June 2006 Archives
Another purchase from Hereford's second hand/charity shop - as was All That Remains - and another random dip into the world of Dr Kay Scarpetta. This time I found myself somewhere in between All That Remains and Black Notice - the last two Patricia Cornwell novels that I've read. Come the end of the book, I realised that Black Notice picks up where Point of Origin finishes.
In fact, Point of Origin provides the detail on Benton's death at the hands of escaped psychopath Carrie Gethin, Lucy's manipulative former lover who Kay, Marino and Benton had (almost) put behind bars. It comes in the context of Lucy's having left the FBI and having joined a speciliast team of fire investigators (she's also learned how to fly helicopters), which comes in handy when Kay et al find themsleves investigating a series of gruesome murders that are not *quite* covered up by arson. Deliberately so, as it turns out.
Despite the many references to Carrie and Lucy's affair in the Kay Scarpetta novels I've read, I've not so far managed to find the one in which it takes place, and similiarly having seen Benton's role leap from professional rival to murdered live in lover in recent reads I seem to have managed to miss out on the part where he and Kay get it together, at his wife's expense. All of which means that I'm going to make the effort to read the series from the start.
Amazon.co.uk link: Point of Origin - Patricia Cornwell
Amazon.co.uk list: Kay Scarpetta Collection (in order)
Having polished off All That Remains rather more rapidly than expected, I resorted to the books that line the shelves of the Gyford's Walton residence.... Having already plundered the shelves on numerous occasions I knew I'd have to try something I'd previously rejected.
The one I picked, Richard Rayner's The Cloud Sketcher, has proved a very good read, and I'd never have expected a novel to teach me about both American urban architecture and Finnish history, whilst simultaneously managing to build in a romance across a vast social divide!
The Cloud Sketcher follows the life, loves and career of Finnish architect Esko Vaananen, taking him and us from his childhood in a remote peasant village to the prosperity and opportunities available in Helsinki to a young architect at start of his career in the early years of the 20th century. This promising start is cut short by the bitter fighting between the Reds and the Whites as Russia's Bolshevik Revolution spills over into Civil War in Finland, its neighbour and, at this time (I think...), vassal state.
The action then moves on to east coast of America in the glorious 20s, a time of prohibition and jazz, millionaires, gangsters and their molls, and the skyscrapers evoked in the title. Even if times the plot seems a bit bloated, Richard Rayner keeps you turning the pages right to the bitter end.
Buy it: Amazon link
A quick one-day read over the weekend at Walton, which came as a bit of a surprise as I'd expected this Kay Scarpetta novel to last me rather longer. Then again, it's one of the earlier instalments in the series and I'm realising that the more recent novels are much longer - Blowfly and Trace in particular.
A satisfying read though, with Kay and Marino uncovering the connection and killer behind a series of double murders that turn out to stetch back decades, and unlike many other novels featuring Kay Scarpetta, this one stretches over many months. In addtion to the murder mysteries themselves, the plot also features politics a-plenty, and bitter rivalry and deliberate obfustication between the various law enforcement agencies that get involved. In fact, everyone seems to have their own agenda; from the drugs czar who is not only one of america's most powerful women, a potential presidential candidate in fact, but also the mother of the girl whose murder opens the novel, to Benton Wesley who Kay encounters heading up the FBI team.....
Two additional points of interest in this novel, particularly if - like me - you've read some of Patricia Cornwell's later novels first: (1) it features Mark as Kay's love interest; and (2) Kay's interest in Benton Wesley is purely professional, and she dislikes and distrusts him.
Having just been to explore www.patricia-cornwell.com and finding the publication timelines, I realise that this must be the earliest Kay Scarpetta novel I've read. Clearly I need to read its two predecessors: Post Mortem and Body of Evidence - if only to learn more about Kay's relationships.
Amazon.co.uk link: All That Remains - Patricia Cornwell
Amazon.co.uk list: Kay Scarpetta Collection (in order)
Read on the recommendation of Phil, selected due to running out of library books and the media coverage surrounding the publication of JPod, and very good it was too.
Although of more immediate appeal to those of us with an interest in technology, Microserfs is actually also worth reading if you've ever wondered what people whose work involves "programming" or "the internet" actually *do*. Or, more accurately given that this was written in the late 1990s, "did". It's also an excellent snapshot of the coming together of a generation of geekoids, the technical developments / opportunities they could both envision and create with the venture capitalist investment and proliferation of IT in both workplaces and homes which resulted in the dotcom boom.
But it's not an altogether alien world of techno-speak and nerds. Yes, the book is set on America's west caost, in the high tech towns of Seattle and San Francisco, but Dan, Karla and the rest are characters that recognisable in their foibles and their fears - even if some of their fads and fetishes aren't quite so familiar. There are lots of funny moments, and poignant ones too, and I really liked the way the main characters are given a wider family setting, so that you get a sense of how they have ended up who and where they are.
Buy it: Amazon link
A 20p gift from work colleague Michael who chanced upon it in Harrow library's "withdrawn from stock and approved for sale" selection after a chat we'd had on sci-fi, and very enjoyable and thought provoking both were too.
Ward Moore was writing in the 1950s, which is the present day setting for part of this novel (albeit "ancient history" for the 21st century reader), and unlike most sci-fi I've read the author conjures up an alternate history from the American Civil War to the then-present day, rather than imagining fantastic worlds in galaxies far, far away.
That in itself made for interesting reading, although I did feel that I missed much of significance due to knowing virtually no American Civil War history in any world/universe, but Ward Moore also throws in a whole different course of scientific development in his world, including a time machine.....
Buy it: Amazon link
I would put this novel into the "I'd've been happy reading it as a library book; but I'd have felt disappointed if I'd paid anything like the RRP for it". So it was a good job I'd bought it at the cheap and cheerful charity second hand bookshop in Hereford.
It wasn't bad, just a little light in places - but that's the risk of reading historical novels featuring dashing heroes amidst a cast of characters from a range of cultures, enjoying epic adventures and political intruige in lands afar.... I *always* end up comparing them with Dorothy Dunnett's, and by and large they come up short.
And there were always going to be some cultural/literary differences arising from the fact that I was reading a translation of a book originally penned in french. Occasionally this was irritatingly obvious, albeit at the gnat rather than shark end of the scale, in the over-elaborate use of synonyms. The example that sticks in the mind is the various words for elephant that appear in the space of a few paragraphs on pages 315 and 316: pachyderm, mastodon, animal - I can just hear the french stylistic flourishes.....
But enough gripes, because The Seige of Isfahan is definitely worth a read if you like historical novels. In it, Jean-Christophe Rufin returns to the characters twenty years after he created in The Abyssinian and finds them scattered across the countries and empires of Persia, Europe and Central Asia. From the central base of Isfahan under the last of the Persian Kings, the plot twists and turns its way across time and place reuniting the orginal cast back once more, but this time in an Isfahan destroyed by seige and ruled by the Afghans of Kandahar.
Buy it: Amazon link