Mark Billingham, ‘Lifeless’

I’ve noticed that Mark Billingham’s name occurs as a reviewer on the cover of other thrillers that I pick up. This gives me a slight sense of guilt that I’ve never heard of him before now. I’ve just been looking at his website and discovered that he’s also a stand-up comedian, writes articles for national newspapers and broadcasts on Radio 4 now and then. I’m quite proud of never having heard of most of the people on Celebrity Big Brother, but this one is less impressive on my part. (I like the article on the relationship between crime writing and stand-up comedy, by the way – worth a look.)

This is anything but lifeless (wonder how many reviewers jumped on that one?).  What I like most is that there’s no sense of reverence about anything. People are messy, imperfect, annoying, funny, forgetful, pathetic and surprising. It’s a page-turner. I normally prefer whodunnits to slow reveals, but this one keeps moving and is full of nice small details, both in dialogue and description. I don’t know that it will stick in my head as a novel to remember, but it was a good one while it lasted.

Martin O’Brien, ‘Jacquot and the Fifteen’

A French policeman gets invited to a billionaire’s villa in the South of France for a reunion of the rugby team for whom he once scored a famous match-winning try against England at Twickenham. Then he finds that his team-mates start dying. That’s enough of an unusual set-up to get me to pick a book of the library shelf without much hesitation.

I haven’t read any of the other books in Martin O’Brien‘s series, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they all featured the food and landscape of the South of France as heavily as this one does. There are times when the author seems to be part crime novelist, part travel guide and part food enthusiast. But it’s none the worse for that (after all, Donna Leon‘s Venetian crime novels not only give me the sense that I can explore the Venice behind the tourist trail but also taught me how to peel garlic).

I found the hero’s relationship with his gorgeous new girlfriend to be a little cloying and it clogged up the plot a bit occasionally. I also found the denouement less satisfying than I’d hoped. But overall, not a bad read.

Stephen Booth, ‘Scared to Live’

I’d read Stephen Booth‘s ‘Black Dog’ before, which stuck in my mind as an unusually atmospheric crime novel. This is another in the same series, set in the rural Peak District. There’s nothing particularly surprising about the set-up – two cases which turn out to be connected; two detectives, each with their own hang-ups and tendency to brood – but he does it well. Nicely paced, good simple prose, nothing too obvious, well-sketched characters and a great sense of place. I wasn’t overwhelmed with admiration, but it was a perfectly good way to spend a few hours.

Stephen Deas, ‘The Adamantine Palace’

I don’t seem to have done very well at this blog business so far. I think it’s partly because I’ve felt that every post ought to be substantial. Not earth-shattering, but at least containing some well-considered viewpoint. Bugger that. This is going to be more of a reading diary from now on, and if I don’t have much to say about a book, well, at least I’ll record that I’ve read it. Which will at least be useful to me, even if no-one else ever reads any of this.

Having said that, I’m prodded back in this direction by the flaws in my latest library book (a pity that I’m always more motivated by irritation than admiration, but I suspect that can’t be helped) and so this will be more than an ‘I’ve read this’ entry.

‘The Adamantine Palace’ by Stephen Deas is another take on a world where people ride dragons. This time, it’s a world where the only way people can stop the dragons descending in fury and incinerating the population is to feed them a potion which numbs their brains and makes them biddable. There are two focuses to the plot: one is the awakening of a dragon and its destructive reaction, and the other is ruthless intrigue among the rulers of the region to see who’s going to be the next top dog.

The dragon thing is a nice idea, no question about that, and the plot is well-shaped and does the requisite number of twists and turns. But if you’re looking for an exploration of the ethics of the question of taming the dragons, or evocation of the parallels between the destructive nature of the dragons and the viciousness of the humans, this isn’t your book. We’re told that dragons are violent and want revenge (and food), and that humans are ruthless and want power (and sex), and that’s about it. The parallels are, I suppose, obvious, but could be made more interesting.

There are no nice guys in this book, the characters mostly differing from each other only in terms of social position, motivation, and degree of nastiness. One character, Princess Jaslyn, does come off the page as a person, but since her chief characteristic appears to be her inability to interact with anyone who isn’t a dragon, and her function in the plot seems to be to be ordered about by her mother, this spark is largely wasted. The chief villain of the piece (i.e., the one who’s even nastier than everyone else) does have a certain cheerful glee to his villainy which is welcome, but it’s not enough to lift the tone. It’s not that the thoughts and actions of the characters aren’t believable, merely that they’re all depressingly similar. The narrative point of view shifts a great deal, so that you’re rarely in doubt of what the characters are feeling, but it’s often hard to care. Deaths are treated matter-of-factly, unless they form a part of someone else’s motivation, and even then there’s not a lot of depth to anyone’s reaction.

I had a few more quibbles:

1. The book starts with four genealogical tables showing various royal families. I should have known that this was not a good sign. I spent the first several chapters flicking back and forth trying to work out who was being discussed and why, and eventually began to find that I stopped caring. It’s a complex world that Deas has envisaged, but it’s only ever sketched, not drawn. This makes it a lot harder to remember the names and roles particularly of the more minor characters being mentioned, as they have no real context.

2. There’s one very odd story-telling decision which bugged me. Two of the characters are mercenaries who are friends and cousins. We see certain episodes in the first half of the story through the eyes of one of them, and the second is shown only from the other’s viewpoint. Yet when the author kills off one of them, it’s the one he’s previously been using as a viewpoint character, meaning that for the second and more important half of the story we’re suddenly in the company of someone we don’t know as well. Why do this?

3. You can’t seize someone gently.

I suspect a sequel is on the horizon, but I don’t want to spend any more time in the company of these characters. I’ve no objection to ruthless intrigue, but some genuine humanity and for preference a spark of leavening humour, however dark, are necessary for me to get involved (mercenaries making crude jokes because that’s what mercenaries do doesn’t count). It’s a pity, because the world Deas creates is potentially an interesting one (and hallelujah, he can construct a sentence).