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Book Club - by Suhaili

Last year I read an appalling 37 books... about two thirds of what I had achieved the year before that. This year I am aiming to knock over a clean 50 novels, and so it is with great satisfaction that I kick off 2008 (which should, hopefully, see this book blog resurrected properly) with the first novel of the season, a Canadian crime-mystery called Sucker Punch, sent to me by one of the lads from Dundurn Press.

Joe Grundy is an ex-middle of the road boxer now turned security guard. He heads up the security at the Lord Douglas Hotel, a high-class establishment that plays host to the cream of downtown Vancouver, Canada. Whilst juggling staff issues and a dead end social life, Grundy finds himself smack bang in the middle of a good ol' fashioned murder mystery with a touch of conspiracy about it. A local hippy has just inherited around half a billion dollars (snatching it out from the under the noses of a pair of very angry corporate charity organisations), and he makes no friends when he announces his plan to give it all away to the masses. Grundy figures it's his business when the hippy gets murdered at the hotel on his watch, and he sets about chasing the mystery, an outstanding bar tab and some staff who have gone AWOL.

The author of this novel, Marc Strange, is a character-actor and creator of some old TV series I'd never heard of (The Beachcombers). I'm not sure if this is his first novel or not, but I found it to be a very enjoyable, assured and engaging read. It's more remniscent of pulpish crime-mysteries in the vein of Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett than, say, more mainstream crime fiction by James Patterson or Patricia Cornwell, which suits me right down to my bones. There's an urban sweatiness in the writing and if I had to pick out what Strange's strongpoint is I'd say it's the characterisation... this book juggles a huge cast of supporting characters (many of whom I suspect will turn up again if other Joe Grundy mysteries get written) and not once was I stuck remembering who was who. Strange seems to possess a deft ability to portray all these varying players and low-lives from the many stratas of society - shifty businessmen, money-lending gangsters, dodgy security guards, vulture-like relatives, ambitious journalists, scumbag journalists, etc, etc - without any self-consiousness or irrelevance. And anchoring all this is the narrator, Joe Grundy himself, an amiable and humble protagonist who could easily carry a few more adventures should the situations that arise not be too contrived. It's refreshing to read one of these books where the main character isn't a detective or a policeman, and the plot and Grundy's involvement in it here is suitably realistic for the reader to play along and believe in it.

Anyway, if you're a fan of pulp fiction or engaging crime novels, then I'd easily recommend this book. If you're reading this from Australia though you'll probably have to order it in via your local bookshop or just look it up on Amazon.

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Crime/Spies

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The Grifters

March 21st 2007 07:15

'The Grifters' is probably one of the more well-known novels from hardboiled crime writer Jim Thompson (he was also responsible for 'The Getaway' and the script for Stanley Kubrick's 'The Killing'). It was adapted for the screen in 1990 by director Stephen Frears, and featured John Cusack, Annette Bening and Anjelica Huston in the three major roles. The book itself was published in 1963, and is as gritty and bleak as they come.
Roy is a small time grifter (con-artist) making well via three different kinds of short-con swindles. He was barely raised by his negligent con-artist mother, Lilly, and is currently seeing a middle-aged woman by the name of Myra. The book opens with Roy copping a baseball bat to the stomach after a simple grift goes wrong... Roy seems well enough at first but when his mother drops in on him after a long absence she finds him at death's door and rushes him to the hospital. Myra and Lilly turn out to be quite similar, and each is jealous of the other... as Roy slowly recovers and works his way back into the grifting game he also starts to become dimly aware of unwanted machinations around his person.

This isn't really a straight-forward crime novel but more of a pulpish tour of the lives of lowlife con-artists... immoral opportunists who work and live amongst the scum of society. Thompson paints their world as a sleazy, unpredictably brutal and depressing environment. The motivations of the three main characters isn't always clear, and there are more than a couple of twists in the tail of the piece as a result. At the heart of the novel is the ongoing journey of Roy... a shrewd young man raised to know nothing other than grifting. A series of events, starting with the baseball bat to the stomach and helped along by his antagonistic relationship with his mother, help propel Roy towards a kind of escape. Roy doesn't exactly have an epiphany - Thompson's world is too dark and drab for that - but he moves towards a better way of life. This is most exemplified by the middle section of the novel, where Roy strikes up a brief relationship with a nurse named Carol.

Carol is out of place in Roy's world... the world of grifting has no room for sympathy in it and when he encounters this shy, innocent and sinned-against woman he meets someone who is actually deserving of it for once. This is not a sucker, not another grifter, this is a woman who has endured abominable pain and cruelty. Roy is unable to deal with it, owing to his upbringing and worldview, but it's a remarkable and memorable sequence in what would otherwise be a simple tale of thievery and deception. This, coupled with tragic and incestuous overtones remniscent of Oedipus Rex, make the novel more than just pulp fiction.

A good, no-nonsense read set amongst the hard-knocks pond-life of small-time criminals. Dirty, double-crossing and delicious.

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The Glass Key

February 7th 2007 07:27

'The Glass Key' is the fourth of seminal crime writer Dashiell Hammett's five oft-celebrated novels. Written in 1931, it is often said to be the peak of his work as a writer and was believed by Hammett to be his best novel. Hammett is probably best remembered for writing the novels 'The Maltese Falcon' and 'The Thin Man', both memorably adapted for film in Hollywood's golden era. Even today, more than 70 years later, 'The Glass Key' remains a snappy and indelibly modern piece of hardboiled detective fiction.

Ned Beaumont (always referred to in the text by his full name, whilst other characters are referred to either by their first or last names), is the right-hand man of a corrupt political boss named Paul Madvig. Madvig has pretensions towards the big time, and is heavily involved with the family of Senator Henry (he is backing the senator politically and intends to marry the senator's daughter). When the Senator's son, Taylor Henry, is found dead in the street by Ned Beaumont, it begins to look bad for Madvig... Beaumont refuses to acknowledge that his boss could be responsible for the murder though, and sets about investigating it in his own laid-back and deceptively careless manner.

In Ned Beaumont, Hammett creates a memorably cynical and sickly (and unlikely) hero. Ned Beaumont gambles, drinks, mocks, takes a few beatings and uses unscrupulous means to get what's owed to him. But underneath it all ticks an undying loyalty to his friend and boss, Paul Madvig. Despite the novel's seedier elements of casual corruption, crime and manipulation, Hammett is telling a story of honour amongst thieves - Ned Beaumont retains an inner goodness despite the world he lives and operates in, and the lengths he goes to for his friend speaks volumes about what Hammett places importance on. It's a dirty world, but we can hold a little brightness in it despite our sins and the sins of others.

'The Glass Key' really impressed me... I was surprised when I learnt how long ago it had been written, the dialogue and prose is really quite crisp and sharp and it seems miles away from other novels of the era (ala 'The Great Gatsby'). It's the sort of novel that defines the word 'hardboiled', and it's easy to see why Hammett was such an influential writer to his contemporaries (EG. Raymond Chandler). I didn't really see any of the various twists coming, the novel has a kind of elliptical feel to it as Ned Beaumont goes about his everyday business, chasing up seemingly unconnected subplots and shrewdly bumbling from punch to punch. This is a good piece of left-field detective fiction, I really enjoyed it and I look forward to reading Hammett's other novels.

TRIVIA: The Glass Key awards are named after this novel. The awards are based in Scandanavia and have been going since 1992, the award is an actual glass key and is presented to a different nordic writer each year for the best crime novel.

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The Spy Who Came in From the Cold

August 22nd 2006 04:30

You can feel the grit and bitterness in every pore of John Le Carre's 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold'... for a book written at the height of the cold war it sure isn't afraid to indulge in a more than healthy dose of cynicism. I've been feeling myself drawn to books in the spy/cold war genre for a while now and I guess I chose this book as the starting point in Le Carre's impressive bibliography because it's often cited as 'the book that changed the rules'.

Alec Leamas is a veteran British spy who has been operating out of Berlin for some years now. The book begins on the tail end of his time in East Germany, as Leamas watches his last contact make a pathetic bid for freedom only to be killed at the last minute. The operation has turned out to be a complete disaster. Leamas is tired of the whole dirty business... he decides to 'come in out of the cold', so to speak. The only problem is, he has very little money to live on after retiring. He life spirals away from respectability... he becomes a drunkard and a bum. German agents start to circle him. Defecting looks like a good option...

There's a lot more going on from page 1 then just that, but to explain any further would be to spoil the layers of subterfuge that make these kind of novels so good. Le Carre makes little attempt to attack communist idealogy, our hero Leamas is far too jaded and cynical to bother deconstructing socialist philosophy - and when he is called upon to defend British motivation he does so with very little enthusiasm. At times it can seem a bit too talky, or introspective, but this is part of Le Carre's trickery... when he delves into the backstory of certain characters he is sometimes revealing hidden events to the reader that changes our interpretation of what is happening. It's a book you have to pay attention to, for sure, and the payoff is impressive.

Le Carre is also a fine writer... his prose is as good as his plotting, and he writes well for a broad range of diverse characters. Even small and seemingly inconsequential characters are drawn in a realistic and memorable manner... it adds to the story's coldness, the crisp and in-depth descriptions give the book a kind of objectiveness that keeps you guessing right up to the very last paragraph.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this review, this is also the book that broke the rules... I can't comment too much on this as I'm not overly familiar with the genre but I think the ending probably goes a long way towards breaking the mould, as does Le Carre's muddying of the distinctions between the sides... his realistic protrayal of Cold War idealogy and the relationship between the West and the Communists has helped keep this book from becoming dated.

This book was also made into a film in the 60s, starring Richard Burton as Leamas - a role that gained him an Oscar nomination. I've been wanting to see this film for a while (being a fan of Burton's work) but since I haven't seen it around, well, that was another reason why I decided to give the book a crack. Glad I wasn't dissapointed!

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Posted By: Luke - Category: Crime/Spies

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The Ipcress File

May 24th 2006 11:18

The Ipcress File (Australian edition), this is most likely what it will look like if you're looking for it in Australia.

This would have to be one of my all time luckiest bargain finds ever. I found it for about $4 in a bargain pile, and it seems to always turn up in bargain piles of books wherever I look so chances are that if you're looking for this in a bargain bookstore you'll probably find it. And it's worth finding.

The Ipcress File is the first book by hard-boiled spy and historical author Len Deighton. It was published in 1962 but it holds up very fucking well today. It pretty much helped redefine the spy thriller-novel at it's time of release and continues influencing the genre today (take a look at a few days back on this blog for the entry about The Gun Seller for an example

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The Gun Seller

May 14th 2006 03:36

Hugh Laurie - Actor, Comedian, Author

Hugh Laurie is currently most well-known for playing the titular character on the American drama series 'House'. A few people I know have been surprised to learn that he is actually British... with this in mind, a lot of people would probably be unaware that he had a long career in television comedy back in the UK before 'making it big' in the U.S. Even less people are probably aware that he also wrote a book once, about ten years ago. This book is 'The Gun Seller', which is the main purpose of my blog here today.

I bought this book about six or so years ago to round out a 'three for $12' book deal. I didn't actually want this book, I just wanted these two other Doctor Who books, but I felt like I was ripping myself off if I didn't make use of the deal. And so 'The Gun Seller' has sat on my shelf slowly gathering dust ever since. I recently finished reading a whole bunch of Robin Hobb books recently and was looking for a change of pace so I thought I might as well finally read Mr. Laurie's book

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