True Crime Story - Joseph Knox

 True Crime Story is post-modernist crime fiction.  It does what Truman Capote tried in In Cold Blood and Norman Mailer developed in The Executioner's Song - but goes one stage further.  Where they novelised on real world crimes and criminals, Joseph Knox has made fictional crime seem real.  He uses the tropes of true crime documentaries - first person narratives, intercut and conflicting; expert commentary; even the making-of narrative - to persuade us, as we read, that this really happened.  Someone had to do it and Joseph Knox, who broke through with Sirens and The Smiling Man (both reviewed on this blog) is as good a candidate as any.

Knox is the best practitioner of contemporary Manc noir, thus True Crime Story is set in and around Manchester University at the end of the autumn term 2012.  Fresher Zoe Nolan disappears from a student tower block party.  At first, naturally, it is assumed she's just wandered off.  But her parents arrive and join her flat-mates (who include Zoe's twin, Kim) in raising the alarm.  Zoe is not the type to disappear - Kim is the 'bad' twin.  A sex tape is produced, apparently seen at the party itself, in which Zoe is having sex with the sleazy posh boy Andrew Flowers.  Flowers has been seen with dropout drug-dealer Jai Mahmood.  Liu Wai, who was obsessed with Zoe, stirs the pot along with Fintan Murphy, who claims to have been close to Zoe.  But most insistent of all is the twins' father, Robert, who had invested all his hopes in Zoe and her singing career.  He drives the press coverage, makes Zoe's disappearance a national obsession.  A charitable trust is founded in her name, to financially assist other young women of talent and to keep Zoe's name in the public eye.

Over the next seven years the lives of those around Zoe move on, not necessarily in a good way.  A young writer, Evelyn Mitchell, starts interviewing them in the hope of securing a deal for a book.  She turns for guidance to none other than Joseph Knox who, before he became the breakout author of modern Manc noir was peripherally involved in the Nolan case.  We see some of the email interchange between them as Evelyn develops her theories.  Evelyn ultimately solves the mystery but it is Knox who completes the book and does the additional interviews for this, the second edition.

It is very clever, very well done, and though I finally guessed who was responsible, I didn't work out how that person had fixed their alibi.  The book is full of such twists and turns as it should be.  You can't do a mystery with a small circle of suspects without parading each in turn as Suspect Number One.  Some twists work better than others, which again is inevitable.

I enjoyed it.  I really appreciated the craft and skill on display.  But I don't particularly want to read anything else like it.  It's in effect a literary conjuring trick.  Very impressive - until you start to deconstruct how it was done.

The Gentlemen's Hour - Don Winslow

 The other day Don Winslow announced on Twitter that he's retiring after he completes his current City on Fire trilogy.  There will be no new novels published, but thankfully there are plenty of not-so-old novels just appearing on this side of the Atlantic.  Take this, for example, from 2010, the follow up to The Dawn Patrol.  The Gentlemen's Hour is what happens immediately after the Dawn Patrol on the surf off Pacific Beach, San Diego, California.  It is when the forty-somethings take over from the thirtyish surfer dudes.

Boone Daniels (brilliant name) is on the cusp.  A former cop turned PI, he is getting a little old for the Dawn Patrol.  A new generation is coming up.  Maturity calls - the need to do something with his life, to earn some money, perhaps even start a new relationship.  Since his longtime squeeze Sunny left to ride the pro surfer circuit Boone has been flirting with Petra (Pete) Hall an upmarket British attorney, though he can't quite bring himself to seal the deal on account of old loyalties and fiscal inequalities.

But then Petra offers him a job.  The prestigious practice she works for has taken on the case of Corey Blasingame, the racist skinhead who killed the San Diego surf guru Kelly Kuhio (K2) with a single superman punch.  Much against his better judgement Boone takes the gig.  After all, what can he do?  There are five eyewitnesses to the crime and Corey confessed straight away, no excuses, no explanation.  It's the refusal to explain that causes Boone the problem and sets him against his best bud Johnny Banzai, the cop who took the confession, and the rest of the Dawn Patrol.

Meanwhile Boone picks up another job courtesy of a regular at the Gentlemen's Hour, a millionaire who wants Boone to keep tabs on his wife who might be indulging in a little extramarital fun and games.  It's the sort of work Boone despises but, hey, he needs the money.  And this time it's not the Dawn Patrol he finds himself up against.  It's the Cartels, their expert torturer Jones, and the full weight of corporate California.

It's all pure Winslow - the modern master at his very best.  All present tense and taut as a tripwire.  I loved every second.

The Royal Succession - Maurice Druon

 The Royal Succession is the midpoint of The Accursed Kings sequence (The Strangled Queen, the second installment, is also reviewed on this blog, but my reading of The Iron King predates it).  Louis X, the strangler of queens, is dead, poisoned by his brother's mother-in-law, the giantess Mahaut, Countess of Artois.  Louis's second queen, Clemence of Hungary, is five months pregnant.  The late Louis already had a daughter by his first wife.  If a healthy son is born, the succession is clear.  If there's a second girl ... what then?

In the interim, someone must take charge.  The someone who succeeds is Louis's senior sibling, Philippe, Count of Poitiers.  Philippe is twenty-three; he has the political skills of his father and namesake, the Iron King, but not the military.  Philippe the younger is known as the Myope - he is acutely short-sighted.  On the plus side, he has the backing of his murderous mother-in-law.  By bricking up the cardinal electors in a cathedral, he is also able to secure the backing of the new pope, John XXII, formerly Cardinal Jacques Dueze - a pontiff so notorious that it was over 600 years before Rome dared allow John XXIII.

Most of Philippe's enemies are within the royal family, and therefore controllable.  Most are simply buyable.  But there are others, like Robert of Artois, whose lands have been appropriated for Mahaut and who is not even permitted to be in his nominal county.  Robert is the anarchic backbone of The Accursed Kings and his appearance always livens up proceedings.

Druon is the absolute master of historical background.  His knowledge of political wrangling through the ages is second to none.  His subject matter is so dark, so twisted and amoral, that it is only the rock-solid foundation in fact that makes it credible.  Frankly, it's no wonder that Druon was the literary hero of Republican France.  Not to everyone's taste, then, but certainly to mine.  My only reservation - I'm not entirely sure about the translation by Humphrey Hare.  It's a bit old-fashioned.  I wonder, are there are other translations?

The Way of All Flesh - Ambrose Parry

 'Ambrose Parry' is really Christopher Brookmyre and his wife Marisa Haeztman.  This is not a secret; they sign off the Historical Note in their actual names.  But the choice of a joint pseudonym in the manner of Nikki French is a wise one.  Anyone familiar with Brookmyre's solo work over the years would not expect a book like this, whereas Ambrose Parry sums it up exactly.

The story is set in Edinburgh and is absolutely noir, starting with a murdered prostitute (and, as Parry points out, 'No decent story ought to begin with a dead prostitute.") but it is set in 1847, when specialist obstetricians in Scotland are experimenting with anesthesia, and medical student Will Raven is taken on as apprentice to Professor James Young Simpson, the leading surgeon of the day.  Will Raven is also an assumed name and its bearer has unpleasant links with both the Edinburgh underworld and the murdered prostitute.  Also in the Simpson household is housemaid Sarah Fisher, who has ambitions beyond her station and is a friend of the enxt young woman to die suspiciously.

And so we're off on a classic murder mystery with drugs and cross-dressing and backstreet abortions thrown in.  It is all excellently well done, full of red herrings and subplots.  The characters all stand out vividly - I especially enjoyed the underworld enforcers Gargantua and the Weasel.  The historical background has been expertly researched and is served up simply and effectively.  Surely this will be the first in a series?  Surely someone will adapt it for TV?

Night Passage - Robert B Parker

 Night Passage is by the actual Robert B Parker.  Dating from 1999, it is the first of the Jesse Stone series, now being continued by others.  This is the one in which Jesse is sacked by the LAPD because he's taken to drink after the break-up of his marriage to aspiring actress Jenn - to be almost immediately hired as Sheriff of Paradise, Massachusetts, on the other seaboard of the Continent.

Paradise is a sleepy town, and that's the way bank president and head selectman Hasty Hathaway wants it kept. But then Jesse comes upon local muscleman Jo Jo Genest blatantly in breach of his restraining order and makes an enemy.  It starts with graffiti on a police car, then someone kills the police station cat.  Then a local woman is found dead, naked and dumped.  For Paradise, this is a crime wave and questions start being asked about the new sheriff.  To add to the pressure on Jesse, his ex-wife gets in touch just as he is starting a new relationship with the town attorney.

It's a cracking story involving the Boston Mob and local militiamen exercising their constitutional right to bear (and buy) arms.  I liked Parker's panache and attention to detail.  For me, the best bits were the phone conversations between Jesse and his ex.  This was Parker really building his protagonist's character.

The Rise of Enoch Powell - Paul Foot

 A Penguin Special from 1969 - I just had to have it when I saw it - by the legendary left wing journalist Paul Foot.  It has been easy to forget how influential and politically important Powell was back in the day.  My first memories of him date from my early childhood when he was Minister of Health for (I think) Sir Alec Douglas-Home.  In contrast to the likes of Sir Alec, Powell was considered modern and down-to-earth.  He was also considered principled, which is something he had in common with Sir Alec, who was a genuine war hero and an opponent of appeasement in 1936 and '39 (i.e. not one of the 'Guilty Men' in Foot's uncle Michael's celebrated 'Cato' book).  In fact, of course, Powell was not what he seemed.  His principles, such as they were, were electoral self-interest and a rose-hued nostalgia for the Indian Raj.  As for modern, he was an early advocate of all the things that have brought Britain to its knees - free market, anti-union, and contempt for anyone lower down the food chain.  He made a point, Foot's research shows, of not consulting his electors: he argued that they had different views from each other, which is true, but the job of the elected member is to listen first, sift later.  As a result Powell came to occupy a world of his own.  He made up statistics and even lied about his own pronouncements.  The speech bubble on the front cover is Powell's famous quote: "I have set and will always set my face like flint against making any difference between one citizen of this country and another on the grounds of his origin."  However, from the early Sixties on (and remember, this book is from 1969 - before the notorious 'Rivers of Blood' speech), he discriminated in exactly that way.  He doesn't give two hoots about white immigrants from Canada or South Africa, it's the black and later brown people he objects to, coming over here, filling up our schools and hospitals, interfering with our Aryan bloodline.

Powell was scum - he betrayed his own party every five minutes - and a raving loony.  But Foot reminds us, he might not have been the worst.  There was Duncan Sandys, whom I vaguely recall (mainly because he was one of Churchill's sons-in-law), and a rancid hater of any sort of difference (he hated homosexuals as well as people of colour) called Sir Cyril Osborne,  who I had I had not heard of.

A good book - a necessary reminder that in one area at least, the political discourse has moved on in a good way.  I wonder if Foot revised it after Powell really lost it in the Seventies?