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A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George. Crime fiction 9/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/29/2007 9:07 AM
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A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George [ISBN 0 340 83129 4] is the very first of George’s Inspector Lynley mysteries (written in 1989) and is really one of her best. The characters of Lynley and Barbara Havers is much rougher than the television personas have smoothed – Haver’s working class edge is the same but Lynley is this upper class fop painted in two dimensions. However, saying that, the plot is seriously clever
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Perfect Match by Jodi Piccoult. Literary Fiction 6/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/28/2007 3:49 PM
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This novel, Perfect Match [ISBN 0 340 89722 8] is written to the usual Jodi Piccolt formula – common life tragedy padded in a long-winded narrative heavy on the psychology, but with a contrived feel. The plot of this one is simple but the underlying premise – if you’re a mother you can get away with anything even when you’re wrong – is the type of Piccoult sophistry we are by now used to.
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The Land of the Living by Nicci French. Crime fiction 9/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/27/2007 8:48 AM
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I have reviewed a number of books by Nicci French (do a search on the blog to find them) and this book, The Land of the Living [ISBN 0 141 00650 1 ], though I have read it before some time ago, is just as good on its re-read. The plot is excellent, tight and unguessable but beautifully planned and an unexpected ending. The narrative is grippingly suspenseful, and very believable
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The King of Lies by John Hart. American murder mystery 4/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/26/2007 10:32 AM
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John Hart’s novel The King of Lies [ISBN 13 978 0 312 36375 a] illustrates one of my increasing fears – that the American crime fiction novel is diverging further as its own genre and becoming more difficult to read, more introspective and self-regarding, more full of unresolved angst. This novel’s plot is pretty run of the mill – everything that is going to happen is signalled from the outset due to a particularly awful lead character
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The Boleyn Inheritance by Philippa Gregory. Historical fiction 8/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/25/2007 11:24 AM
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Phillipa Gregory’s historical novel The Boleyn Inheritance [ISBN 978 0 00 719033 1] is one of a series written about the Tudor period generally and the Boleyns in particular. Not only are these books very readable, but also they are meticulously faithful to historical background – everything that happens in the book, could have well happened. What she does is to put flesh onto historical fact – embroider dialogue from known behaviours, and uses the mechanism of changing first person accounts, which works very well as a way of giving different viewpoints, and elucidating what is happening
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Stripped by Brian Freeman. American Crime Fiction 10/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/23/2007 8:55 AM
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Brian Freeman’s crime fiction novel Stripped [ISBN 978 0 7553 2537 5 ] is a terrific read, and an example of a master storyteller, that can keep you engaged and wondering all the way through. Its one of his series where Jonathon Stride and Serena Dial are detectives, and though they are only mediocre characters when compared with other detective series, and, indeed, their relationship has so much angst it appears contrived, this doesn’t affect the quality of the plot or narrative, even with the dodgy gay and transsexuals just sneaked in there.
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The Glass Palace by Amitav Ghosh. Historical Fiction 8/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/22/2007 10:56 AM
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Amitav Ghosh’s historical novel The Glass Palace [ISBN 0 00 651409 X] is an epic story of three generations of a family moving from Burma, Malaya and India at a time in the 20th century before the partition of India. An Indian, writing in English Amitav Ghosh’s brings new historical and human insights into the stories of the period though sometimes I felt the canvas was both too small and too large at the same time. Though the characters are drawn in detail with sympathy and understanding, the background historical and geographical information at times fades so much into the background its difficult to put the happenings into the context of historical happenings
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White Mughuls by William Dalrymple. Historical non-fiction 8/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/21/2007 9:41 AM
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William Dalrymple’s impressively researched historical non-fiction book, White Mughuls [ISBN 0 00 655096 7] was winner of the 2003 Wolfson History Prize, and this is not surprising. The account of the British in 18th century India blows away many of the accepted views of that time by using contemporary letters and papers used as sources for the first time
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Lifeless by Mark Billingham. Crime fiction 7/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/20/2007 1:01 PM
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Mark Billingham’s crime fiction novel Lifeless [ISBN 0 7515 3616 4] I found a very heavy read. Its not that its boring, it just moves so slowly its hard to persist for long periods as the action is dripped out in very small globs. The plot is quite opaque at the outset even though you are led to believe its straightforward, it clearly isn’t. The narrative is full of detail but not a lot of it actually adds to moving the plot forwards
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A Fancy to Kill For by Hilary Bonner. Crime fiction 7/10 |
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By bookworm on
6/19/2007 3:16 PM
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Hilary Bonner’s novel A Fancy to Kill For [ISBN 0 09 943586 1] is a nice, lively quick murder mystery interspersed with titillating details of more intimate happenings (I can’t call them relationships). A straightforward plot and a narrative you know there must be a twist in – and indeed there is.
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