Breakfast At Libraries

The Magus of Hay is the twelfth mystery in Phil Rickman's Merrily Watkins series, which consists of supernaturally-tinged crime novels featuring an Anglican vicar and Deliverance (ie exorcism) consultant as their main character.

In case you're wondering, yes, the Church of England does have priests who are trained exorcists - and the sorts of situations in which Merrily is called in to help are generally fairly plausible; think people who feel there is an unsettling atmosphere in their house after a violent death, for example, rather than children with spinning heads.

I've read all eleven of the previous books in the series over the past fifteen or so years, which is an obvious indication of how much I've enjoyed them. They feature an ever-expanding cast of recurring characters, including Merrily daughter Jane, local musician Lol Robinson, West Mercia Police officer DI Francis Bliss, and many more. Rickman has a gift for cliffhanger chapter endings and also for capturing a strong sense of place - the books are as much about the psychogeography of the English-Welsh border country as anything else. The supernatural elements are cleverly woven into the crime plots, and are chilling without pulling the novels into actual horror or fantasy territory. All in all, a great series if you're looking for easy but involving page-turners with plenty of atmosphere. I often save the latest Merrily Watkins for my summer holiday - they're very much that kind of book for me.

Now I've said all that, I'm going to be honest and say that this latest instalment in the series disappointed me. Two of the major characters from the previous books are almost entirely absent, and although Merrily is obviously heavily featured, she doesn't play an awfully central role in the plot. She's part of the story, but rarely, if ever, the driver for it. Instead, that task falls to DI Bliss (who seems to have more pages to himself in each new book) and to Betty and Robin Thorogood, a pagan couple who also first came to our attention in A Crown of Lights.

While I find Frannie Bliss an engaging lead, there is something lacking for me in Robin and Betty - particularly Robin, an American artist best known for designing fantasy book covers who has decided to rebuild his life with Betty by opening a pagan bookshop in Hay-on-Wye. I don't find him to be a sufficiently well-rounded character to carry a novel to this extent, and his combination of outward brash bluster and inward anxious angst quickly becomes tiresome.

I enjoyed Hay-on-Wye, a town I know relatively well, being the primary setting for the action, and as always, Rickman captures every location perfectly. The book even comes complete with 'off-camera' appearances by Richard Booth, the self-styled King of Hay who played a major role in reinventing the town as a haven for book-lovers and an isolated hub of independence from corporate developers and chain stores. The uniqueness of Hay and the question of whether or not it can continue to sustain itself is discussed intelligently throughout, and plays an important part in the story.

However, the actual nuts and bolts of the main plot didn't seem particularly fulfilling to me. I didn't get the usual chilling fascination from the supernatural or occult elements in Rickman's other works, and nor did the progress of the investigation really gel. I found the lengthy conversations about the particular type of occultism that features in this book a little dull, if anything - this is a reaction I've never experienced when reading the previous Merrily Watkins books.

It's certainly fair to say that my expectations were high, so I may be judging it more harshly than some would, but this was the only Merrily Watkins book I had to remind myself to keep reading so that I could finish it. There were great elements to it, and I still got plenty of enjoyment from it, but there just seemed to be a lot missing.

There is a minor sub-plot involving a prim headmistress apparently haunted by the ghost of her partner, and the gay vicar who covers Merrily's parish responsibilities during her week's holiday: I actually found this far more interesting than the main mystery, and would happily have read a whole novel devoted to it.

I got the feeling from The Magus of Hay and its predecessor The Secrets of Pain that Phil Rickman might be trying to change the direction of the series to make it less Merrily-centric and focus less on her and her relationships. I may have this completely wrong, of course - I hope I do, because it's not just Merrily but also the people around her (including Jane and Lol) who form the glue that holds these books together.

I've seen a great deal of praise for one of Diego Marani's previous novels, New Finnish Grammar, although I haven't yet got round to reading it and decided to start with God's Dog instead because I was so interested in the basic premise.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson is set during one of my favourite periods for fiction, the early 20th century. Beginning with the birth of its protagonist, Ursula Todd, in 1910, it follows the fortunes of Ursula and her large, frequently eccentric family through two world wars. However, what makes Life After Life different is that we don't just see one version of Ursula's life, but many.

I'm not going to write too much about this book, because regular readers of this blog (I'm joking of course; there are none) will already know that I have read all the other books in Elly Griffiths' Ruth Galloway series and have reviewed them here. If you're interested, they are The Crossing Places, The Janus Stone, The House at Sea's End, A Room Full of Bones and Dying Fall.

I'm not going to pretend that these books are gritty, realistic crime thrillers. The Outcast Dead, like the previous instalments in the series, has a somewhat crazy plot, and the familiar cast of characters we've been introduced to in previous novels - notably Ruth herself, who despite an ever-expanding group of friends acquired in the other books is still fundamentally a loner, and Harry Nelson, gruff policeman and father to Ruth's toddler daughter despite his happy marriage to Michelle.

The core of the plot of The Outcast Dead involves an archaeological mystery, this time the discovery of a skeleton that may or may not be that of a notorious Victorian 'baby-farmer' with a hook for a hand, but as usual, this becomes inextricably linked with a present-day crime, also involving small children. It's a great page-turner, as you would expect, and the historical plot absolutely fascinated me in its own right. Furthermore, there's a subplot involving the personal lives of some of the supporting characters which pleased me no end, as I was never happy with its lack of resolution in the previous book.

The Outcast Dead is really a case of 'more of the same' - but I absolutely don't mean that to be a bad thing. This is the sort of series where each book feels like time spent with old friends, and that's one of the reasons I enjoy them. Overall, this a fun, hard-to-put-down instalment in a great, light crime series full of well-rounded, memorable characters and Griffiths' entertaining brand of dry, observant humour. 

Touched is another of Hammer's series of horror novellas by well-known authors, which also includes Helen Dunmore's The Greatcoat (excellent), Jeanette Winterson's The Daylight Gate (disappointing) and Sophie Hannah's The Orphan Choir (another excellent one). I find it hard to resist this series at the best of times, and when I read that Touched was partly inspired by Joanna Briscoe having spent her early years in the village that formed the setting for the brilliant film The Village of the Damned, which was in turn adapted from the novel The Midwich Cuckoos by my hero John Wyndham, I was never going to be able to last long without reading this one.

Luckily I wasn't at all disappointed by Touched, which is a great little chiller of a book that brings together
multiple sinister threads into one increasingly unsettling narrative. In 1963 the Crale family - parents Rowena and Douglas, non-identical twins Rosemary and Jennifer, loner Evangeline, toddler Bobby and newborn Caroline - move into a cottage formerly occupied by Douglas's elderly mother in an idyllic village, and set about knocking down the wall between it and the house next door in order to make it into a family home. However, the house seems reluctant to cooperate. Damp patches appear; strange smells come and go, from cat pee to disinfectant and an old woman's perfume . Little Bobby talks of mysterious intruders, and Rowena is plagued by nagging sensations that there is a sixth child in the house.

If you're thinking this sounds like a standard haunted house narrative, it's really so much more than that. There's also Evangeline for a start, who talks of an imaginary friend, insists on dressing in her grandmother's old Victorian clothes, and forms an unlikely, disturbing friendship with Pollard, the local builder working on the house, and his childminder wife. There's Jennifer too: unlike her stolid, reliable twin Rosemary, Jennifer is stunningly beautiful, so much so that her looks are constantly commented upon even in her early teens. Yet when Jennifer is asked to play a one-line part in a film being made on location at the village, she seems strangely, eerily vacant on camera.

There's an enormous amount going on in Touched, and it's not always clear what might be supernatural and what might be a more earthly threat. If I did have any complaint about this book, it would be that there are perhaps too many plot strands for such a short novel - I could happily have seen it spun out for another 200 pages - but that's not exactly a damning criticism.

Touched is not only (very) creepy and unsettling like all the best ghost stories are, it's also beautifully evocative of its setting and period. This is a deeply worthy addition to the Hammer series.

The blurb for The Neighbors describes it as "an insidiously entertaining tale of psychological suspense and mounting terror by the boldest new master of the form, at the intersection of Basic Instinct and Blue Velvet". It's the story of Andrew Morrison, who leaves home after a row with his alcoholic mother, moves into a rundown property with a deeply unpleasant housemate, and finds himself fascinated by Red and Harlow Ward, the strangely glamorous couple next door who seem keen to take him under their wing. To me, this all sounds quite promising.

Unfortunately, The Neighbors simply fails to deliver on pretty much every level.

First of all, Andrew - who is also irritatingly referred to as Drew and Andy throughout, despite the narrative being from a third person omniscient point of view - has little in the way of either depth or backbone. His departure from his mother's home is not especially convincing, and nor is his response to the strange reaction he gets from his new housemate Mickey (sometimes called Mick, which irked me as much as the Andrew/Drew/Andy business) when he arrives after agreeing to move in. He's perturbed by Mickey's incredible rudeness upon his arrival, but fails to confront him about it or even question it, despite Mickey being a old childhood friend. Moreover, his obsession with the Wards simply doesn't seem credible. Admittedly, Andrew might be looking for a mother figure or a family unit, given his background, but I still fail to see why he'd a) develop an erotic fixation with an obviously mad middle-aged woman solely because she's well-groomed and makes him some cookies or b) believe for one moment that a suburban couple could possibly need to pay him to work full-time simply on some low-skilled maintenance jobs around the house. Why does this not make him in any way suspicious?

Similarly, while we're constantly reminded that Harlow Ward is an attractive woman, there is no real explanation for her apparent magnetism or her ability to manipulate her husband into turning a blind eye to her blatant violent lunacy. It's simply not plausible in any way. I kept suspecting that there might be some sort of supernatural element to it, as this seemed the only possible explanation, but no, it's nowhere near as interesting as that.

Red Ward is largely devoid of character, as is Mickey. Harlow herself is essentially just a dangerous nutjob, and while some cursory effort is made to explain her psychological issues, it's a pretty poor one that's also tastelessly dismissive of the type of experience she's been through. And there is little suspense, either, simply because everything is so obvious and happens with such unlikely speed. There are no real surprises, and no attempt to build any kind of atmosphere.

Finally, the quality of the writing overall seems low to me. It's all telling and no showing, with clunky exposition and asides on the characters and their behaviour that take the place of character development through action and dialogue. Harlow Ward, supposedly the all-important, all-powerful lynch-pin of the novel, is reminiscent "of that Mad Men show - her hair, her clothes; they were profoundly retro". Is that kind of lazy catch-all, shorthand description really the best the author can do?

I honestly hate writing bad reviews, and I can usually find plenty to enjoy even in a book that didn't really work for me. Unfortunately, not this time.

My second holiday reading choice was last year's Costa Book of the Year, Nathan Filer's The Shock of the Fall. The book has a non-chronological narrative pieced together by protagonist Matthew and describes the gradual process - beginning with the early death of his brother Simon, who has Down's Syndrome, during a childhood holiday - that leads up to him being sectioned under the Mental Health Act.

You could be forgiven for thinking this sounds depressing, but in fact it rarely is - it's certainly desperately sad at times, and you'll often find yourself frustrated with Matt and some of the choices he makes, but there's plenty of wry, observant humour and a great deal of warmth, particularly in some of Matt's family relationships (Nanny Noo, his ever-patient grandmother, is a delight).

According to his author bio, Nathan Filer still works as a mental health nurse on an in-patient ward, and The Shock of the Fall is certainly a brilliantly vivid and realistic journey into the UK's mental health care system and the slow development of Matt's condition. Lots of reviewers have talked about Matt's schizophrenia being 'caused' by Simon's death, but in fact The Shock of the Fall makes it very clear that things just aren't as simple as this: there are no clear answers. The story refers in passing to many other possible contributing factors, from a family history of mental illness to heavy cannabis use in Matt's early teens. Filer also takes care to drop various early clues to Matt's condition into the story, but impressively manages to do so without ever drawing obvious attention to what must have been his extremely thorough research.

However, Simon's premature death is still central to the novel, and only as the story begins to draw to a close do we find out exactly what happened to him. Simon, even in his absence, becomes a major character in his own right, and when Matt's hallucinations begin to take Simon's form, it's almost as if Simon was too big an influence on Matt's family to stay dead. The challenge they face is finding the best way to remember him.

I've seen several critics liken this book to Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, and I can certainly see why they'd make that comparison. Like Haddon's novel (which I also enjoyed), The Shock of the Fall is remarkably insightful in its depiction of the thought processes of someone whose mind works in a way that's strongly atypical, and it's also similarly revealing in terms of the pressures placed on the protagonist's family and friends, all of whom are flawed in their own right and often realistically out of their depth.

I found The Shock of the Fall gripping, heartbreaking and touching, and I'm struggling to find any real fault with it. Highly recommended.

I got through a great deal of reading on my summer holidays this year. Praise be for the Kindle, or my reading matter would almost certainly have sent me over my luggage limit on the flight.

First up, as they say, was The Fever by Megan Abbott. The Fever is a young adult novel set in an American high school, which would usually have been more than enough to put me off reading it, but at the heart of its plot is something that always particularly intrigues me: an unexplained outbreak of a mysterious illness. A while back, I watched an excellent Channel 4 documentary about a small American town in New York State in which a number of teenage girls all appeared to fall victim to an inexplicable form of a Tourette's-like illness, characterised by severe tics. Was it psychosomatic? Mass hysteria? Wilful attention-seeking? A neurological disease caused by something in the local environment? A mystery infection? Or even, it was suggested, a physical reaction to a severe trauma? I assume Megan Abbott was aware of the Le Roy case, as The Fever has numerous similarities to it, and it was this that prompted me to read the book.



The Fever centres around three teenage girls, Deenie, Gabby and Lise. One day, Lise suffers a sudden and life-threatening seizure at school, leaving her comatose in hospital. Shortly afterwards, Gabby falls victim to a similar fit that leaves her with strange tics. Then Kim, a neurotic hanger-on to the group, also collapses, and the small town community of Dryden starts looking for answers.

What follows is a dark, somewhat claustrophobic mystery, packed with secrets and characterised by a constant, pervasive anxiety. In the age of social networking, YouTube clips of the girls' seizures soon find their way to every smartphone in Dryden. Parents begin to theorise about the controversial HPV vaccine their daughters have just been given, and it's surely no accident that Megan Abbott has chosen to refer to the HPV jab, which helps to protect women against a cancer-causing virus transmitted through sexual contact, rather than a tetanus or polio booster, for example. The girls at the centre of The Fever are all at a turning point when it comes to sexual experiences, and the degree to which their development and behaviour is scrutinised both by their parents and their peers - while Deenie's older brother Eli and his male friends are apparently able to be as casually promiscuous as they like without attracting any censure at all - is uncomfortably realistic.

Taking the edge off the teen melodrama is Tom Nash, the divorced father of Deenie and Eli who also happens to teach at their high school. I found Tom perhaps the most interesting character of them all, and would like to have seen more from his perspective - but I appreciate that I'm not exactly the novel's target audience.

Ultimately, too much of The Fever rests on a) boys and b) mistaken identity for my liking, and there were elements - both in terms of plot and character - that I found implausible enough to be irritating. I didn't find the girls' mysterious friend Skye at all convincing, for example, and nor did I find Deenie's brother Eli to be sufficiently interesting to warrant the amount of plot allocated to him. Moreover, while I know full well that teenagers can be infuriatingly and destructively secretive at times, I found it hard to see why, at a point in the story where they're concerned that the seizures might have been caused by their impulsive swimming trip to a possibly toxic lake, they don't just come clean and say so. There are other, darker, more credible secrets in The Fever, and this one doesn't seem sufficiently significant to be the source of so much angst.

However, the central plot device is fascinating, and this is a well-crafted mystery overall.