Stella Rimington Dead Line (2008)
Michael Connelly The Scarecrow (2009)
I was a bit let down by Dead Line, the fourth outing for Stella Rimington's heroine Liz Carlyle. For a fair bit of this book I really had no idea what was going on. My concentration was not held and at some vital point I lost track of whose secret services were doing what, where, why and to whom. I like Liz Carlyle - she's a modern heroine with modern issues, but I started to get a bit annoyed with her 'OMG I'm still single' thought monologues. The mini-theme of birds of prey was apt - Liz is becoming a bit like a vulture herself, looming over the slowly dying wife of her boss. On the plus side: Rimington is great on details of espionage, as we'd expect from the former head of MI5. It's the characters who are starting to irk me: how can I balance my desire for them not to be one-dimensional (as some are) with my wish not to know any more about their lives outside their secret worlds?! Oh dear, I've run right off my "on the plus side" list. Anyway, the plot, if I grasped it properly, is about an attempt to sabotage a Middle East peace conference in Scotland. The conclusion was entirely predictable. I kept wishing that they'd all been blown up at about page 50. I enjoyed the first three books in the series, so I'm hoping this one will be erased from my mind by the next one, which I'm sure I won't be able to resist. All that sexy spycraft... Rating: 5/10
Happier things: a Michael Connelly book is like meeting up with an old friend. Connelly's so reliable, so intensely plot-driven, so good on the details of character and place. I was happy to see the return of Rachel Walling (from The Poet and a couple of other Connelly's) in The Scarecrow. She is a great strong but flawed female heroine. I was less keen on Jack McEvoy, to whom I didn't particularly warm in The Poet. I keep mentioning The Poet. This was Connelly's excellent 1996 serial killer thriller. It was well-written, with memorable characters and the action was fast and tightly plotted. It was filled with shocks and surprises and contained an attractive mix of professional and amateur detection in its story of the FBI's hunt for the serial-killer the Poet. The Scarecrow reunites Rachel Walling, the FBI agent who was responsible, with the journalist Jack McEvoy, for tracking down the Poet. Many years have passed and McEvoy is about to be made redundant from his newspaper reporting job. He decides to go out with a bang with one final big story on a serial killer whom no one has suspected - but it seems that he may have fatally underestimated his high-tech opponent. Fortunately Rachel is prepared to put her career on the line (again - why is it that women do this so readily when it is so much more difficult for them to regain the ground?) to save Jack from himself and the Scarecrow. The result is not as gripping as The Poet or its sequel The Narrows, but it is a good read: a Connelly rarely disappoints. I've mentioned his ability to set a scene - he is such a visual, almost cinematic writer. Every book I read makes me feel like getting straight on a plane to Los Angeles. Again, though - and maybe I'm just a sour old sociopath - the personal issues intrude unevenly in places. McEvoy's dialogue, in particular, I thought a bit stilted (funny, given that McEvoy has Connelly's ex-job at the LA Times). He seems, in this outing, a somewhat formulaic figure, unlike Connelly's better known and always unpredictable hero Hieronymus 'Harry' Bosch. Rating: 7/10
If you liked these: read Stella Rimington's fascinating autobiography Open Secret and Michael Connelly's The Poet - or any of the Harry Bosch series.
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