The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf
The Star Online: Lifestyle: Bookshelf |
| Posted: 07 Oct 2012 01:49 AM PDT Fault Line IN every small town, there is at least one young person whose sole ambition is to get out and do something different. This goal is both focused and broad. Fame, fortune, career and direction are unspecified. What matters is distance. What matters is escaping the flock. Often, such single minded determination is enough to make the deceptively easy dream possible, for better or for worse. Getting out is easy when the escapee does not care where he ends up. As long as there is nothing to distract him from the exit road, he will take it. Robert Goddard's narrator in Fault Line, Jonathan Kellaway, is such a person. He lives in St Austell in Cornwall and, with a place waiting for him at college in London, he seems ready to break away from his town. Goddard bounces his readers up and down Jonathan's timeline.The book starts in 2010 and Jonathan suspects that the reason why he is being called into the big boss' office is because he is about to be forced into early retirement. This is absolutely fine with him. The company to which he has devoted his life is not what it once was. He is ready to cut ties. No such luck, however. Big boss has been ordered by someone even further up, the company patriarch, to give Jonathan one last mission. One that will take Jonathan home to St Austell and perhaps to the resolution of several mysteries that arose and remained unsolved over Jonathan's lifetime. At this point Goddard takes his readers to the first and largest leap back in time, to 1968. St Austell is a one-industry town, offering a steady job and secure future to anyone who enters it. That is enough to put Jonathan off. The most he is willing to devote to the china clay industry is one summer job. A summer is all it takes to bungee cord Jonathan to china clay forever. The chord is formed when he becomes entangled with a powerful and wealthy family that reign in the industry. If at first all Jonathan wants from them is a summer job, he slowly starts wanting more, starting with the family's beautiful daughter, Vivien. For the next 50 years the family will help Jonathan get what he wants, but they will demand much in return. Very rarely does Goddard offer readers a clue of what lies ahead. Right when he seems to have settled into a pleasant pace for his plot, he ambushes with twists and tragedies. The family appears to be cursed, plagued by violent deaths, suicides and kidnappings. In Jonathan, Goddard has created an ideal guide for the reader. Somewhat like the characters in the horse-racing novels of Dick Francis, Jonathan is not a cop nor is he particularly interested in the family dramas. But by the simple virtue of being in the right place at the right time, he becomes the unlikely receptacle of family trust. Key family members may trust him more than anyone else, but that does not mean the trust is complete. Far from it. Jonathan is kept in the dark about a lot of things, fed only morsels of information. Jonathan is a very ordinary character that is made interesting by what happens to him rather than by who he is. If he goes beyond what is asked of him, it is always with an ulterior motive, the quick calculation of what he can get back in return as the family's go-to guy. At times the reader may feel like shaking Jonathan into being more curious or dogged, but he is neither and lets a lot of things drop until circumstances or the family put them in his path again. Bestselling Goddard's plots have been described as "labyrinthine", a term that perfectly fits his latest book which for the most part keeps its readers in the dark, baffles them with sudden turns, and frustrates them with dead ends. It is only after 400 pages and more than 50 years of Jonathan's life that both narrator and reader are allowed to emerge from the maze. The bright light Goddard flashes so expertly is as shocking and as disorientating as the dark unmapped tunnels. You have to read the preceding pages to get the full experience of the last few, which is that one chapter has finally ended satisfactorily and it is just now time to begin chapter two. |
| Posted: 07 Oct 2012 01:45 AM PDT After living in this part of the world for a quarter of a century, an American author delivers authentically spicy thrillers. THE Kingdom of Thailand thrived on its contradictions, and it was with these contradictions that it contrived to seduce you. Thai people were generally placid and charming. Somehow they had combined Buddhist stoicism and the upheavals of modern life into a brew of ambivalence that beguiled the Western soul. 'Mai pen rai'– never mind – was the national motto. Who could resist that?" From Killing Plato, page 192. Author Jake Needham is a man who knows Asia like the back of his hand. Having lived in Hong Kong, Singapore and Bangkok for the last 25 years, Needham is familiar with the charms and quirks of these megacities. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that his five contemporary crime novels, all set in the cities of Asia, have been published in 15 separate editions in four languages, and have sold over 100,000 copies. Born in the United States, Needham graduated from Rice University and the Georgetown University Law Center, and went on to practice international law before eventually taking up writing. His crime novels, which focus on Jack Shepard, a lawyer-turned-lecturer living in Thailand, have earned rave reviews, with Needham being memorably described by the Bangkok Post as "(bestselling American crime author) Michael Connelly with steamed rice". Tight and atmospheric, Needham's three Shepherd novels are financial thrillers of the highest calibre, a perfect combination of suspense and wit that will satisfy even the highest of standards. Much of his stories involve references to real life places and events, and pondering on what is fact and what is fiction adds an extra layer of enjoyment to his novels. Laundry Man, his first Jack Shepard crime novel, opens dramatically with the protagonist receiving a call from his former law partner, the shifty Barry Gale, who Shepard had until recently thought to be deceased. Gale reveals himself to be the mastermind behind the financial collapse of the Asian Bank of Commerce, a disgraced Philippine bank that he had taken over for his own profit. However, in a strange karmic turn, Gale confesses that he too has been scammed and he needs Shepard's help to save him from his bosses, a cruel gang of Russian mobsters who think he has absconded with their money. What results is a crazed ride of financial misconduct, dirty money and misuse of power, as Shepard's investigations draw him into a twisted conspiracy involving Burmese drug traffickers, American intelligence agencies, and Chinese military groups. While the novel does not lack in its action scenes and possesses a thrilling guns-and-glory climax, the most gripping element of Laundry Man is watching the slow unravelling of the various conspiracies. Like Thailand's famous Patong bargirls (who can sometimes turn out to be barboys...), nothing is truly as it seems when it comes to Needham's novels, and watching Shepard get into trouble as he tries to figure out who is double-crossing who can be truly absorbing. Protagonist Jack Shepard is a delight, a sharp-witted lawyer with a drive for justice, forced to reside in a world of hard men who don't believe in the rule of law. Laundry Man also features a rich supporting cast of characters, many of whom feature throughout the series. Particularly memorable are the amiable but largely ineffective Thai police officer Jello (no, not his real name), flighty former intelligence officer Darcy Rice, and Shepard's friend "Tommy" Tammarat, who constantly insists he is not a spy despite much evidence to the contrary. Needham's next book, Killing Plato, ups the ante by introducing a killer new character, the notorious financier Plato Karsarkis, the world's most wanted fugitive, accused of racketeering, money laundering and murder. Imagine Shepard's surprise, therefore, when he walks into a bar in Phuket to discover Karsarkis waiting for him. The fugitive begs Shepard to help him obtain a presidential pardon through Shepard's friend Billy Redwine, a counsel to the American president. His nine-year-old daughter in New York is dying of leukaemia and he really wants to see her again, pleads Karsarkis. Complicating matters, however, are the breakdown of Shepard's marriage and the presence of US assets who have come to Phuket to kill Karsarkis, all of which puts Shepard into something far hotter than tomyam soup. Needham shines when it comes to writing antiheroes, and Karsarkis delights, coming across as sympathetic and ruthless at the same time. Also memorable is Deputy US Marshal Clovis Ward, head of the marshals tasked to capture Karsarkis. Full of Southern swagger, and prone to colourful one-liners, Ward occasionally feels like a stereotype, but provides many of the novel's funniest bits. The Shepard crime series concludes with A World Of Trouble, where Shepard, now based in Hong Kong, finds himself hired as the lawyer of General Charlie Kitnarok, a former Thai Prime Minister. Kitnarok, living in exile in Dubai, is plotting a return to power when his plans are thrown for a loop by a sudden assassination attempt that leaves several journalists dead. It turns out that the former PM is smuggling arms into Thailand, which poses a threat to the country's newly elected Prime Minister: the beautiful Kathleeya Srisophon, who Shepard has previously been involved with. Thailand edges closer and closer to a violent civil war – and it seems only Shepard can stop it. A World Of Trouble is slightly different from its predecessors: not only does the setting expand, with action taking place in Hong Kong and Dubai as well as Thailand, but Needham now narrates in the third person instead of through Shepard. While this means we get a necessary view of the thoughts and actions of other characters in the novel, this may be a little disappointing to readers accustomed to hearing Shepard's voice. Readers up to date on current affairs may notice striking parallels between A World Of Trouble and recent political conflicts in Thailand, where Yingluck Shinawatra was elected as Thailand's first female prime minister. Amazingly, however, Needham started writing his novel before the events in question, a strange coincidence that the author says he is not very surprised by. In an author's note in the beginning of A World Of Trouble, Needham relates an anecdote told to him by a friend, which perhaps perfectly sums up the tone of his series: "That's the thing about Asia." He chuckled. "You really can't make anything up. No matter how outrageous what you have written may seem, one day somebody will come up to you and tell you it really happened, or is about to happen." Visit Jake Needham's website at jakeneedham.com. |
| Posted: 07 Oct 2012 01:43 AM PDT FRANCESCO Pittau and Bernadette Gervais have a new picture book, Birds Of A Feather, which I have yet to see, but sounds amazing. The husband-and-wife team are known for their rather far-out ideas and quirky, sometimes slightly dark, sense of humour. Their book That's Dangerous, for instance, has provoked several outraged postings on Amazon.com. Admittedly, not everyone will be guffawing over pictures depicting children in washing machines, with plastic bags over their heads, and about to get their brains blown out. It's perhaps Pittau and Gervais' opinion that children need to be told explicitly what they are not supposed to do, but many parents express horror that their children should be shown such pictures. Might the book give kids ideas? Perhaps. I guess it's for parents to decide whether That's Dangerous is suitable reading material for their sweet, innocent little ones. However, just because it's a picture book doesn't mean it has to be read to/with a toddler. A tween or teen might get a kick out of it, as might some adults. Same goes for That's Disgusting! One quite gross illustration in this book shows a girl about to stick her finger up a cat's butt. However, I know for a fact that this is something children think about doing. My neighbour's son actually told me he contemplated doing this very thing to my cat and, suddenly, it made perfect sense why his own cat was always so bad tempered! Birds Of A Feather seems to be presented in the same style as Out Of Sight, another Pittau and Gervais book. The illustrations in both books are in full-colour and realistic style, unlike the sketchy, cartoony doodle-type drawings in Dangerous and Disgusting. There are also flaps and pop-outs galore. The online reviews make the books sound like quite a visual feast, and also suggest that they contain some fascinating bits of information, told in the pair's usual succinct manner. The only Pittau-Gervais book I have firsthand knowledge of is Elephant Elephant: A Book of Opposites. The book illustrates all the usual antonyms like "fat" and "thin" and "tall" and "short". There are also more unusual opposites, for example "plugged" and "unplugged". It's just now occurred to me that the elephants could have been portrayed in an electric rock band, and playing an acoustic set, but no, "plugged" shows an elephant, full of water, with a cork in its bottom, while the "unplugged" elephant is corkless and leaking all over the floor. "Boy" and "girl" have the elephants peeing, thus clearly showing where and what their girl and boy parts are, and there's "sealed" and "unsealed" with the sealed elephant sporting a zipped-up side-flap, and the unzipped pachyderm showing all its internal organs. I know many parents would think this book very odd indeed. The elephants, who, I must say, look either alarmed or alarming, are line drawings, smudgily coloured in with grey, on an off-white background, and there's no rhyming text or heart-warming tale as a saving grace. It's not what most would think of as suitable for children, but I love its subversive humour and originality. My favourite pair of opposites is "clever" and "stupid" – well, what do you know, the elephants look exactly alike! This is so true and just this one wise illustration is worth the price of the book. Daphne Lee reads to wonder and wander, be amazed and amused, horrified and heartened and inspired and comforted. She wishes more people will try it too. Send e-mails to the above address and check out her blog at daphne.blogs.com/books. |
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