RUSH OF BLOOD by Mark Billingham
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RUSH OF BLOOD
Mark Billingham (www.markbillingham.com) Little, Brown Book Group (www.littlebrown.co.uk) £16.99 Released: 2nd August 2012 |
Six Brits – three couples – meet at the pool of a Florida Keys resort while on holiday, and become friendly over the course of the two-week holiday. On their last day, a child goes missing – a fourteen-year-old girl with special needs, a fellow guest at the resort. Two months later the couples get together for dinner back home, and conversation is dominated by the girl, and the fact that she has still not been found. When Jenny Quinlan, Trainee Detective Constable with the Metropolitan Police, visits the six with some follow-up questions, the group begins to splinter, and tensions rise. They have all, it seems, been less-than-honest with the local police when questioned on the scene. The disappearance of a second girl in Kent under similar circumstances causes Quinlan to dig further: all of these people had means and opportunity in both cases and she can find no reason to believe that any of them are innocent.
Rush of Blood (my first Mark Billingham, surprisingly) takes no time to getting to the point and plunging the reader headfirst into a cleverly-constructed mystery that keeps us guessing to the very end. The action moves from London – where our six protagonists prepare to meet up for dinner for the first time since they met in Florida – to Sarasota – where Detective Jeff Gardner is still trying to find a break in the case of the missing girl – and, through a series of flashbacks, to the resort where the three couples meet and the girl disappears. Additional viewpoints – Jenny Quinlan and the first-person narrative of the murderer – serve to show these characters from different angles, and to deepen the mystery surrounding them.
Billingham sets out his stall early on – this is not a mystery novel that is designed for the reader to solve. Each of the six protagonists have something to hide, and any one of them could have taken the girl on that last day in Florida. While he never holds anything back from the reader, he obfuscates the facts by phrasing them ambiguously:
Half an hour later, one of the couples is in bed and both he and she are reading: a novel that had been discussed on a television book club and the autobiography of a northern comedian. Another couple is making love, and, although the cabins are detached, the walls are thin and on a still night such as this one the sound carries easily from one to another, so they take care to keep the noise down.
The third couple is arguing.
This “one couple, another couple” style is something he uses throughout, and to wonderful effect in the unmasking of the murderer at the end of the book – it is several pages before the reader is let in on the identity, prolonging the suspense, and giving us one last chance to change our mind as to who we thought it might have been.
The characters are all stereotypes (the surly builder with the short fuse; the obnoxious “lad” with an eye for anything in a skirt and a seemingly endless repertoire of tasteless jokes; the excitable, gossipy housewife), but they come with enough padding to lend them some credibility and realism. It’s difficult to find a redeeming feature in any of them, but this makes them very compelling characters to read about, and the discovery that all of them have lied – to a greater or lesser degree – to the Sarasota Police keeps the reader glued to the page despite the fact that they’re a thoroughly unlikeable bunch.
Perhaps the most frightening aspect of Rush of Blood is the first-person narrative of the murderer. This puts us inside the head of a very disturbed – and disturbing – individual with some very interesting views on the equality of man and the inadequacy of the law. Once again, though, Billingham presents this to the reader in such a way that it provides no definitive answer as to the identity of the murderer.
I felt – I still feel – that punishing me for what I’d done would be wrong. That seemed blindingly obvious, even then. I was positive that if I was ever caught, the powers-that-be would see sense pretty quickly. Once I’d explained, as soon as they’d been made to understand about…fairness, then any kind of punishment wouldn’t really be an issue.
Rush of Blood is a smart mystery coupled with an examination of the human condition, and our relationships with each other. It’s a gripping and entertaining read and Billingham maintains firm control throughout. The characters come to life through natural dialogue and individual tics that make them interesting to the reader. The fact that any one of them could be a suspect keeps the reader on their toes and it’s impossible to make a guess (“it was him!”) and stick with it throughout the course of the novel. A brief appearance by series character Thorne provides a bonus Easter Egg for long-time fans of Billingham’s work, but this is a standalone novel and, as such, is an excellent place to start. Be careful, though: it’s impossible not to get hooked. A wonderful, entertaining read that will make the ideal companion by the side of the pool.
COLD HANDS by John J. Niven
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COLD HANDS
John J. Niven William Heinemann (http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/…/william-heinemann) £12.99 Released: 2nd August 2012 |
Donnie Miller has it all: beautiful wife and son, perfect home in the wilds of Saskatchewan and the sort of comfort that comes from having a rich father-in-law who is generous to a fault with his daughter and grandson. It’s a far cry from his poor upbringing in Glasgow and Donnie lives with the constant fear that none of it is real, that it will be taken away from him in the blink of an eye, that it’s much more than he deserves. Donnie Miller has a long-buried secret, a life that he has worked hard to put behind him. As winter settles in, the family dog disappears. When it turns up horribly mutilated, the cracks in Donnie’s life start to appear. When the heavy snows start to fall, cutting him and his family off from the nearest town, Donnie discovers that he’s about to lose more than just the dog.
Cold Hands is something of a slow-burner, to start. Told from the first-person point of view of Miller, we meet the man and his family, and quickly come to understand the dynamics that drive this small family unit. The mutilated dog turns up early on, and seems shockingly out of place in this snow-covered idyll, giving us a glimpse of things to come. The narrative is frequently interrupted by flashbacks – descriptions of Donnie’s childhood, and his friendship with Banny, the school bully – and we quickly learn that there’s a secret, something bad enough to warrant a new identity and a new start outside of Scotland. There is something jarring about these flashbacks – the shift in accent and language, the violence – but it is a feeling that serves the story well, and never reaches the point of distraction or irritation for the reader.
Towards the middle of the book, Niven begins increasing the tension, and the final third is an intense, breath-taking read, that always keeps the story’s main themes in sight, and is never anything less than completely realistic. As many writers have done before him, Niven uses snow as the catalyst for the action in the novel, and the combination of snowstorm and isolation as the enabler for Miller’s persecution (The Shining, anyone? 30 Days of Night?). It’s an old trick, but with fantastic results: a tense thriller designed to keep the reader turning the pages long after bedtime; at its core, a character who does not necessarily deserve our sympathies, but who receives them nonetheless.
At its heart, Cold Hands is a story about parenthood, and an examination of the inherent insanity that comes with it. To what lengths would a parent go in order to protect their child? Or to avenge them? It’s an added dimension that speaks directly to parents, leaving behind an uneasy feeling and a desire to keep the children home, wrapped in cotton wool at all times. Don’t worry, though, there’s plenty here for everyone, and Cold Hands should appeal to anyone who prefers their action heroes more in the vein of John McClane than of Rambo.
Cold Hands is John Niven’s first foray into crime/thriller territory (hence the addition of the middle initial), and shows a writer who is more than up to the task. There were points (particularly during the flashback scenes) where I had to remind myself that I wasn’t reading an Iain Banks novel, but Niven’s own voice is readily apparent for the bulk of the narrative. The settings are beautiful, and Niven does an excellent job of putting the reader in the middle of that cold, snowy Canadian wilderness, and into the heart of the action. It’s also worth noting that he does not pull his punches, and that this is not a book – despite appearances in early chapters – for the faint of heart or stomach.
From its slow beginnings to its violent and blood-spattered conclusion, Cold Hands is a good old-fashioned thriller. With a handful of twists designed to keep the reader on their toes, Niven’s first thriller is an intense and gripping examination of one man’s determination to protect his family from a past he has long forgotten. This is thriller writing at its best, and John J. Niven is definitely one to watch in a genre that can, at times, suffer from saturation of offerings.
THE BUFFALO HUNTER by Peter Straub
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THE BUFFALO HUNTER
Peter Straub (www.peterstraub.net) Cemetery Dance Publications (www.cemeterydance.com) $19.99 Released: Late 2012 |
From the moment thirty-five-year-old Bobby Bunting lies back on his bed with a paperback Western and a baby’s bottle full of vodka, it’s clear that we’re in the presence of a very odd individual. A Midwesterner living in New York, working as a data entry clerk, Bunting is a modern-day Walter Mitty; the life people believe he leads – the highly-placed and –paid job, and the beautiful model girlfriend – is nothing like the one he actually leads – a lone existence, reading pulp paperbacks and drinking in his one-room apartment. When he finds his old baby bottle in the attic of his parents’ home, Bunting hides it in his case and brings it back to New York. As he builds a collection, his world starts to change subtly; soon the line between his fantasy life and the real one is blurred, even for him, and Bobby Bunting is in danger of losing himself in his own imagination.
Peter Straub, one of the world’s finest producers of horror fiction, got the idea for this novella at the opening of a friend’s art show, Rona Pondick’s Bed Milk Shoe. Cemetery Dance have cleverly used a photograph of one of the pieces as the book’s cover, and all those baby bottles strapped to a double bed make for a very eye-catching cover. Behind it, a very short and very restrained (as in most of Straub’s work that I have read) piece of horror fiction, beautifully-executed and more than a little unsettling.
The story is told almost exclusively from the point of view of Bobby Bunting, a thoroughly unlikeable, self-centred character who, nevertheless, manages to carry the story from start to finish. It’s an excellent vantage point from which to watch the proceedings unfold: his growing obsession with the different types of baby bottle and teat (there’s a lesson there for collectors of all types); the blurring of the line between reality and fantasy, so that we can see Bunting’s thought processes and how he sees his own life. His interactions with other people are excruciating to witness, his social skills almost non-existent; the description of a brief date will leave the reader squirming and uncomfortable, if not baying for his blood. This is a man most comfortable in his own company, a man who enjoys relaxing after a hard day with a drink and a good book. Despite how much he reads, his reading is restricted to the handful of books that grace his bookshelves, so he knows exactly where to turn when things take a turn for the strange.
Straub borrows elements from Western writer Luke Short (though the book from which Straub’s tale takes its title doesn’t seem to exist), Raymond Chandler and Leo Tolstoy as Bunting’s tale unfolds. It’s a strange mix, but in the hands of this master of the genre, it comes together perfectly, adding a new dimension to what might have been a one-note story.
Peter Straub is a much underrated writer (at least here in the UK – people who don’t read horror know him as the man who wrote that book with Stephen King, or believe him to be one of King’s pseudonyms), who continues to produce some of today’s best fiction in any genre. The Buffalo Hunter is a short, offbeat tale that is likely to stay with the reader for some time after the book has been returned to its place on the shelf. The combination of loathsome protagonist, highly original story and startling conclusion combine to make this one not to be missed. Fortunately, the book is being given the trade hardcover treatment by the wonderful Cemetery Dance, so copies should be relatively easy to come by. At the much-too-short 150 pages, this one is more than worth your time.
LOW TOWN: THE STRAIGHT RAZOR CURE by Daniel Polansky
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THE STRAIGHT RAZOR CURE (LOW TOWN 1)
Daniel Polansky (www.danielpolansky.com) Hodder (hodder.co.uk) £7.99 |
Warden is a drug dealer and hard man on the streets of Low Town. Ex-soldier, ex-lawman, it is only his past that keeps him above suspicion when he stumbles upon the body of a young girl. When a second body is found, Warden receives an offer he can’t refuse from his old boss: solve the crime in seven days, or die a slow and painful death at the hands of the Questioners. As the body count rises and time moves inexorably forward, Warden finds himself in the middle of something best left alone: inhuman creatures, last glimpsed over a decade ago on the battlefield, are roaming the streets of Low Town, and the long-banished plague looks set to return. But the truth of the matter is this: Warden is the only man in Low Town who can find the perpetrator and stop the wave of destruction.
You might be excused for thinking The Straight Razor Cure is just another fantasy clone, or an Assassin’s Creed-style video game adaptation. The fantasy-lite cover does nothing to dispel this notion, and while the blurb is slightly more helpful, it’s still not perfect. It took me awhile to pick this one up off the shelf, but within a handful of pages, I was more than well aware that this was something new and fresh – quite possibly the newest, freshest fantasy novel since Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind. It is, in short, the bastard son of George R. R. Martin and Raymond Chandler, an unusual combination of hard-boiled crime novel in a fantasy world setting.
Daniel Polansky’s first novel – and the first novel in a series set in Low Town – takes no time getting down to business. World-building happens as the plot moves forward, and we find our way through this strange city – and learn of its history – as we follow Warden on his rounds. This is a world where magic has the upper hand in the battle with science, but Low Town comes with a better “finish” than some traditional fantasy settings. There’s a gritty urban feel here, with office blocks standing shoulder-to-shoulder with taverns and restaurants; a rich part of town where the gentry maintain mansions, and the seedier parts where anything goes. Change the names and the technology, and this could be Chandler’s 1940s Los Angeles.
With the city comes a complex society, divisions by race, religion, wealth. Order is maintained by the city guard, while the Agents of the Crown rule with an iron fist from Black House. Warden moves through the city with ease, equally confident with rich and poor, with sorcerer or guardsman. His past, though, leaves him with a healthy fear of Black House and his relationship with the Crown is one of the many intrigues that make us want to follow this character in order to get to know him better. In Warden, Polansky has created the perfect antihero – a man with enough good qualities to make it okay for us to like him, and enough bad qualities to make him interesting.
The blend of fantasy and hard-boiled detective is an interesting choice and it works surprisingly well. Polansky is obviously well-versed in both genres and uses the different styles to their best advantage: the basic building blocks of this world drawn from the domain of Tolkien or Martin, while the characterisation, the crimes themselves, the snappy dialogue and the noirish feel are drawn from an entirely different time and place: the works of Chandler and Hammett, Jim Thompson and possibly even James Ellroy have a heavy influence here. Throw in a soupçon of the supernatural, and you’re left with a novel that does not so much straddle the genre lines as obliterate them completely, producing something wonderfully original that takes the reader completely by surprise.
‘Let’s see now – there was Tara, and the Kiren you paid to kidnap her. And Carastiona, and Avraham. We’ve already mentioned my old partner. And upstairs the Master took the straight razor cure rather than face what you’ve become – though I’m not sure suicide adds to your tally.’
Low Town: The Straight Razor Cure is an excellent start to what is sure to be a dark, gritty, but most of all exciting, series. Daniel Polansky has created something fresh and intriguing that should appeal to fans of fantasy and crime fiction alike. It’s an assured and accomplished debut that bears strong promise of more to come. For me, the only problem with this book is the sales pitch: it needs a strong cover, something less “generic fantasy”, and more emphasis on the crime angle. That aside, this is a surprising little gem from a talented author who, hopefully, has plenty more to offer.
An Interview with CHRIS MORGAN JONES
 Photograph © Alexander James |
Name: CHRIS MORGAN JONES
Author of: AN AGENT OF DECEIT (2011) On the web: www.chrismorganjones.com On Twitter: @chrismjauthor |
Chris Morgan Jones’ first novel, An Agent of Deceit, was published in 2011 to widespread critical acclaim, with many outlets comparing his work to that of John Le Carré. Before setting pen to paper, Jones spent eleven years in the shoes of his protagonist, Ben Webster, working for one of the world’s largest business intelligence agencies.
Thanks for taking the time to speak to us, Chris. For me, An Agent of Deceit, comes across as an old-fashioned spy novel, of the type you don’t really see any more, in a very modern setting. But it still has a very “Cold War”, east versus west, feel to it. Can you talk us through where the idea came from, and how you set about constructing the complex plot?
The very first idea I had, revolving in my head in a quiet way for years, was the predicament of one of the main characters, Richard Lock, who has almost inadvertently signed away his identity, and in the process his life, to hide the criminal gains of a sinister Russian bureaucrat. In my old work I used to come across Locks almost every day – lawyers and accountants whose job it was to set up complex networks of companies offshore. Some of them, like Lock, sell themselves completely and pretend to own things on behalf of others nastier and more powerful than them. I began to wonder who these people were and how they had become what they had become, and slowly one particular such person began to form in my head.
As for the plot: I knew where it began and roughly where it ended, and so the work came in filling out the middle. First I thought through the central story, the relationship between Lock and the investigator who pursues him, and then I introduced the other characters, imagining how they would affect and be affected by events. At one stage I drew up a large chart with the characters across the top and time running down the side and worked out how everyone would interlock. Strangely, it was much easier to plot than my second book, even though in many ways it was more complicated.
That old-fashioned sense is helped along by the fact that Ben Webster, the novel’s protagonist, makes his way through the story – for the most part – without the aid of gadgets, gizmos or even modern technology. With the exception of the frequent mention of mobile phones, this is a story that could have happened prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Was this a conscious decision you made at the outset and, if so, why?
No, strangely. It developed like that. I knew that London and Moscow, the home cities of the two protagonists, would be the two poles of the book, and toyed with various ideas for the location of the book’s final third. Then it became clear that it had to be Berlin – partly because it made sense in plot terms, but also because Berlin is neither east nor west, and was therefore the perfect place for Lock’s dual allegiances to be tested. So I became aware of the old-fashionedness late on.
An Agent of Deceit takes a slightly unusual approach to the spy novel in that it devotes equal airtime to the points of view of both hunter (Webster) and hunted (Richard Lock). Did you find one character more difficult to write than the other, and how much of each character were you able to build from your own experience in the business intelligence community?
Webster was more difficult to write. As you suggest, the book is written from the two protagonists’ perspectives, which alternate throughout. It turned out that this was an excellent structure for a first book, because it established a steady rhythm, but its one flaw, I now realise, was that because Webster is so busy hunting, and making the action of the book happen, we get to know him less well. We get to observe Lock in a more natural state, in a way, and I think he feels more rounded as a result. This is something that with luck the second book addresses.
And while what Webster does is a pretty accurate amalgam of what people in my old world do, the characters themselves aren’t drawn from a single model. They’re both fictional creations, and to be honest neither particularly resembles anyone I know in life.
There have been plenty of comparisons between your work and the novels of John Le Carré, which is presumably not a bad thing for a first-time author to hear. As I read the book, I found myself comparing Webster to that other great fictional spy, Bernie Samson – more everyman than Old Boys’ Network, the obsession and doggedness. Can you talk about the influence these two giants of the genre – Le Carré and Deighton – have had on your own writing?
I’m not sure it’s possible to unpick one’s influences. Le Carré and Deighton are both writers I enjoy enormously, and admire, but I think others might be better placed to spot the correspondences. One very nice reader compared the book to Eric Ambler, which was another tremendous compliment. What they all have in common is the sense of a secret world occupying a dimension right next to but invisible from our own, which is definitely something worth emulating. They’re probably all in there somewhere, along with some writers of detective fiction. Rex Stout, a name not heard often in the UK, definitely had an influence on the structure, even though his books – brilliant comic detective novels – are entirely different.
And before we move on to more general questions…are we likely to see Ben Webster again? Can you talk about what you’re working on at the minute?
I’ve finished a new Webster novel. It’s called The Jackal’s Share and will be published in hardback early next year. As I said, this time we spend more time with him, and his trials are rather different and more acute. The story is entirely new, though – it isn’t strictly a sequel.
For the third book I’m planning to write about the same world, but to shift the focus to a different character within it. And Russia hoves back into view.
What other authors or works have influenced you as a writer?
Rex Stout, as mentioned above. James Lee Burke, a brilliant writer of crime thrillers, for want of a better word (he’s much too good to need a genre tag). Then there are all the writers I’d like to think I might be influenced by in some small way. Robert Louis Stevenson is probably top of that list. Line by line I’m not sure he’s ever been bettered, and his stories and plotting are sublime. There’s a reason that Treasure Island is still such a thrilling book.
And as a follow-on, is there one book (or more than one) that you wish you had written?
Heavens. Apart from Treasure Island, probably The Count of Monte Cristo, which is probably the most compelling story I’ve ever read. It makes a thousand pages seem like fifty.
What does a typical (writing) day in the life of Chris Morgan Jones look like?
That’s an excellent question. The ideal writing day involves getting up early, around 5.30, writing for a couple of hours before the children wake up, going back to it from 9 until lunchtime, and then squeezing in another three hours or so from 4 till 7 (in the middle of the day my brain stops). In reality all sorts of things get in the way, and when they don’t, I do.
And what advice would you have for people hoping to pursue fiction-writing as a career?
Carve out some time. This is easier said than done, of course. The luckiest break I got was being able to write the first few chapters of the book while looking for a new job, and without the uninterrupted work that allowed I’m not sure I’d have completed the task.
What are you reading now, and is it for business or pleasure?
I’ve been reading an extraordinary book about parallel universes by a brilliant writer on physics called Brian Greene. The book is The Hidden Reality. It sounds ridiculously difficult, and it is – every morning I’ve forgotten what I read the night before. But it’s truly fascinating and has the advantage of having no characters and plots in it, which is sometimes a relief.
Would you like to see An Agent of Deceit make the jump from page to screen? If so, do you have any dream casts/directors/whatever?
I’ve thought about it, but to be honest not to that degree of detail. There’s Tomas Alfredson, who directed the brilliant vampire movie Let The Right One In, but then he went and directed the equally good Tinker Tailor, and he might feel he’s had enough spies.
And finally, on a lighter note…
If you could meet any writer (dead or alive) over the beverage of your choice for a chat, who would it be, and what would you talk about (and which beverage might be best suited)?
Now that’s fun. M. R. James, the ghost story writer. We’d have to meet in an empty house somewhere on the Suffolk coast and we’d talk about his most terrifying creations. I would need whisky.
Thank you once again, Chris, for taking time out to share your thoughts.
Chris will be appearing at the Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival on Friday 20th July.
AN AGENT OF DECEIT by Chris Morgan Jones
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AN AGENT OF DECEIT
Chris Morgan Jones (www.chrismorganjones.com) Pan Books (www.panmacmillan.com) £7.99 |
There seems to be cyclic nature to the popularity of certain, seemingly long-dead, genres. In recent years we have seen upsurges in the popularity of westerns and pirates, for example, while the most recent rebirth, helped along greatly by Tomas Alfredson’s big screen adaptation of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, is in the spy fiction genre. Not since before the fall of the Iron Curtain have we had so much choice in this area, and Chris Morgan Jones is one of the new names making waves. An Agent of Deceit is his first novel, and takes the somewhat unusual approach of constructing a spy novel around a spy who works in the business intelligence community, rather than a government-run institution.
Richard Lock has spent almost fifteen years constructing and running a network of companies which form the external face of Russian oligarch Konstantin Malin’s empire. Lock has done his job well – none of the companies can be traced back to their true owner – and has been paid well for his efforts. When a Greek oil tycoon hires Ikertu Consulting to look into the affairs of Malin, investigator Ben Webster finds that the best place to start looking is the network of companies outside of Russia, and that the weakest link in Malin’s chain is Richard Lock. Spurred on by personal reasons, and by the murder of one of Malin’s retired lieutenants, Webster attempts to secure the defection of a man looking for a way out from under one of Russia’s most dangerous men.
An Agent of Deceit has the feel of an old-fashioned spy novel. With the action focussing on London, Moscow and Berlin, it certainly fits the mould of the Cold War-era spy thrillers. Jones takes the novel of approach of alternating chapters between hunter (Webster) and hunted (Lock), giving us both sides of this complex but engaging story. Webster, ex-journalist turned corporate spy, is a strong lead, and comes across as something of an “everyman”, more Bernard Samson than George Smiley. His position as investigator in business intelligence consultancy Ikertu makes more sense in this post-Cold War world than a similar position in MI-6, but the Russian element, and the Berlin setting of much of the action harks back to an older time, a more divided Europe. Lock is a man out of his depth and struggling to find an escape route. As investigators close in, and focus their attention on his businesses, he starts to panic, wondering just how indispensible he is to Malin. He is a surprisingly likeable character, and we find ourselves rooting for him as his world begins to unravel.
The plot is as complex as Lock’s network of companies, but Jones’ fresh approach and somewhat brusque writing style ensure that proceedings are kept moving, and that the reader is never left confused by jargon or details. As the various threads begin to interweave, and the story moves towards its climax, the pace kicks up a notch and the reader is left breathless and wanting more. The climax, when it arrives, is as tense and thrilling as it is unexpected – the pieces of this finely-constructed mystery fall into place, and the bigger picture is revealed to the reader – and the protagonists – for the first time. It’s an accomplished coup de grace, a very pleasant surprise from a freshman writer who seems already to be on top of his craft.
With the exception of mobile phones – which play a large and important part of the plot – Webster manages to proceed with his investigation without the aid of the gadgets and gizmos that the Bond films have led us to expect from spy adventures. It’s a nice touch (although an unplanned one, according to the author) that gives this novel its old-fashioned feel, and provides us with a story that could well have happened prior to the fall of the Berlin wall. It’s perfect, then, for fans of Le Carré and Deighton and brings a fine tradition into the twenty-first century, giving it a new lease of life in the process.
Chris Morgan Jones brings with him a wealth of real-life experience in the field in which he writes, and this shines through in the details. An Agent of Deceit is a wonderful start to his writing career: it’s an old-world spy adventure that is at once intelligent and thrilling. In Ben Webster we find a sympathetic character – a family man, a man of principles – who forms the heart of the narrative and makes us care about what happens next. There is no doubt about it: spies are back, and Chris Morgan Jones is at the forefront of the push, an exciting young writer with fresh new ideas for an old, but extremely popular, genre.
BED OF NAILS by Antonin Varenne
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BED OF NAILS
Antonin Varenne Translated by Siân Reynolds MacLehose Press (maclehosepress.com) £18.99 |
When his friend kills himself on stage in a seedy nightclub in Paris, John Nichols leaves the isolation of his camp in southern France’s Lot and heads to the country’s capital to identify the body. But something doesn’t quite feel right, and John finds himself investigating his friend’s final days in an attempt to find the truth. Inspector Richard Guérin, exiled to Suicides following a scandal two years previously, has found a thread linking together a dozen suicides over a period of two years. John’s friend may well be the latest in a long line of assisted suicides, and together these two men aim to prove it.
It doesn’t take long for the reader to realise that Bed of Nails, Antonin Varenne’s third novel, is not your average piece of crime fiction. As the novel opens, two men are dead, though neither of them seem to have been murdered. The first has stripped naked and run, smiling, along one of the busiest roads in Paris until a head-on collision with a truck ends the frolic and the man’s life. The second, an American fakir, has bled to death on stage after suspending himself from a pair of hooks through his chest. There is nothing to suggest these deaths are suspicious, except in the minds of the story’s two protagonists.
The characters are the key to this story, and Varenne has injected each with enough life to leave the reader wanting more from them long beyond the end of their participation in this odd little tale. Caricatures and stereotypes abound, but the characters – and the story, for that matter – never seem stale. Guérin is the inward-looking obsessive policeman, his yellow mac as much a symbol of who he is as the badge he carries. His assistant, Lambert, is the stereotypical French policeman of a hundred films – tracksuits and indolence. The American, John Nichols, is an over-exaggerated Davy Crockett, while even the old men that patrol the streets of the village where he lives might have been plucked from a Stella Artois advertisement. Throw in a beautiful German artist who strips naked, covers herself in paint and throws herself at canvasses, and an old ex-convict who bears a striking resemblance to the late Edward Bunker, and you begin to get some sense of just what to expect.
This is part gritty police procedural, part tragicomic examination of modern life and the inventive ways – and associated motives – in which some people leave it behind. In Guérin, Varenne gives us the shell of a once-great man. A scandal two years earlier – the details of which we don’t learn until later in the book, in a revelation as grotesquely funny as it is shocking – has led to his removal to the wilds of Suicides. But his mind – the mind of one of the force’s greatest detectives – continues to work, and he quickly becomes obsessed with these suicides that he believes have had some outside assistance, to the point that the obsession has an adverse affect on his emotional stability and physical wellbeing. It is his driving desire to find the truth that carries the story along, and ultimately leads him to John Nichols and the death of the fakir. Here we find a more concrete story, involving Gulf War veterans and CIA cover-ups. The fakir’s suicide provides the perfect pivot around which these two seemingly unrelated cases revolve.
Bed of Nails is a beautifully-written novel and, even in translation, Varenne’s flourishes and narrative tricks shine through. There is the hint of a hard-boiled novelist here in some of the phrasing, and the staccato dialogue. Here, too, you will find a Paris that you are unlikely to find in the tourist guides – no Eiffel Tower, no Champs Elysées; this is a Paris where tourists rarely stray. The City of Light and Love has a dark and seedy side, and it is here that we find Varenne’s assortment of freaks and misfits, and spend time in their company.
It’s an unconventional crime novel that nevertheless has the power to shock and entertain. A strong cast of characters and a dark sense of humour are the story’s strong points, and help to carry the reader through some of the more surreal aspects of the plot. Varenne has no trouble getting inside the heads of his protagonists, and has a talent for bringing his readers along for the ride. Bed of Nails is another winner from the consistently excellent MacLehose Press and, while Antonin Varenne may be something of an acquired taste, he’s definitely worth a try. If your tastes are remotely similar to mine, you’ll be counting down the months until his next novel.
An Interview With Samit Basu
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Name: SAMIT BASU
Author of: THE GAMEWORLD TRILOGY (2004 – 2007) On the web: samitbasu.com On Twitter: @samitbasu |
Samit Basu is the author of five novels, all of which have been published in his native India. The publication of his first novel, The Simoqin Prophecies – the first book in the GameWorld Trilogy – marked the beginning of Indian English fantasy writing. His superhero novel, Turbulence, is released by Titan Books in the UK in July, and in the US a year later. It was first published in India in 2010, and is the first of his books to be released in the UK.
Thanks for taking the time to speak to us, Samit.
Pleasure to be here. Good of you to let me into your online home.
Can you tell us something of the origins of Turbulence? Did it spring from a long-standing desire to write a superhero novel?
I’d wanted to tell a superhero story for a while, ever since I first read Watchmen about a decade ago. It was always going to be a book… I know the superhero genre is one that lends itself to visual media, but the idea of the superhero – the essential excitement of one extraordinary person with the capacity to make things better – often gets overlooked in the process. And while that can be done very effectively in other media, comics,TV, the Internet and films – look at Joss Whedon’s work in all these fields – I still believe a book is the best place to explore an idea.
That said, I didn’t know Turbulence was going to be a superhero novel when I started plotting it in the summer of 2009, which is when the story is set. The whole idea behind it was to write a novel of here and now, to say as much about the world right then as it could. Hence the focus on present day desires and anxieties, present day obsessions and aspirations, as seen in both the world and the powers the heroes acquired. I wanted to write a fantasy story set in places I’d actually been to after years of making up worlds. And since I was looking at events on a global scale, and writing about people who could actually change the world, it made sense to make them superheroes. Especially because nothing embodies the zeitgeist these days better than the evolved superhero. They’re everywhere, in one form or another.
It’s obvious from reading the book that you’re a huge fan of the genre, and have taken inspiration from many of the classics. At the same time, you’ve relocated the action to India and in many ways broken the mould of traditional superhero tales – I’d put Turbulence alongside the likes of Watchmen and Powers, rather than Superman or Spider-man. What challenges, if any, did you face creating something that at once pays homage to and satirises 80-odd years of comic-book history?
I didn’t grow up on superheroes, those comics weren’t really available in India. I really started reading superhero comics when I came to London to do an MA, as an adult, at a time when superhero comics had evolved greatly. So the writers I read – Moore, Gaiman, Ellis, Ennis, Morrison, Carey, Vaughan, Miller, Bendis, JMS – had already reworked, revised, updated and deepened the classic stories into a genre that was not only complex and sophisticated, but also constantly self-referential and self-mocking. To be mentioned in the same breath as Watchmen and Powers is so lovely that I’m going to pretend you meant it in terms of quality, not just intention.
I think any revisionist aspect of Turbulence falls under homage to works that have already pointed out the innate ridiculousness of older superhero tropes, rather than any really original attempt at revising the genre, because others have done that very effectively before me. If there’s any aspect of superhero culture that I really felt needed changing, it was a certain inward-looking tendency; that people with extraordinary powers should be content to operate on a really local scale, fighting their own villain sets to maintain the status quo, instead of really changing the world just because they could. But then several other comics, from The Authority to Morrison’s JLA have already gone there.
The essential attitude to comics and superheroes in Turbulence is this: it’s 2009, superhero culture exists and is everywhere, and a few of the characters, recognizing the similarity of their newly acquired powers to those of superheroes they’ve seen/read about, refer to them from time to time. Much like Iron Man calling Hawkeye Legolas in the recent Avengers film.
The Indian setting creates something of a cultural shift for a lot of the traditional fans of superhero comics, and it brings with it huge political and social implications, which you have examined in the novel. You have also spent some time considering the consequences of the good deeds that we see superheroes perform on a regular basis. Both subjects that tend to get ignored, or glossed over, in a lot of the genre’s output. How important were these issues to the development of your characters and your storyline, and do you think they should be examined in more detail within the wider genre?
I wanted this story to be set on a huge scale, where the arrival of superpowers had real consequences not just for the characters but for the world at large. And I wanted this world to be as close to our world as possible. The Indian setting is because I’ve actually been to most of the places in the book and wanted to try superimposing a fantastic layer on real-world spaces, and there are many real, chaos-driven real worlds here that only need a little push to turn post-human. I suppose it could have been set anywhere, but I just knew India better than other places.
If the setting, the implications of the story being set where it is, and an overall sense of consequences being considered have worked for you, that’s a huge relief, because these were among the advantages that I thought telling this story in prose/novel form instead of comic form would bring. While visual storytelling media have many advantages over the novel form for the superhero story as a rule, these are things that it’s just so much easier to do without having to worry about accompanying visuals. So credit goes mostly to the medium, not me. But yes, these were all extremely important to me while world-building, and I always like superhero stories to have as much real-world detail as possible, and to have a broad worldview, not just be about power vs power fights in New York, fun though those are.
I must admit that I’m somewhat clueless when it comes to the Indian literary scene. You have been credited as the creator of Indian English fantasy. Did you feel that this was a gap that needed to be filled, and how do things currently stand?
I don’t really know if the creator of Indian English fantasy tag is real, or if it means anything to be the first. I was certainly the first Indian to write books in English that were called fantasy novels, were published by a major publisher and did well.
I wasn’t aware that genre existed, growing up, because our bookstores weren’t that structured. So I thought all stories were just stories, and while of course there were different kinds of stories, I didn’t know they lived in separate houses. So I wasn’t aware of a gap to fill when I started writing in my early 20s, or even that my first novel was fantasy. My publisher told me.
A lot of fantasy has been published in the eight years since my first novel. Samhita Arni is a name to watch out for. I haven’t read much of the new Indian fantasy, because I read across genres and countries, and try to keep up with films and comics and games as well, and there’s just too much to follow. But I’m sure if something good had come up I would have known. Most of the good fantasy work in India has been for children and young adults. There’s also been a rise in Hindu fiction, retellings of Indian myths, for which there’s always a huge religious market, but I don’t know if that counts as fantasy.
The obvious question, given the subject matter of Turbulence, I suppose, would have to be: what super power do you think you would have come away with had you been a passenger on that plane? And what would you do with it – hero or villain?
Tia’s power. The ability to split into multiple bodies and live multiple lives and never really have to make a choice again. Never miss out on any experience, wander all over the world, do everything. I’d use it as both hero and villain, of course, just because I could.
What authors or works have influenced you as a writer?
Too many to list, so I always put on a football coach cap for this question and list the 11 authors who’ve influenced the book in question most. In this case, Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Warren Ellis, Garth Ennis, Mike Carey, Hari Kunzru, Haruki Murakami, David Mitchell, China Mieville and Terry Pratchett.
And as a follow-on, is there one book (or more than one) that you wish you had written?
Again, too many to list. But I’m also very happy that the authors who wrote them did. I also wish I had invented the light bulb, especially with some kind of royalty-based contract, but I’m perfectly happy to use it.
What does a typical (writing) day in the life of Samit Basu look like?
A large desert of procrastination and Internet browsing punctuated by bursts of guilt-driven typing. I actually tend to write quite fast when I get around to it, and am usually working on at least three things, so when I’m doing the actual writing I tend to disappear into it for a few months and emerge at the end with crazed eyes, ready for more enthusiastic time-wasting. I wish I could write every day, have a routine. But I’ve been writing for a living for almost a decade now and that doesn’t seem likely.
And what advice would you have for people hoping to pursue fiction-writing as a career?
All of the following.
Don’t. I hear investment banking pays well, especially if you ruin the economy while at it.
Go for it. It’s such fun. But do it only if you really love writing, not to be rich or famous or important because that is really not likely to happen.
Don’t. Read my books instead, and then other people’s.
You must! It’s such an interesting time to be a writer, what with ebooks and all that. The next shiny vampire or horny businessman could be YOURS!
What are you reading now, and is it for business or pleasure?
Railsea. For pleasure, and potential theft, which I suppose is business.
Would you like to see any of your novels make the jump from page to screen? If so, do you have any dream casts/directors/whatever?
All of them, but I don’t have a dream cast or director. If it happens, whoever does it will turn out to be the person I wanted all along. Unless the adaptation doesn’t do well, in which case an alternative list will emerge.
And finally, on a lighter note…
If you could meet any writer (dead or alive) over the beverage of your choice for a chat, who would it be, and what would you talk about (and which beverage might be best suited)?
PG Wodehouse. We’d talk about whatever he wanted to, I think I’d just listen. With some beverage from one of his Mulliner books, possibly a Gin and Angostura, or a whiskey and hot water with lemon.
Thank you once again, Samit, for taking time out to share your thoughts.
It was an absolute pleasure.
TURBULENCE by Samit Basu
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TURBULENCE
Samit Basu (samitbasu.com) Titan Books (titanbooks.com) £7.99 |
On a British Airways flight from London to Delhi, each of the passengers has a vivid dream. In this dream they see the person they want to be, the ideal them. When the plane lands, the passengers discover that the dreams were a precursor to reality – they have each been endowed with “powers”. As realisation dawns, factions form and individuals begin to disappear under suspicious circumstances, it becomes clear that the world as we know it is about to come to a very violent end. Aman Sen and the motley crew he has assembled must pool their resources in order to stop the ambitious and cruel Jai Mathur.
At first glance, Samit Basu’s fifth novel (the first to receive wide release outside his native India) seems to be your average superhero adventure. With elements of Marvel’s Fantastic Four and X-Men, it introduces us to a cast of characters who have received a mysterious gift from an unknown benefactor, and who have a difficult choice to make: to use the gifts they have been given for their own good, or for the good of mankind. But there’s a depth here, an examination of issues that sometimes get ignored or glossed over in the traditional superhero outlets (which is often down to the medium, rather than the writing).
The distribution of powers – based on the subject’s dreams – leads to a very obvious split: on the one side, Jai Mathur and his “team” have the strength, the speed, the ability to fly, and with those powers seems to come the desire to take control, to subjugate the Earth’s population. On the other, the B-list superheroes, as Aman Sen so blithely puts it: here we have Sen himself, who now has the ability to connect to any networked device – make a phone call, surf the Internet – without the need of a phone or a computer; Tia, who has the ability to create multiple copies of herself; Uzma, whom everyone loves immediately. The powers here come without the megalomania, and so we find Aman Sen trying to work out how to use his powers for the good of humanity. And then there are rogue elements who fit on neither side, and a handful of characters who remain undecided as to which side of the fence to land.
Despite the inequality between the two sides, in terms of strength at least, clashes are inevitable, and Basu ensures an action-packed read through a handful of violence-filled set pieces and enough surprises to keep the reader turning the pages long after that “one last chapter before bed”. But it’s not all punch-ups and fireballs. Basu spends time examining the political and social implications that come with the birth of a new race of metahumans: should there be new laws to govern them and the use of their powers? How should the question of patriotism be handled: should these new supermen and –women be ambassadors for India, or for the world (the fact that one of Sen’s teammates is a British Pakistani adds a whole new dimension to this question)? There is plenty of food for thought here: the Indian setting presents something of a culture shift for the average superhero fan, while Basu spends some time considering the consequences of these peoples’ actions – even the good deeds have unforeseen results and domino effects that leave these “heroes” questioning their right to interfere.
Don’t worry, though – there’s plenty of action to keep the story moving at a lightning fast pace, and a strong enough cast of characters to carry the story. In Aman Sen we have a wisecracking, self-confident nerd whose sole aim is to use his newfound powers for good. His polar opposite, the military’s Jai Mathur is everything that a master supervillain should be – conscienceless, ambitious and uncompromising. Between them, the four hundred other passengers of that fated flight, each with their own unique (and sometimes completely useless) power, and each with a decision to make, and a personality to justify the path they take. It’s a cast that Stan Lee would be proud of, though Turbulence is definitely more Watchmen than Avengers.
Credited as the creator of Indian English fantasy, Samit Basu arrives in the UK as an accomplished, some might say veteran, writer – Turbulence is his fifth novel, making him the best fantasy writer you’ve never heard of. That’s a state of affairs that you should rectify with all possible haste. Turbulence is a superhero novel like none you’ve seen before. A polished storyline, engaging characters and razor sharp wit combine to make this a must-read for everyone that has ever enjoyed a comic. It’s funny and action-packed, yes, but it’s also extremely intelligent and thought-provoking. It’s a perfect introduction to an excellent writer, and we can only hope that his back catalogue is made available in the UK in short order. It’s also an excellent start to a series that looks set to redefine the superhero genre for the twenty-first century. Kudos to Titan Books to bringing this excellent author, and this exciting series, to a much wider audience.
