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Good Reading : November 2007
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26 goodreading ı NOVEMBER 2007 word of mouth crime fiction Everything about books www.goodreadingmagazine.com ONLINE The Shakespeare Secret JL Carrell An expert in the works of a legendary artist finds the murdered body of their mentor, setting them on a quest to unlock an ancient secret. Sound a bit familiar? This is the premise of The Shake- speare Secret, a book that borrows heavily from The Da Vinci Code, both in content and marketing spiel. It’s hardly worth elaborating further on the plot. If you’ve read The Da Vinci Code (more than 60 million copies were sold so it’s a fair chance you did) then you’ve already got the gist. Just substitute Da Vinci for Shakespeare, Silus the albino monk for a slightly more pigmented, less religiously insane bad guy and Robert Langdon for Kate Stanley and you’re halfway there. But I shouldn’t be so glib. Author JL Car rell clearly knows her stuff when it comes to the bard, cleverly plucking passages from his works and weaving them with snippets of historical fact to construct her mystery. She’s also clearly spent time studying the mechanics of plotting; you feel compelled to keep reading.The down- side? Study mechanics, and you may end up sounding, well, mechanical. So is The Shakespeare Secret any good? Well, if you liked The Da Vinci Code, you’ll like this. If you didn’t, then you probably won’t. ★★ Sphere $32.95 Reviewed by Guy Mosel MyLifeasaMan Frederic Lindsay An oddball, this one, but a very enjoyable one. Lindsay is yet another Scottish writer of fine crime novels (is there an end to the list?) of whom I had never previously heard. This one begins with protagonist Har ry Glass coming back home from attending a protest in Glasgow to find his 90-year-old wife, Eileen, dead on the bedroom floor.The novel swiftly backtracks to 50 years before, when Har ry as a callow youth of 18 begins a job at a factory owned by Bernard Morton and his brother Nor man. Fired after a week, Harry retaliates by driving off in Mr Morton’s car – which he knows full well contains Mrs Eileen Morton. Some plot twists later, Har ry and Eileen find shelter in a remote Highlands far m owned by the inister August and Beate. Cold omfort indeed. Meanwhile, er nard and Nor man are after he contents of a briefcase ashed in the boot of Ber nard’s ar, and will kill to retrieve it. Atmospheric writing and intriguing characters add to the tension as it builds around the hidden life at the farm. Lindsay draws a sympathetic portrait of an unsophisticated young man and a lonely older woman coming together in an unexpected way. ★★★ Polygon $16.95 Reviewed by Roz Everett The Burnt House Faye Kellerman Apassenger jet crashes into a Los Angeles suburb, killing everyone on board. Identifying the bur nt, destroyed bodies is a painstaking process, but the LAPD are thrown a loop when a woman who was supposedly on the flight is found not to be. So where is she? Hmm … Then a body is found in the wreckage that shouldn’t have been on the flight at all. So who is she? Double- hmm … This is the rather intriguing set-up in The Bur nt House, Faye Keller man’s latest Peter Decker crime mystery. Unfortunately, the story never quite meets the expectations set by this clever idea. Why? Well, first of all it’s about 100 pages too long. Keller man, much like husband and fellow mystery writer Jonathan, is not what you’d call an efficient writer.The first third of the book is at best hard going and at worst brain-numbingly dull. Personally, I think she should cut down on the dialogue. It’s not her strong point and much of it adds nothing at all to the reader’s under- standing of either the characters or the story. But it’s not all bad.This is Keller man’s 22nd book so for the most part she knows what she’s doing. If you can ride out the uninspiring first 150 pages, there are rewards to be had. ★★ HarperCollins $32.99 Reviewed by Guy Mosel Bones to Ashes Kathy Reichs Ienjoyed the first Kathy Reichs book, Deja Dead, but was annoyed by the novelist’s need to put her heroine, a forensic anthro- pologist specialising in bones, in mortal danger. When she did it again in the second book, I lost interest. I like a police procedural, and perhaps especially a forensic police procedural, to reflect the reality that the people who work in the labs rarely get threatened or shot at. I was disappointed because I’d liked the book otherwise: its setting in French Canada, its heroine, Temperance Brennan. And I’d been fascinated by the science, which rings beautifully true because Kathy Reichs actually is forensic anthropologist. So I turned to the tenth book in he series with some interest nd hope. It is a page-tur ner, and I did enjoy it. But yet again, Tempe’s case links to some- hing in her past, and yet again, she’s out in the car with hot not-quite-boyfriend cop Ryan and yet again people she cares about are in danger. Reichs is hugely popular, and I’m sure if you liked the earlier books you’ll like this one just as much. Unlike some other series, Reichs hasn’t gotten sloppy or tired. The style is assured, the prose lively. War ning, though: if stories about child por nography tur n your stomach, this one is not for you. ★★★ (fans) ★★ (others) William Heinemann $32.95 Reviewed by Pamela Freeman
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