E-books and audiobooks reviews: fiction
Blame Stieg Larsson and Gillian Flynn. Any thriller with the word "girl" in the title seems to inspire great expectations. Paula Hawkins has already won over Stephen King with this teasingly constructed mystery.
by Paula Hawkins
Random House
(e-book)
Blame Stieg Larsson and Gillian Flynn. Any thriller with the word "girl" in the title seems to inspire great expectations. Paula Hawkins has already won over Stephen King with this teasingly constructed mystery. We have three narrators, but zero in initially on Rachel, who is enjoying a sneaky gin and tonic on her last train home of the week. Sadly, Rachel enjoys a drink on most other days, and slowly we read through her narration to see a desperate woman who is obsessed with other people's lives: strangers but also her ex-husband Tom and his second wife, Anna, whom she stalks when so drunk that she forgets it the following day. Hawkins' second narrator is "Jess", one of the people Rachel spies upon. Like Rachel, she is not all she seems, and not only because her real name is Megan. Megan's disappearance provides central drama, and brings Rachel together with her nemesis Anna in the search for a potential killer. By this point, it is impossible to know who to trust, and Hawkins keeps the uncertainty spinning until the end. Impressive.
by Kyril Bonfiglioli
Penguin
(e-book)
If the name Kyril Bonfiglioli doesn't trip off the tongue don't worry. Until late last year it didn't mean much, save to a small band of fervent admirers. Now, thanks to Mortdecai starring Johnny Depp, the English novelist's name is on quite a few people's lips. He was, variously, an art dealer, boozer, cad and Casanova - although he makes clear that Don't Point That Thing At Me is about "some other portly, dissolute, immoral and middle-aged art dealer". The plot is a thing of crazed beauty. Mortdecai steals a Goya and is beaten up for his pains by British and American intelligence, not to mention the oil baron who wanted the painting in the first place. The joy, however, is the elegant prose, the drinking and the one liners: "In he pranced, all silent and catlike and absurd, buttocks swaying noiselessly"; "Sometimes, in a subdued light, and with my tummy tucked in, I could almost fancy me myself"; or "Nor is there any sleep so sweet as that of the unjust". Naughty, funny and unstable, Mortdecai is a one-off.