“Rain” by Don Paterson (Faber and Faber) – poetry review

“I love all films that start with rain:
rain, braiding a windowpane
or darkening a hung-out dress
or streaming down her upturned face;

one big thundering downpour
right through the empty script and score…”

shows Don Paterson’s latest collection is up to his usual masterful standard and right as rain, particularly in the sequence in tribute to the late and much-missed Michael Donaghy.

Don Paterson’s poetic integrity is never in doubt: his skilful use of rhyme and that he clearly cares about how the poem sounds as well as what it says.  It’s rare though that he gives a glimpse of energy and passion as in “Song for Natalie ‘Tusja’ Beridze”, a Georgian singer which also makes a play on tba being Georgian for lake as well as demonstrating Don Paterson’s skill with a longer line,

“This I wish you as I leave Invierkeithing and Fife
listening to Trepa N for the two hundred and thirty-fourth time in my life
with every hair on my right arm rising in non-fascistic one-armed salutation
towards Natalie, Tba, my Tusja, and all the mountain lakes of her small nation…”

“The Private Lives of Pippa Lee” by Rebecca Miller (Canongate) – Novel Review

The film’s not made it to Leicester, so I turned to the book.

“Well I congratulate you. You are the first person who has ever walked across the threshold of this house who isn’t riddled with ambition, frustrated or otherwise.  Even the butler is writing a short story. He broke the news to me yesterday,” Herb comments on his first meeting with Pippa.

A misspent youth pushes Pippa into marriage with a man 30 years her senior as the third Mrs Herb Lee.  She falls into the apparently humdrum life of a housewife and mother, enabling Herb to continue his successful publishing career.  Determination not to make the mistakes her own mother made sours Pippa’s relationship with her own daughter whom Pippa suspects sees her as a doormat.

Herb, now 80, moves them to a retirement village.  He continues to run his publishing business.  Pippa discovers that the security of her marriage was achieved through emotional compromise.  Disgusted by the doctor’s “sleeping pills and take up a hobby” advice as she finally acknowledges she’s been sleepwalking, Pippa begins to admit her past and explore her future options.

Rebecca Miller draws Pippa as a piece of unfired clay, moulding herself to her family’s wants.  She’s the one cooking dinners so Herb can entertain, she’s bringing a bottle to a neighbour’s party while Herb’s chasing a manuscript, she’s proud and supportive of her son’s lawyerly respectability and counsellor to her friends’ emotional dramas.   But what of Pippa?  You suspect she’s envious of her daughter’s self-sufficiency and drive, something hinted at when the book returns to Pippa’s youth and that problematic lack of ambition. 

Almost in Anne Tyler’s territory, but not quite with her confidence and absolute attention to detail.  Anne Tyler would never have given us a second wife’s death as “a fine spray of blood the shape of a huge Japanese fan surged out of her serpentine black hair, spattering him, all of us, like lava shooting out of an angry volcano.  The glass behind her was coated ruby red.”  But this over-poetic prose is generally rare, suggesting first-novel nerves from Rebecca Miller.   Anne Tyler’s prose gives a texture and detail that makes it very difficult to translate to film.  Rebecca Miller’s prose is a line that draws a sketch, giving space for the reader to colour the picture in.  Very easy to see how the book became a film.

“No Escape” by N J Cooper (Simon and Schuster) – Novel Review

Giving a pre-schooler an unwanted digital camera and letting her take photos on a picnic in a tourists’ spot on the Isle of Wight seems harmless.  But she takes a photo of a killer who only has four cartridges in his shotgun: one for the pre-schooler, one for her mother, one for her eighteen-month-old brother and one for their dad.  That this leaves the killer without a shot for his intended victim isn’t a problem until Doctor Karen Taylor turns up.

Young widow and forensic psychologist Karen Taylor camps in her family-owned chalet on the island where she’s come to interview Spike Falconer as part of her study into Dangerous Severe Personality Disorder.  Spike, convicted of the murder of the picnicking family, was adopted as a toddler by the wealthy Falconers who are reluctant to talk about their adoptive son, or, at least, Colonel Falconer is, Karen believes that his wife may be persuaded to talk if only she could be separated from her domineering husband.  The Falconers adopted because Mrs Falconer seemed unable to have children, but she fell pregnant naturally shortly after Spike comes to live with him, giving him a brother, Silas, two years younger than him, who is now a “successful city type” working in finance and earning more than enough to wear designer labels and drive a high-performance Porsche.  Dr Taylor finds her interviews with Spike puzzling as either he has an a-typical variant of the disorder or he doesn’t have it at all.

Apparently having overpowered a prison guard, that Colonel Falconer was privately paying to keep his adoptive son secure and who Spike accused of spying on the Colonel’s behalf, Spike escapes from Parkhurst Prison.  Dr Taylor gets a phone call requesting her presence at a potential hostage situation: a three-year-old girl has been tied up in full view of a window on the first floor of a house and the police don’t know if the abductors are nearby.  Rescuing the girl, Dr Taylor makes herself unpopular with the police for messing up their crime scene.  Spike is later recaptured, but Dr Taylor finds herself being dragged in for a police interview about her part in his escape. 

Of course, she had no part in his escape, but, having stirred up a hornets’ nest, Dr Taylor sets about pacifying the hornets.  There’s a lot of smoke and some of the hornets don’t seem to be sure whether they should be attacking their queen or the intruders and appear to change sides.  There are also powerful interests at work in ensuring Dr Taylor doesn’t get her answers.  Theories are fine for psychologists, but police need evidence that can be taken to court and Dr Taylor must not only consolidate and prove her theory but deliver evidence or at least a confession from the real killer to satisfy the police.

N J Cooper has skilfully created a labyrinthine psychological thriller that satisfyingly keeps the pace and tension all the way to the credible conclusion.  She focuses on the characters and their relationships, unobtrusively bringing in Dr Karen Taylor’s training and knowledge as real, solid background rather than something her character happens to do because the story needed a lead with access to the police who wasn’t governed by police procedures and paperwork.  Dr Karen Taylor has a personal life too but that takes place in the periphery of the story and is seamlessly fed in around the main plot.  A polished performance and I hope to meet Dr Taylor again.

“Cross My Heart” by Helen Slavin (Simon and Schuster) – Novel Review

Nine year old Grace, witness to an ongoing war of snark and snideness between her mother and grandmother, learns that telling a ‘true’ lie can get her out of trouble.  Her success lies in basing her untruth in truth and then fleshing it out slightly so it gains credibility.

In parallel to Grace’s story is Alec’s.  In a pub, remembering his favourite childhood TV show where the hero Fraser has a girlfriend called Grace, he witnesses a ‘domestic’.  Alec sees the woman home, complying with her request to check her flat’s empty before she goes in.  Later, she’s found murdered and witnesses place Alec at the scene.  Alec’s ex-girlfriend lies and makes Alec out to be violent, leaving the police little incentive to check out Alec’s description of the man the woman was actually with.  Being the 1970s, there’s no neat forensics to come to his rescue.

Dragged back home by her grandmother after a disastrous holiday, Grace witnesses another battle between mother and grandmother, this time with a fatal outcome.  Trapped – after all if the battle’s survivor goes to prison then Grace will go into care – Grace tells another lie.

Alec adjusts to prison life, learning some useful home maintenance and plumbing skills and picking up a degree.  He’s refused parole as Alec can’t bring himself to pretend remorse for a crime he didn’t commit.  Nearing the end of this sentence, he’s allowed to do some maintenance work for a vicar and his wife.

Meanwhile, a grown up Grace buys a house in need of repair, develops a side-line in knitting, runs a stall to sell sweaters and scarves and is seen as an easy target by the office sex pest, Hugo.  She dreams of a gentle man who is good at DIY.  When Hugo follows her home, she tells him she has a fiancé. 

When the vicar’s wife is taken to hospital, Alec manages to slip away.  He drifts towards the area where Grace lives.  Can he overcome his instincts for truth and fall in with Grace’s lie to protect them both?  Particularly when an overly-nosey neighbour accuses Grace of murdering her fiancé, police find freshly dug earth and blood-soaked tea towels and Grace’s earlier lie about that fatal argument between her mother and grandmother (both now passed on) could unravel her new life.

Alec is sympathetically realised as the good guy who’s out of his depth and pushed by circumstance into a situation of unintended consequence.  Grace’s world is sharply observed through a child’s eyes and credibly uses coping strategies a child would use. 

Helen Slavin draws her readers into the story as if being intrigued by the colour of someone’s knitting, then noticing and admiring the texture and detail of the knit and finally being compelled to keep watch until the garment is finished.  “Cross My Heart” shows a supple, skilled writer.

“Burial” Neil Cross (Simon and Schuster) – novel review

Nathan’s former friend-of-a-friend Bob turns up one night warning that, “They are digging up the woods.”  Six words that tell you not only are both men hiding a very dark secret but it’s now a race against time for both to embark on some serious damage limitation. 

Bob and Nathan met when Nathan was a gopher on a radio show and Bob was a student studying the supernatural ostensibly with the aim of debunking such beliefs.  At a party, to avoid the current girlfriend Nathan is planning on making an ex, he, Bob and another woman head off in a car taking an unmarked lane into the woods.  After leaving to answer a call of nature, Nathan returns to find the woman dead.  All three had plenty to drink and didn’t go easy on the lines of coke so, not thinking clearly, the two men concoct a plan and agree never to see each other again.

In mitigation, Nathan endures a painful transition back to an appearance of a normal life though is left scared of the dark.  Four years as a salesman and he meets an estate agent whose elder sister is missing.  Dating turns to marriage and plans for children when Bob re-enters Nathan’s life.  Luckily his wife, Holly, is out.

Thus far, the narrative’s stayed with Nathan but Bob’s re-emergence gives readers the chance to catch up with Bob and try and piece together what actually happened that night.  Neil Cross has written for the BBC drama “Spooks” and the story in “Burial” gathers pace as readers have to decide whose version of events is more reliable and what motives characters have for the way they behave and what they tell each other.

The risk in choosing a narrating character with a murderous secret in his past is that some readers won’t see past the secret.  But Nathan is given chance to put things right or at least comfort those bereaved and help them move on.  Can Nathan redeem himself or will he be forever defined by one event in his past?  It’s the questions, rather than the characters, that linger when the book is closed.

“City of Fear” Alafair Burke (Harper Collins) – novel review

“City of Fear” was called “Angel’s Tip” in the US after the favourite drink of a student on a break in Manhattan whose body is found by detective Ellie Hatcher on her morning run.  The student has been strangled and her hair snipped off by the murderer presumably as a souvenir.

I warmed to Ellie Hatcher.  She’s bright, dedicated to all aspects of her job from chasing suspects down alleyways to researching cold cases, but is also recognisably human.  She figures the initial suspect is guilty of obstructing justice and possibly bribery, but not murder, however, hangs back until she can put together some evidence for her theory.  She understands her place in the hierarchy – somewhere near the bottom – but doesn’t let it intimidate her.

Alafair Burke is a fan of her father, James Lee Burke, and it’s fair to say that writing a series about a detective would draw inevitable comparisons, but Alafair’s drawing on her experience as deputy district attorney.  She’s picked up her father’s sense of character – Ellie is fully rounded and believable with none of the annoying quirks that some lesser writers think is a substitute for characterisation – and an appreciate of the limits detectives are forever up against.  The unco-operative public, suspects that bargain to get themselves off while someone else gets murdered, the frustrations of politics and tough decisions on the allocation of finite resources in the police department.  What she’s not quite mastered yet (this is only the second outing for Ellie Hatcher) is the sense of place.  Her New York and plot has the pace of a densely-populated city that never sleeps, but at times I could be reading a map.  When Ellie is driven to the DA’s office, I get a list of buildings and the problems of finding a parking space but not whether the road is smooth or rough or the sense it’s jam-packed with traffic.

It’s soon clear, Ellie Hatcher and partner J J Rogan have a serial killer on their hands, political pressure to solve the murders yesterday and journalists who know more than they should to deal with.  That their Lieutenant failed to make a link between the angel tip drinker and a previous case of his is a complication they could do without.  Alafair Burke maintains the pace and tension skilfully.

If I had a vote, I’d have gone for the original “Angel’s Tip” title.  “City of Fear” is too vague and doesn’t work as the city isn’t in fear, it’s too busy, and the fear is the all-too-familiar fear foisted on woman balancing how much they have to drink, what time they leave a night club and whether they are safer with a cab or the man they met earlier that night.  “City of Fear” is too vague, overblown and in direct contrast to the control and poise of the writing within.

“Crucifix Killer” Chris Carter (Simon & Schuster) – Novel Review

Detective Robert Hunter, after tip off, discovers his rookie partner nailed to a cross behind a bulletproof door, heart strapped to a monitor which will trigger explosives if it flat lines.  There are three buttons, only one of which will open the bulletproof door, and there’s a clock ticking down from sixty seconds. 

Los Angeles has a serial killer.  One that’s intelligent enough to murder their victims in one place but leave the body in another for the police to find.  This means there are no forensic leads, no brilliant forensic trick that uncovers the killer.  This killer also has a surgeon’s precision and a love of torture.  With no apparent connection between the victims, the detectives stall.

The plot doesn’t though: that lives up to the blurbs, tight, slick and compelling.  Stylistically different, but Chris Carter shares James Lee Burke’s sense of pacing and place.  “Crucifix Killer” isn’t just a cat and mouse game between detective and murderer.  Chris Carter holds a mirror up to the detectives too: how do the police uphold the law when surrounded by people who don’t?  Doesn’t the corruption they deal with on a daily basis rub off on them too?  Similar to questions asked by James Ellroy, although Chris Carter is less concerned with politics and more focused on the effects of their work on the detectives.  One of whom is challenged when a pimp and dealer, who takes care of his high class prostitutes, leads the detective to a snuff movie operation.  The detective’s first reaction is to tell the pimp to back off and let the law take over.  But then evidence is uncovered that some of these movies involved children.  The pimp is as horrified and outraged at the detective.  The criminals here have a moral code too and one the detectives can understand if not subscribe too.  Chris Carter can draw fully rounded characters and appreciates people can do the wrong thing for the right reason and can also do the right thing for the wrong reason.  The serial killer is not completely evil, there is an underlying logic to their motives.

There are a couple of first novel nerves: a tendency to give back stories of minor characters, such as the morgue assistant, and a minor character’s appearance is described by two different characters to no apparent purpose.  Both forgivable and both easily cured with a dose of confidence.

The detectives, however, aren’t short of ideas and the plot twists and turns to a satisfying ending.  The tension is controlled like a professional.  Chris Carter has earnt his place on my “one to watch” list.

“The Last Patriot” Brad Thor (Simon and Schuster) – novel review

This is the 12^th Scot Harvath novel but the first time I’ve met him and his author Brad Thor.  In “The Last Patriot” Scot, a former Navy SEAL and counter-terrorism agent, and his girlfriend Tracy are in Paris enjoying some time together as Tracy recuperates after having had a bomb blow up on her.  She’s suffering headaches but hiding them from Scot.  From a quiet cafe, Scott notices a man pop open the locks on a Peugeot and move it down the street.  A Mercedes parks in the Peugeot’s place.  Scot and Tracy leave the cafe, but stand aside to let someone pass.  As they do so, Scot notices the Mercedes driver, now standing on the pavement at the end of the block, check a photograph and press a remote device.  Scot pushes the man they stood aside to let pass back into the cafe and lies on top of him as the car bomb is detonated.  In confusion after the bomb going off, the man disappears but not before Scot gets his wallet and learns the man is Dr Anthony Nichols.

Tracy and Scot trace Dr Anthony Nichols back to his hotel room.  Interrogating him, Scot learns Dr Nichols is working for the President officially as an archivist, unofficially with specific regard to the Jefferson archive particularly Jefferson’s studies of the Koran to help him learn more about the pirates off the Barbary coast who believed killing non Muslims was justified and discovered there was a last revelation of Mohammed which is not in the Koran, and is in Paris to collect a rare book, an edition of “Don Quixote” that belonged to Thomas Jefferson believed to be notated with a code that will unlock the last revelation.  Scot uses contacts to take Dr Nichols and Tracy to a safe house, reluctantly Scot agrees to help the professor who clearly has not been trained to cope with being the target of a professional terrorist.  Scot meets with the book dealer, but both are held at gunpoint and escorted towards the book fair exit.  As they approach the exit, the gunman uses Scot as a shield to shoot police.  Scot takes advantage of the gunman’s distraction to escape with the dealer.  The dealer helps them through an alternative exit.  Through the dealer they learn the book is held in a mosque in one of the dodgier areas of Paris.

Meanwhile man is arrested in a park in Washington for the apparent murder of his apparent lover Nura Khalifa, niece of Dr Khalifa.  Dr Khalifa was studying papers, believed to be from the Koran, found at an archaeological dig in Yemen.  Nura Khalifa is a reluctant member of Foundation on American Islamic Relations (FAIR) and the man believes he was recruited as a NOC into the FBI to infiltrate FAIR under a mission called Glass Canyon.  As soon as the man starts talking about NOCs and the FBI, the police are only too happy to hand him over to the CIA.  The CIA are sceptical at first but then the man mentions top secret project and, pulling through the project files, a CIA Agent comes across a record that doesn’t make sense.  A Matthew Dodds is listed as killed in action, remains not found but there is no evidence that he was killed so he should have been listed as missing in action.  The CIA agent starts investigating.

It then becomes a race.  Can Scot and Dr Nichols unlock the code and get to the last revelation before the terrorists who are hell-bent on murdering anyone involved and destroying any evidence pointing to a last revelation?  Tracy is hospitalised and treated in intensive care for swelling on her brain and Scot needs answers before the French police arrest her as they are convinced she and Scot are somehow connected with the car bombing and the shooting at the book fair.  Action moves from France to the States as it becomes apparent that Glass Canyon was set up by FAIR to infiltrate itself to weed out weaker members and the man arrested in Washington was actually reporting to the missing CIA agent who faked his own death and converted to Islam after his wife and child were killed.  The pace picks up, the body count mounts – noticeably Scot only kills in self-defence but the FAIR terrorists kill indiscriminately – and the plot holds up as it moves towards its denouement. 

Brad Thor is careful to differentiate between the majority of peaceful Muslims and the extremists in the fictional FAIR.  The last revelation of Mohammed doesn’t exist, although Brad Thor makes the concept credible, and then contents hinted at rather than fully revealed.   And the moment of author vanity when it’s revealed Scot’s treasured gun has ‘Thor’ engraved on it is forgivable. 

Less forgivable is the moment of author intrusion at the end of the prologue where Nura Khalifa’s contact meets her in the park and Brad Thor feels obliged to tell the reader “had he been paying attention… he might have had time to react to the two men who sprang from the shadows.”  I don’t want to be told, I want to know what it felt like for Andrew whose attention was on Nura to suddenly be grabbed and overpowered.  The author intrusion pulls away the suspense and detracts from the scene.  But it wouldn’t make me hesitate to pick up another Brad Thor novel.

The novel-as-screenplay approach, where the initial chapters show brief shots of new characters and it doesn’t really get going until we catch up with Scot and Tracy in Paris, works very well here because the underlying novel is strong and holds the story well.  Brad Thor’s writing is very visual.  It’s rare we hear anything other than the explosions, alarms, gunshots or dialogue, or have smells described – a non smelling mosque, Paris without the scent of coffee and crepes, no musty paper and wood smells at the book fair – this storyteller’s in a hurry to get on with the plot.

Simon and Schuster’s website is here, but it’s still telling me I need to upgrade my browser to IE7 or later when I’m using IE8 so I still can’t ’see’ the site.

“Blogging Blueprint” Glen Allsopp review of a free download

Free download that comes in three sections: Glen Allsopp’s blogging success story, how you can do it and personal insights. Glen started out with a desire to create a website for DJs as an on-line meeting place and promoted it on related sites and via word of mouth to create a real community. Encouraged, Glen put his knowledge and expertise into blogging and created PluginID, which has landed him a dream job, has 3103 subscribers and 85000 page views per month.

Having established his authority, Glen then turns to outlining how you could do it. He does warn that less than 1% of bloggers make a liveable income and it’s better to focus on a blog as a means to an end (promotion) rather than an end in itself (income) with any income from blogging supplementing a real income earnt elsewhere. Glen talks about finding a passion you can communicate rather than picking a popular subject and forcing yourself to write about it. That’s not to say you can’t blog about a popular subject, but make sure you feel engaged and passionate because that will be reflected in your writing. Forced writing about a topic that doesn’t engage you will translate into a dreary blog that won’t attract readers or income. I’m in complete agreement with him that blogs should be about readers: write for readers not search engines or with the aim of attracting income. If readers aren’t your primary focus, you’d struggle to get ranked and struggle to earn from blogging.

Once you’ve got your niche, Glen Allsopp covers branding, selecting a domain, hosting, traffic, search engine optimisation, commenting, guest blogs and social media in a friendly, non overly-technical way. Glen’s a fan of pared down, focused writing which makes his blueprint easy to read. He does labour the point about his love of WordPress. I like WordPress, but I think trying out various blogging platforms and finding one you’re comfortable with is fine, so long as you do actually try WordPress.

In the third section, Glenn passes on some personal insights into how he became successful. He suggests consistency – keep true to your voice and passion and don’t change for the sake of following the latest big idea if you know it’s not for you. That holds for writing as well as blogging. Build a reputation so you build backlinks which will help you dominate search results. Use analytics wisely and provide insane value.

Overall “Blogging Blueprint” is a solid introduction to the basics of blogging for beginners and a good reminder for those with some experience of blogging. There are no startling new ideas for instant success, but then there is no instant success, as writers are well aware.

“Blogging Blueprint” is available as a free download here.

The Longshot Katie Kitamura (Simon and Schuster) – novel review

Cal and his trainer Riley drive to Mexico for a rematch that could make or break Cal’s boxing career. They drive down three days early to give Cal a chance to acclimatise to Mexican heat and Katie Kitamura chance to explore that combination of the tedium of waiting and preparation and the build-up and hype of the match.

Katie Kitamura’s spare, muscular prose does well to capture the minutiae of training, the pre-match atmosphere and boredom of cheap, crummy hotel rooms. Style-wise she alludes to Cormac McCarthy or Harry Crews although without the latter’s dark humour. Here, as Cal is led up to the ring,

The canvas was so white it was blinding. For a moment he didn’t see anything but the ring. The people around fell silent. They fell out of focus. He looked at the ring. The fuzziness left the picture. He could see now. In an instant it had become clear. He stepped off the runway and walked around the ring. He climbed through the ropes. Then the noise came back.

Without giving away the ending, it does go out with a whimper. We see Riley’s reaction but not Cal’s – other than being totally stunned by the fight – which feels like an omission. Although not one that would stop me reading Katie Kitamura again.