wot i red on my hols by alan robson (sacerdos ovum)

The Good, The Bad, And The Actually Not Too Bad At All

The novels written by Andy Maslen are (collectively) a rather large curate’s egg.

I read three of his books and I enjoyed them hugely. Great, I thought to myself. I’ve found a new writer who seems to have been quite prolific. So on the strength of that feeling I recommended him to a friend who shares my tastes. She read some of his stories (not the ones that I’d read) and absolutely hated them. This puzzled me because I was still basking in the glow of the novels I’d enjoyed. So I returned to Andy Maslen and read some more of his books. It turns out that my friend was quite right – apart from the ones that I’d initially read, they were all appallingly bad.

Let’s try and analyse this a bit more closely…

The three novels that I enjoyed are about the life and exploits of one Detective Inspector "Henry" Ford – we never learn his real first name, he is always addressed by his mildly punny nickname. In the prologue to the first novel, Shallow Ground, we learn that several years ago Henry’s wife had died in a climbing accident. Henry blames himself for his wife’s death, though that’s probably more a case of survivor’s guilt than anything else. Nobody else blames him for the accident.

Although he has never truly come to grips with the tragedy he has, nevertheless, managed to make a success of his life. He has a close relationship with his son and professionally his career has progressed very satisfactorily indeed. As the novel opens, he has just been promoted to Detective Inspector and is now leading an investigation into the very first murder case he has ever been in charge of. It’s quite a responsibility…

The three novels are perhaps a little formulaic but the plots are cleverly constructed so I think that’s forgiveable. The crimes and the criminals (together with their motives) are plausible, and the events are not overly melodramatic. The characters, both good and bad, are well drawn and believable – I was particularly impressed with Ford’s crime scene investigator Dr Hannah Fellowes. She has a ruthlessly analytical mind (probably a side effect of her severe autism) and her deductions are crucial to Ford’s investigations. We never learn very much about what happened in Hannah’s life before she met Ford, but it is clear that she has traumas of her own in her background. Much is made of the fact that both Ford and Fellowes are emotionally fragile, but they have both come to grips with their personal tragedies and their past never stops them from living their lives in the present. I doubt that anyone would ever really call either of them "cured", whatever that might mean in the circumstances (it’s hard to tell) but they function well enough in the real world and they have the well-earned respect of their friends and colleagues.

Ford’s relationship with his son Sam is beautifully drawn. Ford loves Sam – in the early days after his wife’s death it was only the thought of Sam that kept him going. It’s clear that Ford is a great father figure and he’s done a superb job of raising Sam, but Sam is now a teenager and he is starting to rebel against his upbringing. Ford is terrified that he might lose his son and somehow he has to learn to curb his (understandable) tendency to want to wrap Sam in cotton wool. If he carries on doing that, it is a guarantee that the relationship will spiral out of control. His internal battles with himself as Sam tests the boundaries of his freedom are brilliantly written. Things come a head in the second novel Land Rites, when a local thug threatens Sam in an attempt to get Ford to back away from his investigation. Ford takes decisive (and very unorthodox) steps to protect Sam from this danger and the thug is forced to back down. In other novels by other writers I suspect that the emotional blackmail of Sam’s vulnerability would have been a significant plot thread. But the way that Ford cuts the Gordian Knot and brings the thug to heel is a clever and decisive move that is perfectly in character, given the nature of his relationship with Sam, and which also turns out to be crucial to the success of his investigation. It’s all very impressive…

Much of the success of Ford’s unravelling of the cases he is presented with depend on forensic analysis. Hannah is invaluable here, of course. This is particularly important in the third novel Plain Dead when it becomes necessary to determine whether or not a seeming suicide is in fact a murder. There is strong circumstantial evidence in favour of suicide and, initially at least, the forensic results are ambiguous. This is my favourite of the three novels. The subtlety of the plot is particularly satisfying and the (sort of) resolution of Ford’s feelings about his wife’s death together with Sam’s growing maturity makes for some very tasty icing on the cake.

And so, puzzled by my friend’s reaction to Andy Maslen, I turned to some of his other novels.

Hit and Run is the first of a series of stories starring Detective Inspector Stella Cole. Stella had been a rising star in the Metropolitan Police. Then a hit-and-run driver killed her husband. Overwhelmed by grief, Stella dived into the booze and the pills. Somehow, after a year or so, she has managed to drag herself back to some semblance of normality and she has returned to work – to light duties only. She is still terribly traumatised by her husband’s death.

Then events conspire to convince Stella that her husband’s death was not the accident that it appeared to be. She learns that there is a secret organisation lurking at the heart of England’s judiciary. It calls itself PPM. The initials stand for Pro Patria Mori which translates as To die for one’s country. It’s a quote from a poem by the Roman lyric poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus) who claimed (in translation) that "it is sweet and proper to die for one’s country". The war poet Wilfred Owen, in a poem which described the horrors of trench warfare in the first world war, referred to Horace’s sentiment as "...the old lie" and used Horace’s phrase ironically. In Owen’s opinion there is nothing glorious about war or about dying, though he does recognise that sometimes there is no other choice. The members of PPM see themselves as patriots and use the phrase as Horace meant it to be used, choosing somewhat cynically to overlook Owen’s more jaundiced view of the world. They see the phrase as a justification of the necessity for society to condemn people to death in order to protect itself. And so they have taken it upon themselves to kill anybody who they believe to be a danger to the fabric of society so that they can preserve the status quo. Stella’s husband was one of their victims, and now that Stella has stumbled upon them she is determined to hunt them down and make them pay.

Stella is such an unattractive character and the plot is so ridiculously stupid (vigilantism by entrenched members of the establishment makes no sense) that I found the book to be rather a slog. There are other books in the series, but I won’t be reading them.

Well, I thought, let’s try something else. The Seventh Girl is the first volume of a series about Detective Sergeant Kat Ballantyne. Kat joined the police as a direct result of her best friend being murdered by a serial killer known as the Origami Killer because he always leaves an origami heart on the bodies of his victims. After he killed Kat’s friend, his killing spree stopped for fifteen years, but now he is back and it is Kat’s job to hunt him down.

Kat, of course (because this is an Andy Maslen novel after all) was traumatised by the death of her friend and the re-emergence of the killer has ignited emotions that she is not sure she knows how to deal with. So again we have a viewpoint character skating on thin emotional ice (are you starting to see the pattern?) combined with a really, really dumb plot. I tend to be biased against novels involving serial killers who identify themselves with gimmicky signatures. Serial killers are very rare in the real world (though annoyingly common in novels) and they almost never show off by planting clue-filled origami hearts and the like. There are several books in the Kat Ballantyne series, but again I won’t be reading any of them.

Blurbs and reviews suggest that Andy Maslen’s most popular books are the ones about a freelance mercenary called Gabriel Wolfe. So, in for a penny, in for a pound, I tried to read Trigger Point, the first novel in the series. I promise, I really did try to read it but it was so bad that I couldn’t actually bring myself to finish it and I give up in disgust about three quarters of the way through.

Gabriel Wolfe is an ex-SAS soldier. He left the army with a severe case of PTSD after experiencing the deaths of too many friends and colleagues. For various not very convincing reasons, MI5 feel that he is the perfect person to infiltrate a clandestine group led by one Toby Maitland, an ultra-right wing politician who seems to be planning a military coup in the UK.

The story gets sillier on every page. Wolfe’s MI5 recruiter and case officer is a sexy Swedish spy who, of course, he immediately hops into bed with. Maitland travels to America on an arms buying trip and Wolfe travels with him where he meets a sexy American spy who, of course, he immediately hops into bed with. Maitland and Wolfe get involved with a drugs deal with the Hells Angels and naturally Wolfe has to kill them all which he does very efficiently with lots of lovingly described grue and gore. Then he and Maitland travel on to meet an ex-South African security service operator in Michigan who has an armament depot where Maitland intends to purchase the firepower he needs for his coup. And that’s where I gave up.

The massacre of the Hells Angels was nothing but page after interminable page of weapon porn which was quite a struggle to get through. Wolfe sprays bullets from a huge variety of ordnance all around the landscape and glories in all the mutilations he is inflicting on his foes while exhibiting no signs whatsoever of the PTSD that has supposedly emotionally crippled him. Once they meet the South African arms dealer, the volume gets turned up to eleven as the prose salivates over comparisons of the merits of this, that and the other very big gun. I simply couldn’t stand it any more.

It’s clear that Andy Maslen really only has one kind of viewpoint character, somebody who has suffered a great trauma in their life and who is now struggling to come to grips with it over the course of several books. In itself there’s nothing wrong with that approach though it can get rather tiresome to read about it in book after book after book. When the deeply flawed character also has to cope with an overly melodramatic and ridiculously stupid plot then the stew becomes so over-salted that it simply can’t be stomached any more. That’s the reason why, for me at least, most of his novels simply fail to work. It’s also the reason why my both my friend and I have given up on reading any more of his books.

However I still maintain that with the Detective Inspector Ford novels, Andy Maslen got the mixture exactly right. Ford’s trauma is not overly intrusive – certainly it has scarred him and it defines who he is, but it doesn’t stop him from functioning. Furthermore the crimes that he is called upon to investigate are really quite mundane. They are ordinary murders committed by ordinary people for ordinary reasons with no thud and blunder melodrama or paranoid prancing about (well, not much anyway). If he ever writes any more novels about Detective Inspector Ford, I will happily read them. But I have no interest at all in any of his other series characters.

* * * *

Denzil Meyrick is a Scottish ex-policeman who writes detective novels set in Scotland. The first lesson a writer learns is to write about the things that they know best. That’s exactly what Denzil Meyrick has done and it has proved to be a sure fire recipe for success.

Whisky From Small Glasses  is the first novel in a series about Detective Chief Inspector Jim Daley. Daley is based in Glasgow, but for his first literary outing he is sent to the small seaside town of Kinloch to investigate a rather gruesome murder. The body of a young girl has been found floating in the sea and when one of the local police force wades in and grabs hold of the body to drag it ashore it separates into two halves, torn apart at the waist. I was immediately hooked – what a great opening scene!

Daley finds himself a little bit of a stranger in a strange land. Kinloch is an isolated community, close-knit and not all that welcoming to outsiders. But a murder has taken place and it is soon followed by two more. If Daley is to have any chance of coming to grips with the case, he cannot afford to remain on the outside looking in. He and his team will have to find a way to fit in so that they can really come to grips with what is happening.

This is a novel written by a Scotsman and set in Scotland. That is always a recipe for some very dark and often extremely witty humour and this book is no exception to that rule. The plot itself is nothing special, but that’s not the point. The story is driven much more by character and by situation than it is by ingenuity and I consider that to be a strength rather than a weakness.

DCI Jim Daley is an amiable protagonist. He has a quick wit and an ever expanding waistline. When he arrives in Kinloch he introduces himself to the local police with the words,  "As I’m sure you all know by now, I’m Inspector Jim Daley, and before anyone says it, yes, I do go to the gym daily." Sadly his excursions to the gym cannot compensate for his enjoyment of good food and even better drink. I did say he was Scottish, didn’t I?

Jim is married to the highly flirtatious Liz, and he sees his excursion to Kinloch as a chance to calm himself down and to try and come to grips with her latest infidelity. So he isn’t best pleased when Liz herself turns up in Kinloch on a jolly with her brother in law, a man who Jim despises. However this eventually turns out to be something of a blessing in disguise for Liz will prove instrumental in the tracking down of the killer. Not only that, the circumstances surrounding the unmasking of the murderer actually serve to bring Jim and Liz closer together and it seems likely that the latest rift in their marriage may well be healed. Doubtless later novels will tell us whether or not this is indeed the case.

The jokes are funny and the herrings are vividly scarlet. I was sure I knew who the murderer was, but I was completely wrong. It’s a very satisfying feeling when that happens. I enjoyed the book a lot. I will definitely be coming back to Kinloch for more stories.

* * * *

Richard Osman is a world famous television presenter and comedian in the UK. But I’ve never heard of him so I had no idea what to expect when I started to read We Solve Murders, the first book in what promises to be an entertaining series of murder mysteries, all of which (presumably) will get solved. After all, it says so in the title and titles never lie.

This particular story concerns itself with Steve Wheeler and his daughter-in-law Amy. Steve is a retired policeman whose world now revolves around life in a small village. Steve does a bit of amateur private eyeing which mostly involves searching for lost pets. He spends the rest of his time taking part in his local pub quiz and cuddling his cat Trouble who insists on his head being scratched just so with both hands. If you don’t do it just so you will live to regret it. So cuddling Trouble is a full time job in itself. Steve misses his wife Debbie who died in a freak accident several years ago. But there are compensations. He talks to Debbie almost every day, so that’s nice. But for now, he is living an enjoyable and comfortable retirement. His days of action and intrigue are long behind him, though he can live them vicariously whenever he wants to through his daughter in law Amy. She rings him every day to report on her adventures.

Amy Wheeler works for a private security company called Maximum Impact Solutions. Mainly she works as a bodyguard, protecting highly important people from assassins and the like. As the story opens, she is protecting Rosie D’Antonio the world famous (and extremely rich) novelist. Rosie is somewhere between 20 and 90 years old. Her longevity is probably due to her habit of pickling herself daily with strong drink and stronger drugs. Her latest best seller includes a character who is clearly based on the Russian oligarch Vasiliy Karpin. He has taken exception to the portrayal and now Rosie is hiding in plain sight on her private island in South Carolina with Amy to keep her safe and a former Navy Seal called Kevin to serve as their private chef and to keep Rosie’s bed warm at night.

Amy is married to Steve’s son Adam. It is a very successful marriage. They love each other deeply and passionately, mainly because they hardly ever see each other and rarely spend any time together. Adam is a wheeler-dealer, constantly travelling the world making incomprehensible business dealings and amassing a vast fortune.

Unbeknown to Amy (though well known to the reader), Amy is about to be hunted down and killed. A very dangerous man called François Loubet has her in his sights. Loubet is a money launderer who recruits internet influencers to travel the world to make adverts for their products. Although they do not know it, the influencers are actually carrying suitcases full of money across international borders on Loubet’s behalf. Of course, they are not always successful in this. When they are caught, Loubet has them killed in amusingly sadistic ways, always leaving behind enough evidence to incriminate Amy Wheeler in the killing.

Loubet communicates with his people via emails written for him by chatGPT in the persona of an aristocratic British gentleman. Loubet is not an aristocratic British gentleman, so this is a successful smoke screen designed to keep his real identity secret.

Soon Amy and Rosie are on the run from several hitmen who have Amy in their sights. Amy is well aware that she is being hunted though to begin with at least, she is unsure why she has a target painted on her back. Rosie insists on travelling with her, delighted to have a heart-throbbing adventure. Perhaps she will write a book about it.

Amy turns to Steve for help. Steve is reluctant to leave his house and his obligations to both his pub quiz team and to his cat. But duty calls and his daughter in law’s life is at stake so he pushes himself out of his comfort zone into a whirlwind adventure that sees him travelling the world on luxurious private jets, eating gourmet food, and getting drunk (and amorous) with Rosie. It all culminates in a helicopter flight out of which he vomits copiously from a great height over most of the Dublin countryside because he foolishly drank twelve pints of Guinness before boarding the helicopter in which he is chasing down the hitmen who themselves are chasing Amy. He’s having the time of his life.

I’ve straightened out the narrative sequence a little bit in this summary (though I haven’t included any spoilers). The structure of the novel is rather more convoluted than I’ve indicated and it has a lot more characters in it than I’ve mentioned. Furthermore the characters all come and go in and out of the story quite unpredictably. Their roles change before your very eyes as more of the plot is revealed (and as previously revealed details are obscured). Important characters fade away into insignificance (usually they get killed) and less important characters are promoted to significant roles as their backstories are revealed. It’s actually quite hard, at the beginning, to keep track of just who is who, who is chasing who, and why they are doing it in the first place. But never mind.

I strongly urge you not to take the book too seriously (it doesn’t take itself seriously so why should you?). Nevertheless, you really will need to keep your wits about you if you want to have any understanding at all of what is going on. But if you persevere (and take it quite slowly) the rewards are huge. The plot is ingenious and the characters and situations are very, very funny. The dialogue is crisp and witty. What more could anybody want?

The not quite cliff hanger ending explains every single remaining mystery, ties up every single loose end in an efficient knot and leaves the way open for a host of sequels. I am greatly looking forward to reading them as and when they appear.