Book Review

  • Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Pantheon, 2003 (2007 translation), 352 pages, C$29.95 tpb, ISBN 0-375-71483-9

    Ask around for graphical novels recommendations, and everyone will mention at least one title: Art Spiegelman’s Maus, which used comics as a way to tell the story of a Holocaust survivor. The subject matter made it respectable for audiences far more diverse than just “the comic fans”, the meta-complexity of Spiegelman’s narrative ensured that it would remain a hit with the intelligentsia, and the accessibility of the tale made it a perennial favourite in bookstores. Don’t expect it to go out of print soon.

    Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis has a number of superficial common points with Maus: Both are true stories in graphic novel form, both became breakout books with mainstream audience, both have something to say about totalitarian regimes, both use an iconic black-and-white approach to their visual presentation. But Persepolis also shares with Spiegelman’s masterpiece a deeper connection: Both use biographical comics as a way to show that history is something that happens to people.

    Persepolis starts in Tehran at the end of the seventies. Marjane Satrapi is a ten-year-old girl, coping with the aftermath of the Iranian revolution. Through a series of short chapters, we come to learn about her family, her school, the circumstances surrounding the revolution and the immediate impact of it. During the second half of this first volume, as the story enters the eighties, we get to see the effect of the Iran/Iraq war on Tehran and Marjane’s life.

    The Marjane in the first volume of Persepolis 1 is an irresistibly cute girl with a smart mouth and privileged circumstances. Distantly related to old Persian royalty, her immediate family is relatively well-off and is able to avoid the worst of either the revolution or the war. But not everyone survives, and the events reach everyone. During this first volume, Marjane is a victim of circumstances: The anecdotes that she relays are more powerful than even the most complete histories of Iran in making us feel why and how the revolution occurred.

    Things are different in Persepolis 2: Sent to Europe to get a better education, 15-year-old Marjane has a hard time growing up alone and away from her family. Still smarter than most of her acquaintances, Marjane soon fall into a bad crowd, tries her hand at drug-dealing, quits school, is kicked out of her residence and touches bottom soon afterwards, living homeless for three months. Pushed beyond her limits, she returns to Iran, where she gets to re-experience the religious regime.

    Persepolis 2 isn’t as cute as the first tome, but it’s more affecting: Marjane is now the person most responsible for what happens to her, and the smart little girl has turned into a self-destructive teen trying to find her place. As a young adult, her talents are still challenged by the society in which she lives. After a brief spell in which she thinks she can get along in Iran, she comes to realize that she will never belong, in Iran or anywhere. The entire series ends in 1994 as she leaves for France, where she still lives today.

    It’s the story of a life, but it’s really in the telling that Persepolis comes alive. A crafty writer, Satrapi navigates a tone between innocence, confession and veiled outrage: By showing rather than proselytizing, she’s able to capture the essence of what life must have felt in Iran. She shows, by example, the inanity of a regime that considers its population to be childish and untrustworthy. She re-tells events such as the Iran/Iraq war and the Gulf War from an Iranian perspective, giving an extra dimension to history that Western audiences don’t know very well.

    It’s all tremendously affecting, and carries with it the impact of an excellent narrative. The storytelling is top-notch, and even the deceptively minimal art is effective: Characters are immediately recognizable from a few iconic details, and the abstraction of the art enhances its universality. Best of all, though, is the way Persepolis is able to make us feel what it was like to be an young Iranian girl during the revolution, a pre-teen during the war, a teenager exiled in Europe, and a young woman back under the veil. It’s the kind of story to make us realize that beyond textbooks and newspaper headlines, history has victims. Persepolis is earns a place next to Maus on the “graphical novel classics” shelf, and it’s easy to see why. Don’t miss it.

    (Some will be surprised to learn that I read Persepolis in English when the original version was published in French. The explanation is purely pragmatic: The relatively scarce four-volume series of trade paperbacks in French would have cost me around $130, whereas the two widely available hardcovers in English set me back “only” $45. Feel free to quote me the next time you contemplate the role of market economics in cultural assimilation.)

  • Target Lock, James Cobb

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Jove, 2002, 490 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-515-13413-9

    Describing the plot of this book is impossible to do with a straight face. It’s about, after all, a female American naval officer who falls in love with a pirate. If this was a movie, you would expect musical numbers, lush cinematography, situational comedy, and maybe even a “yarr, my darling!” or two.

    Yet this is the fourth entry in the “Amanda Garrett” series of military techno-thrillers. The natural audience for this book is not going to be the same than for Romance novels: Imagine steely-eyed conservatives, military personnel and chickenhawk nerds like me hoping for a follow-up to the excellent Sea Fighter and finding themselves with… a pirate romance.

    Judging from the Amazon comments, some were baffled, many were pissed and only a few were amused. Predictably, I find myself solidly in the “amused” camp. Through I have a lot of respect for the first three novels in the series (even calling them some of the best military thrillers of the mid-nineties), my attachment to them isn’t quite that strong: if Cobb decided to mess with the formula with Target Lock, the best thing to do is sit back with a bucket of popcorn and watch the show.

    Certainly, the macro-level premise of Target Lock is interesting. After the dirty little coastal war in Sea Fighter, US government grows concerned about piracy in Indonesia and wisely sends Amanda Garrett back to the sea. Tasked with solving the problem and helped along by a US Navy task force, Garrett eventually realizes that a modern-day “pirate king” is to blame for the attacks.

    Up until “pirate king”, this was a wonderful premise: the piracy problem is indeed a growing issues in southeastern Asia, and it presents an interesting challenge even for someone with the latest technology at her fingertips. Heck, even with “Pirate King”, it’s a promising setup: a strong antagonist has to be involved (and vanquished) at some point for a dramatic conclusion.

    But it’s all in the way things are presented. And this is where the “pirate romance” bit takes a toll: It’s one thing to speak of a novel that’s not as exciting, not as tightly focused as the previous books in the series. It’s quite another to compound that with incongruous scenes in which the formerly unflappable heroine of the series suddenly takes on the mantle of James Bond and self-consciously seduces a wealthy powerful man who just could be the Pirate King. Readers thus jostled out of the book’s spell can then start making wisecracks, dismissing the book’s complex problems with an easy “Yarr, my darling!”

    This being said, I can’t help but wonder what role gender politics can play in such sarcasm. The Amanda Garrett series was distinctive partly for its portrayal of a female heroine in a modern naval setting. It has also been true that the attempts at romance between Garrett and other characters were tepid and not entirely believable. But what role does the madonna/whore archetype play in dismissing romantic entanglements for the series’ heroine? I wonder. I may think that this whole seduction business is a weak subplot clumsily inserted in a novel that didn’t need it, but I can’t account for my own invisible biases, and that worries me.

    Not that this is the biggest problem with the book. The crystal-clear action sequences that made the previous books so memorable are here muted and infrequent. The final “attack in paradise” is suitably apocalyptic (and the Chris Moore cover of the book’s UK edition is lovely), but there isn’t much here to gnaw upon. Even my favourite character of the series, the wonderful Christine Rinaldo, doesn’t get much to do this time around. The result is a weak novel, even if you don’t add the pirate romance aspect, or the hints that another admiral may be romantically interested in Garrett.

    It amounts to a disappointing novel by anyone’s standards, especially given the strong impression left by the first three books of the series. As of this writing, five years later, this is still the final chapter in the Garrett series, and Cobb has limped along on unrelated books that skirt the edge of self-publishing. His big return, planned for fall 2007? A Robert Ludlum “collaboration”. Uh-huh. He can do much better.

  • Death by Hollywood, Steven Bochco

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Ballantine, 2003, 239 pages, C$11.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-46687-X

    Sooner or later, it seems that every writer who passes through Los Angeles ends up with the irresistible ambition to run to New York publishers and sell them a revenge novel about Hollywood’s excesses. Find a screenwriter with prose ambitions and you will probably find someone looking to settle a score or two outside the normal power structures of Hollywood. And watch out if an established novelist goes to Hollywood for a while… Sooner or later, they come back wide-eyed with a novel or at least a short story on the madness of Southern California. (Get Shorty, anyone?)

    The twist with Steven Bochco is that in Los Angeles terms, he’s more a member of the TV middle-class than the cinema elite. But he’s from Hollywood anyway, so the revenge fantasy novel aspect still holds true. Bochco may not be writing directly about TV production in Death by Hollywood, but he’s still skewering the same celebrity-obsessed mentality that seems to permeate the L.A. bassin.

    A relatively short novel at a time where 350-450 pages is the norm, Death By Hollywood is as long (or as short) as it needs to be. Told from a first-person point of view that at first seems disconnected from the action, Death By Hollywood is about murder (fittingly enough for the creator of “Hill Street Blues”, “L.A. Law” and “NYPD Blues”), but also about the cult of celebrity and the way in which a person without scruples has a huge advantage over anyone who does.

    It starts with voyeurism, as a screenwriter watches a naughty scene turn violent, then deadly. Obsessed with the idea of a killer script premise, the screenwriter inserts himself in the developing story, all the while plotting how he’s going to influence the events for the best dramatic effect. If it means getting friendly with the lead investigator in the case and getting very close to the murderer, well, why not?

    Played half with a smile, half with a cynical sneer, Death by Hollywood wastes no time in getting into the heads of characters willing to do the worst to others if it just means taking a step closer to success. Never mind that the plot never quite makes sense (announcing what you’ve done to the world isn’t a terrific idea for a criminal, script or no script): the emphasis here is on the satire, the description of how Hollywood corrupts everyone who’s touched by its illusions. Even the characters who should be the most trustworthy aren’t any better than the others, we discover. The language of the book is crude, and the action sometimes pauses for ribald scenes. This is both a macho-noir narrative and a satire: it’s not to be taken too seriously.

    Yet part of what makes the charm of the novel is the accumulation of details about life in Hollywood. I’m always very fond of the alternate Hollywoods developed by fiction writers as they weave details that may or not correspond to real-life celebrities. The nature of celebrity being so extreme, the difference between reality and fiction is never too clear nor too clean. Suffice to say that Bochco writes with the weariness of someone who has spent decades in the business: the asides of his narrator alone are worth the short time it takes to read the novel. (Though I wonder if Death By Hollywood would have been different if Bochco had tackled TV series production. Is there a reason why he didn’t, or was it just a better story this way?)

    It’s hardly a perfect novel (among other things, the omniscient point of view seems a bit presumptuous from the narrator, especially when he tries to justify how he learned all of that information), but it’s a very enjoyable one. It may not be worth the price of a hardcover unless you’re building a collection of Hollywood revenge novels, but it’s a great excuse for going back to your local library, or to hunt the bargain bins. Steven Bochco won’t ever by known for his novel over his TV series, but Death by Hollywood certainly isn’t a dishonour. In fact, I wonder if he’s ever going to write another one…

  • Throne of Jade, Naomi Novik

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2006, 398 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-48129-1

    Sometimes, sarcasm is the quickest way to the truth.

    So when I say that reading Throne of Jade is like being stuck on a slow boat to China, I’m not being mean as much as I’m being as descriptive as possible

    Nor am I being negative given how much I enjoyed the novel despite its lopsided structure.

    Because Throne of Jade does take place on a slow boat to China. After the events of His Majesty’s Dragon, Will Laurence and Temeraire are faced with a new threat: the Chinese government has learned that Temeraire, formerly a gift to the French government, has fallen in English hands. They’re not happy and the English government isn’t necessarily feeling better about it. Soon, a plan is hatched to send Laurence out of England and in China, where negotiations with the Chinese emperor can most efficiently settle the issue.

    There’s a catch: during an eighteenth century where most of Europe is at war, sending a major delegation to China can only be done by boat, around Africa and the Indian Peninsula. For the duration of the trip, Laurence, Temeraire, their entire crew, the English delegation, the Chinese diplomats and everyone’s support staff are stuck on a flotilla going to China.

    It’s not a smooth voyage: beyond culinary matters (as Temeraire comes to appreciate Chinese cuisine), the ship is attacked by pirates, dogged by traitors, wracked by dissension and enlivened by all sorts of other incidents.

    Still, we’re on a slow boat to China.

    This changes two-third of the way in the book, as China looms over the horizon and the palace intrigue begins in earnest. Almost too quickly for comfort, various conflicts are introduced or revealed, along with significant revelations about why Temeraire was sent to Europe. As a few roughly-paced actions scenes show, all is not well in the Chinese court,. Temeraire makes a permanent enemy, but manages to make things end happily for everyone else. If you’re looking for a plot, you’ll find it in the last hundred pages of the novel.

    Fortunately, the chief attraction of the Temeraire series is still world-building, character and prose rather than plot. Novik is still fond of short-loop drama (though one hopes that the introduction of a recurring antagonist may change things slightly) and the structure of her second novel is lopsided, but she still writes entertaining prose, and the deepening characters of Laurence and Temeraire are doing much to keep us in the story.

    Temeraire may often be too good to be true, but his growing awakening to the true treatment of English dragons (especially when compared to their Chinese brethrens) introduces a few elements that may eventually develop into satisfying plot lines. I’m still vaguely unsure if the human/dragon relationships are meant to satirize a certain view of male/female power dynamics, or if they’re meant to map onto other privileged/oppressed relationships. But then again, sometimes a dragon is just a dragon… and on that score, Throne of Jade does much to stretch the reader’s imagination: Temeraire’s arrival in China is a glimpse into yet another series of conventions regarding dragon accommodations. Compared to His Majesty’s Dragon, the feeling of “cheating” alternate history is lessened given my lack of familiarity with Chinese history at the time.

    But even despite my quibbles about the plot and structure of the novel, I still had a lot of fun reading Throne of Jade, and that ends up trumping all other concerns about the book. Novik has, once again, delivered a solid series book that shows that the readability and richness of her first novel weren’t accidents. It doesn’t stand alone, nor is it meant to: her story may be shifting gears in anticipation for later instalments. Black Power War is up next, with its deliciously ominous title.

  • Temple, Matthew Reilly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    St. Martin’s, 1999, 508 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-312-98126-0

    Few dilemmas of genre fiction fascinate me as much as the trade-off between believability and excitement in thrillers. Make your thriller as faithful to reality as possible and there’s nothing left to distinguish it from dull newspaper headlines. Make your narrative as wild as possible and no one will take you seriously.

    On the other hand, nobody ever said that “being taken seriously” was in the job description of thriller authors. So congratulations to Matthew Reilly for figuring out that sometimes, it’s better to be fast, furious, insane and action-packed than to be realistic. His second novel Temple may never survive a real-world audit, but it’s exciting like few other thrillers I’ve read recently, and that excitement does much to patch over the weaker parts of the novel.

    Although mixing historical treasure-hunting with high technology has enjoyed a renewed degree of popularity since Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Reilly was there before most others with Temple. The initial hook is a staple of adventure fiction: A rare Inca idol made of extra-terrestrial material that could end up destroying a good chunk of the Earth should it fall in the wrong hands. To retrieve the idol from its current unknown location, the U.S. Army grabs academic William Race and drags him in the jungle, where he’ll have to interpret a rare manuscript, make nice with his ex-girlfriend and learn how to become an action hero against nature, Neo-Nazis and American traitors.

    Busy schedule, and “busy” is only one way to describe the fever pitch of Temple when it gets running. As he runs deeper in the Andean jungle, William Race is surrounded, then abandoned by highly-trained military personnel. Occasional allies include native people and a pair of German police officers (including one coincidentally named Karl Schroeder). But it’s the variety of threats that make Temple flip over on the “wild and crazy” side of the thriller ledger. Any novel that pits giant felines against Neo-Nazis is not one to dismiss easily, especially when both of them are against an academic who’s got to learn everything about modern weaponry in the blink of an eye.

    The chief attraction of Temple is how it unabashedly structures itself as a written action movie. There’s little complexity of prose and character here, but a lot of complicated action sequences and cinematic set pieces. This isn’t a book for delicate little literary flowers: this is the written equivalent to a blockbuster Hollywood action movie, and it works remarkably well at fulfilling those expectations. Many thriller writer attempt such action-heavy stories, but few of them do it as well as Reilly.

    The only lull in the action comes in a pair of lengthy historical narratives forming the diary of a priest visiting the Inca empire hundreds of years before Temple‘s contemporary frame. I ended up skimming those sections with little impact on my comprehension of the rest of the story.

    As for the rest, well, it’s tough to summarize boats jumping in the air and wild gun tricks. I’ll let you grab a copy of the book and find out for yourself. Just don’t expect a lot of internal coherence or even a basic respect for the laws of physics. The last death-defying climax is so ridiculously overblown that it will either make you hate the novel or seal your love for it forever: It’s the kind of things that only insane or self-confident authors can pull off, and I can’t tell if Reilly is one or the other. I’m not even sure I want to know.

    One thing is for sure, though: Now that I have belatedly become aware of Matthew Reilly, it’s about time that I find out what else he’s written. Already, Contest and Ice Station have been thrown in my pile of books to read, and I can’t wait to find out if the brand of crazy action that sustained Temple is to be found in his other books. But, oh, have I got a hunch…

  • The Black Ice, Michael Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1993, 439 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-61344-4

    Whenever a reasonably good and consistent author emerges, reviewers inevitably wonder what will be the novel to break their stride. What’s the worst they can do? What is the least of their capabilities?

    The Black Ice may be an above-average police procedural, but this second entry in my Michael Connelly Reading Project (“One novel per month, every month, until I’m caught up”) is the weakest of the half-dozen Connelly novel I’ve read so far.

    Once again, the star of the show remains Harry Bosch, the laconic LAPD policeman that has since become Connelly’s signature character. For Harry, things are tough at work and about to get tougher as a policeman’s corpse is discovered. Suicide, say early results, but Bosch isn’t convinced –even as his superiors aren’t fond of too-clever deductions. In typical Connelly fashion, the subsequent investigation takes Harry in dangerous places, especially when the death turns out to be linked to the drug underground of Los Angeles, with an even more problematic Mexican connection.

    Throughout most of its duration, The Black Ice is slick procedural detective fiction, and it uses a number of L.A.-specific elements to spice up the narrative. Fruit flies have seldom been so important in a police procedural thriller, and even routine scenes such as a visit to a low-end bar end up having unexpected spikes of drama. Before the end of the novel, we’re even treated to a big SWAT action sequence.

    For readers who aren’t following Bosch’s novels in linear order, The Black Ice doesn’t particularly depend on the events of the first volume. Only Bosch’s romantic history and distrust of the LAPD’s Internal Investigations unit carry through most clearly. After the troubled romance of the first volume, Harry is after yet another opportune girlfriend this time around, although don’t worry –later volumes show that it won’t last. The internal investigation angle is trickier: Harry doesn’t trust the LAPD and the LAPD doesn’t trust him either. In Connelly’s fiction, though, this is business as usual.

    But “business as usual” ends up being the key expression to describe one of Connelly’s most average effort so far. His typically fluid prose remains just as apt at hooking readers into a complex web of competing subplots but The Black Ice, for the longest time, lacks the distinctive edge that usually gives an extra boost to Connelly’s fiction. Critics will struggle to find something to say about it and turn in shorter-than-usual reviews. Until the last quarter of the narrative, it’s “just” another murder investigation with a drug angle. What happens afterwards is definitely a spoiler, but that extra quasi-insane twist eventually becomes the most distinctive element of the novel.

    And yet, even if The Black Ice is satisfying crime fiction, it’s still a notch under what Connelly can usually write and the difference is perceptible. Since the result is still superior to the average, it’s easy to forgive Connelly this misstep. The mark of a great author, after all, is how he can be above the norm even in his weakest moments. The Michael Connelly Reading Project rolls on, far from being disappointed.

  • 253, Geoff Ryman

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Griffin , 1998, 384 pages, C$17.95 tpb, ISBN 0-312-18295-3

    (Preferably read online at http://www.ryman-novel.com )

    Now here’s an early-web curio that most may have forgotten: a “hypertext novel” in the purest sense, a story without much of a main plot but plenty of characters. 253 of them, in fact: the number of people that can fit in a London tube train. Every one of them to be described in 253-word long chapters. The train (we quickly learn) is doomed to a terrible crash, making the lives of its passengers seem even more poignant.

    High concepts such as “interactive novels” are often bandied about by amateur writers convinced of their genius and self-importance. Often, they’re just rehashes of cheap “make your own adventures” YA novels. Less often, they can take on deeper themes about the way we live stories (such as Kim Newman’s exceptional Life’s Lottery). Geoff Ryman isn’t just any writer (a fact that has grown even more obvious since 253) and his hypertext novel is considerably more ambitious than a piece of stunt writing.

    Inevitably, there are many ways to read 253. Paperbound readers will find a “paper remix” of the book available in bookstores. But that’s a very linear interpretation of the work: the fullest experience is freely available from the web site on which Ryman originally wrote the novel. Here you will find the introductory material, tragic conclusion and the 253 character profiles that form the backbone of the novel. Thanks to the hyperlinks, you will be able to jump from one character profile to another as they interact, building a fuller picture of what is happening aboard that doomed train. Navigating through the novel becomes your own interpretation of the book: Characters encountered in a particular context will have a different resonance later on when they’re seen from other viewpoints, perhaps irremediably affecting the experience of 253.

    For instance, I started reading 253 with the firm intention of doing it linearly: I would read all of the introductions, then all of the character profiles, then the conclusion. But only a few characters into the story, I started following the links that suggested a story. A young man with a crush on an older woman? Let’s click and see what she sees! What, she’s married and her husband is following her? Let’s click and see what happens! Ryman has been clever enough to include a number of such mini-dramas in the hypertext, and it’s not uncommon, following links, to go from one of those stories to another. In some ways, the free-form nature of 253 offers a clearer look at the way storytelling is wired in our brains: I found that I simply couldn’t resist the attraction of a suggested narrative. (Clearly, I’ve been spending too much time reading John “The World can be read as Story” Clute.)

    The number of characters also allows Ryman many fiction-bending possibilities, as it eventually becomes apparent (especially in the last car) that not every character is inhabiting the same world, the same genre or the same story. Some are lost in dreary domestic drama; others are stuck in a crime thriller; at least one would feel at ease in a science-fiction story (having discovered the proof of the entirely reasonable assertion that all males are slightly autistic), whereas a bunch of them eventually transform their train ride in a musical comedy. A “Tall, ravaged, nervous-looking middle aged man” named Geoff Ryman [Passenger 96] even makes an appearance as part of a roving comedy troupe. But even he isn’t the strangest character on-board: That honour could either go to another man studying his fellow passengers and writing the novel’s epitaph (Passenger 252), mysteriously blank character 70, “Pigeon-chested, pigeon-toed” character 121 (my personal favourite) or the ultimate passenger 253, who sends the entire novel into an entirely different direction altogether.

    It makes a unique reading experience: So many characters in such a condensed fashion, with unexpected links and a variety of lives worth experiencing. 253 often recalls the old joke about the dictionary (“great vocabulary, lousy plot”), but here the diversity and interconnectedness (or lack thereof) of the characters is the fabric from which the narrative is made. The train crash is the epilogue than caps off the story in tragic fashion, a sad note in what is otherwise an exhilarating experience (albeit occasionally tedious, when read too quickly). I’m half-glad, half-disappointed I got to experience it at home in front of my computer: In an ideal world, I might have done better had I read it on my PDA during my own lengthy bus rides to and back from work.

  • The Road, Cormac McCarthy

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Knopf, 2006, 241 pages, C$30.00 hc, ISBN 0-307-26543-9

    A man and a woman are walking down a path near the Rideau Canal.

    It’s spring and the snow blanketing Ottawa will stay away for a few months. Patches of green suggest that summer is coming up. The canal is a popular lunchtime destination for the office workers who won’t stay locked up inside their cubicles.

    The man and the woman walk together, but they don’t hold hands. They’re not in other relationships either, but if they were, they wouldn’t be walking together like that.

    Turns out I read a Pulitzer-winning novel last weekend, he says.

    Thats quite unlike you, she says.

    It was an accident. Cormac McCarthys The Road. I wanted to see what the fuss was all about. Even Oprah picked-

    You read a book from the Oprah Book club? Now thats unusual-

    Hey, I paid nine dollars extra to get the hardcover without the Oprah sticker. Please.

    Right. And I suppose that this book is…

    Science-Fiction.

    I knew it.

    But its really something else. Post apocalyptic. The guy who wrote it isnt a Science Fiction writer.

    So he just accidentally wrote SF?

    Maybe. I mean, the point of the story is to show a man and his son at a time where everything has been destroyed. Theres no fancy science, no gadgets, no big plot to save the world. Just two people walking down a road, trying to survive until they can find more food.

    They can just catch rabbits.

    Its not so simple. This is a post-post-apocalyptic story, years after the big event that killed off everything.

    Nuclear war?

    Maybe. It’s not clear and I dont think the author even cares. The stopped clocks and the ash falling down say nuclear war, but the lack of radioactivity and the big booms could mean an asteroid strike. But if that was the case, half the globe would be OK… oh I just dont know.

    I guess it doesnt matter, then.

    No. The point is that by the time the book begins, everythings deader than dead, and every place has been looted more times than you can count. All the plants are gone, most of the people are gone, and the only way anyone can eat is to get lucky and find cans that have somehow escaped everyone else.

    Wow. That doesnt sound too good.

    The prose tries really hard to find all the possible synonyms for gray ash. Its not a novel for depressives.

    It could make anyone feel better, though. Show you how things could be worse.

    I dont think reading about a baby being roasted on a spit is going to make anyone feel better about their lives.

    Ew.

    Sorry about that.

    Just dont mention it again.

    Okay.

    Okay.

    They announced it won the Pulitzer this morning: For prose fiction.

    For a Science Fiction book.

    They say its for literary merit. For good writing.

    Such as?

    Writing without dialogue tags. Removing apostrophes. Stuff they teach in university.

    That must make all of your scifi friends mad.

    You should see what they say on the blogs. Half of it says science fiction rocks, the other half is beating themselves up about how the book is bad SF that stole everything from other genre books.

    What about you?

    The novel is all right. Its not telling a story you can cheer for, but its much better than genre fiction at atmosphere and prose. Even if it stays a one tone melody through the book.

    You’re going to die, you ‘re going to die for three hundred pages?

    Something like that. You forgot the part where they walk and eat.

    They do that a lot?

    Its pretty much all they do. Its a good thing the ending is more optimistic. Though after everything that came before, it doesnt take much to make a happy ending.

    Not my kind of book, I think.

    I wouldnt even try to suggest it to you. But its not that bad. And if it can convince some people that science fiction can be respectable, well thats just a bonus.

    They stop at a bend in the canal. Lunchtime’s more than halfway over, and they’ll have to head back to the cubicles before long. Leaning against the metal railing, they watch a small boat go past.

    And you know what, he says, it does make you feel glad to be alive.

    She grabs his hand and squeezes it.

    She has never done that before.

    But it’s a start.

  • Elantris, Branson Sanderson

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Tor, 2005, 622 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-765-35037-8

    Hold on to your hats: I’m about to say nice things about a classical genre fantasy novel.

    Yes, I know: I’m not supposed to like fantasy, especially if it’s in the overdone “medieval societies, kingdoms, lost magic, palace intrigue” vein. But there are exceptions, and Brandon Sanderson’s Elantris is one of them.

    For one thing, it fits in one single volume. Though follow-up stories are certainly possible, Elantris is its own 600-pages beast and it closes on a satisfactory conclusion that doesn’t need a sequel. One-shot novels seem so rare in fantasy that this is a welcome distinction, if not even an innovation.

    The theme continues with the book’s opening blurbs, which will really try to make you believe that this is an unusual fantasy novel. No quests! No elves! No mages in robes! And that’s true enough: Elantris manages to avoid the typical quest narrative and keeps the usual genre decorations to a minimum.

    And yet, if you look closely at the novel, it’s easy to apply John Clute’s structure of fantasy: You have a kingdom in which magic is thinning away, and protagonists who are actively working at solving the issue, some treating the symptoms while others try to understand the deeper roots of the problem. The entire narrative schematic of the novel is one that points toward healing and redemption —literally in the case of one character and metaphorically for the entire land where Elantris takes place.

    But never mind the question of whether Elantris is traditional fantasy or not: The real reason why I’m so pleased with the novel is far less abstract: it’s all about the fun of reading. Sanderson’s clear writing and the strength of his characters make it impossible to put down the novel once it starts going. From the first few pages, Elantris establishes a strong trio of viewpoint characters that will carry us to the end of the story: Raoden, a young prince who wakes up “dead” and is condemned to exile; Sarene, his fiancée (soon to be a “widow”) who’s coming from far away to unite two kingdoms through marriage; and Hrathen, a priest who is sent to the city in order to cleanse its rot. Polished but transparent prose add to the characterization to form the essence of strong storytelling. Clearly, Sanderson’s got some talent if he can make a fan of even anti-fantasy curmudgeons like me.

    I particularly enjoyed following the Sarene chapters, as she proves herself a formidable presence in a court where she’s either seen as an interloper, a nonentity or a victim. Trained in the diplomatic arts, she sets in motion a number of intricate schemes even as members of the court underestimate her. There’s dramatic irony is our knowledge that her fiancé is not completely “dead”… and that she even comes to meet him under very strange circumstances. Meanwhile, Raoden wastes no time in exile in trying to solve the mystery of the once-radiant city of Elantris, and Hrathen has plans of his own to take control of the kingdom on behalf of his master. But Raoden’s a goody-goody two-shoe and Hrathen is another one in a long line of unpleasant fantasy priests; it’s really Sarene who ends up forming the backbone of the novel’s appeal.

    Strong scenes, terrific descriptions and an eventful plot do the rest: Elantris is the kind of novel that rewards lengthy reading sessions. There’s an intricate relationship at play between the names, magical system and glyphs (complete with graphical appendix!) that proves how much thought went into this novel. That Elantris is a first novel is a minor wonder: The writing is assured, enjoyable and skillful to a degree that confirms why Sanderson has spent two years on the Campbell Award ballot.

    Heck, it’s good enough to make me think that I’ve been too quick to dismiss classical fantasy. It certainly leads me to suspect that I’ll be spending some time paying attention to Sanderson’s next few books. The qualities that make Elantris work so well -plot, characterization, prose- are a writer’s strengths, not particularities of genre. This very impressive debut bodes well for the rest of Sanderson’s career… and maybe even for fantasy in general.

  • Vulcan’s Forge, Jack B. DuBrul

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Forge, 1998, 371 pages, C$8.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-812-56461-8

    Even since Clive Cussler grabbed the modern American adventure novel by the throat and gave it a wedgie, writers have been struggling to imitate his success and rip off his formula. There may be a few forthright mimes in the bunch (Craig Dirgo’s The Einstein Papers was a conscious attempt at aping the formula, but Dirgo has the distinction of being a frequent Cussler collaborator), but there are also outright copycats such as Jack Du Brul’s Vulcan’s Forge. (But don’t think that Cussler disapproves. There’s a big honking blurb from him on the cover of the Forge paperback edition.)

    How is it a copycat? I’m glad you asked. Grabbing my steel pointer and a schematic plan of Vulcan’s Forge, allow me to poke at the novel’s protagonist, a true squared-jawed American hero named Philip Mercer. Take note: Mercer is built according to the precepts of serial fiction, not simply the needs of a single novel. He is single (though handsome and suave enough to be able to seduce any woman easily, at least once per novel), independently wealthy as a freelance geologist, and tough enough to be willing to travel anywhere on the globe to deal with the problem at hand. Proficiency with survival techniques, big vehicles and weaponry is assumed. Aficionados of Dirk Pitt will oooh in recognition at the Mercer home, an innocuous building that has been completely re-built to act as a museum, research library and depository of cool toys.

    Cussler fans will also nod whenever one of the two main antagonist is revealed: A rich man with dastardly plans for a chunk of the United States, a plan that plays well with the schemes of the other main antagonist. The threat, of course, directly links to Mercer’s professional credentials as a geologist, suggesting that further books in the series will all depend in some way or another on a series of rocky premises. The plot is ludicrous and the science is worse, but that should be seen less as a problem, and more as a further proof that Du Brul is writing in the Cussler vein. Heck, there’s even some underwater action built-in.

    Fortunately, it work relatively well. Though no one will recognize this as a fine piece of literature or even a superior thriller for the ages, Vulcan’s Forge goes through the right motions with some skill, and the result is readable enough. It is a bit longer and blander that it ought to be (some editing would have been able to tighten the action), but not enough to matter. There’s also a late late plot twist that doesn’t matter one bit and makes the novel even more preposterous than it already is. But since it’s a Cussler copycat, can it actually be too preposterous?

    Your answer to that question will determine whether you’re likely to enjoy this novel. It’s strictly a formula thriller meant to launch a series, and as such it’s better than many other attempts. I certainly prefer it to Craig Dirgo’s The Einstein Papers, to name only one such recent example. Philip Mercer’s not an unlikeable protagonist (though I can’t say the same of the company he keeps), so there’s a very good chance that I’ll pick up his next few adventures. Of course, it’ll remain to be seen whether Du Brul will stick to the Cussler formula, or branch out to something of his own.

    [April 2007: Ew. Du Brul’s follow-up, Charon’s Landing, is a step down in almost every way: Not only is it considerably duller and lengthier, it’s also taken with a rabidly conservative viewpoint that keeps poisoning whatever enjoyment is left in the novel. Here, Good old Philip Mercer has to fight big bad environmentalists, but don’t worry: his manhood is sufficient enough to turn a convinced antagonist into his love-kitten in a matter of pages. Virulent denunciations of environmentalist excesses may net Du Brul the usual Crichton-loving readership, but it makes the novel unpalatable to everyone else. Not that a correction there would have helped the rest of the novel as it muddles through a plot that offers little of note. Not the most auspicious follow-up novel.]

    [May 2007: Huh. Du Brul novels keep going but don’t necessarily feel like they’re part of a consistent series. Third volume The Medusa Stone is much better than either the first or second volume as it pits Mercer against a complex web of international intrigue in Africa. The action is unusual, the pacing keeps up and there are a number of fairly interesting scenes here and there. It’s not so successful as far as characters are concerned: Mercer can’t keep a girlfriend and presents a serious risk to his acquaintances, but characters are almost irrelevant in this type of novel. It’s acceptable beach reading, though it still falters even as a simple Cussler copycat. It’s good enough to make me grab the next Du Brul novel at used book sales, but certainly not good enough to go and buy them new.]

  • The Black Echo, Michael Connelly

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Warner, 1992, 482 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-446-61273-1

    I’ve been a fan of Michael Connelly ever since discovering Trunk Music a few years ago. Since then, I have read most of his early masterpieces and fan favourites (The Poet, Blood Work, The Concrete Blonde…) but, like some oenophiles storing great vintages “for another day”, simply accumulated his novels without reading them.

    Well, this insanity ends this month. For this is the start of the Michael Connelly Reading Project, a comprehensive effort to read one Connelly book per month, every month, until I’m done. In chronological order, skipping over those I’ve already read (with potentially hilarious consequences).

    Obviously, I have to start at the beginning: Connelly’s debut, The Black Echo.

    It’s not just Connelly’s first novel, but also the introduction of his best-known character, LAPD investigator Harry Bosch. Vietnam veteran, jazz enthusiast, laconic and taciturn, Bosch makes for a protagonist in perpetual tension. He’s incapable of living outside a rigid hierarchy, yet he’s got a problem with authority. He fits the mold of a classic Private Investigator, but chafes away in an unglamourous police job after a brush with celebrity. He comes to the series with a fully built past made of a lousy childhood, a stint in Vietnam, a police career and no permanent romantic entanglements.

    It’s pure luck (or is it?) if his latest investigation starts with an anonymous corpse discovered dead in a Hollywood hill drainage tunnel. At first, it looks like a simple case of drug overdose, except for one thing: Bosch knows the victim. They were in Vietnam together as “tunnel rats”, and Bosch can’t let this one go. As he tracks down the threads of the investigation, he’ll discover that the crime wasn’t just the end of a person’s life, but a step in a much bigger plan… one that will see him go back underground.

    For established fans of Michael Connelly, the biggest surprise with The Black Echo is how accomplished a first novel it is. It may not be among Connelly’s finest efforts, but it compares favourably to most police procedurals and already showcases the strengths of his fiction: The familiarity with police procedures and mindsets; the clean prose; the use of Los Angeles as a location; the sharply drawn characters; the intricate plotting; the excellent scenes; the mounting tensions between Bosch, the criminals and the hierarchy in which Bosch operates. It’s very slick stuff, and it seems mastered right off the bat. Like all Connelly novels, this one works from the very first page.

    There are, inevitably, a number of small missteps. Some of the plot twists are a bit obvious, to the point where I even found myself rightfully thinking “Oh, please, Connelly, don’t go this way.” He does, but part of the strength of the book is how it can survive even that. ( I suppose that my predictive abilities would have been even stronger had I remembered The Concrete Blonde in greater detail.) There is also a bit of a lull at mid-book, between beats of the investigation.

    Ultimately, it ends deep under Los Angeles, taking advantage of Bosch’s past as a tunnel rat. The path from the initial examination of Bosch’s friend to the final frenetic pursuit in city sewers is enjoyable and compulsively readable. Connelly knows his stuff, and the hooks he sets in his story make The Black Echo a believable episode in the life of a protagonist who has already seen a lot and will see even more in the rest of the series.

    The Black Echo‘s quality wasn’t lost on the book-reading public: Not only did it launch Connelly’s career, it also netted him an Edgar Award for best first novel of the year. For Connelly fans, it’s now an essential read and a bit of a cornerstone. My Michal Connelly Reading Project couldn’t have started on a better note.

  • His Majesty’s Dragon, Naomi Novik

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Del Rey, 2006, 356 pages, C$9.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-345-48128-3

    There is something in the DNA code of science-fiction and fantasy readers that makes Napoleon-era nautical adventures irresistible. C.S. Forrester’s Horatio Hornbower, Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey… those series seem to reach the same pleasure centres stimulated by good SF&F. You can find SF&F readers who haven’t read either author, but you’ll have a harder time finding SF&F fans who didn’t like those books.

    So seeing Naomi Novik pick the Napoleonic era as a setting for a dragon-enhanced alternate history series isn’t too much of a stretch. The era is appealing, and her likely readership is reasonably familiar with the historical period, whether through Forrester and O’Brien, or through Austen, Trollope and other contemporary writers. Having the series follow in the wind of the Hugo award-winning Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell doesn’t hurt either.

    So, yeah: The Napoleonic war with dragons. Simple enough, right?

    But Naomi Novik is one of the first of a new kind of writer: those who have honed their skills in the on-line trenches of fan-fiction. As such, her writing is eager to please and structured around a series of sharp hooks and short dramatic loops. His Majesty’s Dragon starts right off with action and mystery: After a naval battle between a French frigate and an English warship captained by Will Laurence, the victorious English soldiers discover a dragon egg in the hold of the French ship. A dragon egg ready to hatch.

    Before anyone can ask what a valuable dragon egg is going in the hold of a frigate travelling without escorts, the entire English crew is scrambling to bring the ship back home and make sure that the dragon is properly hatched. Given how a dragon imprints on the first human it sees, it’s crucial that the right man for the life-long commitment be there when it happens. Alas, that man turns out to be Laurence: within moment, his entire comfortable naval career is jettisoned: Forever attached to the dragon, his arrival in England sees him shunted to His Majesty’s Air Force. Far too old by novice pilot standards, Laurence quickly finds out that his dragon isn’t normal either. Temeraire, as the dragon is called, can speak like most dragons, but is of a very rare breed with above-average capabilities. Most of His Majesty’s Dragon is a novel of discoveries, as Laurence discovers how to behave like a pilot, and as everyone discovers what Temeraire truly is.

    Cleverly written and engagingly plotted, Naomi Novak’s first novel is pure reading joy. It reactivates the dormant “swashbuckler” gene in SF&F readers’ DNA and delivers solid adventure, absorbing prose, good scenes and the first glimmer of a long-running series. Even those who think they don’t like dragons will have trouble stopping reading after a few chapters.

    Novik has done her research and understands the lineage of dragon-themed stories: There are a few playful pokes at Anne McCafferey’s Dragonrider series, along with a good eye for practical concerns. Novik’s combat dragons are huge and require an entire support crew to man effectively, and that’s not even mentioning the sheer quantity of meat required to fuel those dragons.

    This attention to detail, on the other hand, highlights the biggest conceptual trap in Novak’s conceit: The contradiction between a well-established historical era and an alternate world where dragons are an integral part of history. Surely their power would have been recognized and exploited earlier? Surely the entire geopolitical map would have been altered early on by air power and fast reliable communications?

    On the other hand, alternate history is a game about how early the departure point should be. Too late, and pickier readers start to kvetch. Too early, and the series’ entire high concept goes away.

    More serious is the short-dramatic-loop structure of the novel. While it’s rich in instant gratification and early story hooks, it eventually leads to a lack of continuing tension. Laurence ostracized by his fellow pilots? Resolved within pages. Laurence and Temeraire having a spat? Resolved within pages. A potential traitor within the ranks? Resolved within pages…

    But even with those short loops, the novel does a fine, fine job at setting up the world and its characters. By the end of the book, a number of mysteries are kept in reserve, and everyone’s looking forward to the next adventures of Temeraire. By-the-numbers, perhaps, but nonetheless effective. It’s a good thing I bought the entire series so far…

  • Trojan Odyssey, Clive Cussler

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Berkley, 2003, 463 pages, C$10.99 mmpb, ISBN 0-425-19932-0

    I may not respect Clive Cussler’s fiction, but I do admire his chutzpah. It takes a special kind of audacity to perfect a thriller-writing formula and keep re-using it volume after volume, decade after decade. It takes even more self-confidence to to farm out that formula to a bunch of other writers, to found an oceanographic research institute, to write books about one’s adventures and yet keep on writing ever-more ludicrous thrillers. Every time I wonder why I keep reading Cussler’s novels, I just have to stop and remember that he seems to be the happiest author on Earth. Certainly the one who’s having the most fun with the money given to him by readers.

    His latest non-bylined novel, Trojan Odyssey, is more of the same for Cussler, though with a couple of inevitable twists that suggest a new direction for the series. Fans of Cussler’s “Dirk Pitt” will remember the improbable revelation at the end of Valhalla Rising, when a couple of Pitt inheritors just walked out of the woodwork. Well, this development seems here to stay and endure, as the younger Pitt siblings take on a significant part of the action this time around.

    The setup of the action will be instantly familiar: After two optional historical prologues that set up latter portions of the plot, yet another nautical disaster looms on the horizon: A fancy new nautical establishment is being threatened by a hurricane that doesn’t seem to know where it’s going.

    (Have a look at Page 52 of the paperback edition: “Hurricane Lizzie is moving due east and accelerating.” Then have a look at pages 53: “Lizzie was also moving at a record pace westward across the ocean.” Later, on page 104, “Lizzie is still heading due east as if she’s travelling on a railroad track.” Later still, on page 116: “Hurricane Lizzie had moved westward to continue casting her death and destruction on the Island of the Dominican Republic and Haiti…”: “My thanks to the previous owner of my paperback edition, who underlined those passages before chucking the novel to a used-book sale!)

    But have no fear, because Al Giordino, Pitt the elder and Pitt the youngers are on the case. The hotel is saved and the plot is free to start. A mysterious brown tide is causing all sorts of environmental mischief, and it’s up to the whole NUMA crew to discover something that is apparently invisible to everyone else. But don’t worry, because no one would quite believe the cause of the brown tide.

    Despite a problem that could be solved with a couple of well-targeted Tomahawk missiles, it’s again up to all Pitts and friends to stop the menace, fight a reclusive multi-millionaire, go against a neo-primitive cult and still save the day for everyone involved. Oh, and discover the real location of Troy. (Because apparently, this kind of detail can be lost after a few thousand years.)

    It amounts to an adventure that is not less ridiculous and yet no less satisfying than previous instalments. It has taken me, mind you, a long time to re-calibrate my ludicrousness sensors to Cussler’s looser standards of reality. But once you get to roll with the improbabilities, it’s hard to stop reading. There’s a panache, almost a wilful daring to Cussler’s method that would be unacceptable in any other context and yet ends up charming his long-time readers.

    What’s more serious is the end of the novel, which suggests a pretty definitive passing of the torch from the elder to the younger generation of Pitt explorers. Only time, and the next novel, will tell whether the trademarked Dirk Pitt will be satisfied with a series of supporting cameos or will take a more direct part in the continuing saga of Cussler’s novels. I’m almost tempted to stop reading and leave him to his well-earned nuptial retirement.

    But naah; how else would I get my fix of pure Cussler craziness?

  • A Gentle Madness, Nicholas A. Basbanes

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Owl Books, 1995 (1999 revision), 638 pages, C$29.95 tpb, ISBN 0-8050-6176-2

    I’ve got the sinking feeling that I’m going to justly appreciate this book in a few years, once I’ll qualify for inclusion within its pages.

    Yes, I accumulate books. I’m not sure that I can call myself a “collector” yet (collecting usually implies a selective focus, and I don’t have much of one unless it’s “stuff I like”), but I like the feeling of being surrounded by books, I like what they represent and I know far too much about resale value factors to claim a mere casual interest in them. Let’s face it: I love looks. I’m a bibliophile.

    But even a three-thousand-book collection is chicken feed compared to the monsters of bibliomania that Nicholas A. Basbanes studies in A Gentle Madness, a lengthy examination of book collecting through the ages.

    A book about book-lovers, A Gentle Madness starts a long way back. At the time before the concept of books was invented, as a matter of fact. It won’t surprise anyone to realize that there have been collectors since the days of papyrus scrolls, and that the printing press has only popularized the affliction. A Gentle Madness takes a very long time to get to the twentieth century. Along the way, we get to learn about the Pepys collection, about the earliest book-dealers and about the way a bibliophile gave his name to Harvard. Basbanes has done his research, and this dry section of the book shows it most clearly: Often, the pages blur with an accumulation of names, dates, book titles and monetary figures.

    My interest in the book picked up as it came closer to the twentieth century. It helps that many stories get more interesting as we get closer to the nineties. Beyond historical research, Basbanes has turned himself into an investigative reporter to witness high-priced book auctions, interview library representatives or rub shoulders with convicted book criminals. A Gentle Madness gradually turns into a gonzo documentary in which Basbanes himself becomes a small part of the narrative. And there are some seriously fascinating stories around the book world. I defy anyone, for instance, to read the chapter on the mysterious (and curiously well-financed) Haven O’More and not look on-line for more information. It’s not for nothing that he gets a chapter by himself (“To Have and to Have No More”), along with an addendum in the preface tantalizing us with the promise of an unsolved enigma.

    As soon as the book lets go of historical time-frames, the writing style is clear and detailed. Basbanes walks a fine line between vulgarizing his subject and including enough information to fascinate. There are numerous digressions on a variety of topics. I was amused by the description of “List Collecting” (being guilty of trying to collect all Hugo Awards winners myself), and got a kick out of a not-so-complimentary description of Forry Ackerman’s sci-fi collectible collection.

    But most of all, reading A Gentle Madness often felt like a warm and comfortable bath of similarly-minded ideas. Book collecting has never been more popular, and the variety of collectors interviewed and described by Basbanes is enough to make any book-lover feel a lot more normal for accumulating stacks of printed material. There’s a pernicious aspect to A Gentle Madness, especially when using the extreme examples in the book as a yardstick to say “See, I’m not too bad!”

    But I suspect better. Midway through reading A Gentle Madness (and at its length, “midway” can be a looong time), I attended a panel on book collecting and told myself that I should really make an effort to build an electronic index of my stacks of books. Weeks later, I found myself purchasing a special book-collection software, along with no less than two different bar-code readers. The time to say “I’m not a collector” has passed: I’m definitely in the game.

    I hope to avoid being featured in any of Basbanes’ follow-up books.

    [August 2007: Not an auspicious sign: I’ve just completed an email interview with a writer putting together a “virtual panel” about book collecting for the French-Canadian Solaris magazine. The issue should be available in stores in December 2007.]

  • Malicious Intent, Mike Walker

    ByChristian Sauvé Book Review

    Bancroft Press, 1999, 399 pages, US$24.00 hc, ISBN 1-890862-05-3

    Say it, and say it loud: This book is trash, and it makes Mike Walker proud!

    What else did you expect from a self-described “weekly gossip columnist for the National Enquirer” whose jacket biography boasts that “He’s done more Geraldo episodes than any other guest”? Walker isn’t a rocket scientist: he’s a fifty-foot shark in the Hollywood trash mag pool.

    So when he sets out to write fiction, don’t expect the Great American Novel. Don’t expect a strident denunciation of current American society. In fact, don’t expect much more than a string of salacious anecdotes and passable grammar, because Malicious Intent is what his debut novel is all about. If you’re wondering what a tabloid “writer” would churn out given four hundred pages of prose, this is it. Sex, drugs, and Hollywood.

    It starts with a murder and ends in violent death, but don’t make the mistake of taking any of this seriously. This is a thriller where journalist can be two-fisted heroes, where young actresses have older men wrapped around her most tender areas and where everyone’s got a spectacular perversion to hide. Resemblance with reality is strictly optional, but readers of gossip mags will feel right at home.

    Malicious Intent‘s so-called plot revolves around Charmain Burns, an up-and-coming actress with a sordid past who will stop at nothing to climb the Hollywood power ladder. As the novel begins, her actions cause the death of a tabloid reporter. As she tries covering up her involvement in the crime, further events are set in motion. Meanwhile, Walker’s narration takes a break in order to explain how Charmaine got to Hollywood, and the trail of broken bodies she has left in her wake.

    But as much as we love to hiss at an antagonist, we need a hero to go through the motions of a plot. Enters Cameron Tull, a square-jawed street-smart reporter for the “National Revealer” who won’t accept the death of his colleague. Launching his own parallel investigation into the case, he quickly finds out who’s pulling all the strings… and the only question is whether he’ll be able to resist her.

    But never mind the plot, because it’s all structural framework for tawdry titillation, cheap Hollywood caricatures and saucy anecdotes which just may have something to do with real-life Hollywood. It takes merely twenty pages to get to the book’s first S&M orgy. And you haven’t seen the straight-razor castration, the psycho stalker calling himself Randak 2000 or the deaths by immolation.

    Oh yes: sex, violence, money, romance, beauty and celebrity: it’s all in here, slathered with double helpings of every deadly sin. Unflappable Cameron Tull gets his girl (though to make it easier, it turns out to be a long-lost love), fights temptation, sets things right and rides off in the sunset under a killer headline. Meanwhile, we get a look at the fairyland underbelly of Hollywood, learn entirely misleading information about the glamour of gossip magazines and mentally relax for four hundred pages. This is perfect beach-side reading as long as you leave the red pencil home. It’s nearly impossible to stop reading once it gets going.

    Even the clunky style of Walker’s prose gets in the act. Clearly, no editor at the lower-tier Bancroft House (“Books that Enlighten”) has dared suggest that a professional writer shouldn’t overuse narrative ellipses, written accents and SHOUTING ALL CAPS like that. No one dared suggest that the clichés and ethnic stereotype (“[they arched] their backs to accentuate that most devastating Latin male magnet: the big, shapely ass.” [P.192]) was a bit too much over the top. And why would they? If you’re going to knock down the markers of good taste, you might as well hit all of them.

    The result certainly won’t be remembered for anything more than a very guilty pleasure, an instantly-forgettable piece of raunchy trash and beautiful sleaze. If we must judge books on their objectives and how well they fulfil them, then Malicious Intent is a complete success. It hits the centre of the target and stays embedded there. Mike Walker may have little writing talent and a complete lack of literary ambition, but he knew what he was doing in writing his novel, and he ought to be proud of the result… in his own way.