Devils' Corner

By Lisa Scottoline
I’m afraid I found this book quite dull. Really dull, in fact. So dull it gets my annual award for Crime Novel Least Likely to Inspire Me to Stay Up Past My Bedtime as well as my other annual award for Least Plausible and Least Interesting Love Story.

So why was this book so dull? It wasn’t badly written. It had a relatively good plot – at least, it wasn’t one of those ones about some shifty white-collar crime involving convoluted financial arrangements, which I always find particularly challenging to follow…no, I think it was because the characters weren’t terribly engaging. They got a bit better by the end of the book, but I didn’t really get a sense of our heroine ever being particularly interesting. Her love interest was silly, as I believe I have already inferred. Also, she had a very annoying way of interviewing suspects and witnesses and so on, which seemed to be essentially to bombard them with a long series of questions and not let them have any time to respond. No subtle Inspector Goran-type methods here!

Anyway, what happens? Our heroine, Vicki Allegretti, goes to meet a confidential informant about some gun-running but interrupts the murder of said confidential informant, and the theft of some very good quality cocaine. Also, her partner gets killed. So naturally she has to investigate, against the express wishes of her boss, of course. (I think Lisa Scottoline needs to read a bit of Jasper Fforde, to make her more aware of crime novel cliches). Ho-hum.

Rating: 4 out of 10

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