Heart Shaped Box – Joe Hill

Judas Coyne, heavy metal rock star, past his prime and sole surviving member of his self-destructing band, now lives in comfortable seclusion on his ranch with his latest Goth rock-chick, Georgia, and his two German shepherd dogs, Angus & Ben.

At his ranch Judas has assembled a private collection of macabre items, so when his PA Danny spots a ghost for sale on an internet auction site, Judas just hits the ‘buy now for $1,000’ button to seal the deal and enhance the collection. The ghost is purported to be that of Craddock McDermot, deceased spiritualist stepfather of the vendor, and what arrives in a heart shaped box is his favourite suit to which his spirit is expected to be attached.

And it is, but the initial curiosity value soon turns to unease, discomfort, fear and dread as the ghost not only materialises but shows he can still use his powers of hypnotic persuasion to manipulate the living to do his will.

Danny does a runner but Georgia hangs on in. It is not her real name; Judas re-christens his procession of trophy girlfriends after the states he picks them up in. Her predecessor was Florida who when dumped and sent back home killed herself. Thinking back Judas recalls that she had a step-daddy, and the penny drops that he has been targeted for revenge from beyond the grave.

Judas, Georgia and the dogs (who seem to offer some protection) go on the run which turns into the road trip from (or rather to) hell, during which there is death and destruction, slashing and shooting, blood and gore, as they follow a high risk strategy to end their nightmare.

I am no connoisseur of the horror genre but this seemed good to me with convincing descriptions of the unearthly and the terror produced; the action only pausing briefly to take a breath before taking the next ramp up in the spiral of fear.

Started Early, Took My Dog – Kate Atkinson

Here, Jackson Brodie, itinerant and now semi-retired private investigator, washes up in Yorkshire. He has just the two cases on the go and one is into his own missing ‘fake’ second wife, Tessa, who has gone off with most of his money. On the plus side he has gained a son, now confirmed as his, though resident with mother Julia, who filled much of the gap between Jackson’s first wife (Josie) and Tessa.

Jackson, a bit of a loner, often finds himself having imaginary conversations with Josie and Julia, although he soon widens this circle to include ‘Jane’ his satnav voice and a small dog that he unexpectedly acquires.

But his professional case is the current focus - an antipodean request to trace a woman’s origins. Adopted in Leeds 35 years ago, she cannot find any record of her birth or adoption, so has asked Jackson to investigate.

As to be expected in the Jackson Brodie novels (and it is a great strength) he does not hog the spotlight; there is an ensemble of interesting, wonderfully filled out characters who criss-cross the stage taking the reader off in seemingly diverse directions albeit with a common theme emerging of losing and finding.

A big presence, in all ways, is Tracy Waterhouse. She has lost her sense of purpose having retired from the police force and taken up a job as head of security at a shopping mall in Leeds; and not lost, but missing, is someone or something to love, which leads her into a risky and impulsive action.

What aging actress Tilly Squires is losing is her mind, as creeping dementia causes her to drift between the past and the present, and between her TV role and reality.

And then there is Barry Crawford, ex-colleague of Tracy’s, nearing retirement himself and in a different way to Tilly, nearing the end of his tether. He’s effectively lost his family with his grandchild killed, his daughter in a two year coma, his son-in-law serving a two year sentence for the drunk driving that caused both, and a wife with whom he has no relationship other than sharing an address.

When Jackson Brodie comes asking questions about a baby who materialised from nowhere in 1975, Crawford realises that a secret he helped to bury 35 years ago could be found and blow up in some important faces.

Kate Atkinson weaves these threads (and more) together with great dexterity, mischievous wit, sly social comment and comic observation. I also love, in a self-torturing way, how the characters bump into each other, blissfully unaware of each other’s identity and how intertwined their lives have, or will, become. It is difficult to avoid shouting helpful comments at the page.

How it all turns out remains a hook right to the end; and though with Atkinson the dénouement is never simple, it is always satisfying. 

Resurrection Men – Ian Rankin

This is the thirteenth novel featuring DI Rebus of the Lothian and Borders police, and one too many of his insubordinate outbursts has resulted in him being closeted with a group of other mavericks at Tulliallen Police College on a course designed to bring them back into line. As part of this they have to work together on the resurrection of a cold case - the murder in Glasgow six years previous of low life Eric Lomax.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, Siobhan Clarke is part of the team investigating the recent murder of art dealer Edward Marber. Newly promoted to DS, she is keen to make an impression but being Rebus’ protégée comes with its problems – including a propensity to put herself in dangerous situations.

A third case emerges when Rebus gets hauled out of class by colleagues from the serious crimes squad who want to use his (too) close relationship with gangster Big Ger Cafferty to turn one of his underlings whose son has been arrested. And then a fourth thread emerges as Rebus suspects some of his fellow ‘resurrection men’ at Tulliallen are hiding past misdemeanours.

As connections grow between the cases and the personnel involved, Rebus uses his intuition and a poke a beehive with a stick approach to flush out the truth, catch the villains and gain some posthumous payback for the victims.

All the usual action, angst and animosity are here, put together with Rankin’s crisp dialogue and choice turns of phrase that give his books an appeal beyond their genre.

Us – David Nicholls

Douglas Petersen has reached a crossroad in his life, not uncommon in middle age. His only child, son Albie, is due to go off to university and his wife, Connie, suddenly announces that their marriage has run its course and she wants to leave him. As Douglas (the narrator) puts it “if Albie had flunked his exams we might have had another good year of marriage”.

The timing of the announcement is also inconvenient as to mark Albie’s last summer at home a Grand Tour of Europe’s cultural centres – Paris, Amsterdam, Venice, Florence and Rome - has been planned and paid for. So they decide to see it through. In Connie’s mind it will be a last hurrah; for Douglas it will be a chance to show the woman he still loves a good time and convince her to stay.

So far so downbeat - funny but in a Victor Meldew vein of humour. But before they get to Paris the cracks in his relationships with both his wife and more particularly his son begin to show. Then in Amsterdam the pressure of keeping up appearances is too much and the threesome fragment. Douglas for once acts on impulse, and once he becomes liberated from his itinerary and exposed to new experiences, the action becomes frantic, funny and more purposeful.

As well as the on-going mishaps of an Englishman abroad and the inescapable trials of family life, Douglas also relates how his courtship, career and family evolved to this point, musing on how it all went wrong after him trying so hard. In addition to the humour there are moments of bitter sweet emotion, tense heart-stopping episodes, and an ending full of twists and turns.

So just another cracker from the author of ‘Starter for Ten’ and ‘One Day’.

Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace – Kate Summerscale

In the same style as her excellent ‘The Suspicions of Mr Whicher’, Kate Summerscale here reveals another Victorian scandal in the downfall of Isabella Robinson.

From about 1852 to 1856 Mrs Robinson, an intelligent and articulate woman who moved in upper middle class, radical society, maintained a secret diary. In it she recorded not so much her comings and goings but her thoughts, opinions and more crucially her amorous musings and encounters.

The latter rarely involved her husband Henry, who was often away on business, was cold towards her, and kept a mistress. Who they increasingly, but not exclusively, involved was Dr Edward Lane, a family friend and a married man.

Henry’s discovery of the diary in 1856 led him, in 1858, to be one of the first to take advantage of the recently passed Divorce Act (1857) and the new Court of Matrimonial Proceedings to seek a divorce (previously only obtainable through a prohibitively expensive application to Parliament).

The ensuing case became a cause celebre, bringing into sharp focus the unenviable status of a married woman in mid-Victorian Britain, or more accurately her lack of status, being a mere chattel of her husband. The great and the good debated her case. Did she actually commit adultery with Dr Lane, or did her diary record wishful thinking, or even delusions brought on by her sexual frustration.

Around the central narrative of the “affair” and the court proceedings Summerscale constructs a fascinating picture of society at a point where many established views were being challenged by new radical thinkers – scientists like Charles Darwin, authors such as Marian Evans & Charles Dickens, and marginal medical practitioners such as phrenologist George Combe – and when the issue of a woman’s right to an independent life began to be considered.

Reading Challenge 2015

No review this week as I am working through some lengthy tomes at present. But instead this 150^th post will share thoughts on the Popsugar 2015 Reading Challenge.

Although nominally the challenge is to read 50 books (52 really as one has to be a trilogy) it is actually a list of 50 characteristics to tick off. And as most books will satisfy several criteria it should be possible, within my normal reading pattern, to cover most bases. We shall see.

In fact, thirteen books into the new year, seventeen boxes can already be checked off, some multiple times, as I have no problem with ‘nonfiction’, ‘set in a different country’, ‘female author’ or ‘translated from another language’.

Looking at the rest of the list I foresee difficulties stumbling over a book by an author with my initials, or one published in my year of birth. Also a graphic novel and one featuring non-human characters will stretch my normal literary parameters, but then that is the whole point.

And the final box – a book started but never finished – means that Moby Dick could raise his head once more.

The Railway Man – Eric Lomax

As a boy growing up in Edinburgh, Eric Lomax developed a love of trams and then trains. The interest was maintained as a young man but he wouldn’t have guessed just how big a part a railway was to play in the rest of his life.

Having left school to become a telegraphist with the post office, the natural progression at the outbreak of the second world war was to enlist in the Royal Corps of Signals. Deployed to the eastern theatre he ended up in Singapore just in time for its mass surrender to the Japanese army.

As a PoW with technical knowhow he was put to work, along with similarly skilled colleagues, in the repair sheds, maintaining (as badly as possible) the equipment used to build the notorious Burma - Siam railway. This group’s relatively privileged position came to an abrupt halt with the discovery of their homemade radio receiver and Lomax’s hand drawn map of the projected railway route.

The Japanese response is no less horrific to the reader for being predictable from the likes of ‘Bridge Over the River Kwai’ and ‘Unbroken’. Lomax relates the torture and brutality, and his stubborn resistance without hyperbole; the drama and pathos self-evident.

His trauma does not end with liberation; for three and a half decades he is haunted by his experiences and it is only after meeting (on a train) his second wife-to-be that he can, with her encouragement and support, begin to come to terms with them.

And when he discovers that one of those involved in his interrogation is alive and is now an activist for reconciliation, he resolves to go and confront the man and test how sincere is his professed remorse.

It is a compulsive, powerful read, highly recommended.