Jack Maggs by Peter Carey

Jack Maggs returns to London in secret from Australia where he has been deported but made his fortune. He is searching for the occupier of a house in Great Queen Street but while he knocks on number 27 he is spotted by Mercy Larkin who thinks he is at the wrong house and has come for the interview for a butlers appointment at her employers house. Jack falls in with this for his own reasons and is employed to be butler to Percy Buckle. One of Buckle's visitors is the famous author Tobias Oates who is skilled in mesmerism. He promises to cure Jack of a muscle spasm by hypnosis but unlocks secrets that would be dangerous to be known abut Jack and which will impact upon all the lives of those present at the mesmerism, including the servant who listens at the door.

London's murky underbelly is laid bare as Jack Magg's life story gradually unfolds from his orphan upbringing, the reason for his deportation to the colonies and his dangerous return.

Carey has taken the character of the title from Dicken's 'Great Expectations' but apart from that very little remains of the original novel. Perhaps the character of Tobias Oates is supposed to represent Dickens who, in this story, is obsessed with Maggs because he is in search of a idea for his next novel.

This is a dark story full of secrets and damaged people, all in fear of poverty or position, nearly all willing to exploit others.

Peter Carey cranks up the level of trepidation as he plunges you into the Victorian world and the quest of his anti-hero Jack Maggs to find Henry Phipps which entangles everyone around him and no one escapes from the consequences of their actions for good or ill.

I recommend this book but if you have not read any Peter Carey before then I would suggest starting with 'Oscar and Lucinda' which is set in the same century.

The Oxford Murders by Guillermo Martinez

A South American student of mathematics arrives in Oxford and boards with a Mrs Eagleton but he does not get to know her well she is soon murdered. He discovers the body in company with Arthur Seldom a professor of logic who tells the police that a piece of paper was left in his pigeonhole at the college with a symbol and the message "The first of the Series" and the time 3:00pm.

We do not have long to wait for the next mysterious death with also a note and symbol posted on the college door. The problem of solving the next in sequence is that according to the Austrian logician Godel not every statement can be proved true.

The start of the book is OK but I found the expositions rather clunky and slowed down the narrative. Once we got rid of those the plot rolls on quite nicely. The descriptions of Oxford from an outsiders point of view are quite well done but the problem is it reads rather like a film exposition rather than a fully fledged novel. It has recently been turned into a film with Elijah Woods (as the student) and John Hurt as the professor but I have not seen it on general release.

The book won the Spanish Planeta Prize so maybe they saw something in it that I did not.

Verdict - A short quick read.

The Edgars & In Bruges

The Mystery Writers of America's Edgar Award Nominees have been announced in this year of the 200th anniversary of Edgar Alan Poe's birth.

I love a list but with this on top of the Guardian's "1000 novels everyone must read" series also coming out this week, I suspect, I may be tempted into more book buying.

What I like about the Edgars is the all encompassing nature of the awards within the genre. As the name mimics it is indeed like the Oscars although I don't know if they have a red carpet, maybe just a Masque of the Red Death with dripping blood.

I must admit that I have not read any of the books mentioned, yet, but Book Club Buzz has the full list and some links to his reviews.

I have seen one of the films that is up for Best Motion Picture Screenplay which is 'In Bruges' written and directed by the Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It is the story of two Irish hit men who have been sent away to a wintry Bruges at Christmas after one of their jobs goes wrong. Ray (Colin Farrell) hates Bruges and is haunted by the fact that he killed a little boy by mistake on this last assignment but Ken (Brendan Gleeson) loves the city and tries to enthuse Ray about medieval sites. The plot is clever and the dialog sparkles, there's a girl, a dwarf, Bruges itself and some black comedy plus a cameo appearance by Ralph Fiennes as the cockney boss. The two leads inhabit the parts and are wonderfully acted. A marvelous two hander as Brendan Gleeson's world weary part allows Colin Farrell to really shine on screen.

Verdict - Unpredictable Thriller. Recommended

Kate Atkinson

'When Will There Be Good News' by Kate Atkinson

Quotes from the Book:- "A coincidence is just an explanation just waiting to happen" Jackson Brodie
"The best days of her life had been when she was pregnant and the baby was still safe inside her. Once you were out in the world, then the rain fell on your face and the wind lifted your hair and the sun beat down on you and the path stretched ahead of you and evil walked on it" Joanna Hunter

'When Will There Be Good News' opens with a slaying of a family by a stranger but the 6 year old Joanna runs and hides in the long grass. This section is marked 'In the Past'

We then move to 'Today' which is 30 years later and now Joanna is a GP in Edinburgh with a baby and married to Neil , a businessman who may be a bit dodgy. Her nanny is a precocious 16 year old called Reggie whose mother has drowned on holiday.

Other characters are introduced, Jackson Brodie, an ex army and police, currently a private detective, is in Yorkshire stealing hair from a boy who may be his son. DCI Louise Monroe, who is not sure where her own life is going, is about to alert Dr Hunter that her family's murdered has been released from prison.

Reaching one of the sections marked 'Tomorrow' (and there is more than one):

Suddenly Joanne Hunter disappears but DCI Munroe does not believe Reggie when she says something is wrong and has not, as Neil Hunter says, gone to visit her sick aunt. Brodie meanwhile is boarding a train he thinks is going to London, but he is wrong and it is heading in the opposite direction, to Edinburgh but he will not quite make it to the station as the train crashes.

Our protagonists are hurtling towards each other and now everybody believes that Joanna is missing. The plot gallops away taking more twists and turns to its eventual end.

This is a beautifully constructed novel, as you would expect from the author of 'Behind the Scenes of the Museum', although of a very different genre, but still full of dry wit, full drawn characters and a pacey plot.

Verdict: Rattling Good Read

Kate Atkinson's website here