An Irishman from Down Under

He talks a lot, that Adrian McKinty. And after I’ve pruned and edited, he still talks a lot, but that’s as it should be. He’s fun to listen to, and what if he rambles? He’s Irish, and if he didn’t have so much to say, maybe his books wouldn’t be worth reading?

Before we met for this interview in London in January, I was afraid I wouldn’t like him. Liking his books so much, surely something would turn out to be wrong?

Only wrong thing I could think of what that he was idiot enough to wear only a hoodie, with snow forecast. So maybe he talked as much as he did to keep warm?

After all, he rambled for almost two A4 pages (if you can accept that as a measure of talking) before stopping to ask ‘what was the question?’ But who am I to insist on my questions when someone entertains me so effortlessly?

Here it is. The slowly typed up rambles of my favourite Irish boy in all of Melbourne…

Henning Mankell OAP

Thank goodness someone had the sense to celebrate some kind of birthday at last! I’ve been thinking it’d be nice with a birthday. But it had to be someone special, and I wanted a good number.

Henning Mankell is 65 today, but despite what it says in the heading, I very much doubt he’ll be retiring. Does he look like the retiring type?

No.

Here he is, looking a bit grumpy. Perhaps he’s thinking about his presents. Or just ‘when can I get out of this?’ And ‘I want my cake now! With coffee.’

Bookwitch bites #97

Let’s start with a stolen photo, shall we? (My thieving is getting worse. Or better, depending on how you look at it.) Here is a photo, which might have been taken by Gill Lewis, winner of the Salford award last week. It was on her Twitter, anyway. And the lady between Jamie Thomson and Josh Lacey is not Gill, but Barbara Mitchelhill, who narrowly avoided that dinner.

Another award is Sefton Super Reads. They have announced their shortlist for the summer, and it’s pretty good. The lady above is on it, for instance. And so are some of my other favourites, and some unknowns (to me).

• Ruth Eastham, Messenger Bird
• Fabio Geda, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles
• Caroline Green, Cracks
• Barbara Mitchelhill, Road to London
• J. D. Sharpe, Oliver Twisted
• David Walliams, Ratburger

In fact, there are awards absolutely everywhere. Declan Burke could be in for an Edgar for his hard work on Books To Die For, along with John Connolly. I don’t know who or what they are up against, but if ever a book and its creators deserved an Edgar, Books To Die For must be it.

While we are in an awards kind of mood, it appears Adrian McKinty is on the shortlist for The Last Laugh for The Cold Cold Ground, which will be awarded at Crimefest later this year.

Finally – in more ways than one – Nick Green’s The Storm Bottle is available to buy. That’s over three years since I reviewed it, which happened by some odd fluke (me looking into the future, kind of thing). So far it’s ‘only’ on Kindle, but if you only ever buy one Kindle book in your life (although that sounds a bit unlikely, now that I stop and think) this has to be it. The Storm Bottle! Very good book! Sad. Funny. Exciting. Does not end the way you expect it to.

Dolphins can definitely talk.

Colin Fischer

Can there be too many aspie novels, and in particular, ‘aspie character solving a crime’ novels? Possibly, but as long as they are well written and entertaining I can certainly manage a few more. I did stop to consider this as I started on Colin Fischer the other day, thinking that I was on familiar ground, but I soon fell under the spell of Colin and his family. He has a mother who says ‘holy sh–!’

Although only twice. I think. She works for NASA, and Mr Fischer does something spacey-sciency as well. Hardly surprising they have ended up with a son like Colin. More surprising his younger brother is so ‘normal.’

Colin has just started high school, and he did so with his head flushed down the toilet. He keeps a notebook for just about everything. He seems to know just about everything, too, except how to socialise with people.

One day a gun goes off in the school cafeteria, and Colin sets to work on finding out who did it. He works almost harder at proving who didn’t do it. For this he has to leave his comfort zone. And he has to lie, which he needs help with.

You could see this as ‘simply’ another book set in an American school, with a socially awkward boy solving a mystery in an aspie kind of way. But I loved it!

Perhaps one day we can have an aspie hero who isn’t quite as capable as Colin. Most parents of children on the autistic spectrum have far more serious concerns than those faced by Mr and Mrs Fischer. But as contemporary entertainment, this has everything; mathematical rules about where to park your car, as well as advice on cooking for people who sell weapons.

I’d never heard of Ashley Edwards Miller and Zack Stentz before, but it seems they are the scriptwriters for X-Men and Thor. I can’t decide whether they intend to return to Colin Fischer, although I believe they left the door open.

The Thunder Omen

After some slow days with me picking up the ‘wrong kind of book’ I was relieved to settle down with Caroline Lawrence’s The Thunder Omen. It’s her third Threptus mystery, and as such is short and a quick read, and it would be easy to think that such books aren’t for the adult reader, or for review, even when it’s one of Caroline’s.

I really must forget all such thoughts, because it was not only precisely what I needed, but an exciting mystery and a history lesson, served up with humour. Who knew ‘a leaky shack full of damp chickens’ could lead to romance and culture and sheer fun?

It’s Christmas – or Saturnalia, as they called it – and Threptus is trying to enjoy it as much as he can, despite the cold and wet and the lack of money.

They need a new roof, and Floridius is selling stolen clay figurines holding clay croissants. (They are ‘really’ thunderbolts, but Threptus sees food everywhere.) And unfortunately Bato’s engagement to Lucilia is still not in order.

Floridius and Threptus set out to sort things out, but despite fake thunder and dyed chickens, they fail at first. WWLD (what would Lupus do?) helps Threptus work out solutions to their problems, and when that’s not enough he can think for himself.

We get to visit a Roman theatre, and once she has stopped being scared of thunder, Lucilia has some fun.

It’s all very educational and very romantic. I’ve said it before, but those chickens are marvellous. And so are these little books, with so much goodness in them.

(What I wouldn’t give for an almond croissant right now!)

Riots and other black holes

Trust the two witches to pick the day with ‘snow’ to travel to London. But we got there, and we made it home too. Daughter and I each had an interview to conduct, wanting to kill two birds with one Pendolino train. Two, if you count the return journey.

And what birds we got!

We played it safe by snaring Lucy Hawking for a scientific fiction chat at the Euston Ibis. On account of her being intelligent, and likely to talk about complicated stuff to do with black holes, etc, she was Daughter’s to deal with. I relaxed and took unbelievably blurry photos.

She brought us the new paperback of George and the Big Bang. The one where she has altered something at the end to acommodate the Higgs Boson discovery last July. Lucy apologised for having folded the corner of a page. She’d read her own book on the way to see us…

Not content with giving us a book, she pressed a copy of The New Scientist on Daughter. And once the interview was over, they settled down with more science and space talk, with Lucy looking pretty relaxed in her armchair.

When it was school home time, Lucy had to dash off to do motherly stuff, while we had an iPod to feed before our next bird.

Adrian McKinty had flown all the way from Australia via Seattle and Ireland to meet us. And the BBC, but still. We forced more tea down Adrian’s throat, which could be why he appeared to have overdosed on caffeine. Or it might have been jetlag.

We began by talking brothels, about which he seemed surprisingly knowledgeable. It was mainly a discussion about us not meeting in one, since I had come to the conclusion that the Wellcome Collection’s Café might be better after all, despite well-meaning advice on facebook. Especially as it had a Death exhibition on. (Not on a Monday, obviously.)

Adrian talks a lot, even for an Irishman. At one point he broke off after a long monologue, wanting to be reminded what the question was. How should I remember?

My Photographer was relieved to find Adrian didn’t look like his mugshot which she’d found online. I was relieved he’d had the sense to run away when he encountered unexpected riots in Belfast at the weekend. I mean, if the M&S Foodhall is that empty, you should suspect riots round the corner. The armed police could also be a clue.

We could easily have gone on forever. Before Adrian’s publicist dragged him away, I forced Adrian to doodle in my copy of I Hear the Sirens in the Street. He did so – almost – as well as he writes books. Daughter’s gasp had more to do with how it looked upside down.

And we really do want to see that YA space adventure!

… and rock ‘n’ roll

This week we’ve mentioned the sex, and the alcohol. That leaves the rock ‘n’ roll. Wine, women and song. All bad stuff.

There’s so much music in novels these days. Perhaps there always was, and I’ve been deaf and blind. Adrian McKinty (yes, him again) puts lots of music in his books. Sergeant Duffy listens to a wide repertoire. He’s a bit of a show-off, that Duffy.

In Adrian’s YA novel The Lighthouse Keepers, which I’ve read but not yet reviewed, the young main character raves about music. Not so sure he’s not too precocious in his musical taste, but never mind.

Might be an Irish thing? When I first ran into John Connolly – outside the Ladies, before an event, and before he knew who I was – he pressed a CD into my hands. I gather he listens to a selection of music each time he writes a book, and those tracks end up belonging to that particular novel.

I added John’s favourites to my iTunes, and every time a track I can’t identify pops up on shuffle, I can be certain it’s one of his. I only added the CD because it contained a Lee Hazlewood track. I used to be a great fan.

A Jodi Picoult novel from a couple of years ago also included a CD. I passed the book and CD on to someone else, while making sure I put the tracks into iTunes first. I like them a lot.

It can be inspiring having an author’s choice of music for when you read. But what if you don’t like the music that helped them write? If every time the characters play their favourite tracks, you just can’t stand the music? Would you rather do without it?

Rather like when you find out which actor inspired someone’s character. If it’s the ‘wrong’ actor, you’ll have to quickly re-imagine them as someone you’d prefer. (Nobody tell me their heroine was inspired by that Keira woman! I’d have to burn your book.)

Music is an age thing, too. Adrian – again – is the wrong age for me. He doesn’t pick the music I listen to, nor the stuff forced on me – I mean, made available to me – by Offspring. I have a whole decade, that’s been almost completely blacked out. (When Son did a GCSE project on a decade in pop music, he was given the 1980s. Naturally. And we could offer no help.)

It’s not only the music behind a book, or the albums enjoyed by a fictional character. The whole book can be based on music. Obviously. Recently Son translated extracts from a couple of music based novels written by a Norwegian author. That was 20,000 words featuring an opera and all the backstage stuff. Luckily it was a made-up opera, so it ended up being less of a fact checking nightmare.

And we get YA books about pop groups, and wannabes. With the current talent programme epidemic on television we will probably end up with many more of them. It beats vampires, though.

Although having said that, I seem to recall that one of Anne Rooney’s vampires played in a band.

And Elvis lives.

I Hear the Sirens in the Street

Others have said that Adrian McKinty’s second crime novel about Sean Duffy – I Hear the Sirens in the Street – is better than the first. I find it hard to say. Despite my admiration for Adrian’s writing, The Cold Cold Ground was such a fantastic surprise, that I suspect I simply took it for granted the sequel would be marvellous – which it is – so I am unable to rate them against each other.

It starts gruesomely enough, with a bloody torso, which is never nice to find. And how to identify it, in the days before DNA? I thought what Adrian/Sergeant Duffy came up with was pretty good. I just don’t know what’s fiction, and what’s fact.

He mixes real people into his plots, and does it with conviction. I loved last year’s Gerry Adams, and was amused by the appearance of Mark Harmon’s ex-brother-in-law in the new one. The cast seemed smaller this time, which almost made it harder to decide on the culprit(s).

Never mind how good a crime novel this is; it’s yet again more about the period in which it is set. 1982 is a year I remember well. At the time I could never have imagined the new Northern Ireland, and as I was reading I Hear the Sirens in the Street, there was stuff in the news that made me wonder how far we really have come.

The torso – yes, we get to know it quite well. We also see more of Duffy’s neighbours than we might want to, and it’s quite interesting what you can achieve with frozen meat, even when there is a good amount of it. I also – finally – had an explanation to something I was always rather hazy about, so all in all, I am very satisfied.

I can’t recommend the book highly enough. Read The Cold Cold Ground first, and then this. I’m already counting the days to when I can see Duffy for the third time.

Don’t Judge Me

Linda Strachan has gone from knife crime to arson with her latest book, Don’t Judge Me. It’s short, but hard-hitting. While I was reading it, I woke up one night to find someone had been making toast at three in the morning. At least, I hoped someone had. I was feeling vulnerable, and there is nothing quite like the smell of something potentially burning, to scare you.

It starts with the arsonist and continues with someone throwing their baby out of a window. It’s everybody’s nightmare.

There is a group of four teenagers who witness the fire, as well as an independent witness. The police speak to all of them, several times, in order to work out who started the fire.

Part of the questioning reminds you of Murder on the Orient Express, in that you see everybody’s story and you feel that any one of them might have done it. Either because they seem rather crooked, or because it appears no one saw them when they said they did.

Is it one of them? Is it an Orient Express situation where lots of them did it? Or is it something else entirely? Despite short chapters letting the reader see the thoughts of the various characters, you just don’t know.

As usual, the adults are rather idiotic. But maybe that’s what we really are like. These teenagers feel let down by their parents and carers. Maybe someone was looking for attention?

This is an exciting read, and a way of examining different minds. Seeing how they think. Seeing how easy it is to turn to crime, when you least expect it.

Seraphina

Seraphina is a story that provides you with romance and crime from an old-fashioned vein which I almost thought we’d never see again. It is also a fantasy featuring dragons, which isn’t the first thing you expect from a romantic mystery. Rachel Hartman writes so well, and with such humour, that I began rejoicing by the third page.

Set in a fantasy past, 16-year-old Seraphina lives with the royal family as the music mistress in a country where humans have had to learn to co-exist with dragons, who can take on a kind of pretend human form, but who are very different from the humans. One of the Princes has just been murdered, and people fear it was done by a dragon.

Because Seraphina has special talents, and has more knowledge of dragons than most, she ends up searching for the murderer along with Prince Lucian and his betrothed, Princess Glisselda. Seraphina’s lifelong mentor Orma provides her with support, as do some imaginary creatures Seraphina needs to deal with on a daily basis.

Needless to say, Seraphina has a dreadful secret, which must remain a secret. And she falls in love. It’s a classic love story, and it’s not until you encounter one, that you realise they are as rare as gold dust these days.

Very satisfying. I believe this is a standalone book. There could conceivably be more, although personally I’d like to leave things here.

(When the paperback arrived, I looked at the cover, read the blurb and skimmed a few pages, and decided it wasn’t for me in more ways than one, and quickly dispatched it to ‘the other room,’ from which it was rescued the next day after some chatter on fb persuaded me to do The Second Look thing. Very glad I did. And I’m a little surprised to have heard nothing about the hardback last summer. Or anything at all.*)

* It is, of course, on the Carnegie longlist…