Lovers of Victorian Gothic mysteries will have loads of fun with this one, quite different in tone from the norm, and lovers of literary fiction will admire the author’s ability to describe and bring the period to life while also conveying important sociological and religious issues. Written by Alastair Sim, great-nephew of the famed actor of the same name, while he was still a student at the University of Glasgow, the novel takes the Victorian police procedural in new directions. Inspector Archibald Allerdyce, an emotionally damaged man who no longer believes in God, and Sergeant Hector McGillivray, even more damaged from his army experiences during the colonial rebellion in India and the Crimean War, have been ordered by the highest levels of government to solve the disappearance of William Bothwell-Scott, the Duke of Dornoch, wealthiest man in Scotland. The Duke has amassed a ten thousand-acre estate by having his thugs clear the land of long-time poor residents, also demolishing a small village near the coast which interfered with his view.
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If you have ever wondered what it would really be like to be a woman living in Saudi Arabia, then this novel may answer most of your questions. Confined to a black burqa which covers every inch of skin except for her eyes whenever she leaves her house, even when it is over a hundred twenty degrees outside, an unmarried woman must never be alone with a man. She must always be accompanied by a male member of her family, even, as occurs in one scene here, if the member of the family is only seven years old. Leila Nawar, whose grotesquely tortured body is found washed up along the Corniche in Jeddah as the novel opens, works as a videographer for a television station, but she is also secretly working on her own project about women and their sometimes miserable lives in Jeddah. Because she has made many enemies among those who do not wish to appear in her compromising videos, she keeps most of her film at home, storing it on her computer or on discs. When her body is identified, a rare event for women victims who have no fingerprints available, the police are anxious to study her recent films for clues to her death.
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Posted in 9b-2010 Reviews, Book Club Suggestions, England, Humor, Satire, Absurdity, Literary, Mystery, Thriller, Noir, Psychological study on Jan 22nd, 2011
Author Jenn Ashworth takes the concept of irony to new heights in this psychological novel which rivals Patrick McCabe’s The Butcher Boy in its intensity, and it is in her irony that this novel achieves something that McCabe’s novel does not—it is pathetically funny at the same time that it is terrifyingly slow in its revelations of Annie’s past life. In the first six pages, Neil, Annie’s new next door neighbor, asks her if “the family,” especially her little girl, have arrived yet. Annie asserts that he must be confused–that it is only her and her cat, no husband, no daughter. Every remark and every action from this point on capitalizes on the reader’s understanding of real life as the author shows it being played out in conversations among the neighbors and other residents of the community, while Annie twists and manipulates what she sees and hears so that her reality will be what she wants it to be. Ashworth manages to depict a main character with a perverted sense of self and gross ignorance of the conventions of social intercourse while, at the same time satirizing the very suburban society which Annie wishes to be part of—a major achievement pulled off with panache and darkly humorous flair.
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Most people who see this film are probably already well familiar with the story surrounding Lisbeth Salander, the unlikely “heroine” of the trilogy by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. Director Daniel Alfredson, who also directed The Girl Who Played with Fire, apparently also assumes this, as he spends little time giving background, instead showing quick cuts of a few scenes from the two earlier films and allowing Lisbeth’s background to unfurl through her trial for murder. Unlike the previous films, there is very little dramatic violence here, though Lisbeth’s confrontation with her giant brother Ronald Niedermann (Micke Spreitz), who is unable to feel pain, is one of the film’s high points. There are no graphic sex scenes, and the only sexual abuse is done off-camera. The Swedish setting–and the mood–are dark and cold, paralleling the life of Lisbeth Salander. The final scene, subtly different from the novel, consists of Lisbeth uttering one word–a word that had as much long-term dramatic effect for me as the word “Rosebud” does in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. Ultimately, the viewer feels a kind of peace at the end of the film, a sensitive and satisfying conclusion to this trilogy.
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The fraught events in the Balkans leading to the occupation of Greece by the Nazis in April, 1941, form the structure of this complex novel, which begins in Greece and ranges through Albania, France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Turkey, as small, vulnerable Eastern European countries try to stave off both the Italians and the Nazis. Alan Furst, famous for his carefully researched espionage thrillers focusing on events from 1940 and 1941, recreates the confusions and the complications of the Balkan countries in early 1941, as they try to maintain some semblance of sovereignty against the massive war machine of Nazi Germany. Forty-year-old Costa Zannis, a senior police official in the northern Greek city of Salonika, is in the middle of the conflict. Zannis walks a tightrope, doing his part to aid people in Germany who have risked their lives to save others. His life becomes even more complicated, however, by his suddenly developed attraction to the wife of one of Greece’s wealthiest men.
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