The Yiddish Policeman's Union

By Michael Chabon

Another lovely book from Michael Chabon, I think I actually liked this one better than "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay", which I read last year. This one's quite a bit shorter, and based in an alternate world where the Jewish people were sent to Alaska after World War I instead of Israel. Meyer Landsman is a policeman in the Jewish state of Sitka, who tries to solve the case of a murdered chess-playing junkie. Chabon has created a whole society, complete with Jewish gumshoe lingo (which I found a bit hard to get my head around, but no more than actual gumshoe lingo), a bit of sass, a brooding atmosphere and snappy dialogue. Minor quibble in the presence of chess, which I think annoys me because it turns up in quite a few novels as some kind of plot device, but handled here so much better than all the others. At least Landsman also hates chess. Go on, read it...reeaaaddd itttt...

Rating: 9 out of 10

The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club

By Dorothy Sayers
By Gad, it was such a relief to read this after “Let the Right One In”!! Yes, in Dorothy Sayers’ books there are actually characters that say “By Gad!”. If you already read Sayers books with gusto then you won’t need to read this review, unless you want to confirm your own righteousness. The Wimsey novels are kind of addictive and you just have to read them all. Unless, of course, you didn’t warm to Sayers’ detective hero, Lord Peter Wimsey, or if you find characters that say things like “By Gad!” deeply annoying. You might have guessed by now that I LOVE the Lord Wimsey novels. Admittedly, some are better than others – this is a strong one - but regardless I have yet to convince anyone else I know that these books are as fabulous as I think they are.

This novel begins with the death of General Fentiman, who is found in a chair by the fire at his club, the titular Bellona Club. Needless to say this shocks other club members, but it is supposed that he merely died of old age while reading the newspaper. Then it is discovered there are complications involving the will of his estranged sister, Lady Dormer, involving which of them died first. So our hero Wimsey is asked to investigate.

I thought I was reading a Wimsey novel I had previously overlooked, but I suspect I have read it before as I had strange premonitions about who did what that I couldn’t chalk up to simple cleverness. The nice thing about having a terrible memory for books you have read, though, is that you forget the words and phrasings, the small details, machinations, characterisations and convolutions of the plot, and so the pleasure of reading it for the second time is undiminished – augmented, even, as you can kid yourself that you must be cleverer than you really are because you think you know whodunnit.

Lord Peter Wimsey helped me through a rough patch once, so perhaps I am biased. Go on, give him a go – you know you want to! A word of advice, though – don’t start with The Five Red Herrings or Murder Must Advertise. These aren’t his best. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club is classic Wimsey, though.

Rating: 9 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

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

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2006)

By Mark Haddon
I have avoided reading this book for ages, because the title annoyed me. How pretentious, I thought. Hear ye, hear ye: ye shall not judge a book by its title. (Unless it be The Horse Whisperer). This book was GREAT. Apparently it is really a book for “Young Adults” but has not been any less popular amongst adult readers. This book is another example in my ever-growing pile of evidence that some of the best books ever written are those written for “Young Adults”. Incidentally, imagine how you would feel if you were old enough to have relations with a woman, and yet – you could not drink in pubs. Sorry, where am I? Channelling “The Young Ones”, evidently.

This book is narrated by Christopher, who we soon discern is a fairly unusual teenager – for example, he is a maths genius, but hates the colours brown and yellow. He can’t eat food on his plate if different foods are touching each other. He doesn’t really like people much. He screams and rocks if he is afraid or confused. It is never said, but we assume Christopher is autistic. About a year and a half ago Christopher’s mother died, and now his father looks after him on his own. At the start of this story, Christopher is on one of his late-night walks when he discovers a neighbour’s dog (Wellington) dead in the neighbour’s front yard. Wellington has obviously been murdered, because he has a garden pitchfork sticking out of him, and Christopher resolves to find out who did it, in his own unique way, and despite his father’s instructions not to play detective.

As I’ve written elsewhere (in another review), I’m always a bit suspicious of authors writing from the perspective of someone who is very much unlike themselves. (Must check whether Mark Haddon is autistic himself; presumably he must at least have close contact with someone who is). How can I check whether Haddon’s representation of Christopher’s view of the world, his thinking patterns and is logic, is authentic? Well I can’t. But this book was a fascinating glimpse into what it may be like to be autistic (i.e. it successfully fooled me), and into the damage an autistic child can unwittingly wreak on his parents’ relationships - also, how easy it can be for an autistic person to fall afoul of the police and other people who do not recognise the cause of his unusual behaviour.

Rating: 8 out of 10

The Eyre Affair (2003)

By Jasper Fforde
I thought this book was tops. It follows the adventures of our heroine, Thursday Next, who works for a special government agency that tracks down crimes against literature (eg forgeries, exceptionally bad productions of Shakespeare etc). Things get a bit weird when the villain, Acheron Hades (a truly villainous villain), steals the original copy of Dicken’s Martin Chuzzlewit and threatens to take out the hero and thus change the manuscript for ever – with the help of Thursday’s uncle’s new invention, the Prose Portal. (In the testing stages his wife gets trapped in one of Wordsworth’s poems – and it turns out Wordsworth’s a bit of a flirt). When this evil plan doesn’t work out quite as he intended, Hades decides to pick on Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre instead.

Next’s world is one in which literature is much more popular with the masses than in ours – so much so that there is a copy of William Shakespeare’s Complete Works in every hotel room, along with the Bible and several other religious texts, and the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays is a frequent and serious topic of discussion. I liked the character of Thursday Next extremely (she’s a smart chick! Maybe not at genius level, but pretty good), and Acheron Hades was an excellent villain. I think I’ve found a new favourite author and will be looking for a hardback copy for my bookshelves.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

An Instance of the Fingerpost (2003)

By Iain Pears
Iain Pears does Umberto Eco – I am being tough on poor old Iain Pears, aren’t I?? Set in England after the restoration of King Charles, this book is essentially a murder mystery – who murdered Dr Grove? – and consists of four sections, each told by a different character, relating certain events from their own viewpoint.

This is an interesting idea, as the four people have very different ideas about who killed Dr Grove and why, and often works very well. However, as always happens to me in these kinds of books, I lost track of who all the different doctors and monks and Earls and Lords were and tended to get bogged down in all the philosophical and religious discussion. (I skipped quite large sections of Eco’s The Name of the Rose; all the bits that seemed more like advanced lectures in religious history). The first section, told by the Venetian Marco da Cola, was especially tough going. However, it did get better as it went along, and the following three sections were easier to get into. These sections were written in a less formal style and dealt less with esoteric topics and more with revenge and betrayal and all those other topics close to all our hearts. The last two sections I did enjoy quite a lot.

Overall, though, the book did have a slight feeling of “effort” to it – Iain Pears had obviously done a lot of research for the book and was determined to include everything he possibly could. And what’s with the title? I’m still not sure what the “fingerpost” is exactly, it did come up near the end but by that stage I wasn’t terribly interested as it didn’t seem to have much bearing on the plot. Could I use it in a sentence? Nope.

Rating: 6.5 out of 10

Jason King (2005)

By Robert Miall
Unfortunately this novel, based on the early 1970s television series of the same name, does not quite make it into the “so bad it’s good” category – no, this novel is just bad. Jason King is a novelist, man-about-town and 007 James Bond-type character, complete with the necessary misogyny but with much more facial hair. King has to solve two mysteries in this book, both highly unlikely scenarios but never mind – the first to do with a clever bunch of crooks that can outwit Scotland Yard’s supercomputer (amazing what those 70s supercomputers could do!); the second a murder mystery to which King appears to have some kind of psychic connection. (Don’t worry, it turns out to be subliminal messages).

It really is very bad. SO bad. But it does have some classic lines…if only there were a few more – it would have scored higher. Try some of these on for size:

If either girl had slipped on the hard-packed snow she could effortlessly have saved herself by grabbing the nearest tuft of King’s sideburns.

The blonde was chattering, shaking her head admiringly to and fro. The redhead simply clung to King, shaking the contents of her sweater admirably to and fro.

The world, thought Jason, was filling up with women who not only did men’s jobs for men’s rates of pay, but insisted on equality in everything else…you were supposed to pass them at the desk or workbench without glancing at their legs...even an appreciative eyebrow should be kept quiescent.

Magic. And what a spunkrat he is!!! (See cover illustration).

Rating: 4 out of 10
It’s not very long or hard to read, so you may as well…just read the first page at least, go on…

Hot Six (2005)

By Janet Evanovich
I went off Janet Evanovich and her sassy bounty-hunter heroine Stephanie Plum for a while, because I thought I detected the emergence of the dreaded LOVE TRIANGLE erupting between Stephanie and the two eligible bachelors around town, Joe Morelli (cop) and Ranger (fellow bounty hunter and general entrepreneur), at the end of “High Five”. And I really hate love triangles, I mean I REALLY hate them. They go on forever, they can’t possible have a happy ending, there’s way too much useless inner turmoil around and they’re just dullsville in general, man. Case in point: Dawson’s Creek, where there seemed to be several love triangles going on all at the one time. Oh, the agony! I thought I would kill someone. Fortunately, I remembered in time that watching Dawson’s Creek was an optional activity.

Anyway, the book. The eleventh adventure of Ms Stephanie Plum has just come out, so I am really behind the times with number six here, but I am pleased to report that, despite a little bit of love triangle action, this book is thoroughly enjoyable. (In brief, it’s about Stephanie Plum trying to help get Ranger off the hook for the suspected murder of a member of one of the local crime families). I think Evanovich’s skill is that her books really are fun – they’re not heavy, man. So I will get back on the Stephanie Plum train, which is a bit exciting really because I know I’ve got another five books to enjoy before I have to wait another year for the next one. I hope they will be just as reliably entertaining as all her previous books.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10
Good fun. Warning: May make you want to eat doughnuts.

The Poison Principle (2005)

By Gail Bell
Quite a satisfying non-fiction book about poisons, poisoners and the poisoned. The author’s family has its own poisoned past, the investigation of which she threads through the narrative. More of a “researched stream of consciousness”, as my friend Libby said, than a manifesto of any kind, I have to say I did get a bit frustrated towards the end with all Bell’s wafty semi-philosophical ramblings when all I wanted to know really was if her grandfather really poisoned his sons or not. (Obviously not the son that eventually begat Bell, though). That is the inherent problem of this type of book, I suppose, where you begin on page one with a mystery to be solved, knowing you will not find out the answer until page last. Somehow, you have to keep the suspense going, and it wavered a bit for me by the end. For instance, I am not really interested in Bell’s idle imaginings of how Cleopatra may have been saved by one of her poor handmaidens when she was trying to kill herself via snakebite – this has too much of the “well the Romans COULD have built it this way” SBS faux-history documentary for my liking.

But still, quite a fascinating read, and I may be employing a food taster once I am rich enough because Bell’s right, we do every day partake of thousands of small acts of faith, e.g. that the sandwich we bought from the shops for lunch isn’t poisoned – accidentally or deliberately. And by the time I’m wealthy enough to afford a food taster I’d probably have lots of enemies; maybe I could even claim it as a tax deduction.

Rating: 7.0 out of 10
Not to be read at a restaurant, or in the doctor’s waiting room, and you might want to have the Poisons Information Centre on speed-dial.

Queen of the Flowers (2005)

By Kerry Greenwood

You know, I find that I don’t really like Greenwood’s heroine, Phryne Fisher. I tried to read one of her mysteries before and gave it up quite fast; Phryne is kind of cold and superior, and, to paraphrase her own words, not prone to guilt or remorse, or to any extreme kind of emotion, in fact. I did warm a bit towards her in the end of this book, for being so capable, and the plot is quite satisfyingly twisty, so I might be persuaded to read another one. (Plot of this one in a nutshell: Phryne is hired to locate a missing girl who is to be part of the Flower Parade at St Kilda; also one of her adopted daughters is having who-is-my-real-father issues).

There is something quite insufferable about Phryne, though. I started to wonder whether I was succumbing to culturally indoctrinated ideas of what women should be like – you know, all warm and nurturing, or at least prone to a good bit of irrational PMT. I wondered, am I judging her more harshly than the boys? (Boy private eyes, I mean). For example, I am quite fond of Sir Peter Wimsey, another toffee-nosed well-to-do detective-because-he-can-afford-to-be literary character. But Sir Peter is tortured, sometimes, and prone to self-doubt. I also enjoyed Sherlock Holmes stories when I was younger, who is not renowned for his emotional depth - but we could excuse him a bit because he was a genius and because there was good old Dr Watson there with him, who had a more normal range of human responses and got hurt when Holmes left him out of things and so on. It’s all that personal growth business – Phryne doesn’t seem to feel she needs any. Also it annoys me that she’s called “Phryne” because it’s so difficult to spell.

In any case, I have the impression Greenwood wouldn’t be the slightest bit perturbed at Phryne not being universally liked – and I’m quite certain that Phryne herself wouldn’t give a toss.

Rating: 7 out of 10
A good lazy Sunday read when you’re in a superior mood – or, to feel, like Phryne, read it in the bath with a good French red.

Bad Debts (2004)

By Peter Temple
I’ve been trying to avoid giving books a rating of “7” because it seems a bit of a cop-out. But I’m afraid I couldn’t resist giving a seven for “Bad Debts”; it’s a good fun book while not being spectacular. I’ve been looking for a good crime writer for a while (one that isn't an autopsy person) and yay here is one!! Also, he’s Australian!

The hero of the story is Jack Irish, an ex-lawyer who now specialises in finding witnesses for trials and betting on the horses to make ends meet - he hangs around in the dodgy end of town a fair bit. Oh yes, he also enjoys a bit of woodwork, and used to have a drinking problem. It’s all set in and around Melbourne, which is nice seeing as I’m moving there soon. An ex-client of Jack’s contacts him because he’s in trouble, but is murdered before Jack can meet him. Of course, Jack starts to investigate, and meets a few leggy dames, crooked pollies and eccentric football fans along the way. I must say I am a bit worried about moving to Melbourne now, it seems to be a den of vice and a haven for criminals, and I will never think of Daylesford in quite the same way again. (Read the book to find out why).

It took me a while to get going with this book but by the end I was quite fond of Irish and will definitely try the others in the series. I have to say it did remind me of Dick Francis novels - perhaps that was just because of the horse racing element, and that strange feeling you get that the hero is into exactly all the same things the author likes to do in their spare time. More fun and better written than Dick Francis, though.

Rating: 7 out of 10

The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (2004)

By Alexander McCall Smith
The adventures of Precious Ramotswe, Botswana’s only female private eye, are something of a literary phenomenon at the moment, from what I understand. There are at least four in this series so far, and I’m sure there will be more. The book describes the adventures of Mme Ramotswe, a smart, large woman who opens up her detective agency after her father dies. (Her father recommended that she buy her own business, but a detective agency was not what he had in mind).

I liked this book, although it’s not going on my list of all-time favourites. I will certainly keep the others in the series in mind for my next holiday or MS Readathon, whichever comes first. This is a gentle book, despite dealing with some fairly serious issues, not the dark, gritty kind of detective novel. Or even the smart, sassy kind of detective novel. Or the suave, world-weary kind of detective novel. Anyway, you get idea. Give Mme Ramotswe a go.

Rating: 7.5 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

The Dressmaker (2004)

By Rosalie Ham
It must always be so annoying to writers when they read reviews of their work that say things like “yeah it was fantastic but I really didn’t like the ending much’. Writers must thank their lucky stars that they aren’t poor unfortunate film-makers whose ultimate vision is compromised when the test audience decides they’d prefer it if the two main characters got married and lived happily every after instead of dying alone in some garret somewhere after contracting a terminal disease and a broken heart.

So I do apologise to the author for saying this, but…I really did enjoy the book except for the ending. The story is about Tilly, who returns to her childhood town (in country Victoria) to look after her sick mother. Tilly and her mother were the town outcasts when she was young, and she finds that they still are. (Why? Not telling; read the book to find out). Everybody is horrible to her, despite her whipping up fantastic dresses for them all (she became a dressmaker in Paris during her years of exile), except for Teddy McSwiney, who thinks she is beautiful and carefully begins to work on winning her heart. The only other person who is nice to her is Sergeant Farrat, a decent bloke with excellent manners who enjoys sewing his own frocks.

The book is described on the front cover as “an Australian gothic novel of love, hate & haute couture”. It’s a good read, most people get their just desserts, but I felt the end was a bit of a cop-out. I also felt sorry for the poor old Sergeant – in a book where people sort of got what they deserved, I thought he was short-changed. I don't think it’s destined to be a classic or anything, but it was enjoyable and often quite clever – good character sketches, especially. A good holiday read.

(NB: If there really is a town called Dungatar in the wheatlands of Victoria, they must really have it in for Rosalie Ham now).

Rating: 6.5 out of 10