Guilt (Jonathan Kellerman)

Available from all good bookstores and on the Kindle

Now this is crime fiction! 

Kellerman never misses. Yes, he’s written 28 Alex Delaware novels, but each one is different. And while Alex (and his cohorts, to be fair) has his particular quirks, we see different facets of his character each time.

This, Kellerman’s latest offering, begins with an expectant mom who’s renovating her yard when she finds a blue metal box in the soil. There’s a baby’s skeleton in it.

Alex and his partner, Los Angeles Police Lt. Milo Sturgis, begin to hunt for clues to the infant’s identity, but the bones of another baby emerge in a nearby park. Together with the corpse of a 20-something woman, killed by a gunshot. 

The three must be related, but how and why? The detective and psychologist delve sixty years into the past, to explore a former hospital with a dangerous staff and reputation.

Expect the usual brisk investigation, with the calm, cool and seldom-ruffled Alex bantering with the grouchy, touchy, binge-eating Milo. Expect a series of tense and detailed scenes and evocative dialogue. Expect the entrance of Hollywood and its own dramas. And expect a case so heart-rending that brings even Alex to tears.

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Oh, What a Tangle! (Anita Pouroulis)

This review was originally published on zaparents.com.

I’ve said this before: book reviewers get jaded. We’re lucky enough to receive new books often; to regularly get to open cardboard boxes filled with the smell of freshly published paper. 

So there’s usually little to make us squeal with delight – until we get into the book itself, that is.

Hoo-boy. The universe was just waiting to see what I would do when it sent me all four of Anita Pouroulis’s debut titles, packaged in a gorgeous re-usable purple satchel. I squealed. No jokes. But, let’s get to the details, shall we?

What’s it about?

I selected Oh, What a Tangle! that very night, for my littlie’s bedtime story. Moms, if your kid has curly hair or hates having his/her hair brushed, buy this book. Because little Kiki’s ‘crowning glory’, horribly neglected in favour of activities that are more fun, soon turns into an actual birds’ nest.

How does it look?

The illustrations are spectacular; the work, I’m told, of student illustrator Monika Filipina Trzpil, who is completing the Master of Arts (MA, Children's Book Illustration) programme at Anglia Ruskin University in the UK.

How does it read?

The words are lovely. It all rhymes and the general flow is melodic. I may be alone in this, but a bedtime story that rhymes (even when it’s a long-ish one) is easier and more pleasant to read.

Aside: For me, as a writer, the cadence of the writing and rhyme does feel a little erratic in parts (my husband, also a writer, has moaned that it doesn’t scan perfectly) – but my kidlet and I still love the book, and its unusual vocab, so who cares?

What else?

And then, there's the app! Oh, What a Tangle! is available in the iBookstore, the App Store and for Google Play. We've 'played' it once or twice, and it's cool. Having apps to complement the bedtime experience is great, especially since my toddler ikes to see her favourite characters everywhere.

Just one more thing

Anita Pouroulis is an ex-South African living in Spain. The pluses for us, as SA readers, are that her stories use the more UK/SA ‘mum’ and other lingo and that her apps feature delightful British-accented narration. What a lovely change!

www.tiffanymarkman

Divergent (Veronica Roth)

Note: This is an audiobook, narrated by Emma Galvin (www.audible.com)

Holy moly. Veronica Roth is only 22. Divergent’s her first book. Wow.

I’ll admit that the timing is superb. Just as 2010/2011 were the years of vampire fiction, 2011/2012 were dedicated largely to dystopian fiction – where people live in a totalitarian or environmentally degraded environment.

Against the backdrop of global hysteria about Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games Trilogy, young adult author Veronica Roth wrote Divergent: a story about a young girl living in a society saved from the brink of apocalypse.

In short, humanity has organised itself into five factions, each of which lives by a single core value: Abnegation (the Selfless); Erudite (the Intelligent); Candor (the Honest); Amity (the Peaceful); and Dauntless (the Brave).

Born into a staunchly Abnegation family, Beatrice Prior has tried to uphold the ideals of her parents – which go against her natural inclinations. Then, on her 16th birthday, she takes an aptitude test to determine which faction she is most suited for. And it is revealed to her, in secret, that she is one of a very rare and dangerous subset of the population – Divergent – because she possesses the traits of not one but three factions. (You’ll see which ones.)

For Beatrice, the decision is between staying with her family and being who she really is, so she makes a choice that surprises everyone. During the highly competitive initiation that follows, she struggles to determine who her friends really are and discovers a conflict that threatens to unravel her society.

This magnificently written book is also superbly narrated by Emma Galvin, who is able to sound youthful, old, female, male, happy and sad – depending on the relevant point of view. I am loving every minute of listening to it.

Disclaimer: I'm known for my default skepticism when it comes to fantasy/sci-fi. But... This book is that good. Promise.

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I'll Catch You (Jesse Kellerman)

This novel is, in a word, dreadful. In fact, the entire time I was reading it, I wondered if it was the writer's idea of a joke. 

And then, in preparation for my review, I looked up some of the author's inspiration for I'll Catch You: 

"This book started as a joke. I was at work on something much longer and darker, and to relieve some of the mental pressure I started noodling around with an idea that had occurred to me late one night while on tour for The Executor: to write a book that functions simultaneously as a thriller and a parody of a thriller."

Makes sense. But may I suggest that the next time Jesse Kellerman feels the urge to make a joke, he not burden the reading public with it in print form. That's what blogs are for. 

This book is, seriously, a waste of good trees. Simple as that. If you don't believe me, make your decision based on the blurb (which should warn you):

"We want to tell you more about this novel. We wish we could explain how spectacular and absolutely unexpected it is; how it will burn itself onto your brain for ever. But we could never do it justice. The only way you'll understand it is to read it."

Whatever. The bottom line is that if I'd known what it was about, I'd not have read it. Especially not after Kellerman's execrable The Executor. Don't believe me? Well, here's the actual plot:
 
When the world's bestselling writer of spy thrillers, William de Vallée, vanishes from his yacht while sailing, his estranged best friend and (unsuccessful) fellow writer Arthur Pfefferkorn decides to pick up where de Vallée left off - with an unfinished final manuscript and a beautiful widow. But this impulsive decision is about to change his life for ever, as he becomes embroiled in the political intrigues of East and West Zlabia - and learns to speak, think and eat Zlabian.

This book is dire. Sorry.

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Two books about unusual women

Five days of holiday. Three separate car trips of four hours each. Four provinces. Four cities. Insufficient reading time. And two books. One: among the top five pieces of trashy, self-serving, barely literate piles of drivel I've read in my lifetime. The other: so brilliant I can't stop thinking about it.

The first is Loui Fish's Walking in my Choos. It's hogwash. Fascinating, sensationalist, poorly translated hogwash. It is peppered with typos, missing a few critical editorial items (like attribution for the foreword) and profoundly lacking in class... but I read it twice. And loved every minute of it.

I knew little or nothing about Loui Fish a week ago, other than that she's the ex-wife of local footballer and (supposed) hunk Mark Fish. I've spotted her in Heat, draped over this or that young buck and showing lots of booby, and I thought she was pretty. If you like that sort of thing. But I had no real idea of the shenanigans - the drugs, affairs, criminals, drama, mutually assured destruction and other chaos - that accompany celeb living.

And if I had the inside track, as Loui does, I'd be too skaam to tell anyone.

Her ex must want to murder her. He, fellow sportsman James Small, and a cast of other local bigwigs come off looking like a bunch of coke-addled miscreants, and the laughingly recited tale of how little Luke Fish tried to loosen his dad's girlfriend's tires is terrifying in the least. Oy. Those poor kids.

So if, like me, you love reading trash and you get off on knowing who's done what to whom and for what bizarre reasons, and you particularly enjoy stories about people you may spot in Tasha's, this book is divine holiday reading. But wrap the cover in brown paper, for God's sake, because I'd be more embarrassed to be caught reading this than I would 50 Shades of Grey, or even Twilight. Yeesh.

Number 2 Holiday Book is Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl, and it's possible I am the last bookworm on earth to have discovered it. Those in the know have been raving for ages, and I've been ignoring them. The blurb simply doesn't do this novel justice. That's my defense.

Anyway, here's my take on it:

The story is genius. The writing is magnificent. The characters are utterly believable. The twists and turns are many. The dialogue and internal dialogue are insightful.

In short, it's a winner - reminding me a lot of a book I adored about ten years back: The Drowning People, by (I think) Richard Mason. There's also a lot of Wally Lamb, Lionel Shriver and Joanne Harris in Flynn's style, and I really like all three.

Here's what some others have said:

Gone Girl is one of the best—and most frightening—portraits of psychopathy I've ever read. Nick and Amy manipulate each other—with savage, merciless and often darkly witty dexterity. This is a wonderful and terrifying book about how the happy surface normality and the underlying darkness can become too closely interwoven to separate. - Tana French, New York Times bestselling author of Faithful Place and Into the Woods 

Gone Girl builds on the extraordinary achievements of Gillian Flynn's first two books and delivers the reader into the claustrophobic world of a failing marriage. We all know the story, right? Beautiful wife disappears; husband doesn't seem as distraught as he should be under the circumstances. But Flynn takes this sturdy trope of the 24-hour news cycle and turns it inside out, providing a devastating portrait of a marriage and a timely, cautionary tale about an age in which everyone's dreams seem to be imploding - Laura Lippman, New York Times bestselling author of The Most Dangerous Thing and I’d Know You Anywhere

Gillian Flynn's first two books, Sharp Edges and Dark Places, are already on my Kindle. Yay!

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