by Peter on July 30, 2010
I have followed the Scandinavian crime fiction scene for a while. A lot of people interested in crime fiction do that for the moment – it’s pretty hot. One thing that has occurred to me is that the Finns seem to have been left behind and that for some or other reason there are very few Finnish crime fiction books available – compared to, for instance, Swedish or Norwegian crime fiction books.
I recently reviewed a book by Matti Joensuu here on this site. And 
I have read several other Finnish crime fiction books as well; they are all very good! Even so, Matti Joensuu is one of very few others translated into English so far – the others seem to be Tove Jansson (who writes crime fiction as well as about Moomins) and Jarkko Sipila. Given that there a lot of interesting crime fiction authors in Finland (Scandinavian Books list a number of good Finnish crime fiction writers) – several authors have been translated into other languages, and they have their annual crime fiction prize called “The Clue” – this is somewhat strange and disappointing.
It is hard to know why
Finnish crime fiction isn’t translated at the same rate as other crime fiction. One thing I have noticed is that there hardly are any good English language web sites from Finland about Finnish crime fiction. The publishers don’t seem to bother with it, literary agencies don’t do it, newspapers don’t have it, and not even the Finnish crime writers association has launched an English language site. So obviously one reason the Finns do not benefit much from the surge in interest in Scandinavian crime fiction is that they don’t promote their own authors and books internationally – not even via web sites. That’s pretty sad.
The only exception is 
a new small publishing company called Ice Cold Crime that so far has translated and published two novels by Clue award winner Jarkko Sipila, and will soon introduce Harri Nykanen, another Clue award winner, to English speaking readers for the first time. That, of course, is good news, and a good initiative by Ice Cold Crime. But even so – there is every reason to urge both the Finns themselves and the publishers in the UK and the US go please do something about this sad state of affairs! The time to move is now.
by Peter on July 29, 2010
STORM is a brand new, quite terrifying and 
very suspenseful cyber-thriller by Dave Pearson. I got a copy for free to review it on this site, and as this is Pearson’s debut book, my expectations were relatively modest. This book, however, took me by Storm – I was sucked into the storyline after just some very few pages, and it kept me thrilled to the very end.
The tale in Storm really is a very modern – almost mind-blowing – intriguing, intelligent and compelling story, quite tech-savvy but with several interesting human touches as well. In the beginning we meet up with a young kid, Dutch, already a full-blown, highly skilled hacker, and his similarly talented cyber-friends. The friends are Spyder, Ray, Skye and Skreemer. They call themselves STORM, and only Dutch and Spyder of the five hackers in the group know one another the old-fashioned, physical way. The others have met over safe phone lines and in cyberspace, and they only know one another by their call names. While they are in the process of finally – after many futile attempts – hacking into a top secret site, one of the guys is arrested (while phreaking, i.e. manipulating telephone networks) and the group splits up.
After having stayed away from hacking for twenty years and been out of touch with the other members of the group, Dutch is suddenly, out of nowhere, contacted by one of the guys from STORM. He needs Dutch for a new hack the group has been planning for a long time. It is the final challenge, the ultimate hack – they want to break in to an ultra top secret military facility, heavily encrypted and protected by impenetrable firewalls. Dutch can’t resist this intriguing challenge, and soon he is on his way to Compound Five, the most heavily protected facility of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), to attack the Intelink. It turns out to be a hack different from anything Dutch anticipated, and so much more – it will take everything Dutch has to make it out alive.
Storm is hot! It’s a wonderful high-adrenaline action-packed roller-coaster of a thriller, as intense and engaging in some ways as the Millennium trilogy by Stieg Larsson and my favorite Dan Brown novel, Digital Fortress
. The plot really rocks, and I found the technology and hacking to be fascinating to the extreme. This really is a fabulous read, an excellent cyber-thriller, and I have to admit that I can’t wait for the next book in this series.
by Peter on July 26, 2010
The most recent Gabriel Allon thriller by Daniel Silva is a pleasure to read. I was sucked back into the Allon-universe in less than ten pages. 
At that point it was more by the beautiful writing than by the content. Daniel Silva has always been an outstanding writer; better, in my opinion, than almost any other writer of thrillers. And this book is even better written than his previous ones – the language is excellent and lovely, very enjoyable to read and well suited for the story.
The story in The Rembrandt Affair is intelligent, intriguing and rich. There is perhaps slightly less action than in some of the earlier books in the series – which to some extent is fitting, as Gabriel and his beautiful wife Chiara are still trying to recover in Cornwall from the ills that befell them in Russia in The Defector – the previous thriller in the series. Silva more than makes up for it in other ways: with a smart, devious plot, very well-drawn characters, well-founded views on the state of the world, stimulating discussions and conversations, and a story that is very engaging.
Gabriel is asked by his friend, the eccentric London art dealer, Julian Isherwood, to recover a stolen painting – a masterpiece by Rembrandt. It has been stolen from a colleague of Gabriel’s, a fellow art restorer, and as Isherwood – who was responsible for it – has no insurance and the painting is worth 45 million or so, Isherwood is now in dire straits. As usual.
We soon learn the Rembrandt is a masterpiece with a legacy written in blood. As Gabriel and Chiara start to track it down, from Amsterdam to Buenos Aires to Switzerland, and people begin to die, they find clues pointing to a Nazi war criminal who amassed a fortune by theft and extortion. The man who controls this fortune is a popular Swiss industrialist and billionaire. And while his business empire has been built on blood, he has carefully constructed and cultivated a public image as a modern industrialist with ethical business practices, concerned with the protection of the environment and with corporate responsibility. But in reality “Saint” Martin Landesmann hides behind elaborate corporate structures and straw corporations, and controls a business empire that employs child workers, pollutes with the worst, destroys the rain forest, and furnishes Iran with all it needs to build nuclear weapons. He is a man that must be stopped.
To stop him, Gabriel has to forge a powerful alliance and to recruit a woman who is having an affair with “Saint” Martin – a woman who loves him; an extremely intelligent and gorgeous financial investigative reporter, a proud, haughty and tough woman – a most unlikely ally. Gabriel knows it will take all of his considerable skills to win this battle, and that he will have to bend rules, break laws, and be smarter than the bad guys in order to win.
The Rembrandt Affair is a wonderful spy thriller – one of Daniel Silva’s very best. It reads like a flowing river, is well-crafted and smart, truly a joy to read. A spellbinding novel about spy, assassin and art restorer Gabriel Allon – a delicious roller coaster of a book!
“Of those writing spy novels today, Daniel Silva is quite simply the best.”
-The Kansas City Star
“The perfect book for fans of well-crafted thrillers … the kind of page- turner that captures the reader from the opening chapter and doesn’t let go.”
-The Associated Press
by Peter on July 23, 2010
William Styron was 26 years old when he published this debut novel in 1951. It received a great deal of critical acclaim, and with a loud bang William Styron established himself on the literary scene. It is a debut novel that must be regarded as a masterpiece even today, one which stands up admirably to 
his later works. It is very impressive – a novel where a young man writes about deep psychological issues and demonstrates insight and reason at a level not at all expected at that age. As a writer, William Styron in my opinion compares favorably with Faulkner, Steinbeck, and Hemingway.
Among the honors bestowed on Lie Down in Darkness was the prestigious Rome Prize, awarded by the American Academy in Rome and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Lie Down in Darkness is a domestic drama. It is set in Tidewater, Virginia, in 1945. The technique employed by the young Styron is interesting, as the action in the book takes place in a single day – a somewhat tragic day, the funeral day of the young daughter of a Virginia family. Peyton Loftis, the beautiful eldest daughter of Helen and Milton Loftis, who had killed herself in New York. Styron uses flashbacks and lets the flashbacks lead up to that one day of her funeral. He pointedly and vividly provides memories that make it clear how and why the family broke apart. It is not a happy event he sets out to illuminate, nor is it a happy tale he writes.
The book is exceedingly well written and very engaging. It is also very well built up. It uses the third person perspective in very interesting and creative ways, and lets us see events from the viewpoint of a number of the people involved. Here Styron is very smart – while the book is about Peyton, for a long time we don’t get to meet her, only hear about her. To some extent he starves us – makes us really want to get her perspective. And then when he lets her loose, it’s a revelation.
Lie Down in Darkness is a book that slowly grows on you, and I had a very hard time putting it down at all for the last 100-150 pages or so. Even here, in his debut, Styron is subtle in his portrayals and writes with considerable craftsmanship and a prose which is at times almost spellbinding. A story where tragedy is followed by tragedy. A sad, yet compelling tale of disappointed love and lives heading blindly towards destruction – not wanting to see where the road was leading them.
by Peter on July 22, 2010
The war in Vietnam is, in many ways, a scar in American history. A bad war; to some extent a meaningless war; a war that was lost even thought every day, for years, 
Americans were fed stories of victories large and small in the media. It was a war of lies, ambitions, greed and corruption; but even so a war with many heroes, a war where many sacrificed a lot for very little.
It is quite likely that it wasn’t at all coincidental that the great American satires of war, Catch-22
and Slaughterhouse-Five – both ostensibly about World War II – were published during Vietnam. And no coincidence that MASH became so enormously popular either – even though it was about the war in Korea, it clearly was as much an allegory about the Vietnam War.
Matterhorn is truly a marvelous novel – it is the debut novel of Karl Marlantes (see picture), yet very likely the definite Vietnam War novel. It reminds me a lot of Erich Maria Remarque’s excellent World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front.
In Matterhorn we meet Lieutenant Waino Mellas and the men of Bravo Company. We meet the absurdity of war – both this war and others; the bravery and camaraderie; the honor and glory; as well as the racism and stupidity. We feel the dampness of the jungle, the sharp edges of the elephant grass, the leeches and the mud. We recognize the fear, the horror and the many ways in which the men hide, disguise and pretend away those emotions; their dark humor that camouflages so much. Marlantes brings us into the jungle, into the Marine Corps, into the war itself with vivid, sharp descriptions and with a story that is completely alive.
It is a brilliant Vietnam War epic where we are unceremoniously dropped into the jungle, disoriented and dripping with leeches, with only a newbie lieutenant as our guide. Lieutenant Mellas is a college kid who entered the Marines as a means to an education, never dreaming that he would have to fight a war, and certainly not of fighting a “war that none of his friends thought was worth fighting.” And he meets it all down there in Vietnam: jungle rot, malnourishment, drenching monsoons, mudslides, exposure to Agent Orange, and wild animals that wreak havoc; along with punishing combat, bitterness, rage, disease, alcoholism, racial tensions, and hubris; an environment where kids are pushed constantly beyond the limits of human endurance. And, of course, he also meets the utter stupidity and arrogance of superior officers hunting for glory with a total disregard for their men, and the systematic manufacturing of lies up the chain of command.
Matterhorn is a glorious, utterly fascinating book. It is also, at many levels a completely sickening book to read; not because it lacks realism, but rather because it describes pain, hurt, suffering, meaninglessness, and stupidity in a completely authentic manner.
A highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Marlantes brings the horrors and heroism of war to life with the finesse of a seasoned writer. Matterhorn is as much about the development of Mellas from boy to man in three months, from the kind of man you fight beside to the man you fight for, as it is about the war itself. And through the untrained eyes of this young man, Marlantes lets us gain a new perspective on the ravages of this war, the politics and bureaucracy of the military, and the peculiar beauty of brotherhood. It is a very, very powerful book, a grand, distinctive accomplishment! I doubt there will ever be a better novel about the Vietnam War than Matterhorn.
by Peter on July 20, 2010
In Dawn Patrol
, Don Winslow introduced us to Boone Daniels, 
a very laid-back ex-cop turned private investigator, and a man with a talent for detection. Boone Daniels is a likable, sharp guy, and has a passion for surfing as well. A very interesting protagonist indeed.
And now we get to meet him again, in The Gentlemen’s Hour. Times are tough for private investigators – there is little work for our PI, and Boone has plenty of time on his hands. So his life revolves around his surfing sessions. However, one day at the beach, Daniels stays on into what is known as “the gentlemen’s hour”, when older surfers come and do their stuff, and is approached by a millionaire surfer named Dan Nichols. Nichols, it turns out, has a new case for Boone.
The millionaire believes his wife is cheating on him. And now he wants to find out if it is true, and if it is, he wants evidence. This is not exactly the kind of job Boone loves the most, and under other circumstances he would have said no. But times are tough, and he needs money and takes the job. And then, of course, once he has said yes to one job, many more come his way. And in the case of the suspected cheating, he quickly discovers that Nichols had it right – he is being cheated. So he considers the job done and over – until, that is, the man Nichols’ wife cheated him with turns up dead with a hole in his head.
Don Winslow is a great writer, quite noir in his style, and knows how to tell a tale in a way that makes it intriguing and suspenseful. The characters in his books – and in this one as well – are cool, bright, have humor and are believable, and some of them are very fun. Also, the action is quite fast and intense, so the book is actually hard to put down. I read it in two days, and each time I opened it, I found myself sitting longer than I had intended to. The Gentlemen’s Hour is very, very enjoyable, and Don Winslow is now high on my list of authors to watch: He can make me alternate between biting my nails and laughing out loud while sitting alone in the back yard. I strongly recommend him and this book in particular!
PS: On July 23rd, CWA announced the shortlist for the CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger award, 2010. And The Gentlemen’s Hour is on the list! A very well deserved honor!
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