The Pier Falls – Mark Haddon

This collection of nine not so short stories showcases Mark Haddon’s talent and imagination.

There is a variety of settings from the deceptively mundane – a south coast pier, a country cottage, a housing estate – to the startlingly exotic – a deserted island, the Amazon jungle, the planet Mars.

Ditto the characters who feature – men and women, young and old, rich and poor. As in life, they are people ordinary in one sense yet unique in others. Haddon places them in unusual situations that have some commonality; they are generally in jeopardy, which makes for tense and entertaining reading.

The prose flows well, the present tense narration giving an immediacy to the events. It is just as well that the length of the pieces enables them to be read in a single sitting of under an hour.

The collection is highly recommended. If you think short story collections are not for you, this anthology could change your mind.

Snap – Belinda Bauer

Eleven-year-old Jack Bright’s life turns when his mother’s car breaks down on a west country motorway. She leaves Jack and his two younger sisters in the car while she goes in search of the nearest emergency phone. She never returns, at least alive. Jack’s dad cannot cope and leaves home. Jack is now in charge, he keeps their parentless status a secret, manages to put food on the table, by burglary.

Catherine While’s life is due to change as the end of her pregnancy nears. Husband, Adam, is over the moon but somewhat over-solicitous. He travels for his job, so Catherine is used to being home alone. It doesn’t bother her – until a serial intruder starts to leave her cryptic messages. She doesn’t phone the police or tell Adam for fear of him becoming even more protective.

DI John Marvel is new to the west country. He’s a Londoner but has been shipped out to Somerset from the Met after a botched case. His interest is in solving murders, but they are fewer and further between out here in the sticks. Instead he is handed the ‘Goldilocks’ burglaries case, so called because the perpetrator tends to steal food and sleep in empty beds before trashing the joint.

It's all connected of course, but very cleverly with sufficient side plots to distract from and obscure the outcome. The writing is pacy with wry observations, and the characters stand out, even the minor ones such as Jack’s sisters and Marvels’ colleagues.

It is nicely entertaining. Bauer comes (as she often does) at the crime novel from an unusual angle, avoiding the stereotyping that prevails in most of the genre.

Birnam Wood – Eleanor Catton

Birnam Wood is the name of a radical gardening collective set up by Mira Bunting but run on a strictly democratic and not for profit, basis. They take over abandoned, neglected, or donated spaces and grow produce for sale, barter, charity, or personal consumption. When a landslide in a national park in New Zealand’s South Island isolates an unused farm, Mira sees an opportunity to scale up Birnam Wood’s operations.

The farm owners, Owen and Jill (soon to be Sir and Lady) Darvish, are safely out of the way up north in Wellington, but when Mira arrives to surreptitiously scope the project, she finds an aeroplane on the airstrip; and the pilot finds her.

He turns out to be Robert Lemoine, an American entrepreneurial billionaire, who is negotiating for the purchase of the land. He’s an odd one, hard to trust, but seems happy to tolerate, even encourage Mira’s project. Mira needs to convince the rest of the group that this is Birnam Wood’s future. Her trusty lieutenant, Shelley Noakes, is in favour, but opposed is Tony Gallo, just back in town. He and Mira have history - unfinished business from when Tony left for the States a few years previously.

Tony’s interest in Birnam Wood is more political than horticultural; his ambition is to be an investigative journalist, and he smells a story in the offing.

The actual story, or stories unfold: Mira, Shelley and Tony a potential love triangle; Mira, Shelley and Robert ditto; Robert Lemoine and Owen Darvish, who is shafting whom in the deal; Lemoine and Darvish ripe for Tony Gallo’s probing; and what is billionaire Lemoine really up to?

All is revealed. Catton’s prose is wordy but never dull, and the pace picks up as motives emerge, distrust spreads, and tension rises to an exciting climax.