My reading for pleasure during May
Hunted by Abir Mukherjee (Harvill Secker)
With its neat twist in the direction the usual terrorist thrillers take, ‘Hunted’ is extremely well told and packs enough thrills and spills to satisfy the most critical of readers.
And yes, that includes me.
I admit I was daunted by the book’s girth. I wondered if Abir Mukherjee would be able to keep the pace rattling along for nearly 500 pages. I needn’t have worried for he had me turning the pages so fast I now have RSI of the finger.
He doesn’t skimp on the characterisation, either, giving a large cast of good guys, bad guys and those in-between who are believable and relatable.
All in all, this has winner stamped all over it and I won’t be surprised to see him scoop some awards.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (Harper Voyager)
I read a lot of Ray Bradbury when I was younger. I devoured ‘The Illustrated Man’, various other short story collections, his seminal novel ‘Something Wicked This Way Comes’ and, later like ‘From Dust Returned’ and ‘A Graveyard for Lunatics’.
However, I’d never, until now, read what was one of his most celebrated novels, ‘Fahrenheit 451’. Perhaps because I saw the Francois Truffaut film version and found it so incredibly dull that it put me off reading the book.
I’m sorry about that, because now I’ve read it I understand that Truffaut, in pursuit of his own vision/version, had excised all that was interesting from the story, except, that is, the central idea that books were banned and only good for burning.
That’s not to say that I found Bradbury’s book completely to my taste. There were certain sections I found dull and even lifeless, particularly some of the dialogue. That doesn’t mean they were, it just means they didn’t quite work for me!
But overall this was a chilling look at dystopian future made even more frightening by the knowledge that even now there are places in the USA that like to ban books they disagree with, while the cancel culture overall can be vicious and petty.
Night Passage by Robert B. Parker (No Exit Press)
I first discovered this author’s protagonist Jesse Stone in a series of TV movies I discovered screening in the afternoons on Channel 5. Tom Selleck was the star, executive producer and, later, co-screenwriter and I loved them so much I wondered why they were consigned to the daytime slot when they were so much better than the prime time output of that channel, and others.
It wasn’t until this year that I read the first book on which the series was based and I’m glad I did.
Both the novel and the screen adaptation boast some fine, terse dialogue – the kind I wish I could write. Jesse Stone, a disgraced cop given one final chance as the chief of police in a small New England town, is nicely etched and although aged 35 in the novels, I still saw the older Tom Selleck as I read it and heard him deliver the snappy lines.
The film version of this one at least deviated from the plot and, I’ve got to say, I preferred the screen story. But the feel of it remains, the spirit of it, and I will be seeking out further novel in the series, as well as Parker’s Spenser series which I’ve also never read.
