Ten Thousand Saints

Eleanor Henderson
Ecco Press 2011, Hardcover, 388 pages, £17.24

Shortly before his death Teddy lost his virginity to Eliza, who was visiting for the night from New York, where her mother is dating Jude’s father. Eliza also gave Teddy cocaine, which may have been the key ingredient in the mixture of substances that killed him. All of this happens in the opening of Henderson’s novel, which deals with the fall-out from Teddy’s death.

Jude travels to New York to tell Teddy’s brother, Johnny, the news. He moves in with his estranged father and gradually becomes involved in the ’straight edge’ punk scene, which rejects stimulants of any kind. Meanwhile Johnny, who is exploring Buddhism, decides that the right thing to do would be to marry Eliza and raise his brother’s child.

It is this chaotic situation that Henderson gradually brings to order. The punks form a kind of family, their own families having disintegrated at the hands of their hippy parents. Jude’s father deals drugs and his mother makes a living blowing glass bongs. Johnny’s mother skipped town shortly before Teddy’s death, fearing that her lies about Teddy’s father’s identity were about to be exposed. Nobody in the book seems grown up but at least the children have an excuse.

Without parental guidance, all kinds of values take their place. Buddhism, straight edge punk ideals and the camaraderie of life in a touring band are all explored as potential codes for living. In the end, the kids will grow into their identities, regardless of what they choose.

Henderson has an eye for detail and creates an authentic mid-1980s New York that is grubby and crime ridden but also filled with an unusual sense of community. A key scene in the novel takes place at the Tompkins Square Park riot in August 1988, in which heavy-handed policing turned a rally into a battle.

She’s equally able to draw the contrast between New York and sleepy Lintonberg, Vermont. The characters shuttle between the two – usually from one of Jude’s parents to the other – seeking to escape one and find refuge in the other. The city represents hope for excitement but also danger; the small town means boredom but sometimes safety. Conversely, the city means anonymity, while the small town can be a place where mistakes are hard to live down.

These aren’t pleasant characters – at least I didn’t find them that way – and that can make this book a difficult read. Like real people, the cast of this book are rough-edged and can be inconsistent, selfish, confused and irrational. Spending a lot of time inside their heads can be an uncomfortable experience.

That’s not a criticism. If anything, it’s to Henderson’s credit that she has resisted sentiment and stuck to the story. Ten Thousand Saints is a very good novel but not necessarily an enjoyable one.

No related posts.

Memoirs of a Master Forger

William Heaney
Gollancz 2009, Paperback, 320 pages, £7.99

Some time ago I stumbled across a blog post by Joyce in which he explained that the success of the novel had been somewhat galling. It had better reviews than Joyce’s previous work and went into reprint in its second week – a feat that none of his other books had managed. Joyce wrote: “It confirms some rather worrying trends in publishing.”

Would this book have been just as successful if it had been released under Joyce’s name? He thinks it is unlikely. Without any preconceptions about the author, critics and booksellers had to take William Heaney’s ‘debut’ at face value. A new Graham Joyce novel has critics digging through the old reviews and booksellers reaching for the previous sales data.

It is a fascinating experiment but I found the book itself to be unremarkable. William Heaney, the central character and supposed author, is a borderline alcoholic who works for a youth organisation and, in his spare time, sells forged books and donates the proceeds to charity. He also either sees demons or has a mental illness that leads him to believe that he does.

The demons have been around since a distressing incident at college, which is recounted in flashback. The donations to charity are, in some ways, an act of penance for what happened when he was younger. They are also partly driven by the fact that Heaney is, despite the criminal activity, a kind and decent person.

William’s wife has left him and the separation has caused tension between him and his children. He falls into a relationship with a younger woman, Yasmin, though he feels uncomfortable at the age gap and her pursuit of him. For things to work out, William will have to confront his demons.

Do you see what Joyce has done there? He’ll have to confront his demons. His demons. Yes, the metaphor is a little heavy-handed.

Joyce says that the book contains a critique of the publishing industry. There is a satire of British Council-supported poetry and, obviously, the novel is filled with fake books as well as – apparently – a demon that lives in a manuscript. It doesn’t really amount to a critique, though.

The problem is that this is part thriller, part romance and part satire but doesn’t fully convince as any of those things. The threads about demons and forgeries seem to be building towards a tense conclusion that never arrives. Instead, everything is tied up with very little trouble. So much for the thriller.

The romance, too, is pretty simple. Two likeable people want to get together and there are no significant obstacles to that. Jolly good. And the satire just isn’t sharp enough.

Nevertheless, Joyce writes very well and Heaney is an amusing, interesting character whose observations are often enjoyable.

Related posts:

1. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (Shane’s book 7, 2011)
2. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (Shane’e book 5, 2011)
3. Stamboul Train (aka Orient Express) by Graham Greene (Shane’s book 10, 2011)

There isn’t much of a story here. Ulrich, the ‘man without qualities’, is disconnected from life. Having spent time as a poet, a soldier and, more recently, a mathematician, he has come adrift. His father suggests that he take a job as secretary to a count, which leads to his involvement in a committee charged with organising a celebration to mark the Austrian emperor’s 70th anniversary.

The book is considered a 20th century classic, a modernist landmark to rank alongside Proust’s The Remembrance of Things Past and Joyce’s Ulysses. If you read James’s 26 Books review, you’ll find that this is his favourite novel. I’m afraid I cannot find the appeal at all.

This is a novel of ideas, a book about nationalism, morality, crime, justice, family, art, intellectualism, commerce, philosophy, militarism, sexual deviance, pacifism, mental health, society, the media and love. Had Musil lived, he would probably have gone on to cover umbrellas, chagrin and sausages too, for all I know. It’s a book about everything and that’s pretty much my problem with it.

The Man Without Qualities is like a map of the world in 1:1 scale or a gigantic photograph in which everything is in focus. It feels like there is no discernment. A work of art is more about what you leave out than what you put in and Musil seems unable to leave anything out. By attempting to say everything, he ends up not saying anything.

For 700 pages or so the book meanders. The long deliberations of the committee, which is led by Ulrich’s cousin, are satirised mercilessly. Having established that the committee is foolish and peopled by fools, Musil then goes on to repeat the point in various ways for hundreds and hundreds of pages. I found it hard to care. There is no emotion to connect to, just a series of abstract intellectual ideas that are ultimately meaningless.

After about 800 pages the book becomes more compelling. Ulrich’s father dies and he travels back home to settle affairs. There he meets his sister, Agathe, from whom he has been estranged for some time. They find a deep connection that draws them together and, since they are siblings, also makes them uncomfortable. Suddenly Ulrich seems to have found the meaning that he was looking for but it is forbidden to him. He and his sister are two halves that can never be properly whole.

The pair alter their father’s will so that Agathe’s husband is disinherited. Her marriage had been an unhappy one and she planned to leave him anyway. Ulrich becomes consumed with the question of whether their action was justifiable.

It’s here that Musil’s obsessive attention to the tiniest detail of intellectual process finally finds a worthy target. There is emotional weight to this dilemma. What Ulrich and Agathe have done is illegal but is it also immoral? That question finds a parallel in their relationship.

This is compelling in a way that a satire about a committee can never be, at least for me. About three hundred of the final four hundred pages in this book could be edited into a wonderful novel.

And what of the rest? I’ve tried to understand what people see in this book but I remain puzzled. The blurb on the back of my copy says: “There is scarcely a page that does not provide new thoughts or offer new insights.”

It’s certainly true that there are plenty of insightful passages and thought-provoking sections here but they are diluted amid the pages of detailed examination of nothing of consequence. Worse, Musil devotes equal time and energy to expounding ideas that are just nonsense.

Here’s Arnheim, a wealthy German industrialist who worms his way onto the committee, considering money:

“And the same is true of morality: if our acts were unrepeatable then there would be nothing to be expected of us, and a morality that could not tell people what was expected of them would be no fun at all. This quality of repetitiveness that inheres in the workings of the mind and morality inheres also, and to the highest degree, in money. Money positively consists of this quality. As long as it keeps its value, it carves up all the world’s pleasures into those little blocks of purchasing power that can then be combined into whatever one pleases. Money is accordingly both moral and rational; and since we all know that the converse is not the case, i.e., not every moral and reasonable person has money, we may conclude that money is the original source of these qualities, or at least that money is the crowning reward of a moral and rational life.”

That “no fun at all” is wonderfully placed and is indicative of the frequent brilliance of Musil’s writing. However, the argument itself is obviously nonsense. Of course money isn’t a moral and rational force, any more than trousers or bassoons are. We can see the flaw in Arnheim’s argument immediately. He’s a fool – and given that he’s supposedly a respected author, Musil is implying that Arnheim’s readers are fools too. But why spend so long unfolding a worthless argument?

Every single character has these obsessive, laborious thought processes. In Ulrich’s case, the ideas are most often interesting and illuminating, though by no means always. Other characters are almost always talking – or thinking – nonsense. At great length. It becomes tiresome very quickly.

There is no shortage of critics far more learned and well-read than me who will tell you that this book is a masterpiece. If you are curious then you should probably make up your own mind. I can’t recommend it.

Related posts:

1. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (James’s book 4, 2011)
2. The Canal by Lee Rourke (Shane’s book 2, 2011)
3. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (Shane’s books 29-31, 2011)

The Games That Changed the Game

Ron Jaworski
ESPN Books 2011, Paperback, 312 pages, £10.22

In this book, Jaworski looks at seven NFL games that he believes represent important moments in the tactical development of the sport. He gives the background to the coaches and players involved and then examines the film of the game to explain how the tactical innovation in question played out.The tactical to-and-fro of an NFL game is what makes the sport so absorbing for me and Jaworski captures it perfectly here. There is a narrative to an NFL game that isn’t always apparent, even to seasoned observers, and this book does an excellent job of making those narratives clear.

Jaworski explains, for example, that coaches don’t always pick plays because they expect to score with them, or even gain a lot of yards. He writes:

“An offense will run plays that you know aren’t going to pick up much yardage, but you have to run them to set up another play for down the road. You run certain plays to see how the defense reacts. You show certain fomations to help a quarterback understand how defenders will line up against that formation.”

It’s here that Jaworski’s experience as a quarterback becomes relevant. He has been on the field and played the game at the highest level. When he tells you what it’s like to try to read a defense or to attempt to avoid a pass rush, you can trust that he knows what he’s talking about.

Using a specific game to explain a tactical innovation is slightly forced because in almost every case the tactics under consideration did not suddenly appear, fully-formed, in one game. They were developed over a series of games – or even over years. However, the advantage of this approach is that makes very clear how the tactics work in practice.

Jaworski’s play-by-play is frequently riveting. At times, he manages to create the excitement of watching the game itself. The only downside was that I wanted to watch the tape while I read his analysis. This can be done with enhanced ebooks and it’s to be hoped that publishers will try to sort out the licensing deals to make that possible in future.

There are also lots of brilliant anecdotes in amid the description. Jaworski explains how Sid Gillman consulted a maths professor to work out geometrically where each receiver should be on the field so that the ball would be in the air for the same amount of time, whichever one the quarterback passed to.

There are some wonderful quotes too. Here’s Jim Otto, the Oakland Raiders center:

“At the end of one run, Joe Greene cussed me out, then kicked me square in the testicles – and I’ve never forgotten that. I didn’t think that was very nice.”

Some of the tactical developments that Jaworski covers here were so significant that they changed the type of players that teams looked for. In some cases, they even resulted in rule changes by the league, because a new idea tipped the balance of the game too far towards the offense or defense.

Though Jaworski has two co-writers on this book, the writing and editing are often poor. There are exclamation marks all over the place, for example, which is irritating. And it’s repetitive: occasionally you’ll read a sentence that repeats, almost a word-for-word, one from a few pages earlier.

Though it would be nice to have better prose, that isn’t the selling point of a book like this. It’s all about the expertise and Jaworski has buckets of it. This is a book that will deepen your understanding of the game. An essential for every fan.

Related posts:

1. Take Your Eye Off The Ball by Pat Kirwan (Shane’s book four, 2011)
2. Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (Shane’s book 21, 2011)
3. Noir by Robert Coover (Shane’s book 1, 2011)

Super Crunchers

Ian Ayres
John Murray 2008, Paperback, 272 pages, £9.99

Ayres at least has an interesting story to tell. The rise in the practice of analysing large data sets is changing the way many areas of our lives work, from finance to medicine, shopping to wine criticism. These changes are profound and although they will help us to make better decisions, they will also make a lot of people uncomfortable, not least those who consider themselves experts.We meet a man who created a formula for predicting the quality of wine years before it became drinkable and a man who has developed a computer programme that takes a person’s symptoms and generates a comprehensive list of possible illnesses.

What Ayres calls ’super crunching’ works by taking a set of criteria – a list of symptoms, for example – and checking it against a massive data set, such as a list of known medical conditions, to generate results that would have been almost impossible to produce manually. Various statistical techniques, such as regression analysis, are used to determine which criteria are relevant to the required outcome and these can then be assembled into a formula.

Obviously, this is the same role performed by a doctor, who uses training and experience to assess symptoms and make a diagnosis. However, human beings a not perfect reasoning machines. We tend to overestimate the significance of coincidences, for example, and to assume that patterns we have seen before will repeat themselves.

Computers don’t do that. They deliver results based purely on the data. Of course, that means they are only as good as the data they are given and the criteria by which they assess it. Ayres makes clear that determining the factors to measure is still a job for a skilled human, as is deciding how to act on the results.

For example, it’s possible to determine the likelihood that a convicted criminal will re-offend. Does that mean it is reasonable not to release those who have a high likelihood of re-offending? Most people would say no. Since all we can determine is a likelihood, we would be keeping locked up some people who would not have re-offended and that would be unfair.

Nevertheless, Ayres shows how some are using the results of data analysis in ways that most of us would consider to be unfair. Retailers are increasingly realising that they can determine how much a shopper would be willing to pay. That means instead of offering everyone the same price, they will charge each customer as much as they can get away with. If you demonstrate that you don’t mind paying high prices then you can expect to be charged accordingly. The only answer, Ayres says, is for consumers to educate themselves.

Ayres has lots of examples but over 272 pages his material wears thin and he ends up repeating himself. Once you understand the concepts at work here, it doesn’t really require an entire chapter to detail how the concept applies to a different field.

Furthermore, Ayres’s central concept is a little fuzzy. There is no precise definition of ’super crunching’. When does mere ‘crunching’ become ’super’? When the data set is of a certain size? When it’s done by a computer? Ayres doesn’t give a clear answer because there isn’t one. The form of these kind of non-fiction books requires Ayres to act as if we have just passed a pivotal moment in history, when in fact these techniques have been progressing over many decades and will continue to do so.

Still, Ayres is very readable and the subject is fascinating. Those who enjoyed Freakonomics or who are intrigued by the idea that statistically analysis can uncover ‘hidden truths’ should give this a read.

Related posts:

1. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart (Shane’s book 7, 2011)
2. German Modernism: Music and the Arts by Walter Frisch (James’s book 6, 2011)
3. Afghanistan by Stephen Tanner (Sara’s book 4, 2011)

A Most Wanted Man

John le Carré
Sceptre 2009, Paperback, 384 pages, £8.99

When Issa Karpov, a young Chechen with links to Islamist terrorists, arrives in Hamburg, he immediately draws the interest of the intelligence services. The Germans are keen to erase memories their failure to detect the Hamburg-based group that plotted the September 11 attacks on the US. They want better intelligence sources to help spot future plots.

The British, meanwhile, are interested because of Karpov’s father, who was a Russian officer. Lurking in the background are the Americans, who want to use extraordinary rendition to remove Karpov to their own facilities to find out what he knows.

These forces largely play out in the background as Le Carre focuses his attention on Tommy Brue, who runs a British family bank in Hamburg, and Annabel Richter, the human rights lawyer who represents Karpov.

Karpov’s father was a customer of Brue’s bank and Richter hopes that the money the bank owe’s to Issa can be used to keep him out of the hands of the intelligence services and give him legal status in Germany.

Le Carre’s central trio, Brue, Richter and Karpov, are all well drawn. Brue, cuckolded, estranged from his daughter and laden with guilt over the customers his father brought to the bank, sees Issa as a chance for redemption. Richter seeks to make amends for a previous case in which she believes that she failed.

Issa, meanwhile, is harder to read. Angry and vulnerable, determined to be a devout Muslim but unsure what that means. He ricochets between those who seek to help him and those who would harm him.

The supporting cast are a little more cliched, particularly Gunther Bachmann, the German intelligence man who leads the operation to find Karpov. He’s a tough, charming workaholic who doesn’t respect authority or play by the book. The kind of character you’ve seen in dozens of spy novels, in other words.

Le Carre moves the pieces of his plot into place slowly, before the whole thing snaps shut abruptly. The ending is so abrupt, in fact, that it feels a little unsatisfying. A chapter expounding on the conclusion would have been welcome but it would also, perhaps, have undermined Le Carre’s point. It’s hard to say more without giving away the ending but the way that Le Carre closes the book puts the reader in a similar position to the characters.

Like a lot of Le Carre’s work, this is a very moral book. Once again, he shows how individuals can be helpless victims in the face of an espionage complex that ruthlessly pursues its larger objectives.

This isn’t in the same class as the other Le Carre novels that I’ve read but it is an engaging book that tells a powerful story.

Related posts:

1. A Frolic of His Own by William Gaddis (Shane’e book 5, 2011)
2. Noir by Robert Coover (Shane’s book 1, 2011)
3. The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins (Shane’s book 35, 2011)

Steve Jobs

Walter Isaacson
Little, Brown 2011, Hardcover, 656 pages, £25.00

The result is a book that those with a casual interest in the technology world will find informative. However, technology experts, particularly those who follow Apple closely, will be disappointed. There are scattered technical errors and assertions by Isaacson that betray his lack of expertise but mostly the problem is that he hasn’t really uncovered enough that is new.

Shortly after Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple, in August this year, Fortune magazine released a compilation of its articles about Jobs and Apple. I was halfway through it when Jobs’s death was announced in early October.

The Fortune anthology, All About Steve, is a treasure trove. It covers Jobs’s time with Apple in the 70s and 80s, his ‘wilderness years’ nurturing Pixar and NeXT, and his triumphant return to Apple. What’s particularly fascinating is that, because these articles are presented as they were published at the time, it’s possible to test their predictions against what actually happened. It’s a vivid demonstration of just how often Jobs’s visions of the future turned out to be correct.

If you read the Fortune anthology and Wired’s more recent ebook, Steve Jobs: Revolutionary, you’ll learn just as much about how Apple’s products were developed as you would from reading Isaacson’s book. Indeed, having read both shortly before reading Isaacson, I was struck by how much the biographer had drawn from them.

The Fortune articles offer lots of detail on the early years of Apple. The company, just making a name for itself, was less secretive then and as time has passed more people have told their story of working on the Apple Lisa, the Apple Mac and the company’s other groundbreaking products.

Isaacson repeats a lot of the stories from those Fortune articles and others that Apple followers will already know from other books, blogs and websites. He offers lots of detail on areas that have already been widely covered elsewhere but as the book moves towards the present day, there are fewer details of life inside Apple.

Less has been published about Apple’s more recent products – though Wired’s iPhone article is excellent – and as a result Isaacson has less to offer. It really appears that, on the product side of things, Isaacson did not uncover much new information. It’s not clear whether that’s because he wasn’t interested or wasn’t able to get the answers.

What you do get from Isaacson is more detail on Jobs’s private life and his personality. Asked why he consented to the book, Jobs told Isaacson: “I wanted my kids to know me.” To this end, there is a lot about Jobs’s childhood, particularly his relationship with his adoptive parents. We get lots of details of his faddish eating habits, his interest in meditation and occasional sections on his romantic life.

The man that emerges is fascinating but also hard to like. Jobs was controlling, manipulative and could be savagely cruel. Most bizarrely, he was prone to breaking down in tears when things didn’t go his way. This continued well into his adult life; he even cried when he was told that the original iMac would have to have a CD tray, rather than his preferred option – a less intrusive CD slot.

Jonathan Ive, Apple’s design chief and one of Jobs’s closest colleagues, tells Isaacson:

“But there are times, I think honestly, when he’s very frustrated, and his way to achieve catharsis is to hurt somebody. And I think he feels he has a liberty and a license to do that. The normal rules of social engagement, he feels, don’t apply to him. Because of how very sensitive he is, he knows exactly how to efficiently and effectively hurt someone. And he does that.”

And yet, time and time again Isaacson talks to former colleagues who say that working with Jobs was the best time in their career. His former girlfriends acknowledge that he could frequently be difficult and unreasonable and yet they speak fondly of him. Jobs’s enormous charisma appears to have been enough to balance the unpleasant side of his personality.

Isaacson gives comprehensive coverage of the cancer that ultimately killed Jobs. At times it made for harrowing reading but Jobs’s determination to continue his work despite the disease was admirable. The story Isaacson tells of Jobs in hospital, rejecting the oxygen mask he was being given and demanding to see alternatives, demonstrates just how obsessed the man was with perfection in design.

Given the time that Isaacson spends on Jobs’s cancer it’s noticeable that the book moves almost straight from his resignation as Apple CEO to his death. It seems clear that there wasn’t time for Isaacson to write much about Jobs’s last days before the book’s release.

That sense of the book being rushed is apparent every now and again in the text. Names are mis-spelt, for example, and quotes are repeated in different chapters. Delaying the book might have given time to fix those mistakes and also would have allowed Isaacson to cover the tributes to Jobs, from family, friends and colleagues.

Overall, this isn’t a bad book. Those starting with little knowledge of Apple will find most of what they need here. However, readers who know Apple – and I imagine they would be a significant audience for this book – will be letdown. Isaacson could, and should, have done better with this book.

Related posts:

1. German Modernism: Music and the Arts by Walter Frisch (James’s book 6, 2011)
2. The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V Higgins (Shane’s book 35, 2011)
3. The Counterlife and Deception by Philip Roth (Shane’s books 22 and 23, 2011)

“Hey Foss,” the prosecutor said, taking Clark by the arm, “of course it changes. Don’t take it so hard. Some of us die, the rest of us get older, new guys come along, old guys disappear. It changes everyday.”

The Friends of Eddie Coyle

George V. Higgins
Picador USA 2010, Paperback, 192 pages, £8.99

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is another classic of the hardboiled crime genre but while The Hunter is the equivalent of the Hollywood action thriller, this is the precursor to something more realistic, such as The Wire. The characters here, whether crooks, cops or lawyers, are just doing their jobs as best they can.

In his introduction Dennis Lehane – a novelist and one of the writers for The Wire – describes the book as “the game-changing crime novel of the last 50 years”. He notes that the book is almost all dialogue and praises Higgins’ ear for real speech.

The plot concerns Eddie Coyle, a smalltime crook in Boston, who is facing jail time for his part in a robbery. In an attempt to avoid prison, Coyle begins feeding information to the police. He doesn’t think he’s giving them anything important but, unknown to him, someone else is feeding better information and Coyle could end up taking the blame.

It’s fairly clear early on how the book is going to end but that isn’t the point. What makes this book so good is Higgins’s evocation of character and place. He wrote this while working as an attorney in Boston and his knowledge of the system comes through in the tangible authenticity of the dialogue and the setting.

Higgins does so much of his storytelling through speech that the story takes on a hazy, vague quality at times. It adds to the unsettling feel of scenes such as the bank robberies carried out by the gang that Coyle is supplying with weapons. The cold precision of the robbers and the business-like capitulation of the bank staff is brilliantly rendered.

As with The Hunter, it’s clear to see how influential this book has been. However, while that book has been so thoroughly imitated that it feels like an imitation itself, there is a quality in The Friends of Eddie Coyle that is very hard to imitate. Indeed, Lehane’s introduction says that even Higgins could not manage to imitate this book with any success.

It still feels fresh and it’s a thoroughly engaging read.

Related posts:

1. The Hunter (aka Point Blank) by Richard Stark (Shane’s book 34, 2011)
2. The Information by James Gleick (Shane’s book 11, 2011)
3. Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (Shane’s book 21, 2011)

Point Blank (Parker 1)

Richard Stark
ALLISON & BUSBY 2008, Paperback, 288 pages, £6.99

Published in 1962, the book is the first in a series of more than 20 novels about Parker, a professional crook. Its author, Donald Westlake wrote more than 100 novels under many pseudonyms. The Parker novels were all written as Richard Stark. In summary, both the novel and its author go by many different names.

In The Hunter, Parker is just out of prison and is determined to get revenge on his ex-wife and his former partners in crime, whose treachery put him in jail. Parker is a single-minded and ruthless hunter. When he discovers that one of his former partners is being protected by the mob, he decides to take on the mob too.

The writing is taut and simple. Westlake doesn’t linger too much on descriptions or the inner life of his characters as he propels the action relentlessly forward. It’s easy to see why the story has tempted so many filmmakers – at times it almost reads like a film script.

The story was probably not that original even when it was written but frequent imitation, by the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Elmore Leonard, does diminish its impact somewhat. At times it feels cosy and familiar rather than the thrilling journey into the underworld that it once might have been.

Parker is a classic example of the indomitable hero. That he will succeed in his revenge mission is not really in doubt at any stage, which robs the story of some tension. Westlake makes up for that with some memorable action scenes and a clever structure that begins in the midst of Parker’s search for revenge and then occasionally flashes back to earlier events.

This is worth reading if you’re a fan of classic crime fiction. It’s enjoyable but probably lacks the impact that it had when it was first published.

Related posts:

1. The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey (Shane’s book 13, 2011)
2. The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies (Shane’s books 29-31, 2011)
3. Open Doors and Three Novellas by Leonardo Sciascia (Shane’s book 6, 2011)

Take Your Eye Off the Ball [With DVD]

Pat Kirwan
Triumph Books (IL) 2011, Spiral-bound, 288 pages, £15.94

The main changes are in updated examples from last season as well as new sections on this year’s NFL Draft and an added chapter on the special teams game.

Other significant changes are to the packaging of the book. It has expanded margins, to facilitate annotation, and is now ring-bound to make it a little sturdier for repeated reference. There’s also a DVD, which features Kirwan explaining many of the book’s key concepts with the aid of a whiteboard and a marker. It’s fascinating if you’re an NFL fan but soporific if you’re not.

As I wrote in my review in March, this is only for those who already understand the basics of American football. Kirwan assumes a degree of familiarity with the rules and terminology. For all those beyond the novice level, this is an extraordinary resource.

My understanding of the game increased after the first reading and so, as the start of the NFL season approached, I was keen to read it again. I wasn’t disappointed: I got just as much out of a second reading. There is so much here, in fact, that I will probably read it again before the next season begins, just to reinforce what I’ve learned.

I recommend this to all NFL fans.

Related posts:

1. Take Your Eye Off The Ball by Pat Kirwan (Shane’s book four, 2011)
2. Reading list: five books about football
3. Inverting the Pyramid by Jonathan Wilson (Shane’s book 21, 2011)