Seven Days in South Africa

Deon Meyer 7 Days Drew ratter writes: THERE'S been a fair gap since my last Thrillfilter review. I have not stopped reading the stuff, of course. For instance, I consumed the whole of Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series (they are cheap on Kindle). Once I started, I could not stop. I find that character driven material of that kind appeals particularly to me. I can live with limited plotting if the writing is good, the imagined world is vivid, and the chief character has character. The next writer I picked up was a sort of accident. Looking at recently returned books at the library, I picked up 7 Days, by Deon Meyer. Meyer lives in Durban, in South Africa, and writes in Afrikaans. He's the first South African police procedural writer I have sampled, and so far 7 Days is the only book by him I have come across. He's good though. His hero is Benny Griessel, recovering alcoholic, completely lacking in self confidence, and with a tendency to swearing at inappropriate moments, and then being wiped out by embarrassment. His love interest, Alexa Barnard, is likewise recovering, and driven by a complete loss of belief in her music career. The book is by no means a one man band. Apart from Benny, one vivid and believable character after another crosses the scene, all interacting, fluent, and well defined. The narrative is well judged and propulsive. The background, that is South Africa recreating itself after the end of Apartheid is well realised. It's good to come across something worth recommending!

Norwegian by Night

Derek B Miller Norwegian by Night Drew Ratter writes: Derek B. Miller is the director of The Policy Lab and a senior fellow with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research. He has a PHD in international relations from the University of Geneva, among numerous other academic distinctions. He is also the author of rather a marvellous novel, a thriller certainly, but a very unusual one. His hero, and a hero he is, is an old Jew. Eighty-two years old, and recently widowed, Sheldon Horowitz has grudgingly moved to Oslo, with his grand-daughter and her Norwegian husband. They are lovely, but Sheldon is unsure, and grouchy. In New York, he was a watch repairer, with friends, and a relationship with his dead son. He was a marine in Korea. He may be slipping into senility (especially given his conversations with his son and his old friend 4000 miles away in New York. Both dead). He may have been a sniper, or he may have been a cook's helper. When he takes on, without the slightest hesitation, the child of a murdered woman, to save him from his monstrous Albanian father; the murderer of his mother, we begin to accept that his marine training and career were serious, and he is, without qualification, wonderful. Norwegian by Night is full of wonder, rather a marvellous piece of work. I certainly hope this fine and deeply humane writer produces more work.

The Hitman's Guide to housecleaning

Hallgrimur Helgason The Hitman's Guide to Housecleaning Drew Ratter writes I wonder if the cult of the Scandi thriller is receding, as everything does, sooner or later. I might be mistaken, but there seems little new blood lately, and being honest, some of those who rode the wave were middling, at best. Shan't name them here, but if you want bad writing....well, as I said,not now. Helgason, though, is great fun, and this is only book written in English. His principal is most definitely an anti hero, Tomislav Bokæsiâc, with accents, who moved to New York, became Tom Boksic, without, and then Toxic Thus into the only occupation which can use his skills effectively. A massively effective contract killer working for a horrible Eastern European mafia. It goes wrong, though, and he has to run. Dodging the law on his way through an airport heading for Zagreb, he ends up murdering a fundamentalist preacher, stealing his identity, documents, and air tickets to Reykavik; a destination he has never even heard of. The remainder of the book is about the life he makes among the evangelist community on that island, as the Reverend Friendly. It is very entertaining indeed. Among other things, his phonetic rendering of Icelandic names is excellent. Goodmoondoor, Sickreader, the evangelists. Gunholder, their daughter, who fairly quickly becomes his lover. And so on, though not to the point of tiresomeness. It's written in the first person, something of which I think there is rather too much these days. But still.

Rabb, Rosa Luxembourg and some wee anachronisms...

Drew Ratter on another chronicler of the inter-war years...

 

Rosa

Jonathan Rabb

Jonathan Rabb is American,but doesn't really feel it, any more than does Alan Furst or Philip Kerr, respectively American too, and Scottish, respectively. They appear to be sort of international initiates in some arcane brotherhood of the interwar years, more specifically the sept which psychically exists in Germany and Eastern Europe.

Rabb is the least prolific of the three, all young men. He is also formally the most academic. Both his parents and most of his grandparents were historians, so it seems, and he gravitated naturally to Yale and Columbia.

His early life as a historian imbues his Berlin trilogy. The immediate post war period is meticulously delineated, and Kriminal Kommissar Hofner works out of the Alex; very familiar to friends of Kerr's Bernie Gunther (who, as a character lives much more strongly in my head, by the way).

The Rosa of the title is the murdered socialist leader Rosa Luxemburg, who so tragically overestimated the internationalism of the industrial proletariat. Other historical figures flit in an out, mingled with the fictional players, Karl Liebknecht naturally, as a corpse, but lesser known socialists and heroes of the Spartacus League like Leo Jogiches flit about, half seen, in the wings. Jogiches then turns out to be crucial.

As well as the heroes, of which there are but few, there are villains. Many villains, easily available, as we are well aware given the era, and the fact that by the early 1930s, a mere decade later, evil had comprehensively triumphed in Germany. Included are not only members of the Freikorps, who were the backbone of the SS, but also the natural foe of the Kripo, the criminal police, the Polpo, the political police. Thereafter, this latter organisation became the basis for the Gestapo

The hook is the fact that there have been constant doubts expressed about whether the shot and bludgeoned corpse examined following its discovery was really that of Luxemburg. DNA analysis in 2009 did not, as anticipated, clear up the whole mystery.

A good read, overall, with  a strange and worrying lace-obsessed murderer with perhaps a slight hint of Jean Baptiste Grenouille? But then, he doesn't turn out to be so central after all.

And so it redoubles and redoubles. The final verdict? Vastly learned, but rather longwinded. And the anachronisms..............even up to and including "So we're good here"

When Rebus met Bond: The Nine Quid Tesco Showdown

So I'm in Tesco (Big Huge version) in Glasgow's Maryhill, shopping, as ever during visits to the various offspring and grand-offspring, for cheap socks and to see if there's a discount on Duvel Golden Ale.

Now I know it's morally wrong to buy books in supermarkets. You should buy them in quaint independent stores where the charmingly irascible owner sits knitting, you get bad free instant coffee and the shelves are collapsible climbing hazards for toddlers. And a new lump of hardback fiction costs £18.99.

But the Rankin and the Boyd (and it's very much a Boyd) under consideration here were £9 apiece in the Big T. Less than half RRP. I'm sorry, but that's paperback pricing and, for an itinerant bibliophile suffering a late allergic reaction to Kindles of all shades, irresistible. So, no cheap Duvel, but I exited with hosiery and fictive skulduggery.

Boyd first, and Solo is the latest in the Fleming Estate's commissions of fresh Bondage by established contemporary authors. Step forward with a riddy, Sebastian Faulks. It is by some considerable distance the best post-Fleming Bond, and is arguably better than some of Fleming's own efforts. Faultless, no, but a splendid read nevertheless. And I admit that I was biased, in that Boyd's Any Human Heart is among my favourite novels of the past two decades and his Restless one of the slickest lit-thrillers I've read.

We find Bond in 1969, ageing but still indulging himself in booze, cars, fags and sex to a mordantly entertaining degree. At first I thought he was going to die of throat cancer by the last chapter. But no, that's just one of Boyd's little teases. He has Fleming's approach to Literary (not filmic) Bondworld nailed down with the exactitude of the real fan - all the brand names, gun-tech, anal-retentive car love and curiously coy randiness. But while it comes close to pastiche, this is no tedious tribute. Boyd's own deep affection for and knowledge of Africa provides the main setting and a degree of political insight which is both relevant to today and truly tough-minded. This Bond is much more socially engaged than Fleming's ever was, sympathetic and merciful, concerned and generous. And strangely vulnerable, even weak on occasion. Yes, the book has a truly horrible supervillain, and two women offering varieties of voluptuous charm. Bond has a form of very violent revenge but his triumph is questionable.

It's a compulsive read, but it's cool, not cold as Fleming's near-psychopathic creature was. It's on reflection after completion that the little references and resonances surface: The Jensen FF/Interceptor conundrum – a fly nod to Simon Dutton in The Saint and Robert Vaughan's The Protectors, and the car Bond never drove either on the page or in a movie. The eerie non-assassination's hints of both Deeley Plaza and (curiously out of print) The Day of theJackal. The CIA agent called Brigham, the wee tip of the hat to Puppet on a Chain by the great Alistair Maclean, and others I will leave you to find for yourself. Plot is where it falls down slightly, the explanation at the end by Felix Leiter just a bit too clunky to be meant ironically. But Solo is very good, bibulous company.

And so to Edinburgh, where Bond was of course educated (and there's loads of Caledonian references in Solo) and a somewhat earthier approach to drink. Ian Rankin's Saints of the Shadow Bible uses a Jackie Leven quote as its title, as opposed to a misheard Leven lyric as the name of Rebus's previous outing, Standing In Another Man's Grave.

I thought SIAMG was a great read, and seemed looser and more playful than previous Rankins, with its whimsical road movie/whisky tour elements. It shared with his other books, though, one of Rankin's major strengths, which is more than an ability to evoke a sense of place. His books are properly located, not just in their excellent capturing of geography - the sights, smells, sounds and people – but in time, too. Saints of the Shadow Bible is set in today's Scotland, and both police reorganisation and the referendum debate inform and enliven the plot, giving it depth and edge.

There are clever TV references as well as the usual musical ones (the late Rory Gallagher's Sinner Boy at one point, providing synergy with the Rankin/Gallagher project Kickback City). Life on Mars is 'a documentary' when it comes to 70s policing. Rebus seems to be heading for an alcohol crisis (but when wasn't he?), and there are hints that healthy living may be staring him in his broken-veined face: Soda water and lime? Jings! Am I detecting a wee wink at Psycho, too? To say more would give too much away.

The book has one of the best-engineered plots of recent Rankins, and the bringing together of Rebus with Fox, his in-house adversary and main protagonist of the Complaints books, works brilliantly, paving the way I'd guess for future collaborations between the two. But as with Boyd's Bond, the use of branded detail is note-perfect (particularly good on using cars to define characters: eg a wonderfully awful white Range Rover Evoque) and there are some very funny moments.

Some people swear that Black and Blue is Rankin at the top of his form, but I prefer the assured delicacy of touch, complexity, humour and casual verve you find here. By now we know all the central characters – Rebus, Fox, Clarke – their quirks, foibles and annoying tics. And crucially, we care what happens to them.

Enough to pay nine quid for the next hardback...