26 Books

High school kids Jude and Teddy spend their time in their small Vermont town hanging out, stealing and getting high. On New Year’s Eve 1987, the pair pass out in the snow after a night of drugs, drink and parties. Teddy never wakes up.

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.

In many ways the back-story of this book is more interesting than the book itself. Memoirs of a Master Forger was not written by William Heaney but by Graham Joyce, the author of a string of fantasy novels over the last 20 years. When it was released, in 2008, the author’s true identity was not made public.

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.”

Julian Barnes won the Man Booker Prize with this short novel last year. He’s a writer I admire, but mainly because of his wonderful memoir Nothing To Be Afraid Of rather than for his fiction. While his style is beautifully precise, I find the content of his fiction rather bland.

The Sense of an Ending

Julian Barnes
Jonathan Cape 2011, Hardcover, 160 pages, £12.99

Sadly that is very much the case here. In many ways The Sense of an Ending reminds me of Graham Swift’s horrendously smug and pointless Tomorrow. While it’s not as bad as that, I certainly didn’t enjoy it very much.

Well, I finished The Man Without Qualities, which is more than its author managed to do. Robert Musil died in 1942, aged 61, a mere 21 years after he began writing this mammoth book. The published edition runs to more than 650,000 words and it’s thought that the finished work would have been twice as long. I suspect that Musil would never have finished, even if he had lived until 81, or 101, or 181. The book would just have gone on and on and on.

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.

Yet more detective fiction, this time in the guise of espionage and the Secret Service.

Diamonds are Forever

Ian Fleming
Penguin 2009, Paperback, 304 pages, £7.99

Oddly for a secret agent, James Bond has been roped in to investigating a diamond smuggling operation. A dentist in Africa gives the stones to a man in a helicopter who takes them to London to be cut, and they’re sent off to America to be sold.

Whoosh, away from Italy, north to Sweden and another detective, Kurt Wallander.

The White Lioness (Inspector Wallander Mysteries)

Henning Mankell
Vintage 2009, Paperback, 576 pages, £7.99

The crime story here is more ambitious and international in scope, involving an assassination plot of famous real-life South African political figures, fictional contract killers and the landcapes of two radically different countries.

Another Italian detective, but this one’s home grown. Salvo Montalbano is a Sicilian police inspector and this is his first appearance in print.

The Shape of Water (Montalbano 1)

Andrea Camilleri
Picador 2005, Paperback, 256 pages, £7.99

The story concerns a man found dead in a car in a wasteground well known as a trading place for prostitutes and drug dealers. He’s Silvio Luparello, an engineer and uncorrupted politician. He’s wealthy and aristocratic, so the well-worn crime trope – this case must be finished quickly to avoid publicity for the powerful friends of those in charge of the police – comes into play and Montalbano feels under pressure.

Modern crime fiction doesn’t go in for humanity all that much. There are faults, for sure, but fondness and family bonds that aren’t late ripped apart from a threat from an avenging psychopath are rare.

A Venetian Reckoning

Donna Leon
Pan Books 1996, Mass Market Paperback, 240 pages, £6.99

Donna Leon’s Inspector Brunetti is the most human detective I’ve come across, a sort of Venetian Maigret with a lower clear-up rate.

The only Le Carre books I had read, before this one, were his classics from the 60s and 70s: The Spy Who Came In From The Cold and the Smiley Trilogy. This is a more recent work, which deals with the espionage world as it today, with the Cold War a distant memory and terrorism the new threat.

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.

“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.