Book Review - Luther: The Calling by Neil Cross

I'm a huge fan of the BBC crime drama Luther, starring Idris Elba as the eponymous hardbitten London cop, so I was eager to read the prequel novel written by series creator Neil Cross. It reveals the investigation of which John Luther is still feeling the fall-out when the show began, both professionally (via internal affairs) and personally (his wife left him for another man during the case). You don't need to know anything of the show to enjoy the book, though picturing Elba's imposing form will help you get into the character (indeed, Cross reveals in author's notes that the character wasn't complete until Elba was cast). As a novelist, Cross has a gripping, no-nonsense style that propels the plot forwards while still finding time for character moments and black humour. It's everything I'd hoped for... but this review does come with one warning.

Luther is a dark and extremely violent show. Likewise, the book pulls no punches - yet I've always found violence on the page to be far more affecting / disturbing than on the screen. You use your imagination more as a reader... and there are some extremely horrific scenes here. There's also a recurring theme of cruelty to animals which I always find harder to stomach than violence against humans. And when even Luther gets involved, dangling a dog from a balcony while trying to extract information from a its lowlife owner, Cross almost lost my sympathy for his hero. Desperate times call for desperate measures, but even anti-heroes need to know where to draw the line...

Not Every Book I Read Deserves A Review

Here's a few I just couldn't be bothered to write about in depth... or even get all the way through. Life is too short.

Child 44 was a gripping classic.

The Secret Speech was a disappointing, though still entertaining, sequel.

It's a good job Agent 6 was the final book in the series because I wouldn't have bought any more. I skim-read this one and still found it over-written, rambling and self-indulgent. Tom Rob Smith has let the research take over, desperate to shoehorn his hero into every significant moment in 20th Century Russian history, somehow forgetting how to plot an exciting thriller along the way.

I was a huge fan of David Guterson's previous books, Snow Falling On Cedars, Our Lady Of The Forest and East Of The Mountain... but this one left me cold. The plot itself was intriguing and the relationship between the central characters had potential. But, just like Tom Rob Smith above, Guterson kept getting off the point until I lost all interest in finding out why the narrator's old schoolmate had gone off to live in the woods (a la Thoreau) before dying and leaving our hero a fortune in his will.

Excellent character writing but a series of very loosely connected vignettes does not a novel make. I'd much rather have read the continuing adventures of Sasha, the first chapter's kleptomaniac heroine, than any of the smug, privileged bores who follow her. If Sasha returned later in the novel, I stopped caring by the time the safari went bad.


Of course, I could be wrong about any of the above. Perhaps you read them and found them far more entertaining? Feel free to disagree.

Book Review - The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

I read The Sense of an Ending pretty much in one sitting. From this, you can deduce two things. First, it's a reasonably short book (150 pages)... though don't let that fool you into thinking it's a short story. There's a whole lifetime in these pages, fully realised and touchingly real. Secondly, it's damned near unputdownable.

The novel involves Tony Webster, a student in the 60s who has a clumsy relationship with a complicated and frustrating girl called Veronica. When they finally break up, Veronica takes up with Adrian, one of Tony's old school friends, and tragedy soon ensues. But just what really happened between Adrian and Veronica, and the part he himself unwittingly played in their ill-fated romance, is something Tony does not discover until many years later. Julian Barnes has created a compelling mystery that deals with growing old, the unreliability of memory, and the unknown consequences of our actions. There are some terrible revelations contained in the latter pages of this book, yet Barnes makes the reader work hard to piece them together - he doesn't just hand you the answers on a plate. It's a brilliant example of restraint and respecting the reader's intelligence that makes you keep reading long after you should have turned out the light.

I was a huge fan of Julian Barnes when I was younger but this is the first book I've read by him in some years. It's also one of his best, a deserved Booker winner, peppered with the kind of incisive observations that make you nod, smile and sigh at that crazy, sad, tragic and amazing thing called life. But unlike so many other critically adored prize-winners, it's got an actual plot too. What more could you want?*

Sometimes I think the purpose of life is to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn't all it's cracked up to be.

(*I'm waiting for somebody to say "zombies".)

Book Review: Q, A Love Story by Evan Mandery

What is the point of this story?
What information pertains?
The thought that life could be better
Is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains

Evan Mandery won me over immediately by opening his latest novel with the above quote from Paul Simon's 'Train In The Distance'. It's one of my favourite lyrics, one that I've often heard rattling around my brain even when I've not listened to the song in ages. It pretty much sums up the human condition - if the human condition is a general dissatisfaction with one's lot.

The high concept of Q is pretty much unbeatable. The novel begins when the unnamed narrator meets Q (Quentina Elizabeth Deveril), the love of his life. They both fall head over heels and marriage seems inevitable... until our hero is visited by a future version of himself with a grim prophecy: marry Q and both your lives will be marred by unspeakable tragedy. Initially reluctant to accept this warning, the narrator is eventually convinced that breaking off their relationship will be best for them both. And so his life continues without Q... until he's visited by a different future version of himself with a new piece of life-changing advice. Each time he follows his future self's instructions, it's not long before another one pops up to set him off in a different direction entirely.

It's an excellent premise filled with comic possibility, and the final third of the book delivers upon this premise with both humour and heartache. Unfortunately, the first half does tend to ramble as the author goes off on the occasional entirely unnecessary tangent. You may want to skip the chapters taken from the hero's attempt to write an alternate history of Sigmund Freud's life: they do follow the book's overall theme but add nothing to the story itself and reek a little too much of vanity project. Some of the meandering comedy was also a little too faux-Woody Allen for my tastes: there were times I wanted to scream at Mandery to stop trying so bloody hard to be funny. But writing humour is the trickiest of talents to master and you may find these sections hilarious. It's a very subjective business, being funny.

All that said, I'd still hugely recommend Q for it's ingenious plot and the breathtaking drive of its final hundred pages. If you're a time travel buff like me, you'll want to know how it ends.

Book Review - 11.22.63 by Stephen King

If you'd told me there was a new book out in which a teacher has to travel back in time to try and stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on the 22nd of November 1963, I would have bought it regardless of the author. From Back To The Future to Mad Men, I've long had a great affection for late 50s / early 60s Americana, and I've also always been fascinated by the way the Kennedy assassination has been absorbed into pop culture, from Oliver Stone's epic, star-studded and wildly paranoid JFK to one of my favourite Manic Street Preachers songs, I'm Just A Patsy. And it goes without saying that I'm a sucker for time travel stories too. So, like I say, I'd have bought this book whoever wrote it. But Stephen King? My favourite author in the whole world ever, ever? Could it get any better?

Well, yes, it could. Because not only is this Stephen King, but it's also the best Stephen King I've read in 20+ years. I've been more positive about King's recent works than many of his longtime fans, but I've still been aware of its flaws: self-indulgent rambling and anti-climatic conclusions being his greatest crimes of late. But at no point during 11.22.63 did I feel that King was dragging his feet: indeed, for a novel that's 734 pages long I could happily have read another 734. Unlike many novels, I wasn't racing to get to the end so I could move on to the next book on my stack, I was pacing myself, slowing down my reading, trying to relish every page, not wanting it to end. That said, I was glad when it did - and, more importantly, how it did. This was perhaps the most satisfying climax King has ever written, and it was interesting to see him tip his hat in that regard towards his son, Joe Hill, who "thought up a new and better ending".

The most impressive thing about 11.22.63 is the plot. Time travel stories are notoriously tricky to navigate, especially ones which involve changing history. Add to that the conspiracy legends that surround JFK and Lee Harvey Oswald and there were a plethora of predictable twists that could have sunk this story. That said, there are also certain time travel tropes which are essential, and to ignore them would have led to a hugely unsatisfying read. King's answer to this dilemma is two-fold: firstly to cleverly hoodwink readers who were expecting a shlocky conspiracy thriller into enjoying a far more satisfying romantic drama. To the point that once the Oswald chase finally takes centre stage, we're screaming at the author to take us back to the comforting diversions of young high school teachers in love. Secondly, there's King's ingenious solution to the book's true protagonist and antagonist. Despite what you might expect, this is not one man from the future versus history's most infamous assassin. Instead, it's one man from the future versus time itself. Time is the bad guy in 11.22.63, because time does not want to be changed. And time will do anything to stop history being meddled with. 'How does one man defeat time itself?' is the novel's central question, yet we're ever aware that a second question lurks in the background: 'What are the consequences if he does?'

The best thing I can say about 11.22.63 is that it's taken top place on my list of Stephen King novels I'd recommend to people who don't read Stephen King novels. If it's true that King has spent his entire career trying to shed the clumsy genre labelling and write that elusive "Great American Novel", then I'll be damned if he hasn't finally done it. Whether or not the sniffy critics will be able to get past the fact that this is a story in which an English teacher travels back half a century through a food pantry in a roadside diner... well, screw 'em if they don't have the imagination.

Book Review: Dark Matter by Michelle Paver

In pre-WWII London, Jack Miller, a penniless young office clerk is offered the chance of a lifetime - to join a scientific expedition to Gruhuken on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen in the Arctic Circle. But circumstances conspire to leave Jack alone and stranded at this remote, frozen camp... alone among the living, anyway.

The first adult novel by former children's author Michelle Paver, Dark Matter is an atmospheric and chilling (in both senses of the word) ghost story. It reminded me of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and Albert Sanchez Pinol's Cold Skin. The Shining and The Thing also, of course. Paver has spent a lot of time in the Arctic and creates a wonderful sense of place: of lonely isolation and stark beauty. Although certain classic ghost story conventions are unavoidable (the taciturn ship's Captain who warns the expedition against making camp in Gruhuken, but won't say why), the characters are believably flawed and the slow-burn creepiness draws you in. This isn't a horror story of big shocks, though there are some memorably scary images and a gripping portrayal of Jack's sanity gradually unravelling as Dark Matter moves towards its climax. Plus there are cute huskies: always a bonus.

Book Review: Player One by Douglas Coupland

A typically self-aware bunch of Coupland characters find themselves stranded in the bar of an airport hotel while in the outside world the price of oil reaches $350 a barrel... and society implodes.

Rick is a reformed alcoholic about to give a large cheque to a self-improvement guru who's promised to change his life.

Karen has flown half way across America to meet her blind date, Warren, after they met in a Peak Oil Apocalypse chatroom.

Luke is a small town pastor who wishes someone would invent an 8th deadly sin to make his confessionals a little less monotonous.

And Rachel breeds white mice for laboratories and has multiple structural anomalies in her limbic system that render her emotionless, humourless and without any understanding of human nature... though she is drop dead gorgeous.

As with the best of Coupland's novels, Player One combines high concept thriller with sharp characterisation and trenchant sociological insight. And as with most Coupland novels, it has absolutely no idea how to end. There are loads of great ideas along the way though and it's frequently thought-provoking and hilarious.

Goddamn Internet ... his computer's spell-check always forces him to capitalize the word "Internet". Come on: World War II earned its capitalization. The internet just sucks human beings away from reality.

Book Review: The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith

The sequel to my second favourite novel of 2011 is almost as gripping as its predecessor. Almost, because although for the most part I found the pages of The Secret Speech turning just as fast as Child 44, there were a couple of sequences I would have happily left out in the cold.

Set a few years after the first book and shortly after the death of Josef Stalin, The Secret Speech finds Leo Demidov facing a very different Soviet Union. New leader Nikita Khrushchev issues a tacit apology for years of terror and oppression and the ensuing recriminations threaten to tear the country apart. Leo finds his past "crimes" coming back to haunt him, endangering the new family he's struggling to hold together. Forced into a desperate mission that finds him imprisoned in a Siberian Gulag then fighting for his life amidst the Hungarian uprising, Leo discovers redemption is hard to come by. Much of this is as breathlessly exciting as the first novel, though a couple of sections (notably the sequence about a sinking prison ship) seem tacked on with an eye to Hollywood. As with the second of Stieg Larsson's Millennium books, there's much less mystery and detective work here and far more action. A worthy sequel, nevertheless, and I'm looking forward to sinking my teeth into the final book of the trilogy soon.

Book Review: A Long,Long Sleep by Anna Sheehan

Anna Sheehan's novel retells the Sleeping Beauty fairytale in a futuristic setting. Rosalinda Fitzroy wakes up after 62 years in "stass sleep" (a suspended animation chamber) to find herself sole heir to her parents' empire, a freak in the eyes of her schoolmates and contemporaries, and pursued by an unstoppable robot killing machine to boot. She's missed out on an awful lot during her years of slumber, including "The Dark Times" (a global apocalypse) and the life and times of her original childhood sweetheart Xavier. There's also big questions to be asked about why Rosalinda was ever in stass to begin with... and dark secrets to be revealed from her own past and her parents'.

A Long, Long Sleep is certainly a page turner. It rattles along at a fair old pace with strong characters and plenty of twists. I suspect I'm not the book's target audience, it's probably aimed at younger female readers BUT it's a hell of a lot better written than the Twilight books and though the internalised teen romance seemed a little twee at times (to a cynical old grouch like me), for the most part I was hooked. There's no edge to it, which I'd have preferred, but neither is there a great deal of the sci-fi gobbledygook that spoils many a futuristic thriller. Immensely readable, give it a go if it sounds like your kind of jazz.

2011 - Books of the Year

The Best of 2010 Countdown continues with the best books I've read this year. No attempts to categorise them into books that were published in 2010 or not... instead, a short countdown of my favourite non-fiction reads before we get onto the main event.

Click the links to read my full reviews. If you can be bothered.

My Top Five Non-Fiction Books of 2010

5. Adventures On The High Teas - Stuart Maconie

4. Sex, Drugs & Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman

3. The Progressive Patriot - Billy Bragg

2. Good Morning Nantwich - Phil Jupitus

1. How I Escaped My Certain Fate - Stewart Lee

My Top Ten Fiction Books of 2011

10. World War Z - Max Brooks

9. Furnace - Muriel Gray

8. Room - Emma Donoghue

7. Started Early, Took My Dog - Kate Atkinson

6. The Hollow Man - John Dickson Carr

5. The Passage - Justin Cronin

4. Full Dark, No Stars - Stephen King

3. Seeing Stars - Simon Armitage

2. Child 44 - Tom Rob Smith

1. The Crimson Petal And The White - Michel Faber

It was a difficult list to judge this year, largely due to a couple of my favourite books suffering from huge flaws in their final acts. Justin Cronin's The Passage is prime example - in many ways, it's the most engrossing novel I've read this year... but it just doesn't know when to end. Child 44 was not so all-consuming, yet it was far more balanced and satisfying on conclusion. The top prize had to go to Michel Faber though, combining a cracking genre plot (a genre I'm usually not that interested in) with beautiful, witty and imaginative prose. The TV adaptation was fun, but not a patch on the source material.

What's the best book you read this year?

Book Review: World War Z by Max Brooks

Subtitled 'An Oral History of the Zombie War', Max Brooks' novel offers a unique perspective - or many different perspectives - on what is becoming a well told tale. While zombie holocausts are ten a penny these days, Brooks gives us something I hadn't seen before: the global picture. There are no recurring characters here (except the unseen narrator), just a series of interviews which tell the story of a terrifying zombie plague from first bite to final (?) victory. From China to Texas, Finland to South Korea, India to Sydney, Barbados to the Federated States of Micronesia, we see a truly worldwide catastrophe, from the point of view of arrogant soldiers, terrified civilians, vain movie directors, failing politicians and horrified relief workers. It's tirelessly researched with clever insights into warfare, science, technology and society as a whole, though Brooks also manages to find time for moments of breathtaking excitement, terror and even the odd laugh. It doesn't take you on the same kind of emotional journey as The Passage, yet it's more plausible and knows when to call it a day. A fascinating novel - though God only knows how Brad Pitt thinks he's going to turn it into a movie...

I met one gentleman on a coastal ferry from Portland to Seattle. He had worked in the licensing department for an advertising agency, specifically in charge of procuring the rights to classic rock songs for television commercials. Now he was a chimney sweep. Given that most homes in Seattle had lost their central heating and the winters were now longer and colder, he was seldom idle. "I help keep my neighbours warm," he said proudly. I know it sounds a little Norman Rockwell, but I hear stories like that all the time.

Book Review: The Courage Consort by Michel Faber

The Courage Consort, "possibly the seventh best-known a cappella vocal ensemble in Britain", are holed up in a rural Belgian château to rehearse the most complicated piece they've ever had to perform: Partitum Mutante. Forced to co-exist under the same roof for the first time, egos begin to clash and minds begin to fray. Relationship break down, strange allegiances form and... is that a ghost wailing in the woods?

Michel Faber's wonderfully observed satirical novella does for avant-garde classical music what Spinal Tap did for heavy rock. Although it's a short book, every sentence is a gem.

As for Dagmar, the most recent addition to the group, she'd stuck with the Courage Consort because they gave her fewer hassles than any of her many previous liaisons. After walking out on the Staatsoper because the directors seemed to think she was too sexually immoral to sing opera (her last role for them was Berg's prostitute Lulu, for God's sake!) she'd been a bit wary of these smiling English people, but it had turned out OK. They allowed her to get away with tempestuous love affairs, even illegitimate pregnancy, as long as she showed up on time, and this she had no trouble with. For nine months of ballooning belly she'd never missed a rehearsal: she'd given birth, prudently, during the lull between Ligeti's Aventures in Basle and the 'Carols Sacred and Profane' Christmas concert in Huddersfield. That was good enough for Roger Courage, who had sent her a tasteful congratulations card without enquiring after the baby's name or sex.

Extra marks for mentioning Huddersfield: we're proud of our Choral Society.

Movie Review: We Need To Talk About Kevin

Ever since I heard of the plans to film Lionel Shriver's novel about the tumultuous relationship between a mother and her high school massacring son, I've been eager to see the movie. It's an excellent book and the combination of director Lynne Ramsay and actress Tilda Swinton seemed the ideal choice to deliver a unsensationalised, dramatically non-Hollywood conversion. The distributors didn't make it easy though. For such a high profile, well-reviewed adaptation of a bestselling, prize winning novel, the film's UK release has been shoddily handled. Most of the multiplexes dropped it after one week while even the arthouses seem reluctant to give it much time. Curious then that the showing I finally managed to attend on Sunday night at the Hebden Bridge Picture House was sold out. Audiences do apparently want to see this movie... but I guess it's just not glamorous, star-studded or CGI-encrusted enough to devote mainstream cinema space to. In decades gone by, this would have been a major release. Can we say dumbing down?

It's even more galling then that Ramsay's movie proved to be one of the best pieces of moviemaking I've seen in a long, long time. Perhaps not the most enjoyable and certainly not the easiest to watch, but as an example of cinematic storytelling: damned hard to beat. Shriver's novel is a long and detailed account of the relationship between Eva Khatchadourian and her troubled son Kevin, and this could so easily have been a wordy, staged adaptation. Instead, the screenplay by Ramsay and Rory Kinnear is a textbook example of how to show rather than tell, using the medium of film to its full extent and respecting the intelligence of the audience, allowing them to fill in the gaps. It's a haunting, nightmarish translation that eschews meaty exposition in favour of dramatic visuals, shocking symbolism, taut-yet-restrained performances, a smart soundtrack and some of the meanest stares ever committed to screen. Clint Eastwood would lose a staring contest against any of the three young actors playing Kevin, and the permanently fraught Swinton gives as good as she gets.

If you've read the book, you'll know what to expect from the movie... but that won't stop you being devastated. If you haven't: prepare yourself for a genuinely shocking, provocative and challenging film that will remain with you long after the drive home. If you can find a cinema that's actually showing it in the first place...

Book Review - Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

So here we go with yet another handsome, photogenic, gifted young author whose debut novel has become a worldwide sensation, voted one of the 100 best thrillers of all time. Yes, I hate Tom Rob Smith... but it's impossible to hate Child 44. It's just too damned good.

Earlier this year I reviewed Sam Eastland's pre-WWII Soviet Union thriller, The Red Coffin, and confessed to my ignorance of Russian history. At the same time, I found the USSR made a fascinating setting for a thriller, a place where a climate of fear and paranoia exists even before any crime is committed and where every detective takes risks no westerner would ever face.

Set slightly later, in the early days of the Cold War, Child 44 tells the story of MGB State Security Office Leo Demidov, a man whose training tells him to make his heart cruel...

"Cruelty was enshrined in their working code. Cruelty was a virtue. Cruelty was necessary. Aspire to cruelty! Cruelty held the keys that would unlock the gates to the perfect State."

Leo believes in the work he does, believes the traitors and spies he hunts deserve everything they get for threatening the Communist way of life. Although not a heartless man, he has no choice but to accept that torture, exile, even execution is an everyday part of his job... though he is starting to wonder. His doubts grow when he finds himself on the trail of a serial killer whose long list of murders is being denied by his superiors. If Leo is to catch this killer, he must risk everything - his life, his wife, his parents, his freedom - but dark secrets from his own past compel him, and the murderer is the last person he would ever expect.

Thoroughly researched, Tom Rob Smith's novel creates a terrifying scenario of Cold War paranoia, poverty and brutality. There are times when the misery and hardship reach almost Dickensian extremes, such as the opening scene in which two starving children chase a scrawny cat, the first meat they've seen in months. Or Leo's first experience of a State orphanage...

"...the entire floor was covered with children all sitting cross-legged, pressed up against each other and trying to eat. Every child clutched a wooden bowl filled with what appeared to be a watery cabbage soup. However, it seemed only the eldest children had spoons. The rest either sat waiting for a spoon or drank straight from the bowl. Once a child had finished, they licked the spoon from top to bottom before passing it onto the next child."

...yet such descriptions only succeed in cranking up the tension and trepidation, making the pages turn even faster. I'm pleased to see a second novel featuring Leo Demidov is already in the shops and I'm looking forward to returning to his world. It's a cool place to visit from the comfort and safety of your armchair... but I'd bloody hate to live there.

Book Review: Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

Police Constable Peter Grant responds to an incident involving a headless corpse in Covent Garden and finds himself taking a witness statement from an 18th century ghost. As soon as Grant's 6th sense becomes apparent to his superiors, the hapless plod finds himself paired with Detective Inspector Thomas Nightingale, the Met's only remaining wizard. Together they investigate a mystery that connects the dark origins of Punch & Judy to the warring sprites in charge of the capital's waterways.

Magical realism is obviously big business in the publishing world these days, but it's always a tricky proposition for me as a reader. Aaronovitch is pitching this novel to the adult end of the Harry Potter audience, there's a little too much horror and bad language for kids, yet personally I'd have preferred Rivers Of London to have even more edge. There are some great ideas here, the best of which wouldn't have been out of place in Vertigo's Hellblazer - though John Constantine would have made short work out of this rambling mystery. The author's attempts to portray magic as a pseudo-science also left me cold. Attempting to explain wizardry as a dark cousin of physics or chemistry just seemed to take away the magic.

I'm probably not the target audience though. I was never much of a JK Rowling fan and I prefer my horror a little more visceral. And real. If fantasy's more your thing, you might want to give Rivers Of London a go. Because Peter Grant and Thomas Nightingale will definitely be back...

Movie Review - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy

Do you remember that old 70s TV sketch (I thought it was The Two Ronnies, but the internet is letting me down) where two spies meet on a park bench and speak in ever-more ridiculous code phrases? "The cuckoo flies backwards over the windmill at midnight." Despite the absence of such corny tropes, I couldn't quite take the latest adaptation of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy seriously. Everyone involved tried very hard to convince me, but the cuckoo got lost in the dark.

I've never read John Le Carre's classic spy novel, nor do I remember the 70s TV version starring Alec Guinness. I can't help but imagine both told this story with less clunk. Characters forced to spout whole chapters of exposition in one speech, flashbacks upon flashbacks upon flashbacks, a myriad of meaningful glances from the top drawer of scenery chewing thesps... and still I had little clue what was actually going on.

And though the cast is undeniably talented, hardly anyone stands out. In the central role as retired master spy George Smiley, Gary Oldman gives Ewan McGregor a run for his money in the "Who can do the best Alec Guinness impersonation?" stakes. Mark Strong gives good hangdog. Tom Hardy looks like Terry from Minder. Colin Firth is way too slimy to be trusted. Toby Jones barks in Scottish. Benedict Cumberbatch tones down the Holmesian kookiness. John Hurt is John Hurt. Only Kathy Burke really impresses as a former secretary denied access to her secrets and missing the bad old days. The period detail is excellent though, I definitely felt like I'd been transported back to 1973. What a grey, dismal and depressing year that was. I'm glad I was only 1.

Book Review - Apples by Richard Milward

Of course I hate Richard Milward. I mean, let's get that out of the way right now. He's young, cool, good-looking and a twice-published novelist with rave reviews. What's not to hate? But give him his due: dude can write.

Apples, Milward's debut novel (first published in 2007) tells the story of two Middlesbrough teenagers, Adam and Eve, and their non-love story. Adam is an OCD geek who has to close the door ten times before leaving the house, gets caught masturbating to his Dad's porno mags and obsesses over Beatles albums (a very teenage thing to do). Eve is a mouthy pretty-girl with a body for sin and a head for getting mortalled whose mum has just been diagnosed with cancer. She has no idea what she wants out of life, but like so many girls her age she thinks she could well end up a super-model.

As is the law for every coming of age novel written since the 50s, Apples has been compared to Catcher In The Rye ("...meets the Arctic Monkeys", said The Times) though personally I found it closer to a British Less Than Zero. There's far more Bret Easton Ellis to Milward's writing than there is Salinger, along with lashings of his hero Irving Welsh (he names Trainspotting as the book that inspired him to write). I enjoyed it, despite the depression and self-loathing I always feel when I discover yet another writer both younger and more talented than I am... but despite how short the book is (only 200 pages) I almost wish it had been shorter still. The scenes told from Adam or Eve's perspectives are gripping, hilarious and heartbreaking. Every now and then, though, Milward goes off on a tangent with chapters written from the perspective of a butterfly, a streetlamp or an unborn foetus. These felt a little too much like creative writing exercises for my tastes, though the foetus did at least make me smile.

Keenly observed, very funny and shamelessly un-pc, Milward captures the voice of contemporary disaffected youth better than anyone I've read in a while. Look away if you're easily offended, because here's the line that convinced me I was going to enjoy this book...

She had that sort of Drew Barrymore look; innocent and pretty, but from the wrong angle you could accuse her of being a mong.

Book Review - Harbour by John Ajvide Lindqvist

Anyone who's read John Ajvide Lindqvist's previous novels, Handling The Undead and Let The Right One In will know that he's an author hugely influenced by Stephen King at his best. We see this again in the opening chapters of Harbour as Lindqvist introduces us to a strange community who make their home on Domarö, a haunted island in the Stockholm archipelago. There's Anders, whose six year old daughter disappears into thin air on a walk to the lighthouse. There's Simon, an old magician and escapologist who keeps a spooky insect in a box that gives him supernatural abilities. There's Anna-Greta, Anders' grandma, a former smuggler who knows far more about the terrible history of Domarö than she's letting on. And there's Elin, a former Reality TV beauty who's determined to make herself ugly. All great characters, given plenty of back-story while the mystery of Domarö deepens, long before the horror begins.

Anders' daughter Maja isn't the first person to disappear on Domarö, and she won't be the last. But what happens when the missing start coming back? Harbour builds to an exciting and shocking first act climax involving two old ghosts called Henrik and Bjorn, homicidal Smiths fans who ride the island on a spooky moped, quoting Morissey lyrics and causing panic wherever they go. Unfortunately, the novel loses much of its momentum in the second half and drags towards an unsatisfyingly metaphysical ending. It's just like Stephen King... at his worst. But don't let that put you off. Harbour remains a fascinating, engrossing and emotionally gripping read, and you may have more time for the climax than I did. It's worth reading for page 347 alone, where Anders breaks down while listening to a cassette of an old Swedish comedian. Lindqvist has a powerful understanding of how pop culture affects us even at the lowest points of our life, and how sometimes it's all that keeps us going.

Book Review - The Hollow Man by John Dickson Carr

I've been on the look out for a copy of The Hollow Man (or The Three Coffins, to give it its alternative US title) for some time now. I'd heard it described as "the greatest locked room mystery ever" and as I'm a sucker for whodunits I was particularly interested in reading chapter 17, "The Locked Room Lecture" in which Carr's legendary detective hero, Dr. Gideon Fell, lays out his treatise on how to commit an impossible crime... and how to solve the seemingly unsolvable.

The Hollow Man tells of two such murders that take place on the same winter's night in London. In the first, the killer appears to not only disappear from the locked room where his victim dies but also escape the scene of the crime without leaving any footprints in the heavy snow outside. In the second, a man falls dead in the middle of an empty street while witnesses look on - yet his mortal wound shows he was shot at close range by a seemingly invisible killer.

While the police scratch their heads and become embroiled in a years old mystery that might even involve vampires or zombies, Dr. Fell pursues a far more down-to-earth solution. The final revelation is incredible yet cunningly plausible - a combination of fiendish planning and bizarre happenstance that prove Dickson Carr a master of the genre.

Originally published in 1935, The Hollow Man remains a fresh, fascinating and outrageously foxing mystery with a charismatic detective hero at its centre. The book's currently out of print in the UK so I'm glad I finally discovered an affordable copy.

An Object Of Beauty

I was a huge fan of Steve Martin's previous novel, Shopgirl (and the movie it inspired) so when I found a proof copy of his latest book, An Object Of Beauty, in the local charity shop, I was happy to plunk down my two quid for Help The Aged.

This novel is a harder sell than its predecessor though, largely because it's central protagonist, Lacey Yeager, is much less likable than the heroine of Shopgirl. Lacey is a mover and shaker on the New York art scene: a flirty, flighty, at times duplicitous, deceptively shallow creature who shimmies up the slippery pole, playing the game by her own rules and doing whatever it takes to get to the top. She's the sort of woman I'd hate unconditionally if I ever met her in person, so it's to Martin's credit that I was drawn into her story - and the insane world she inhabits. I don't have a great deal of interest in art history - particularly not modern art. I'm happy to look at it in a gallery or museum but I rarely care about the men and women behind the canvases. Martin's skill is to make artists, gallery owners and collectors as fascinating as the artwork they obsess over...

Alberg was a collector with a quick purse, which delighted those on the receiving end of things. He had a body shaped like a bowling pin and would sometimes accidentally dress like one too, wearing a white suit with a wide red belt. His wife, Cornelia, was thin where he was wide, and wide where he was thin, so when they stood side by side, they fit together like Texas and Louisiana. There was always a buzz when he entered a room, a buzz that could be described as negative.

Although the novel proceeds from the late 90s through the early years of the 21st century, there's a timeless quality to Martin's writing that reminded me of another great New York novel, Breakfast At Tiffany's. While Lacey Yeager is no Holly Golightly (she wishes!), the circles she moves in and the predicaments she faces reminded me very much of Capote's classic. Although Franks, the narrator (a thinly veiled Martin substitute) does have a habit of running off into turgid lectures on The Scene at times, you can easily skip those and still enjoy the wonderfully observed tale of a group of insane characters increasingly divorced from reality due to their involvement in the murky and mental world of art.