To The Last Page

A fictional novel written by a real-life police chief, A Florentine Death would appear to have all the elements for an explosive exposé of Italian society’s complex and uneasy mix of religion, crime, politics and cover-ups, but sadly the author, whether through prudence or just lack of literary ability, is unable to make much of it. The writing is amateurish, the dialogue unconvincing – I don’t think you can blame the translator in this case - and the tone is horribly self-important throughout. Even more self-regarding is the plot of a serial killer who has hatched an elaborate series of murders of homosexuals which - as the literate riddles he sends to Ferrara indicate - he intends to crown with the death of the Florence Chief of Police himself. The least you could expect from Giuttari is an insider's knowledge of the reality of crime investigation and the political wrangling that goes on around it, but the workings of the police hierarchy are superficially dealt with (perhaps fo...

Proof that If Nobody Speaks Of Remarkable Things  was no one-off (how could writing that good possibly be a fluke), So Many Ways to Begin  again deals with ordinary people leading ordinary lives, but bearing the weight of events in the past that deeply mark their lives. The style is again fractured in time, non-linear, but through its analogy of a museum of mementos, it slowly and simply builds up a solid, authentic and deeply moving exhibit of family-life in post-war Britain. For David, a young man in Coventry who has always dreamed of being a museum curator, a structured life where everything can be organised, labelled and its provenance traced, the discovery that he has been adopted as a child upsets the stable view he once had of the world. The author contrasts David’s relationship with loving parents who aren’t his own with his wife Eleanor’s strict upbringing in Aberdeen, and charts the emotional journey both of them have to make together to understand who they are and h...

Special Assignments consists of two shorter stories where Akunin’s detective Court Counsellor Erast Fandorin is called upon to solve two very different cases that threaten to cause grave embarrassment to the Russian Royal Court of the late nineteenth century. The novella format suits the stories, rounding out the background of the special investigator, his personal life and acquaintances and expanding on his abilities, while still leaving the author room for some flashes of humour, literary referencing and light philosophising. Showing some variety in style and content, the two detective stories however are minor pieces, neither of them particularly fresh or original in the genre. The Jack of Spades is an entertaining adventure of a cat-and-mouse chase between Fandorin and a clever conman and master of disguise who is not only making fools of the general public in Moscow, he has even taken in some prominent government officials with his schemes, leaving behind his calling card and ca...

Thorne is back and so is Billingham – both back on form and continuing the upswing shown in Buried after the rather grim and downbeat The Burning Girl . Detective Inspector Tom Thorne still does some incredibly stupid things for a police officer of his rank in Death Message , having to strike a difficult balance between his personal life and the investigation of a series of brutal murders – but since a killer has involved him personally this time, he doesn’t have much choice. When he starts receiving personal text and video messages from a serial killer who is targeting a Biker gang and a couple of bent coppers, Thorne attempts to establish contact with the murderer outside of the course of the investigation. It’s a big risk, not only compromising the integrity of the investigation, but with the police authorities very interested in the case, he risks drawing unwelcome attention from his superiors. More than that, his decisions could put people close to him at grave personal risk. Tho...

In its passion for love, life and writing, Mario Vargas Llosa’s latest novel returns, brilliantly, to the inspirations of one if his best novels Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter .  In Travesuras de la Niña Mala , a young idealistic young man leaves Miraflores in Peru with no greater ambition than to spend the rest of his years living in the most beautiful city in the world, Paris. He is content to be nothing more than a humble translator and interpreter as long as it allows him to remain there, but a mysterious beautiful woman from his past turns up unexpectedly, and his life never again knows a moment’s peace. Despite the torments she puts him through over the subsequent decades, he is continually unable to resist her charms. There is little doubt that the desirable but uncontrollable niña mala  is nothing more than Ricardo’s muse, the irresistible impulse to interact with life and write about it - each of her appearances coinciding with a new decade and new stage in the openi...

Burston’s preoccupation in his novels with glamour, camp and gender-bending all find their natural home in his latest novel, an entertaining romp through the New Romantic movement of the 1980s, with some mild satire – or perhaps it’s a fond appreciation for – the post-celebrity platform of modern reality TV shows and tabloid headlines. The story charts the progress of ‘A Boy And His Diva’, a fictional composite of The Human League, Culture Club, Soft Cell and numerous other sexually ambiguous acts from the heyday of the early 1980s. Put together by a young gay man, Tony with a rebellious young friend he once met as a punk teenager, Katrina, the duo ride the crest of the New Romantic wave, competing in the charts with the likes of Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet, while bitching in the press with Boy George and Pete Burns, only to share in their inevitable descent of the glamorous lifestyle of drugs and “artistic differences”. Many years later Tony’s manager tries to revive his career by ...

Conventional literary criticism has it that it was the wealth of ideas that redeemed the cheap pulp writing of Dick’s churn-em-out science-fiction novels, and that the unpublished mainstream novels were unpublished for a reason - they just weren’t very good. Don’t you believe it. Voices From The Street  is written from the heart, the characters fully alive and real, their fears, weaknesses, hopes and illusions are all Dick’s own and they are depicted with passion and sincerity.  All the familiar characters and situations are there, whether it’s in PKD’s science-fiction work or his mainstream fiction – little men with deep character flaws, clerks and salesmen, toiling away in dead-end jobs in radio and TV stores, uncertain of their futures, unhappy in their relationships, desperately searching for something to give their lives meaning. Make the most of it – this is the last “new” Philip K. Dick book we are ever likely to have the pleasure of reading and it’s a fine book.