Clean Break

By Val McDermid
I really really want to like McDermid’s books, because I heard her speak at an Adelaide Writers’ Festival once and she was fabulous. How many authors will admit that the reason they made their main character a journalist was because that was the author’s own area of expertise and they didn’t want to have to do any research?? But I’m afraid McDermid’s books just don’t do it for me.

I think Clean Break is the third novel of McDermid’s I’ve read, this one featuring her private eye heroine Kate Brannigan. Brannigan is trying to track down a stolen Monet (there’s a gang of art thieves on the loose! Very topical…) while simultaneously investigating a bit of industrial sabotage. She’s independent, tough and feisty, needless to say, and grappling with some relationship problems with her partner, Richard (a music reviewer). Sound familiar??

McDermid’s books are OK, but they don’t make me want to stay up way past my bedtime to find out what happens. Somehow the jaunty dialogue seems forced. Also, even though I suspect McDermid wrote these before the tough action chick was a bit of cliché, unfortunately the tough action heroine is becoming a bit of a cliché. Also also, and I mention this as advice to any budding crime writers out there, why do crime writers persist in describing their character’s outfits?? Maybe it’s because I’m not a fashion person, but they always sound terribly ugly, unless the crime is set in the nineteenth century or something, in which case I don’t mind reading about greatcoats and bonnets and things. I don’t care if our heroine is wearing tan jodhpur-style leggings, a cream linen collarless shirt and a chocolate brown jacket with a mandarin collar, so just leave it out, OK?

I know McDermid has a staunch fan base, particularly for her series featuring Kate Brannigan and another featuring journalist Lindsey Gordon (not to mention the books that the Wire in the Blood series was based on, featuring crime psychologist Tony Hill), so don’t necessarily be put off by my review. Give it a whirl – airplane reading, maybe.

Rating: 6 out of 10

The Vesuvius Club

By Mark Gatiss
Well, I really quite enjoyed that. Mind you, I passed this book onto a friend straight after I’d finished, and she didn’t go for it at all – not gritty enough, apparently. So be warned.

This book is written by one of the people behind “The League of Gentlemen”, which was that simultaneously macabre, wicked, camp and occasionally disturbing show that was on the ABC a few years ago. So that should give you a bit of an idea about the style of this novel, although disappointingly there was no local store for local people featured in the book.

The Vesuvius Club introduces us to Lucifer Box, by day merely a devilishly handsome, charming and stylish painter and by night (and often also by day) a secret agent for Her Majesty’s government. (Or is that His Majesty’s government? It’s set in Edwardian times). Oh, and he’s also extremely vain, selfish and a general rake, not fussy about the gender of his conquests. (To quote Living Colour, everybody loves you when you’re bi). Box must investigate the mysterious deaths of some high-profile scientists, which lead him through the houses of fashionable London, some graveyards, some naughty clubs and eventually to the tunnels of Naples, nestled beneath Mount Vesuvius.

There were maybe a few too many unbelievable cliff hangers at the end (this isn’t a Beethoven symphony, after all!), but by and large quite an enjoyable novel. Cads make such attractive heroes. Isn’t that terrible?? Excellent holiday reading.

Rating: 8 out of 10

Dead Sleep (2006)

By Greg Iles
Another thriller – in this, our heroine, Jordan Glass, is a burnt-out photojournalist whose twin sister vanished over a year ago from her home in New Orleans and is thought to have been the victim of serial killer. While in Hong Kong, Jordan stumbles across an exhibition of paintings, all of nude women, who may be sleeping but look more like they may be dead. And – one is an exact portrait of Jordan’s sister! (And therefore also of Jordan). Jordan immediately contact the FBI agents investigating the disappearances in New Orleans with this new information, and the story goes from there.

This was quite a nifty book, plot wise – nicely written too, and the author has certainly done some research regarding painting and art authentication. However…the character of Jordan bugged me from the start. She’s a pretty hard-nosed character – she’s tough, she gets what she wants, has had to survive in a man’s world etc etc – and I wondered if I was suffering from some culturally inflicted misogynism that disapproves of a somewhat mannish woman. Or did I succumb to my prejudices regarding men who write from the female perspective? (I.e. It never quite works). Whichever, I felt Jordan didn’t ring true. It felt like Iles was trying a bit too hard to make her a post-feminism modern woman – and yet a woman of which men would approve. Tough, but non-threatening all round. I don’t know, I’m babbling now. But not a bad read – I’ll give Iles another go.

So, is it possible for a man to write convincingly from a woman’s perspective, and vice versa? People seem to get in trouble, for example, for writing from the perspective of a black underprivileged drag queen if they are in fact a straight, upper-class white chick, but nobody blinks twice at men writing as women and so on. Not that I think you should blink, I think anyone should be free to write in the character of whoever they like – just that your resulting book might not be terribly convincing to anyone who really is a black underprivileged drag queen. The trouble with my theory is that I can’t judge its validity from anyone else’s perspective – I can only really judge books portraying white middle-class women of a certain age, after all.

Rating: 7 out of 10

The Raphael Affair (2003)

By Iain Pears
I received a lot of criticism for my criticism of another of Iain Pear’s books, “Death and Restoration”. Well, this one was better! A lot better – I think because we didn’t have to endure so much of Jonathan Argyll’s “inner monologue” about his ethical dilemmas – he was just a slightly kooky art historian. (And we all know how kooky art historians are). I also enjoyed the plot of this book much more, as it relied more on legitimate historical detective work and less on the philosophical musings of monks.

Oh yes, the plot – I’d like to say, a painting gets nicked and they get it back, but this is not really true!! See, the plot thickens already…

The “restorer” in this book wasn’t so much of a tosser as the one in “Death and Restoration”, but did come across as slightly pathetic.

Rating: 7 out of 10

Death and Restoration (2003)

By Iain Pears
This is the second of these series of books that I have read, about the fictional adventures of the Art Theft department in Italy, and although it’s nice to read some crime novels about art for a change instead of all those ones about serial killers and autopsies and things, these are pretty light-weight books and not much to get excited about. Good for reading on the plane or the bus, or when you don’t want to tax yourself overly. I don’t think I need to tell you anything about the plot – a painting gets nicked and they get it back. (Oh damn, I just ruined the ending).

Also it bugs me that the heroine, Flavia, who works for this particular branch of the Police Department, never seems to solve a crime without the help of her bookish failed-art-dealer boyfriend, Jonathan. (He failed at the art dealer thing because he was too ethical and nice). Jonathan seems to be the author’s alter ego in this book in that he has the superior academic knowledge, lateral thinking skills, sensitivity and all that while Flavia tends to run around a lot being the tough cop chick. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of the tough chick and am very glad she’s been written about more in recent years, but now I would like to see more of the “genius chick”. Where are the books with incredibly clever sheilas in them, who solve mysteries with their smarts?? And don’t say, what about “Murder, she wrote” – that doesn’t count. I can only think of Trixie Belden, Nancy Drew and Elizabeth from “Pride and Prejudice” (and that’s not really a crime novel anyway). Any others you can think of? Are there even any female evil geniuses out there?

Rating: 4 out of 10

The DaVinci Code (2004)

By Dan Brown
I bought this book at Melbourne airport, as the Virginia Woolf I was reading at the time really wasn’t working out. Woolf requires solitude and silence, which is not what you find in the average departure lounge.

The DaVinci Code proved to be an excellent departure lounge novel, although I suspect if I read it in silence and solitude it might not hold up so well – it did cross my mind once or twice that the whole thing was a bit far-fetched. However, whether it was gory murders, albino monks, high-tech surveillance gear, secret societies or pagan sex rites, the DaVinci Code had it all. You could even pretend you were educating yourself about the history of Christianity at the same time. I would have liked a few more Matthew-Reilly-style italics to let me know when things were really amazing, though.

Perhaps I should try re-reading The Flanders Panel in a departure lounge, to see if I like it better? Incidentally, the DaVinci Code was fairly free of VTA (Violence Towards Art), except for a few Caravaggios that were handled rather roughly.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Flanders Panel (2004)

By Arturo Perez-Reverte
I probably became unfairly biased against this book, when the heroine, a Spanish paintings restorer called Julia, first lit up a ciggie in front of the 15th century Flemish painting she was “cleaning” in her lounge room, on page one. She smoked in front of the picture for the first seven pages and did so again and again throughout the entire novel. During the novel, she also had long hot showers in the adjacent bathroom, with the door open, ate her meals while gazing at it, and brought drunken not-to-be-trusted friends home to it. At one point, she even kissed the painting! I mean really. With all of this going on, it made it hard for me to concentrate on the quality of the writing, the plot and all those other aspects you are supposed to consider in a book review. Clearly, however, Perez-Reverte has not done his homework properly!!

Now, perhaps this is just jealousy speaking, but how could Julia possibly become “one of the art restorers most sought after by museums and antiquarians” within only a few years of finishing her degree? Rot, I say. Also, apparently she was a restorer known for “the respect she showed the original work, an ethical position not always shared by her colleagues.” Ooh, that whole paragraph made me mad.

OK, so what happened in the book? Julia finds some hidden inscription underneath the paint that suggests that one of the people depicted in the painting was murdered. She and her guardian Cesar link up with a master chess player called Munoz to try and figure out the mystery - the painting shows two people playing chess, so they try to figure out what moves have been made in the game from the positions of the pieces on the board, in order to figure out who was guilty. (Many tedious descriptions of chess moves ensue). Of course, all this business has great implications for the value of the painting and people start getting murdered in present day too, and Julia’s life is in danger! (Gasp).

I was in a bad mood with this book anyway, but once the thing was solved it reminded me of those documentaries on SBS where a bunch of crazed archaeologists try to reconstruct some bridge over a river in order to prove that the yes, the Romans could have done it this way! Emphasis on “could” – they still don’t have any real proof, but they make up some good stories along the way. Or some bad stories. And I’m afraid I thought this was one – no-one’s motivations seemed believable to me, and if anyone arched their eyebrow one more time or smiled without really smiling, I was going to scream.

My Dad did say that it made good reading at 2:00am flying home from South America though.

Rating: 2 out of 10

Bluebeard (2004)

By Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve read one other book by Vonnegut, “Slaughterhouse 5”, which would definitely get a spot on my list of 100 best books of all time, so I had high expectations of Bluebeard. I was initially disappointed. One of the reasons why, I think, was the style of the writing.

The book is the autobiography/diary of Rabo Karabekian, a (fictional) artist of Armenian origin who became part of the American Abstract Expressionist art movement. (Incidentally all his works were destroyed due to a strange chemical reaction between his paint brand of choice, Sateen Dura-Lux, and the canvas, which resulted in all the paint falling off – one for the conservators out there!). He has been encouraged to write his story by a visitor to his house, Circe Berman, herself an immensely popular author who writes under the name of Polly Madison and who is a very bossy person. Karabekian, not a writer, writes in an unsophisticated way – for example, Rabo uses far too many exclamation marks! And he uses italics way too much! This made the book seem a bit unsophisticated too. Boy, what a snob I am.

By the end of the book, though, I was convinced it was very clever of Vonnegut to do this, because it helps draw the character of Karabekian so well – he’s just a guy trying to live his life, and who doesn’t have too many tickets on himself (not anymore, anyway). We learn of Karabekian’s early apprenticeship to a painter (Dan Gregory, a fairly nasty piece of work), his time in World War II (where he lost an eye) and his subsequent marriages, all the while on a kind of quest to become a painter with passion – a lack of passion being his essential problem in life; as an art teacher once said of him, “why should I teach him the language of painting, since there seems to be absolutely nothing which he is desperate to talk about?”

Though Bluebeard does not reach the heights of Slaughterhouse 5, it was in the end an immensely satisfying book. Vonnegut has a unique ability to show how unbearable life all is, without making it unbearable, if you know what I mean.

Rating: 8 out of 10