Well... life is moving ever onwards towards the end of the year and my bookshelves become ever fuller I realise that I still have some work to do here with the reviews. Not only do I have some additional words to put to digital paper. There is also another book I have now finished. Not only that.. there are also 3 more strays that have found a good home with me. So.. as the back is holding out well, without further ado...
### SPOILER ALERT ###
Port Mortuary - Patricia Cornwell
After having finished and mulling it over in my head for a couple of weeks I am still not sure if I like it.
I think it is because the story feels distant from me as a reader. I think this is because it is distant from Scarpetta as well. You are told the story through her eyes and discover the bodies and twists at the same time as she does. As she is being kept away from the main action in the book, so are you as the reader. You feel that everyone else around Scarpetta know more about what is going on and has gone on... but no-one is spilling the beans and it leaves you out in the cold as a reader. If that is what Cornwell was going for then great.. It worked! If it was her idea to have you more involved with the character then for me it has not worked that well. I still enjoyed meeting all the now so familiar characters and seeing what they were up to but everyone seemed to be either hiding something, not doing what you thought they were initially, or keeping Scarpetta (and you) out of the loop of the main action.
It also seems that some of the crimes described in this book are a bit more gruesome than before. There is a little boy that gets killed by someone in a very personal and violent way. One of Scarpetta's old friends ends up dead in the middle of a house of horrors seemingly involved in all sorts of dodgy deals stemming from some really bad decisions that Scarpetta thinks she is part responsible for. Benton seems further away from Scarpetta. At the start he does not know exactly what is going on but once he gets his FBI mojo going again he seems to be more interested in what messages are coming in on his phone than in what is happening to his wife. What I am sometimes finding a bit tedious is the struggle between Benton and Scarpetta about what they are and are not able to tell one another. I am never quite sure if it is just a nice little ploy to get some friction between a husband and wife or if Cornwell is trying to make a particular point about trust and professionalism.
The one thing that I did find a bit disappointing is that the book seems to take a lot of time not revealing very much of anything, keeping you outside of the story and then in the last few chapters you get hit with the flood of who has done what and why and.. surprise surprise one of the bad guys (or should I say galls) ends up at Scarpetta's house and tries to kill her. Naturally this does not happen.. as if it ever was! Scarpetta is not only very clever I think she has also been watching CSI Miami and taking some tips from Horatio Caine on how to stay alive in the most unlikely of scenarios.
Apart from being darker it also feels a much more personal book than the previous ones. It seems to focus more on Scarpetta and how she feels about the events, her isolation of the people she has relied on for years. It is almost like were getting ready for a change in this one and that in the next book we are going to be at the other end of the tipping point and something new is going to start or that some old patterns have been broken. I guess I have to wait to read the next one. Which I will do just to see if I am right if anything... and because even after all the darkness I do really love the way Cornwell writes Scarpetta. For all the cliches that she sometimes uses Scarpetta is a character that I have followed for years now and I want to see her through the darkness.
The Girl at the Lion D'Or - Sebastian Faulks
When I read Charlotte Gray ages ago I found out that Faulks had done a number of books about the wars. I have since gotten Birdsong and this one as well. I have heard that Birdsong is a bit of a heavy one. emotionally so decided leave that one for the moment. I bought this one when I went to Liverpool in 2011 and started to read it as I did not take any books with me to read. I only got a few chapters in and left it as soon as I got back home as I had another one which I needed to finish. It is not that I disliked what I was reading or found it hard to get into the writing style but I could kid of tell that this one was going to be a bit more challenging and more serious than some of the other books I read. I think I was not in the mood for that at the time and I never went back to this one until a while ago. I wish I had stuck with it then and finished it as it is a really great book!
The story starts very quietly and simply with a young girl Anne arriving at a small hotel to work as a waitress. you do not know a lot about her but very soon find out that she is running away from something. Partly her past, partly who she was, partly from the hurt caused her by others. You get a few glimpses of what she is trying to get away from but the whole story is not revealed until we get well into the book.
As with any young, pretty girl she manages to attract the attentions from a few of the local men. She ends up becoming involved with one man in particular, Charles Hartman and you kind of know that the affair is doomed from the start. This guy has a wife whom he stayed with even when he found out she could not have any children so he has a strong sense of duty. Apart from that he is by his own admission always looking for the next woman give him a thrill and to fill his senses to the fullest. Yet he know that he will never find her and that no-one will ever be enough. At least he has the realisation that this is what he is doing and knows what the effect of his actions will be on Anne.
The affair starts fairly innocently but as soon as Hartman sets her up in a flat you know this is going to be serious and you also realise that there is no way this going to end well. Anne is the kind of girl who will want more who needs more, needs to feel loved, safe and protected even though she may seem really brave and strong. Hartman is not going to be able to give her what she wants and he manages to delude himself for a while that he is only helping her because he wants to help her out.. not because he loves her. he even seems reluctant to sleep with her because he feels that this would cross a line that he may not be ready to cross. It would indicate a trust, love and belonging that he knows he cannot provide in the long run.
I will not spoil too much of it by giving you all the detail but suffice it to say it does not end well for both of them. Hartman dutifully goes back to his dutiful wife and Anne packs her bags and starts again. Strangely enough at the end you feel that for neither of them this will be the last time they are going to end up in a dead end relationship. Both seem to ache when it all ends but where Anne picks up the pieces and starts again Charles is trying to remain standing for a while at least. He seems to feel very strongly that he has betrayed her trust by "making" her tell him her story. He feels sorry for her that her life has gone the way it has and he knows he will add to it by breaking up with her. But... he does not want to live with her as the thrill of her has worn off. Anne is just one more girl that could not give him what he wanted for long.
The thing I love about Faulks is that his characters are real, human. They have their good sides and their flaws . they FEEL emotions and are shaped by them in the course of the book. They evolve and grow and you get to watch the reasons why. The pace of the book is slow but it is right for what we are told. Anne is not one to trust easily, she needs time to tell her story and Faulks gives it to her.
Highly recommend this one!
One more review left to do (Jasper Fforde one) but I need to go and do my exercises now and then back to work tomorrow.. if only I could make a living out of doing this!
I have totally lost count on the books count so will have to get them all out of their nooks and crannies tomorrow and have a recount.. again.. think I am up to 102 but not sure
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