[CJ Mars]

Have been doing a lot of non fiction reading over the summer with lots of new titles. It’s a mix of the good, the bad and the ugly with at least one modern classic in my view. With winter fast coming and you want a break from the poker / or sport maybe something will tempt you.

Stephen King – The Cell

I used to be a massive King fan – I’d read almost everything he wrote prior to 1990 and almost nothing since. Early work like “Salem’s Lot”, “Christine” and “the Shining” are in horror terms as good as anything written in the last 25 years. He diverted from straight horror into fantasy in the last 15 years and has churned out a series of brick heavy fantasy novels only one of which I got about a ¼ of the way through and I had all but given up on him. Positive reviews of his new book “the cell” and a plot about zombies persuaded me to give him another go. I was hoping for a slightly shorter version of his fine seventies post apocalypse “The Stand”. For a while I thought I might get it.

The central plot line is simple but effective – after a mysterious unexplained event called the Pulse anyone who has been listening to a mobile phone is turned into a shambling and blood thirsty zombie. No explanation is ever given – it happens and the shock of this event is brutally conveyed in the opening scene when the hero sees a young girl take a chunk out of a woman’s neck. In traditional zombie mode the infected go on to infect others in a steady cycle of infections. As the crisis unfolds people spread the Pulse by unwittingly calling on with their mobile phones.

The opening ¼ of the book is very tense as a small band of disparate survivors try to battle their way out of Boston which is rapidly descending into a bloodbath. The hero is concerned with finding his young son. The son has a mobile but it is often not charged and he hopes to reach him before he can use it. The group struggle out of the burning city as all round them anarchy quickly sets in. Once the action leaves the city however the pace of the book slackens dramatically. The group argue and bicker about the best course of action before eventually deciding to head north from where vague rumours of safety emanate. The terror of the first section also gives way to elements that actually had me laughing (although not in a good way). The zombies seem fascinated by music. They walk along with beat boxes and seem to be heading towards a point from where electronic signals are coming. I couldn’t stop thinking about the video from “thriller” once I read this part and the whole book was undermined for me afterwards. The book plods slowly towards a conclusion and a confrontation with the zombie “intelligence”. For me most of this was a massive slog. There’s a great scene where a football field of zombies are napalmed but bar that the action is thin on the ground and it was a struggle to finish this one.

Verdict: Great start but sags badly in the middle and end

Vienna Blood – Frank Tallis

This is the second outing for turn of the century Austrian doctor and amateur sleuth Max Libermann. It is the winter of 1902 and a series of apparently unconnected crimes – the killing and mutilation of the Emperor’s snake in Vienna zoo and the butchering of three prostitutes convince Inspector Oscar Rheinhardt that a maniac is on the loose and that his friend and disciple of Freud, Max Liebermann is the man to help catch him. Like Liebermann’s first outing “Mortal Mischief” this is a stylishly written novel great in atmosphere and considerably bloodier than his debut. There are walk on parts for Freud and Mahler and a strange symbol is appearing in Vienna. Freud explains that is a “swastika” and is a symbol of “good luck”. Er I don’t think so Sigmund . Between sculptors, painters, Aryan race nuts and cavalry officers there are suspects aplenty in this tale but if you are anyway familiar with opera the connections between the victims will be pretty clear fairly early on. Even if like me you don’t know your Cosi Fan Tuttis from your fruit cornettos the villain isn’t too hard to pick out.

This is very readable but nothing spectacular. If you are looking for a book rich in atmosphere this might fit the bill. As a crime novel there is nothing much to distinguish it from the pack.

Verdict: Oh Vienna. This means not a whole lot to me .

The Italian Secretary : A Further Adventure of Sherlock Holmes – Caleb Carr

This is from 2003 but having watched an excellent documentary on Conan Doyle recently I was tempted to pick it up in a sale. Caleb Carr wrote one of the first (and to date best) of the historical serial killer books that now clutter the shelves – “the Alienist”. He managed to follow this classic up with the real dud “ The Angel of Darkness” which features the same set of characters but with a story told from a different character. Unfortunately this Sherlock Holmes pastiche is closer to the latter than the former. Holmes is called by his brother Mycroft (head of the British secret service) to investigate a possible threat to the Queen’s life. With Watson they travel to her Scottish residences to be confronted with the possibility that the residences are haunted and that the Queen is at risk not only from foreign agents but from supernatural forces.

The book as a whole was terribly disappointing. Bar the opening scene where Holmes deciphers the coded telegraph from Mycroft summoning him to Scotland there is little of the deductive skills on view in the short stories and novels. Holmes shows a worrying belief in the possibility of ghosts which seems totally out of character with the cold, logical and rational mind shown in the books. The end is a woefully misjudged action finale.

There are some great Holmes pastiches out there best of which is Nicholas Meyer’s portrayal of a cocaine addicted Holmes in “the seven percent solution”. This is sadly not one of them.

Verdict: Conan Doyle would turn in his grave.

The People’s Act of Love – James Meek

Russia 1920. While the Russian Civil War rages a company of Czech soldiers captured in WW1 and pressed into service against the Bolsheviks dream of getting back to Czechoslovakia. They are however stuck in a strange town where there are no children and the inhabitants carry a secret. The Czechs woes are compounded by the fact that their insane commander has recently butchered and entire village and shows no signs of wanting to leave the town as the Bolsheviks close in for revenge. Into this explosive mix a man staggers with a tale of escape from a terrible and brutal prison camp in the frozen north. He wasn’t alone however. He claims a killer and cannibal called “the Indian” is on his trail. “The Indian” broke out from the prison during a bloody prison uprising and took him along as food for the journey across the frozen tundra. “The Indian” he claims cannot be killed.

This is it seems a love it or hate it book. It was a controversial long listed choice for the Booker and just missed being nominated for the short list. Popular opinion seems to be much the same – on Amazon the reviews range from “memorable” to “worst book I have ever read”. I will side with the former view. It is beautifully written and the setting is one that seems fresh. The ending is slightly anti climatic but with interesting characters and some fine twists I enjoyed this. There is a fascinating interview with the author at the end who lived in Russia for nearly a decade and who provides the information that the more bizarre elements of the town have their basis in fact.

Verdict: Blood, snow and cannibalism. Perfect winter reading .

Winter in Madrid – C.J. Samson

English crime novelist C.J Samson is proving very prolific. In between the second and third books in his 15th centruy Matthew Shardlake series he knocks of this spy novel set in Madrid in 1940. Spain although pro Nazi is neutral but the Allies are concerned that this will not last if the Spanish are able to get some financial independence from the British blockade by exploiting a gold reserve that Englishman Sandy Ferguson claims to have found. His ex school friend and traumatised Dunkirk veteran Harry Brett is picked by British intelligence to spy on his old friend. Brett is happy to go and upon arriving even happier to find out that his other old friend Bernie who he thought died in the Spanish Civil War might be alive and being kept as a prisoner.

I really wanted to like this book. Samson’s first two novels “Dissolution” and “Dark Fire” featuring the hunchbacked lawyer Matthew Sahrdlake are amongst my favourite crime novels of the last few years but this is very slow. The grim state of life in Madrid is evoked nicely with packs of wild dogs roaming the streets and Franco’s men taking a brutal revenge on the families of the defeated Republicans. The problem is that not much happens in the book. It is also reliant on a number of huge coincidences that seriously undermine the plot. The main “baddy” at the end does something wildly out of character and the shootout at the end seems very staged. A big disappointment. I’m hopeful the third Shardlake book “Sovereign” will be much better.

Verdict: Stick to what you are good at Mr.Samson

World War Z – An Oral History of the Zombie War – Max Brooks

Leonardo Di Caprio and Brad Pitt’s production companies were engaged in a furious bidding war for the film rights of this book prior to its publication in the last two weeks. It’s a massively entertaining read and a quantum leap on from Brooks previous book the throwaway “zombie survival guide” but I’m not sure how it can be filmed without making the strange and very original book structure redundant.

World War Z (WWZ) is written as a series of interviews with survivors 10 years after the end of the war of a massive world war against zombies. The author Brooks is supposedly writing the history as a spin off from work he is doing for a post war UN commission. The book is made up of interviews ranging from a single page to 25 pages and is spread between doctors, politicians, the good, the bad and everyone in between. Through the course of the book the evolution of the disease from an outbreak in China (dismissed by the Chinese as a bird flu epidemic) across Asia, Europe and the US is charted as is mankind’s unwillingness to admit the unthinkable until it is almost too late. The interviews are little gems in themselves – from the stock profiteer who knowingly pedals a false antidote, to the mercenary hired to protect a villa full of clueless celebrities. There is lots of very bloody action. The zombies can in the best of zombie fashion be only killed by destroying their brain. The major stand of the US army in New York is a bloodbath with the zombies overwhelming all before them as technology proves no match for numbers. Part of the military answer is eventually found in a classic piece of early 18th century British military thinking.

There is a great interview with a pilot that crashes behind “enemy” lines en route to supplying one of the fortresses isolated in the middle of the US. Inida and Pakistan press the nuclear button while China implodes in a civil war. Islands prove no refuge as the zombies are unafraid of water.

This is a very easy read. Lots of gore, action, horror and some sly political digs (at current US foreign and military policy). There are walk on parts for Mandela and Michael “REM” Stipe and a celebrity shootout to rival anything from “celebrity death match”. Highly enjoyable and hugely recommended.

Verdict: The most fun you can have without bashing a zombies head in with a “Lobe” (21st centuries answer to the mace) .


The Religion – Tim Willocks

If you don’t mind a book that starts with a six year old girl having her head bashed in with an axe and her mother’s recently killed corpse being gang raped by Bulgarian brigands : : : this brilliantly bloody novel is well worth your time. It’s easily the most enjoyable novel I read this year and is further evidence that when it comes to intelligent adventure novels that Willocks has few equals.

The book is set during the 1565 Muslim siege of Malta. The heavily outnumbered Knights Hospitalier having lost Rhodes 40 years previously have decided to stand, fight and if necessary die against the massed armies of Sulieman the Magnificent. For four sweltering summer months the forces of Christianity and Islam will meet in one of the bloodiest sieges of the Middle Ages.

The hero / anti-hero of the book is Mattias Tannhauser a Hungarian as a child captured and pressed into service as an elite janissary (soldier) for the Turkish army. Having left the Turks he has served with his English friend Bors of Carlise as a mercenary in various armies around Europe. When the action opens he has set himself up as a trader in the lawless Sicilian port of Messina where his contacts with the Islamic world have enabled him to prosper as a trader. Although Bors wants to fight with the Knights on Malta, Mattias says his days with the blade are over and he wants only to get rich arming both sides of the current conflict. He has resisted overtures from the knights to fight with them and they know it will take something special to persuade him to Malta. That something special arrives in the luscious figure of disgraced Sicilian noblewoman Clara and her equally luscious maid Amparo. Clara’s 12 year old son that she gave up at birth is on Malta. If Mattias will bring them to Malta to find him she will marry him and give him the title that will unlock further doors for him in his quest to become rich.

What is supposed to be a brief visit to Malta soon finds Mattias, Bors and the women trapped in a bloody siege of the 4 strong points that make up the defences of the city. Mattias’s knowledge of the enemy is priceless as he knows their tactics and can also slip easily from the city to mingle in their ranks. The action is fast furious and bloody throughout. Knights collapse in the heat as they boil slowly in their armour. The battlements are soon covered in blood and bodily matter of every type. No quarter is given nor asked with terrible and brutal cruelties inflicted on those unfortunate enough to fall prisoner. The combat sequences are literally stomach churning as eyes are gouged out and limbs hacked off and the wounded trampled to death where they lie. The aftermath of the battle as “surgeons” perform the most primitive of operations on the maimed are equally well drawn.

If the book was merely one big battle things would pale rapidly. In the background political considerations are playing there part. The sinister figure of Ludovic grand inquisitor of the Vatican lurks in the background. He has burned over 30,000 people in his efforts to “save” their souls including friends of Mattias’s. He also is exhibiting a not completely priestly interest in the lovely Clara. The Vatican is waiting to see how the siege will play out before committing its hand. The forces of Sulieman have never been beaten in 40 years of campaigning but if they are then the Knights will be a force to be reckoned with in Europe.

The characters are nicely developed too. The story is told from a number of perspectives and there are no stock heroes or villains here. Mattias is a believable lead – he cares little for who wins but is loyal to a fault to his friends. Ludovic is not the monster he appears at first sight. Knights like Valetta the aged and grizzled commander of the Order seems more interested in releasing his knightly hounds of hell as the sufferings of the population. His Islamic counterpoints are at least as sympathetic characters as him.

As outside the fortress crumbles bit by bit, inside the action builds to a brutal climax of death, murder, rape and torture as the forces of chaos collide against the forces of faith.

Verdict:A modern classic. War, death, sex, love, religion and obsession in a single volume .

If you like this, Willocks second novel “Green River Rising” about a race riot and prison uprising in the fictional maximum security prison at Green River is a pretty good read as well.