[others to follow..]
DELUSION IN DEATH BY JD ROBB
(AKA NORA ROBERTS)
I was looking forward to
reading a thriller/police procedural by 'one of the world's top selling
authors' but I found this an irritating bastard from beginning to end. Bastard
because it follows all the norms of the police procedural - acronyms galore
(ME, TOD, COD), steely cop with a past, plenty of Cracker-esque criminal
profiling - but then it rubbed bits of godawful Mills & Boon romance onto
the corpses like an embalming fluid.
Actually, as I write that, it sounds a lot
cooler than the experience of reading it. I also realise it sounds a bit
'Operation Yewtree'. Delusion in Death is not that interesting. The characters
are awful. Take Roarke - the female totty bait - who is described as early as
page 14 as, 'impossibly gorgeous, carved by the strong hand of some clever god
and perfected by eyes of bold and brilliant blue'.
He is also a billionaire and
the husband of the female investigating officer. He's a dick. In fact, the two
main characters are so attractive, wise and smugly in love that the paperback
should come with a free sick bag. Not sure how they would handle this for the
Kindle edition. It's also set in the near future. I can't help but feel that this
is merely added as some sort of marketing differentiator because apart from
references to 'Links' (basically more advanced smart phones) it adds nothing to
the plot or background.
What Robb does incredibly well is dialogue. In fact,
apart from the odd (surely humourous?) sex scene the whole book is driven by
it. Perhaps this was just a duff 'un by 'one of the world's best selling
authors'... Actually, I just Googled the 'In Death' series. Bloody hell, she's
written 45 of the bastards! Even Morse got killed off after 13 novels. Move
along, Nora. Move along.
-- MW
Pray for the Dying
By Quintin Jardine
So crime fiction, not really my
genre. And to be absolutely clear about this. If I'm honest, I don't
particularly like crime fiction.
So why for the love of god did I
volunteer, yes that's right volunteer to review this book?
Bob Skinner to blame, I'm related
through marriage to a Bob Skinner otherwise I wouldn't have picked it up.
Though I did pick it up, before I even read the intro. Before I saw and was
intrigued by the Bob word.
The fact is, its got a great cover
and that exploits a major weakness in my character. A sucker for a bit of
graphic design.
A crime thriller. What's not to like? Well nothing really.
Its not that I'm against genre books
in any principle. I enjoyed comics and science fiction as a young adult and
still retain a soft spot for even the most superficial of space adventures. So
genre fiction is not a bad thing per se.
It's just like soap operas, perhaps better to limit yourself to the one
or at the most two. I've also nailed my colours to the mast of a few too many
false prophet rock and rollers for my own good. So no stranger to fandom either
then.
It's worth noting then that this is
the nth book in the series [its Bob Skinner no 23]. So somebody likes them. More than likes them. Bob
skinner has a serious fan base. As does Quintin Jardine. Twenty plus previous
books in a series is wildly successful by any ones calculations.
Some genre books manage to break out
of the genre and give us a bit more, at their very best much more. Elmore
Leonard, Raymond Chandler and others do this. Their books redefine the genre
and change the way we think about the genre. Some books would be difficult to
classify as genre in the first place. Would it really be reasonable to classify
Blood Meridian as a western? It's certainly set in the correct time period and
follows many of the expectations and form that go to define the genre, but
hardly.
Pray for the Dying does not fall into
either of these categories, it's a genre book pure and simple. No whip
cracking Chandleresque dialogue. No zeitgeist. Its ostensibly links to the current Scottish political
context and the potential unification of the Scottish Police Service provides
little insight and serves more or less as sufficiently serviceable wallpaper
for the action.
So the book.
Yes the book.
It's well plotted, it tells me so on
the back cover, and yes well it is. Well plotted and well paced, just enough
twists and turns to keep you interested all the way to the very end. Slightly
far fetched but nicely satisfying none the less.
What starts as a fairly standard
crime thriller upscales at some point into political intrigue and grand
conspiracy. However the writing style comes across as somehow slightly more
domestic in character. This description is not intended as a criticism, domestic
is fine, and feels just about right in the most part. But as the whole takes
off it starts to feel just a bit underpowered. Like if Belle and Sebastian did
a cover of Stairway To Heaven. Intriguing yes, I'd like to see it even, but I'm
not so sure it would quite fly.
There's an ensemble cast to some
extent, even if the book is not quite an ensemble piece. Some of the action
takes place without the main protagonist being present. Bob doesn't get all the
action, just the juiciest bits. I liked that and would have liked it more if
there had been more of it. However it was all slightly undermined by some of
the minor characters being fairly one dimensional.
The author also struggled to give the
various characters necessary for an ensemble piece authentic voices. Unlike a
movie where individual actors bring their own take on characters they are
playing, in a novel it falls to
the author to give each character defining characteristics and voice that is
distinctive to the reader. Think Irvine Welch and the motley crew in
Trainspotting. Each with their own easily recognised idioms and voice.
The greatest criticism that could be
levelled at the book was the perceived need to fill the reader in on however
many years of backstory. Resulting in groan inducing sentences, which run along
the lines of (husband to wife) 'we need to go to our family home in Dunbar in
our car, the blue Astra with the dodgey clutch, and catch up with our daughter,
the one called Sandra whose married to Jim, the orthodontist with one leg. And
so it goes (I exaggerate). These are liberally strewn through the first third
of the book. This is where the editor could have helped by showing a firm hand,
or was the editor to blame, was it his or her idea. There's another mystery for
you Bob.
So a book I suspect for fans, for the
converted, not a book to convert. The fan will buy this book and no doubt it
will satisfy. If your not a fan I suspect you might be better off with
something earlier in the series. The true fun I suspect lies in following Bob
Skinners adventures over time, the ups and downs, victories and defeats.
How he became a crack shot, peerless
detective, gifted administrator, and a shrewd politician ( yes I know, put like
that..).
--GMcA
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