The Point of Rescue by Sophie Hannah

A quick rundown… Sally’s secret week away turns into a nightmare when she sees a man on TV calling himself the same person as the man she met while away. What’s going on?

Strengths: Taut and tense thriller

Weaknesses: Found it somewhat difficult to believe the murderer’s motive.

Why I read it: Loved Hurting Distance; bought in the Borders final sale.

Pages: 464

Published: 2008

Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton

Setting: England

Rating: 9 out of 10

If you liked this, try: Hurting Distance by the same author

I really enjoyed the first Sophie Hannah book I read (Hurting Distance), so I was surprised to see so many of her books on Borders’ shelves during the last days of their closing down sale. Perhaps she isn’t as well known in Australia? (Perhaps that might explain why I bought another of her books for $5 at the $5 bookstall). I think she is really underrated here – she’s a first class thriller writer. Mystery, police, psychological drama and murders – she has it in one. Fans of Minette Walters or The Hand that Rocked the Cradle would enjoy her books.

Don’t be put off that the police characters (namely Charlie and Simon) are recurring. I’m reading the books completely out of order and it doesn’t matter at all. There was ‘something’ between them in the past (possibly even before the series started) and now we have missed opportunities and sexual tension. While you may be beginning to think ‘oh no here we go again’, that really isn’t the case. What makes Hannah’s books stand out is that the main characters of the books are victims or near victims. The police are secondary and are there so you know both sides of the story.

The majority of this story is told by Sally Thorning. Sally’s a harried mum with a job, a lovely husband and a messy house. The previous year, she was meant to attend a conference which was cancelled. So, instead of telling her family, she went to a hotel for a week of peace. There, she met Mark Bretherwick and had a dalliance with him. So when Mark’s wife and daughter are murdered, Sally is upset. But the man on the television report isn’t the man Sally knows. The only thing is, she can’t tell anyone what she knows without jeopardising her marriage…

The novel presents a very different view of motherhood from what is commonly portrayed in the media – we have the perfect mother, the busy mother and the uncaring mother all portrayed. It explores as much the psychological aspect of raising a child as it does the murders. Some may be offended at having to confront their own feelings about being a parent. (Perhaps this is why some have ranked this book poorly?) You certainly won’t guess the murderer beforehand! Hannah weaves red herrings, blind alleys and chance clues together skilfully so that you’ll stay up all night reading this. I’m looking forward to reading more of her books!

(Note that this book was also published under the title of The Wrong Mother).

The Devotion of Suspect X by Keigo Higashino

A quick rundown… A woman murders her ex-husband and her neighbour helps to cover it up. How will the police work out what happened?

Strengths: Quirkily Japanese, an interesting way of telling a murder mystery.

Weaknesses: Focuses on the action, rather than the nuances of the characters and their motivation.

Why I read it: Very much hyped overseas, I was eagerly anticipating its release in Australia.

Pages: 384

Published: 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown

Setting: Japan

Rating: 7 out of 10

If you liked this, try: Villain by Shuichi Yoshida; Out by Natsuo Kirino

I was really looking forward to this book – completely caught up in the hype, I was stalking bookstore and ebook websites waiting to pounce. Once I finally got my hands on a copy, I began reading straight away. Perhaps my expectation of Japanese fiction has been influenced by Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 and Yoshida’s Villain, but I was hoping for beautiful prose, an analysis of the human psyche and amazing twists and turns in the plot. Sadly, I didn’t find this in The Devotion of Suspect X.

The plot sounds promising: a woman kills her ex-husband almost by accident with an electrical cord and her neighbour (who has a bit of a crush on her) helps her to cover everything up – from disposing of the body to inventing alibis for her and her daughter. Then things start to become too controlling… We also read of the murder from the point of view of the police, and a detective’s university lecturer friend.

While The Devotion of Suspect X has elements of Japanese quirkiness (the protagonist working in a bento shop, the murder weapon being a komatsu cord) it is effectively a murder story that focuses ultimately on the solving abilities of the police rather than the minds of those involved. It could be set anywhere in the world and Japan is not used as a unique backdrop. To put it frankly, this book is overhyped.

The language is nothing special either – whether that is true of Higashino’s writing or whether there is some loss in translation, I don’t know. There’s not enough description to paint a clear scene in my mind. Instead, the narrative focuses on the action but the impact of the police solving the murder is somewhat diminished as the reader saw the majority of it in the first place. The tying up of the ‘why’ the neighbour Ishigami assisted isn’t as interesting. It all seems kind of awkward.

Would I read anymore of Higashino’s translations? Probably, as I enjoy my Japanese fiction. But I certainly won’t be rushing out to purchase them hot off the press!

Faceless Killers by Henning Mankell

Everyone is reading Scandinavian thrillers at the moment and the question to be asked is, what do you read after reading Stieg Larsson’s Millennium Trilogy? My mother is reading Jo Nesbo (and thoroughly enjoying it), so I decided to try Henning Mankell.

Faceless Killersis the first of the Inspector Kurt Wallander mysteries, set in the quiet Ystad area of Sweden (my Swedish geography is not the best, but that’s away from Stockholm). In a quiet, rural area, an elderly man is brutally murdered and his wife is beaten and tortured to death. All the police have to go on is the word ‘foreigner’. Cue attacks on refugee camps and other baffling issues and the police have very little to work on. (This book is set in the early 1990s, before mobile phones and internet so the detective work appears much more time consuming).

Of course, with many detective fiction books there comes problems in the detective’s personal life and Wallander is no exception. Recently divorced with a daughter that wants little to do with him and a father heading towards dementia, Wallander has many problems. Not to mention drinking and driving and then being caught by his colleagues…

The writing is sparse but effective, the plot tight and clever. A short read, but a very good one that left me thinking after what a great storyteller Mankell is. It’s certainly different to Stieg Larsson in that there’s less detail and no mention of Ikea, but the twists and turns are just as good.

Read it if: you enjoy well-written detective novels with good twists.

8 out of 10.

Naked Cruelty by Colleen McCullough

Naked Cruelty is the third in a series starring Captain Carmine Delmonico, detective in the Holloman police in the 1960s. The first book was the excellent On, Off, a truly creepy thriller, followed by Too Many Murders that had me throwing my hands up in the air in despair at the conclusion. (It was good, don’t get me wrong, but I felt really sorry for Carmine).

Naked Cruelty doesn’t continue with the murder theme from Too Many Murders. It starts with a series of rapes (described rather graphically) on women in Carew, a suburb of Holloman. One of the ways to combat the rapist is a walking club, the Gentlemen Walkers, walking the streets at night to protect the women from the ‘Dodo’ rapist. Are they hiding a rapist in their midst?

Add in a giant glass teddy bear, a pair of strangely acting twins, a kidnapping and guns found at the local school and you think Carmine must be in over his head. On top of that, he has a lot of bureaucracy to deal with – Helen, the wayward new recruit and others that are trying desperately to swim against the tide.

As always, Colleen McCullough writes a gripping crime story with many threads. Some seemed to be better ‘fleshed out’ than others (eg. the guns in the school doesn’t rate much of a mention and is tied up very quickly) but it’s easy to follow. Once again, the conclusion had me throwing my hands in the air – such an ending! I won’t give it away for you, but poor Carmine. He never seems to get a break.

This is very different from The Thorn Birds and also The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet (thank goodness). This series does not need to be read in order, but I’d suggest On, Off as the first book to read, as it’s the strongest. 

Read it if: you like fast paced crime set in the past.

7.5 out of 10.

The Marx Sisters by Barry Maitland

 

The Marx Sisters is the first of the Brock/Kolla mysteries and one of the more difficult for me to track down. I finally located a copy in Kinokuniya, Sydney but discovered more recently that most of the series is available as e-books.

If you’re familiar with the series (I only have two more books to read), you’ll know that they can be read out of order without problems (except keeping up with who Kathy is seeing). Being familiar with the more recent books in the series though, I could sense that this book was a little grittier, a little more rough around the edges but I liked that. It was a bit more graphic, a few more swear words but that didn’t bother me at all.

What was different about this book was that it was split into two parts – one for each murder of the sisters (dubbed the ‘Marx’ sisters due to their beliefs). Kathy isn’t working directly with Brock at this time, but Brock joins her investigation as an elderly lady is murdered at home in Jerusalem Lane, ‘a little piece of Dickensian London’ where the developers are about to rear their heads. Meredith’s death can’t be solved, but when her sister dies as well, more secrets about the Lane and its inhabitants are revealed. The conclusion was a nice surprise too- I didn’t suspect the murderer!

I do enjoy Barry Maitland’s books and I’ll be disappointed when I’ve read them all. They’re a well written series about homicide detectives in London, not overly gory and well thought out.

8 out of 10.

Blind Fury by Lynda La Plante

I must say that I don’t take a lot of notice of the titles of Lynda La Plante’s DI Anna Travis novels, as I don’t think they usually relate to the actual novel. I suppose this book (the latest in the series) does, but you wouldn’t make the link until the end.

This book is about another murder case that DI Travis is working on, the murder of three women whose bodies were all found just off a London motorway. It’s a dead case with very few leads. Enter a murderer in gaol who specifically states he can assist the case and get into the killer’s mind. An interesting plot line that makes you think of The Silence of the Lambs but it really doesn’t go very far, except for setting up another lover for Anna.

I’m getting a bit sick of Anna and her boyfriends- yes, she’s very morally upright and dedicated to her career, so how does having a fling in each book assist the plot? Isn’t it in detective fiction canon that all detectives end up sad and lonely?

This is a spoiler but Anna doesn’t break the mould. In what must be the most boring case covered in this series, leads continually come to dead ends and suspects / witnesses are revisited again and again. This is fiction- couldn’t there be a bit more liberty to make it interesting?

The last couple of chapters go through emotions and timeframes very quickly- a little too quickly in my opinion. The blurb on the back of the book also says a little too much about what happens at the end- I had a chapter to read, read the blurb again and immediately thought, ‘Oh, I know what happens now’.

Generally with this series I don’t expect high literature but gripping action. This time I didn’t even get one of them.

6.5 out of 10

Babel by Barry Maitland

Babel was the last Brock and Kolla novel I had in my TBR stash. I was quite sad about this, as Maitland writes fantastic British crime novels from the perspective of detectives David Brock and Kathy Kolla. I’ve read the majority now (completely out of order) and I can confidently say that they are the best British police crime series I’ve read. The characters are believable, the crimes interesting (yet plausible) and I haven’t been able to guess the killer 100 pages in.

In summary, this book takes place shortly after Silvermeadow (but you don’t need to have read this for the novel to make sense). Kathy has been attacked personally and is thinking of leaving the police. Brock has just been put on a new case- the murder of a university lecturer on his way to a lecture. The initial evidence points to a fundamentalist religious group, yet not is all it seems at the university.

Written pre-September 11, 2001, I felt this book dealt sensitively with the Muslim faith. There are no stereotypes or messages pressed on the reader and I felt I learned more about the faith.

Babel is slightly different to the other Maitlands I’ve read in which a lot of time is spent trying to figure out the motive for murder after the murderer has been discovered. This is unusual but no less gripping. The plot twists and turns and just as you think it’s finished, there’s a twist which is plausible given the previous events.

I’m not usually a big crime fan but I highly recommend the Brock/Kolla series. They’re a bit like The Bill before it got entangled in the character’s lives (and the shaky camerawork). You do hear a bit about Brock and Kolla’s personal lives, but I think this would be less than a chapter in the whole book. The focus is on the crime and the police’s role.

8 out of 10, recommended to crime fans and those that like to dip in and out of the genre.

(P.S. I have seen another of the series, No Trace on sale at Dymocks for $10 recently. This book is also highly recommended.)