Mid Summer - And More Criminal Reading

It's hot. Dry. The other day a bee swarm flew through the garden looking for a new home .. chasing that queen.

In fact it is too hot for The Old Man in his current state. At least, this is what he says, as he sits indoors in the dark watching tennis on telly and occasionally making it out to the frosty air of a local, air-conditioned supermarket.
But actually I believe him.

And then there's all that waking up at 4 in the morning... tossing and turning. Not long after that... the dawn chorus starts and it grows light. Though I don't really mind. There is a blackbird whose distinctive song I seem to have heard for years. Is birdsong hereditary? No. I don't really think so. It must be an old bird ... just like I.

So ... all of this contemplation of time passing and the aging process has made me a little reluctant to post recently. Alors! Also - so much makes me angry these days. Brrrr! Whaaa! What to do with it.

I have another book review up - over on the Euro Crime blog. This is for "The Memory of Evil" third in Roberto Costantini's weighty Italian-Libyan trilogy of "Evil" built around Commissario Michele Balistreri of the Rome Murder Squad - from his childhood and youth in pre-Gaddafi Libya through to  his police career in Rome and on up to 2011 and the fall of Gaddafi, and his search for resolution of his own past and that of his blood-brother gang in 1960s Libya. The trilogy is impressive and not for the faint-hearted on many counts. For further detail - pop over to Euro Crime via the above link and read the detail.

Meanwhile... I'm off to drink some more water and contemplate a slice of watermelon for lunch.

The Dolls Criminal Travels: Northern Ireland, Libya and Italy

My dears, I have been travelling as usual. With my crime fiction reading that is.

Firstly I visited Northern Ireland with Stuart Neville's latest book, Those We Left Behind, built around DCI Serena Flanagan who appeared in his Jack Lennon book The Final Silence. (Neville has written a series featuring detective Jack Lennon whose perilous slide down the career ladder signifies the predicament us crime fans doubtless recognise - the hallmark of the independent but rackety, if not rocky, investigator who is tumbling towards a perilous edge. But do not doubt that I am a great follower of Lennon and hope he will return.) Those We Left... is a slight departure again. Although still full of suspense and chill, I think this book goes more deeply into psychological territory. It  deals with the consequences of the release from prison of nineteen year-old Ciaran Devine, after serving a seven year sentence for the murder of his foster father. A child "killer" released back into society where his older brother is waiting for him. The probation officer assigned to his case starts to have doubts about the brothers' relationship and she turns to DCI Flanagan who had gained Ciaran's trust and his confession those seven years before. It's a brilliant book in which Neville seems almost to have crossed into the realm usually the property of Scandinavian crime fiction - the dark psychological/socio-thriller. Read my review over on Euro Crime for more detail.

I also managed a long trip to Libya and Italy with Roberto Costantini's The Root Of All Evil. Make sure you have plenty of time and powers of concentration for this one. But if, like me, you have a liking for crime served up on a social, historical platter - it will be worth it. The second book in a trilogy featuring the frankly unlikeable Italian detective, Balistreri, this one runs from his youth in Tripoli as the son of an influential fascist family together with the run-up to Gaddafi's coup in 1969 and then Balistreri's investigations into a murder case in 1980s Italy. It's a case which starts to remind him of events in his Libyan youth. Detailed, painstakingly constructed, hard realities painted with neutral strokes (it is no mean feat to make readable a book which centres on an "unattractive" protagonist) this is a rewarding book. Again, you can read the full review over on Euro Crime. And you can also read a good interview with Costantini over on the Crime Thriller Fella blog.

Phew! I'd tell you of more foreign criminal adventures but I'm off to put my feet up. Be back soon.

Shifting Sands: Guy Martin

The Old Man and me goes off to Falmouth last Friday - to catch one of the last days of an exhibition of Guy Martin's photos of Egypt and Libya during the Arab Spring conflict. The exhibition was at The Poly there... and sorry it's already closed cos it was only on for a week!

Guy Martin is a young photographer who was seriously injured in the same rocket attack in Libya that killed his two companions, documentary maker and photographer Tim Hetherington, and US photographer Chris Hondros.

The photos are good, the whole thing moving. I's struck by two photographs of Egyptian protestors racing through Cairo. In one - squares of paper briefing the protestors on the chants and slogans drift through the air around them. There are also some beautiful, almost abstract photos of the patterns left by fire... one a burnt out room with scorched filing cabinets, another the pattern of blast on the tarmac surface of a road after a Molotov cocktail has exploded.

The Old Man prefers a more narrative approach and is struck by a photo of three young man standing in front of a building: one peers round the corner, the next stands behind him holding a gun and almost touchingly out of place with his glasses and flip-flop sandals, finally another young man stands nervously behind both, studying them. There is another photo that The Old Man picks out with a young fighter crouching near the floor against the wall inside a building, he is looking up at a window, the light falling through it catches his eyes and lights them up.

Sorry that the exhibition was so brief and couldn't pass on the info earlier, but you can see some of Guy Martin's work at his own website here.

And speaking personally... I long for stuff to be exhibited down here that's national or international. It's all so Cornwall-centric......

I'll get told off for that won't I.