Mini reviews #38

Mystery in the Channel (1931) by Freeman Wills Crofts. Inspector French investigates among the French in this vintage murder mystery. Two bankers are found dead on a steamer going from England to France, and a large amount of money has gone missing. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, and was especially entertained by the fact that characters are able to remember very specific details and discuss them at length. For example, a man working behind a till happens to glance at the serial numbers on small bank notes used in a transaction then, later, when the police put out a list of around a million serial numbers that cashiers should be on the lookout for, he instantly realises it’s a match! Very much reality according to FWC, and rather endearing for that.

Fletch (1974) by Gregory McDonald. Before I started reading this highly popular 1970s macho ‘comic’ mystery, I was warned: ‘it hasn’t aged well’. That, it seems, was an understatement. Surely, even in 1974, a roguish hero who establishes his charming roguery by psychologically terrorising his various ex-wives and raping a 15 year-old with substance abuse issues can’t have been unproblematic? I was disgusted by this book. The mystery element is generic and has certainly been done better elsewhere.

 

The Other Woman (2016) by Sandie Jones. A friend on Twitter recommended this novel after a Reddit post recounting real-life parallels to the events Jones describes emerged. It is a powerful, character-driven debut. A light-read domestic noir, The Other Woman marries the Perfect Husband and Mother-in-Law From Hell tropes.

True Crime Story (2021) by Joseph Knox. Presented as a true crime book, I read this novel because there was a whole ‘thing’ about people mistaking it for an actual true crime book and getting angry at the author. Knox, after all, features as a character/narrator and is not presented rosily. Interviews, newspaper reports, emails, and commentaries form the bulk of this narrative, which centres on the disappearance of a student from Manchester University. I’m fascinated by this cultural moment when a lot of especially male writers are including themselves as characters in their novels. And I did not solve this mystery!

The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (2022 miniseries, Netflix). I’m surprised this miniseries is as popular as it is because, while I found it very funny, I wouldn’t have expected many people to. It reminds me of when I try to do comedy – the jokes don’t quite land because it always turns out I’m assuming people are equally as obsessed with the topic as I am. But this comedy mystery series, which hits every single trope of the cynical modern domestic noir does it so well that it could almost be an example of that very phenomenon. That said, I don’t know anyone who failed to spot the killer.  It doesn’t matter, though. The comedy is there, and it works.

Night By Night by Jack Jordan

Rose is an insomniac who has experienced more than her share of personal tragedy. One day, she comes across a journal, apparently written by a man who thinks he’s about to be murdered. When she takes it to the police, they don’t want to know. And before long, Rose has unravelled a dark, far-reaching conspiracy around the disappearances and deaths of several young gay men, including her own brother. The police, she realises, are not acting, partly because of institutionalised homophobia and partly because the case seems somehow close to home. Rose upturns her whole life pursuing the author of the journal and, when she fears the worst, pursuing justice.

Jack Jordan’s writing style is gripping. Night By Night (2019) is a page-turner. It’s also visceral and immersive. You feel what the characters are feeling, you see and hear what’s happening to them. You forgive the fact that somehow a man keeping a daily journal somehow knows what’s going to happen months in advance, and the author’s fondness for naff names. Because the story itself is so gripping. I read this with Pigeonhole, an online book club that gives you the book in ten (or ten-ish) daily chunks and facilitates group discussion via comments in the margins. It’s my first experience of Jack Jordan, and after reading I went on a Kindle spree to scoop up his back catalogue.

The novel is peppered with frequent references to a real serial killer. Stephen Port killed four gay men in London  in 2014, and the police did not do enough to stop him or to catch him. As one character says, ‘he continued to get away with it because the police failed to act in almost every way.’ Thereby, Jordan makes clear the social relevance of his novel.

There are ruthless, horrifying scenes of violence. And there are outright preachy bits. And there is a lot of misery and tragedy. But the moment that really stood out to me — that made me so emotional I had to stop reading for a bit — was a very simple, totally inexplicit one. Towards the end of the story, when the guilty party has been found out, Rose finds a diverse set of mobile phones, which belonged to the victims. They’ve all been gutted of sims and batteries and left, together, in a drawer. And something about that moment was incredibly haunting.

Several readers in the running comments pointed out that they weren’t enjoying the violence or, more often, the implausibility. The first case of this occurred when a male character meets an attractive man outside a coffee shop, gets chatting, and leaves with his number. ‘Who would accept a phone number from a stranger?!’ people quipped. Those people, I would guess, have little experience of gay culture, where merely being out to each other is a tremendous icebreaker. The narrator doesn’t always make rational choices — again, readers cried foul. But the narrator is an insomniac tortured by grief and guilt. Of course her choices aren’t going to be rational all the time. It would be implausible if they were. And there’s a scene with a psychiatrist who acts … well, very unprofessionally. ‘A psychiatrist would never do that!’ Again, I have a real-life story that says otherwise. So, when everyone started moaning about the implausibility of a character escaping from being buried alive — something I don’t have experience of — I wasn’t hugely inclined to listen to them. In fact, I think that the fact that so many people found so much in this novel hard to swallow helps the author make his point.

META MATTERS

Rose visits a police station and is disorientated by the lack of a two-way mirror and the general inhospitality of the set-up. Her ideas of what the police would be like have been conditioned by glamorous crime dramas on TV, but the real world is much less polished, more human, and nastier.

Blood Orange by Harriet Tyce

Harriet Tyce’s debut, Blood Orange (2019) is a visceral, slow-burning stunner of domestic suspense.

Criminal defence barrister Alison is, like most people living a perfect life, barely holding it together. She has a drink problem and she’s having an affair — and she can’t believe her clients, even when they’re confessing to murder. She’s also receiving anonymous messages.

The characters in Blood Orange are not glamorous, or sugar-coated. They are, like the food they eat, oozing, deceptively-dressed-up messes. And they’re very true to life. In fact, and this is a tiny point but something that is very telling, this is the only contemporary London thriller I’ve read in which the central character smokes without it being a huge guilty secret. It’s a fact of life that so many writers ignore, that people in high-pressure environments, especially in cities, smoke.

That’s not to say it’s bleak; it’s not. The realism is tense, the twists compelling, and the characters’ believability makes the first person narrative all the more urgent. You have to read on, just as Alison has to keep making the wrong choices.

I know that Blood Orange has been optioned for a TV series, and I can see it doing really well in that format. As a debut, it’s remarkable and Harriet Tyce is certainly one to watch.

META MATTERS

This is a new feature I’m going to include in every full review, because I’m starting to think that the one thing crime fiction has in common is intertextuality. In this section of all subsequent reviews, I will be highlighting key moments in which the text reflects its own fictional status, or refers to crime fiction in some way.

In happier times, Alison and her husband used to watch The Wire. They try to rekindle some love and trust watching a ‘Scandi Noir’ boxset.

Second Life by SJ Watson

SJ Watson is, as we all know, the author of Before I Go to Sleep, which is impossible to dislike. His third novel is taking a while to surface but, based on the absolutely gripping, page-turning rollercoaster that is Second Life (2015), I reckon it will be worth the wait. Regular readers of this blog (if they exist) will know that I think the demand for one book a year from genre writers is ridiculous, stifling, and bad for everyone except booksellers.

This novel is narrated by middle-aged Julia, a wife and mother whose younger sister, Kate, apparently committed suicide. Convinced there’s more to the story, Julia starts investigating and finds out that Kate was a regular on dating websites. Julia sets up a profile and starts chatting to the men in her sister’s life. Before long, she becomes obsessed by one of them. And, more damagingly, the stranger becomes obsessed with her.

There is no neat solution to this story, which is a masterstroke, making the whole thing immediate and real. Not being a woman, I can’t be sure, but my impression is that Watson does a superb job at writing from a range of women’s perspectives. There’s also a really intriguing subplot, which is totally unexplored. I am 100% certain, based on how the characters speak and behave, that Julia’s teenage son is gay. But it’s never discussed; indeed, the parents (including the narrator) frequently talk about his ‘girlfriend’ (who turns out not to be a girlfriend). I’d love to know the author’s perspective on all of this.

And my sole go-to irk: the novel is written in the present tense, but it’s clear to me that the author wants to be writing in the past tense, betrayed through the use of ‘had been’ instead of ‘was’, and so on. At least 50% of contemporary thriller writers do this, and it barely detracts from a masterful second novel.