Sir Edward Feathers, known as “Old Filth,” is, ironically, “spectacularly …ostentatiously clean.” His nickname derives from the fact that as a lawyer, he “Failed In London, Tried Hongkong.” A “Raj Orphan,” Filth is a child of British civil servants of the Empire in Malaya. Like other Raj children, he is sent back to England, alone, at the age of five or six, to begin school in a country he’s never seen among people he does not know. Gardam writes a powerful character study of this intriguing character whose fate it was “always to be left and forgotten.” Now in his early eighties and living in Dorset, his wife dead, he reminisces about the past and hints at some terrible event that took place when he was eight, living in Wales with Ma and Pa Didds, who took care of him and two young cousins. Sophisticated and subtle, this novel, shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 2005, is also compulsively readable with its poignant scenes and ironic humor. (A Favorite of 2006)
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Booker Prize-winning author John Banville presents a sensitive and remarkably complete character study of Max Morden, an art critic/writer from Ireland whose wife has just died from a lingering illness. Seeking solace, Max has checked into the Cedars, a now dilapidated guest-house in the seaside village of Ballyless, where he and his family had spent summers when he was a child. Images of foreboding suggest that some tragedy occurred while he was there, though the reader discovers only gradually what it might have been. Now renting a room at the Cedars for an indefinite stay, Max broods about the nature of life, love, and death, relives earlier times, and tries to reconcile his memories, some of which are incomplete and imperfect, with the reality of his present, sad life. An ordinary man in his late fifties or early sixties engaging in interior battles with personal demons may not appeal to readers who prefer snappy dialogue and action plots. But other readers, especially those who may have faced the deaths of family or friends and recognized the limitations of memory, may recognize in Max a kindred spirit. (On my All-Time Favorites list)
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Posted in England, Mystery, Thriller, Noir on Jan 14th, 2011
Involving the reader from the suspenseful opening pages, Kate Atkinson’s third Jackson Brodie novel is not a traditional mystery. Instead, it is a novel which grows out of the terrible traumas that children and young people must endure when people they love die violently. So marked are they by their sudden tragedies, that they never really escape their pasts, and may spend the rest of their lives wondering “when will there be good news.” Five separate plot lines evolve and occasionally overlap here, and in each of these plots the main characters are all needy people hiding an inner loneliness from which they would like to escape. Atkinson’s narrative speeds along, enhanced by her skillful pacing as she introduces new elements and surprises to her myriad plot lines, and she is especially adept at creating understanding and empathy for her characters, each of whom is individualized.
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In this absorbing fictionalization of a real murder case from 1984, author Martin Clark, a Virginia circuit court judge, explores the increasingly fraught predicament of a rural Virginia Commonwealth’s attorney, Mason Hunt, who makes the only decision that makes sense to him as a naïve young man. He must then live with that decision and re-examine its consequences for the next twenty years. At a party one night long ago, Mason’s brother Gates got into an argument and killed a man, and Mason, the only witness, covered for him for years. Eventually, Mason must finally pay for his mistakes, and justice must be served. The book is a can’t-put-it-downer with characters who leap off the page. One of my favorites for 2008.
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Continuing the story of Lisbeth Salander which he began in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Swedish author Stieg Larsson creates a fascinating character study of a young woman with a terrible past, a young woman who also suffers from a form of autism. Salander, having worked with Mikael Blomqvist in the preceding novel, in which she used her formidable skills as a computer hacker to help him solve a major mystery, is on her own for most of this one. Blomqvist, in the meantime, has continued with his work running Millenium magazine, which has been working on an article about the sex trade, its connection with the drug trade, and the high-ranking police and political officials who are involved in it. When two of his investigators are murdered, Lisbeth becomes involved as a hacker to help solve these murders. She herself is wanted for murder.
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