Death Can't Take a Joke by Anya Lipska

Anya Lipska’s compelling sequel to “Where The Devil Can’t Go” demonstrates that she is fast building what the marketeers like to refer to as a “brand” for herself. In simple terms it means she’s a damn good writer.

The intricate plot interweaves a number of story threads, reuniting the characters of Janusz Kiska and DC Natalie Kershaw. The chemistry between Kiska and Kershaw is carefully constructed and beautifully weighted. Lipska writes the nuanced dialogue with real skill, and Kiska’s dour grumpiness provides a counterpoint to his muscular approach to detecting. He also gets some of the best dialogue, particularly when in conversation with his dodgy Polish compatriot Oskar.

The plot is complex and multi-layered, constructed with a number of false starts and dead ends so that the reader is kept guessing nearly as much as the protagonists. The denouement is both brilliantly set-up and executed, with more than a hint of Thomas Harris.

Lipska excels at creating believable minor characters with strong individual voices. I was a little disappointed that Kiska’s complicated love-interest Kasia [one time exotic dancer now running a nail-bar] didn’t get to make an appearance, apart from a brief text message. I thought she was one of Lipska’s great inventions from “Devil”, and I hope that she may return in the next book.

I was privileged enough to hear Anya speak at a Polish Crime Night a few months ago, organised by Magda Raczynska of The Polish Cultural Institute at Belgravia Books in Victoria. Anya shared a platform with another of my literary heroes William Brodrick, author of the Father Anselm books. They both spoke eloquently about their work and each performed a brief reading from their current WiP.

I am a huge fan of her writing and me this novel is even better than her debut. So many of the scenes have a cinematic sensibility, which screams movie / TV mini-series to me. I can only hope that the novel gets optioned, which it richly deserves.

Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty

Apple Tree Yard is a profoundly unsettling novel. It starts out as a tale of obsession and sexual passion, but quickly becomes a much darker morality tale about predators and the inherent danger that can often accompany sexual fantasies.

 

Written in the first person which gives Yvonne’s voice an immediacy and a sense of realism, her story is narrated from the dock at the Old Bailey. Doughty jumps backwards and forwards to slowly tease out the story of her protagonist’s fall from grace. As I was reading it became clear to me that in any case such as this context is everything; certainly context is one of the key factors that members of a jury need to reach an unbiased decision. Doughty has a real skill in balancing the ambiguity of context in a number of key scenes, which serves to highlight the dramatic tension within the novel.

 

I found Yvonne’s measured and precise voice perfectly encapsulated her personality, the slightly passive scientist who finds herself drawn into a web of deceit that she cannot control.

 

A fellow reader whose opinion I normally value bemoaned Yvonne’s lack of depth to me. I had to disagree. For my part I didn’t feel there was a lack of depth; I was certainly able to fill in any intentional gaps. It is true that there are many things left unresolved, left unsaid. Whilst this can be mildly irritating I can appreciate why Doughty has chosen to do this. How often in life is everything neatly and fully explained? However as a reader there were a few crucial conversations that I felt were missing, particularly between Yvonne and her husband Guy. His inability to question her about her affair struck me as unlikely, given the measured personality that Doughty had constructed for him, and so I wondered why she had made this conscious decision as a writer.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed the novel which slowly builds to its final denouement. It does not disappoint.

Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith

I found Tom Rob Smith’s debut to be a tremendous novel. It has a tortuous and labyrinthine plot which twists and weaves its way through Stalinist Russia, starting in war-torn Ukraine in the late thirties and ending in Russia in the mid-fifties. His characters are so well drawn, particularly his main protagonists Leo Demidov and his wife Raisa, along with a truly wonderful villain in Leo’s subordinate and ultimate nemesis Vassily Nikitin.

The complex plot centres around MGB agent Leo Demidov. When a colleague’s child is killed Leo is ordered to silence the family who are claiming that the child was murdered. Murder is not possible in Stalinist Russia as it would be an affront to the state ideology where the only possible crime is a crime against the state. However Leo discovers that a serial killer is murdering children and he and his wife Raisa attempt to track them down. This simple synopsis doesn’t really do justice to the intricacies of the storyline, but provides a starting point.

Smith’s story was inspired by the Russian serial killer Andrei Chikatilo who was executed for the murders of over fifty children in the 1980’s. However Smith chooses to set his novel in 1953 and provides a fascinating insight into Stalinist Russia and the changes that occurred with death of Stalin and the rise to power of Nikita Khrushchev.

Fledging writers are always told about the importance of their opening chapter. The first chapter of Child 44 is breathtaking as two starving Ukrainian children hunt an emaciated cat that they intend to kill for food. It is an object lesson in how to create an initial impact. I was completely hooked.

Smith’s writing is intense and unrelenting; he evokes the bleakness and paranoia of a totalitarian state and his research is exemplary.

The critical reaction to the novel is in itself fascinating. It seems to provoke praise and admiration from some quarters and utter vilification from others. I am firmly on the side of praise and admiration. I thought it was a stunning debut.

Die Trying by Lee Child

Having recently read “Killing Floor” I decided to read Lee Child’s second Jack Reacher novel “Die Trying”. On some levels it’s a very different proposition to the first novel.

For a start “Killing Floor” was written as a singular first person narrative. This gave it an immediacy and an individual viewpoint throughout. However, this writing discipline brings about certain restrictions. All of the action needs to be viewed through the protagonist’s eyes. Anything which occurs “out of shot” has to be eventually discovered by the protagonist to bring it into the plot.

Child has chosen to write “Die Trying” in the third person. This opens up a host of opportunities for a wider plot to take place around and beyond the immediate action involving both Reacher and a kidnapped woman claiming to be an FBI agent. The plot moves through so many complicated somersaults that the third person approach was probably the only way that Child could approach the narrative. However his skill as a writer is evident in the deft way that he handles the third person narration without losing any of the impact of his debut novel.

One key difference is that in “Killing Floor” all of the minor characters interact with Reacher and are obviously seen through his eyes. He becomes a filter for the reader. This constantly keeps him at the centre of the action. In “Die Trying” most of the minor characters do not interact with Reacher until the climax of the book; they have a life of their own, their own sphere of existence. This creates a very different dynamic to the book which is not a criticism, merely an observation.

Child is a master of pace and timing. Just like a sniper he knows when to squeeze the trigger, and he always hits his target with an uncanny accuracy.

As the action in the novel builds to a climax the set-up involves some complicated choreography. Child’s skill as a writer cuts through the complexity and makes the action clear, crisp and tense. For any budding thriller-writers it’s an object lesson in how to write within the genre. I have a feeling that I’ll be reading the other seventeen Reacher novels.

"Wake Up Happy Every Day" by Stephen May

“Wake Up Happy Every Day” is an astonishing achievement. Stephen May’s third novel centres around Nicky Fisher’s opportunistic decision to assume the identity of his dead friend Russell, and the catastrophic implications of this sudden choice. It is a brave and ambitious story which weaves together five narrative strands that slowly become connected. Often when an author attempts such a feat the potential danger is an epic fail; as a reader you only want to follow one thread and quickly become irritated by the other voices or the other stories. However May’s skill is to create an entire cast of characters that you care about, from the central protagonist and his immediate family through to even the most minor supporting character. As I was reading the novel I was trying to work out just how he achieves this, and my feeling is that it’s down to the individual voices, each distinct, yet each imbued with May’s own quirky observations. It’s quite a skill.

The novel is full of great little gems. I particularly enjoyed “I don’t understand why more people don’t embrace doubt, when it generally works so much better than the alternative.”

May’s tone is acerbic, belligerent and angry as he riffs on topics as diverse as loss, longing and cake. Indeed his views on the importance of cake in maintaining successful office dynamics struck a particular chord (probably a C# diminished!).

The plot structure is wonderfully, bizarrely left-field with an ambitious mix between first person narration and third person segments. The pace is relentless and the pages simply fly by before you can draw breath. It’s a novel that you read with a wide grin on your face, revelling in the complexity of the plot, and trying to determine just how the entire tangled mess can possibly be resolved.

Overall I found the novel daring, original and beautifully judged. I now keep recommending it to friends and feel certain I’ll be buying numerous copies to give as gifts (I’ve lost track of how many copies of “Life! Death! Prizes!” I’ve given as Birthday presents).

In the words of some marketing guru somewhere “if you only buy one book this year, make sure it’s this one”. What am I saying? If you do only buy one book this year you probably need to reassess your purchasing priorities!

The Farm by Tom Rob Smith

The Farm is a fascinating premise for a novel; two seemingly unreliable narrators who are the parents of the protagonist, Daniel. Tom Rob Smith’s skill as a writer is evident in the careful way he teases the plot threads out as Daniel’s mother Tilde uses her journal to relate a sinister tale to her son surrounding the parents retirement to a remote Swedish farm.

However nothing is what it seems. At its dark heart the novel is a study of deception and delusion, the secrets and lies that underpin the fabric of a life.

As a reader I found myself fascinated by the apparent simplicity of the set-up, but quickly felt that I could not trust anything I was being told, which I feel certain was Smith’s intention. With a tightly focused cast of characters the distinctive voices that Smith creates, particularly for Tilde and Daniel, are key to the success of the novel, and the pace is carefully crafted and structured.

Because of the unusual structure the first three quarters of the novel are told in “real time” and cover no more than a few hours as Tilde tells her tale. I found myself completely in tune with this pace, and consequently I initially struggled with the abrupt change of pace in the final quarter of the novel when Daniel visits Sweden for himself to verify the truth of Tilde’s version of events.

Smith creates a palpable sense of dislocation within the novel and a feeling of isolation which has as much to do with emotional resonance as geographic location.

I have to say that there was one particular moment in the novel which didn’t work for me, which is when Tilde produces a carved knife from her bag. My instinctive reaction was to question just how she managed to get that through airport security! Also there were a few loose ends within Tilde’s story which Smith had set up enticingly, but then didn’t fully explain, which felt a little unsatisfactory. However these are very minor gripes within what is undoubtedly a superbly written piece.

Overall I raced through the book, fascinated to reach the end and to discover whether my guesses and deductions were correct. Smith didn’t disappoint.

On the strength of this I have now decided to go back and read Smith’s debut “Child 44” which had such high praise.

The Half Life of Stars by Louise Wener

I’ve been working my way through Louise Wener’s novels and I have reached her third “The Half Life of Stars”. It’s been interesting to chart her development as a writer. In many ways her third novel is a more ambitious story than either of her first two books, although there are some thematic similarities; Claire’s search for her missing brother Daniel could almost be an echo of Audrey’s search for her missing father in The Big Blind.

However one of the most striking differences is Wener’s growing confidence with dialogue. The conversational flow in this novel is excellent, and I really enjoyed the voice that Wener gives to Claire, her main protagonist, which is spiky, awkward and belligerent. I loved the character’s ability to deal with the cruel and dismissive put-downs from her dysfunctional family, which made me root for her all the more. The plotting within the novel is also well-handled with a host of seemingly disconnected plot threads becoming slowly intertwined and eventually resolved.

The American section of the novel is particularly powerful and I loved the descriptions of the scenery, the way of life, and the acutely-observed details with which Wener weaves a rich tapestry.

The characterisation is really strong, and despite the reasonably large cast there is a clear differentiation between the various characters. I enjoyed the pace of her writing, and found that I had quickly devoured the book without being aware of the passage of time.

If I have any criticism it’s probably directed towards the epilogue which I simply found too long. Although it’s very cleverly done, my feeling is that it would have been much more powerful at a quarter of the length. Sometimes less can be more.

However overall I found this to be both readable and satisfying, which seems a good balance.