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CRIME NOVEL CHRIS EWAN Safe House (Faber) ●●●●● Chris Ewan is best known for The Good Thief’s Guide to Amsterdam / Paris / Vegas / Venice series of postmodern novels narrated by a thief who just happens to be a crime writer. Safe House is his first standalone thriller and this time the narrator is the rather more innocent Rob Hale. A motorbike racer and plumber on the Isle of Man, Rob crashes and awakes in the midst of a dangerous mystery. Partnered by Rebecca Lewis, a competent private detective, he is sucked into concentric circles of conspiracy involving a missing blonde girl, shady European muscle and even
Books REVIEWS
HISTORICAL TALE LIZA KLAUSSMANN Tigers in Red Weather (Picador) ●●●●● The Second World War is coming to an end and dashing Hughes Derringer is returning from the conflict to his bewitching wife, Nick. Her cousin, a young war widow Helena has found another someone of her own, and is shipping west for a life of glamour and excitement. Tigers in Red Weather charts the lives, loves and tumult of these three and their respective progeny, determined little Daisy Derringer and her brilliantly unsettling cousin Ed. Each of them tell their own story in a delicious five-part narrative harmony culminating in the 1960s.
shadier local constabulary. The pace is heady: new information and revelations arrive in an avalanche but are never confusing. A credibly intricate plot and a range of mostly well- drawn characters is marred only by a tendency to over-play the local colour, but the potential for this to be The Good Thief’s Guide to the Isle of Man is deftly averted and Safe House is a crime thriller that’s in safe hands. (Suzanne Black)
This book, which elicited a sizzling eight-way auction battle eventually settled for a seven-figure sum, contains dancing and fabulous dresses, Lobster Bisque lippy, secrets and whisky sours; it holds within it all the glamour and sass of Mad Men and the bitter rancour and sweet regret of Richard Yates. A cinematic tale both vibrant and sad, it deserves to be read and read, and to blaze a trail that turns 50 shades of grey pillar-box red. (Peggy Hughes)
SOCIAL DRAMA EMRAN MIAN The Banker’s Daughter (Harvill Secker) ●●●●● Whatever caused the recession, there’s one party on whom the trail has yet to go cold, and that’s the bankers. You couldn’t get much more topical, then, than The Banker’s Daughter. We begin in Beirut, where Hanna Mehdi and her father have sought refuge from furious investors after the collapse of his London-based bank. Hanna is not used to asking questions; all she’s been accustomed to is unlimited money and a first- rate education. But when she stumbles across a gruesome photograph that could implicate her father in something far more serious than dodgy
COMIC EDDIE CAMPBELL The Lovely Horrible Stuff (Top Shelf) ●●●●●
Eddie Campbell is most famous for his semi- autobiographical tales as well as providing the scratchy art to Alan Moore’s Jack the Ripper opus From Hell. In The Lovely Horrible Stuff, he’s contemplating everyone’s current obsession: money. The first half is a rambling look at his own finances mixed with some global recession woes, while the second section switches to a history of Yap’s stone monetary system combined with a diary of his trip to this remote Micronesia island. Campbell attempts to put a human face on the various concepts involved in lending, business
lending, her whole understanding of his integrity is threatened.
Right from the off, Mian builds a financial landscape that’s uglier and more deceptive than even those closest to it might suspect. What comes across most clearly is that economics is not a set of intricate theories but a trade, and as such is riddled with deals and conmen. In Mian’s shrewdly observed novel, just as in the very real banking disasters filling the newspapers, greed is always the trump card. (Charlotte Runcie)
finances and the economic slump but it’s never truly engaging. Even with Campbell’s quirky style, reading about someone else’s cash flow is just a bit boring and this comes across like a dull guest at a dinner party who blethers on about mortgages all night. The second half is far more successful, pitched somewhere between an easily accessible economic study brimming with odd facts and a travelogue. Campbell’s mix of art, photos and prose are always appealing but this isn’t his best work. (Henry Northmore)
ALSO PUBLISHED DEBUT NOVELS
Whether you’re lazing on a beach or stuck indoors from the rain, there’s a host of exciting new debut fictions out in August for you to tear through. Film buffs will know Paolo Sorrentino from his directorial work on the likes of Il Divo and This Must Be the Place, but Everybody’s Right (Harvill Secker) is his first novel. A troubled singer in 1980s Naples goes AWOL on tour in Brazil, but it’s unlikely he will stay missing forever given that someone is prepared to pay an awful lot of money for his return to Italy.
Ariel S Winter hasn’t just knocked out a debut novel. The Twenty-Year Death (Hard Crime) is actually three books written in the style of different crime writers (Simenon, Chandler, Thompson) over 700 pages and received vast praise from the likes of James Frey, Stephen King and John Banville on its US publication. Mexican playwright Sabina Berman’s The Woman Who Dived into the Heart of the World (Simon & Schuster) is about a Californian who returns to her birthplace across the border to run the family tuna company after the death of her sister. She takes an autistic niece under her wing, with both finding a new kind of freedom. Peter Heller’s The Dog Stars (Headline Review) has been compared to The Road but ‘with hope’, as the bereaved Hig survives a global disaster and decides to fly his fuel-light Cessna into the unknown to discover who else might be alive. Tupelo Hassman’s Girlchild (Quercus) is also a story about finding positives in hopeless scenarios. This one features the resourceful Rory Dawn Hendrix who aims to leave her trailer park home in Reno before she hits 16. That proves to be easier said than done. (Brian Donaldson)
2–9 Aug 2012 THE LIST 107