Miscellany – All Hallows' Eve 2008

Well, I managed to get a whole lot more reading done since the last post. Here's the Hallowe'en special!

1. I think that Lee Child is better than John Grisham in at least one way. Like Grisham, you learn about the technicalities of the legal (or extra-legal) life. Like Grisham, the plot eats at your mind, ratchets up the tension, and tempts you to finish each book at a single sitting. Unlike Grisham, Child actually varies his plots and comes up with very different and unlikely takes on life, coincidence, evil and violence. The fourth Reacher novel is called The Visitor, and no, it is not about an asteroid, a ghost, a psychopathic man with an axe, or anything like that. Rather, it's about ex-Army women dying in bathtubs full of army-green paint. Really. And very well done too. The fifth in the series is called Echo Burning, and it has even more devastation, a totally different plot, and lots of distressingly discriminating violence involving a femme fatale and a traditional Southern family.

2. Paul McAuley is indeed a finer thriller-writer (when it comes to biothrillers) than anyone except Michael Crichton. With respect to Crichton, the only reason McAuley is behind is that a) he is more exact about life, and b) he has written fewer books. The latest McAuley I've read is White Devils, an unusual riff on the not-quite-post-not-quite-Apocalypse genre, mixed with Heart of Darkness and savage lacings of philosophical terror in the form of post-human pre-humans. Yes. You heard me. Go read.

3. It's a pity that Stieg Larsson is no longer with us. I've just read the first of his three books, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and it's a beautiful read. As with many modern Scandinavian authors, the writing is sparse but detailed; accounts are exact, the plot is convoluted and horrific, the characters are wonderful psychological case-studies. The book centres around Mikael Blomkvist, an investigative journalist who normally deals with the financial and industrial world. His eventual co-star is Lisbeth Salander, a Goth prodigy and private investigator with rather odd behaviours. The two of them deal with a serial killer, a financial empire, and lots of truly very nasty people. Along the way, they find love and hate and powerful passions. Not bad at all.

I've got a huge reading list for now. Back soon though.