss us, Mom,” [Joe] asked.
“Wrong question,” she said. “I’ll be dead. I won’t be missing anything. It’s you that will be missing me…You’re really asking another question… You’re asking, how can I abandon you? You’re asking, aren’t I concerned with your affairs any more? Don’t I want to see what happens with your lives? Have I lost interest in you?”
We said nothing.
“I understand,” she said. “Truly I do. It’s like walking out of a movie. Being made to walk out of a movie you’re really enjoying. That’s what worried me about it. I would never know how it turned out. I would ever know what happened to you boys in the end, with your lives. I hate that part. But then I realized, obviously I’ll walk out of the movie sooner or later. I mean, nobody lives for ever. I’ll never know how it turns out for you, I’ll never know what happens with your lives. Not in the end, Not even under the best of circumstances. I realized that. Then it didn’t seem to matter so much. It will always be an arbitrary date. It will always leaving me wanting more.”

Although for me these elements of family, character development and context, including the way and the why of Reacher’s departure from the institution he’d previously been part of from birth, are the centre pieces of The Enemy, they're surrounded by an engrossing, somewhat far-reaching and far-fetched but sadly believable conspiracy-based plot. - Alex

The Jack Reacher novels
Killing Floor; Die Trying; Tripwire; The Visitor; Echo Burning; Without Fail; Persuader;The Enemy; One Shot;The Hard Way; Bad Luck and Trouble; Nothing to Lose; Gone Tomorrow; 61 Hours; Worth Dying For