Review: 'Smoke and Whispers' by Mick Herron

‘Smoke and Whispers’ is fourth in a series focussing on the character of Sarah Tucker (it’s called the Zoe Boehm series but Sarah is the narrator) who manages to get herself in range of fairly unbelievable investigative situations. This instalment is mediocre but, then, so were the others in the series.

It should not be beyond a decent writer’s skill to don a persona with a different gender, but Mick Herron doesn’t manage it convincingly. The protagonist, Sarah, isn’t really likeable and so the fallibility of her character merely comes across as fecklessness. In essence the character is written using too many female stereotypes for her rendering to be either plausible or admirable, neither do her many hang ups garner sympathy. She’s just a character who comes across as dithery and too much a victim to be an effective solver of crimes. It may surprise Mr Herron to know that we women don’t all obsess about our weight, cathartically shop or expect the nearest man to rid the vicinity of spiders.

The plot is pacy enough to be engaging, despite some fairly unbelievable developments, and there are some interesting secondary and tertiary storylines. This novel doesn’t have much in the way of mood changes or humour and less so because, actually, it’s just so sexist - Herron even uses the expression, ‘male-thinking’ at one point, really? It’s lazy thinking and I find those tired old cliches annoying. All of which possibly suggest that Herron was cutting his literary teeth on this book before producing the much more involving ‘Slow Horses’ series. I’m just glad I found those first!

Review: 'Strange Practice' by Vivian Shaw

When I got to the end of this book I was incredible torn. I actually didn’t want to include anything positive in this review and yet that would have been quite unfair - there is merit in this book.

I am a sucker for characterisation and the characters crafted by Shaw are, actually, winsome: fallible and yet charming. It’s possible, of course, that because most of the characters are not human the reader is able to forgive their mistakes and inconsistencies (and occasionally a stumble on the writer’s part) more easily.

What I found REALLY clumsy was the dialogue. The novel is set in London and the characters are English (or have lived in Britain for long enough to adopt the lingo) and yet their speech is peppered with Americanisms. I haven’t been to London for a while but I’m sure they have not adopted the use of ‘Goddam’ as their standby expression of annoyance or frustration - fairly sure it’s still ‘bloody’. The dialogue also had lots of pop-culture expressions and quips which were incredibly irritating and, cynically, I think it’s to generate an easy sell to generation Y. For those with a more finely tuned ear, it doesn’t ring true for characters who are from the upper middle classes, one of whom is supposed to have a ‘cut-glass’ accent. As a fantasy novel no-one is looking for absolute realism but some level of plausibility has to be achieved to lift it out of the children’s section and, in the end, the dialogue became teeth-gnashingly annoying.

The plot is acceptable with it’s general sense of adventure, although it’s bit of a Cinderella story. It’s so disappointing to still see female characters, however worthy of it, getting dragged out of a sooty hearth by a dashing nobleman. But then, gender stereotypes are pretty much adhered to in this book: the men do the action and the woman does the caring. The characters, however, are saved from a decline into a total conventionality by being beautifully outré.

There are some notions and ideas that I admired -it’s inclusive and quite jolly. However, there is an amoral aspect to certain conclusions or rendered in certain characters that I find fairly cowardly or, more generously, naive. The text isn’t weighty enough to subjugate historical tropes well enough to be convincing. Generally, it’s these inconsistencies in continuity that ultimately undermined the credibility of the writer’s craft.