The Girl with a Clock for a Heart – Peter Swanson

George Foss had never quite got over his brief but intense relationship with Liana Decter in his first semester at college, which finished abruptly with her disappearance and an unsolved murder (or two).

When he sees her, twenty years later, in a Boston bar he thinks at first it is just another of the fleeting resemblances that have plagued him over the years, causing a double-take before disappointment kicks in. But not this time; it is her, and she’s here looking for him.

She needs his help to get out of a pickle - to return some money she has stolen from the man who employed her as a PA (and mistress). It’s dirty money so the police aren’t after her, just an apparently homicidal private investigator.

George knows he should walk away, but can’t. The old attraction is still there, still strong, and anyway his current life is uneventful, and this meeting has highlighted how empty he has felt since he lost her.

So he steps into an unfamiliar world of escalating lies, violence and double-dealing. As he did twenty years ago - the story, in the classic fashion, intersperses events of those undergraduate days that also led to danger and deceit.

The twists and turns are well crafted and the book is a real page-turner as the reader, who throughout is privy only to George’s movements, thoughts and actions seeks, as he does, answers and the truth (which are not always the same thing).

This is Peter Swanson’s debut novel and I for one will look out for his next.

Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

This unusual book showcases the author’s versatility and ingenuity: the versatility with six writing styles deployed in six different settings; and the ingenuity by the structure, as each story unfolds in succession with tenuous but compelling links to its predecessor.

The first story starts, then is suspended midway and another begins; then it too is interrupted to start the next, and so on. It is nested like a set of Russian dolls, but I think of it more like a necklace. Each component is its own polished gem, cut in half and strung symmetrically around a central pearl. Thus:

A nineteenth century diary relates the experiences of a South Seas voyager; years later, between the world wars, it is discovered in a Belgian country house and mentioned in letters from an itinerant rake of a composer who is working there to his student friend in Cambridge; the friend becomes a top nuclear physicist and a key character in a sixties thriller; the manuscript of which is sent years later to a current day vanity publisher and read while comically incarcerated in a home for the elderly; his attempted escape becomes a cult movie in a global corporation dominated future, which is mentioned in the account given by a cloned worker of the transcendence of her destiny and the consternation it caused to the ruling elite; this is recorded on a futuristic media platform which, as a relic, turns up further in the future within the final tale, related in the oral tradition, by a post-apocalyptic survivor in Hawaii.                    

You get the idea; the tales are then completed in reverse order – having climbed the mountain and been left with five cliff hangers, the descent is massively satisfying.

Whatever the simile – nested dolls, strung necklace, or mountain journey – it is a master work by a master at his craft.

Stone Mattress – Margaret Atwood

These nine tales are a mature piece of work from Margaret Atwood in more ways than one. As well as demonstrating her well-honed storytelling craft her narrators and protagonists are mainly men and women in their later years.

As is the wont of the aged, the day to day concerns over the inconveniences of getting older jostle for attention with the accumulated recollections of their youth and prime to provide an entertaining cocktail.

The first three stories, Alphinland, Revenant, and Dark Lady, make up an intriguing literary triplet with crossover characters turning up unexpectedly and giving different perspectives on shared events.

The next two stories buck the ‘oldies’ trend: Lusus Naturae is a ghostly telling of the fate of a freak of nature; while in Freeze-Dried Groom a dealer in second hand goods  buys the key to an auctioned off storage unit and finds it contains a complete wedding including a shrink-wrapped groom – then the bride turns up.

The last four tales revert to the old folks - looking back on the adventures, mistakes and triumphs of earlier years – including the title story. In Stone Mattress a thrice married professional widow now finds herself face to face with the man who, as a boy, deflowered her mercilessly; she suffered then and his failure to recognise her in maturity gives her an opportunity for revenge.

The final story looks a little forward in time – and uncomfortably; in Torching the Dusties the residents of a retirement home watch on with growing anxiety as a militant group ‘Our Turn’ protest at their gates at the resources deployed to maintain the old in comfort at the expense of the unmet needs of the productive generations.

It is a fine collection of stories and a good introduction to an excellent author.

Guards! Guards! – Terry Pratchett

The Night Watch in the City of Ankh-Morpork has been run down to skeletal proportions - Captain Vimes, Sergeant Colon, and Corporal ‘Nobby’ Nobbs – mainly due to the eminently sensible arrangement between the city leader ‘the Patrician’ and the Guild of Thieves whereby only licenced crime is permitted, within an agreed budget, with the Guild itself responsible for ensuring that “unauthorised crime was met with the full force of Injustice, which was generally a stick with nails in”.

For those unfamiliar with Terry Pratchett’s ‘Discworld’, it is a revolving disc that moves through space supported by four giant elephants standing on the back of Great A’Tuin the Sky Turtle. Other than that, it holds an only slightly distorted mirror to our own world, with technology replaced by wizardry.

For example, secret societies with arcane rituals abound, including the Supreme Lodge of the Elucidated Brethren, whose Grand Master has a cunning plan to overthrow the Patrician and install a puppet king. Not on Captain Vimes’ watch!

The plot thicken to the consistency of the city’s pestilent river, seasoned by characters ranging from the eccentric dragon-breeder Lady Sybil Ramkin, through Carrot the naive new night watch recruit (who was taken in as a baby by dwarves but at six foot plus is proving a bit of a vertically challenged liability in the family gold mining business), to the unfortunate librarian of the Unseen University (home of the wizards) who, since a spell backfired has been trapped in the body of an orang-utan (yet continues unhindered in his post).

What happens is mayhem, and is largely irrelevant as it is in the telling of the tale that the book’s strength lies. The language is expansive and witty, with the footnotes alone worth the reading.