Month: June 2019

I picture Scottish band Idlewild, which I saw in Melbourne maybe a decade ago, as a group of very able musicians, plus, notably, self-declared poet Roddy Woomble. Woomble left the band after their heydays first few albums, and his next few releases were fine but more like earnest, if literate, poems set to minor key songs that never lifted. Idlewild reformed in 2015 and now “Interview Music” is a welcome blast from the past, but, really, a Roddy Woomble album buttressed by earnest musicianship that graces some songs with flair but can also retreat into disparate if professional chops. “Same Thing Twice” returns to the band’s jagged, scream-led roots; at the other extreme, “Lake Martinez” is a lovely Woomble lyric-led ballad; and “Mount Analogue” is a fine in-between chunky toon.

A “crimmy” ( as some of my friends refer, perhaps ever so disparagingly, to a crime novel) set in formerly industrial Newcastle towards the Queensland border, in a world of petty criminals and small time business people and ordinary folk, “Hiding to Nothing” is the second boisterous outing of house painter Lachlan Munro. Lachie is a house painter but also attracts chaos and swirling wrongdoing; this time the mix is a milk bar robbery, gangster Billy Wong and Lachie’s combustible con father. The action is swift, caper after caper, and the dialogue is sharp (though not as humorous as I’d expected, reflecting more on my sense of humour than on the author’s style). A fun read over a few hours straight and a peep into the feral side of a lively Australian city.

Only a few weeks after enjoying the second book in T.W.M. Ashford’s “Checking Out” time travel cum space romp series, I jumped straight into the concluding Book 3, “Checking Out: Anticlockwise.” George Webber, once a guest at the Le Petite Monde hotel, gateway to the multiverse, takes a lead role in this adventure, partnered with concierge Pierre, in wild corners of the universe and the cracks in its time continuum. Once again, the pell-mell zany time travel plot twists come thick and fast, once again the Doctor-Who-style fights and flights entertain, and once again a light sense of humor leavens the strangeness. The entire concoction is served up with wonderful flair and control. Another one-sitting read and another smile-inducing pleasure.

I’m no expert on the history of Israel or the life story of its founder (self-declared and, in truth, actual) founder, David Ben-Gurion, but I found “A State at Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion” to be comprehensive, sophisticated, and in line with the facts I knew. Using scads of archival material presumably never before available, Tom Segev, a leading, and at times controversial, historian/journalist, takes the enigma of Ben-Gurion and adds plenty of flesh to it. Ben-Gurion could be wild and woolly, almost insane, or he could be the most conscientious diplomat. His personality veered all over the spectrum. I was fascinated to discover that core elements endured through his life: his passion for politics and its power bases; the concept of a Jewish state, come what may, whatever was required; a love of reading; tempestuous relationships; and a deep hankering for his place in the panoply of history. Segev retains superb control over his material, and writes vigorously and methodically. Although this is the only bio of the icon I have fully read, any competitor for historical authority must surely be quite remarkable. I commend “A State at Any Cost” to both the keen modern history buff and the explorer of Israel’s genesis.

Another of my recent forays into police procedurals set in the back blocks of America, this time in rural Pennsylvania, “An Unsettled Grave” is the second outing for inexperienced but whip-smart Detective Carrie Santero. She teams up again with relentless hunter of killers, Jacob Rein (this time jobless and homeless after the furies of the series’ Book 1), when a child’s foot emerges from a grave. Secrets three decades old are re-ignited. Bernard Schaffer writes smoothly and Santero in particular works well as a feisty protagonist. If I tired a little of flashback scenes (I know they have their place but I prefer present-day drama in procedurals), the climax satisfied and the entire read flowed like a river.

Horror being one of the few genres I rarely visit, “Pivot,” a claustrophobic gothic about a boy raised as an assassin by a mysterious cult leader, took nearly its full length to impress itself upon me. You need a certain mindset to sink into a book in which young Jack, fearful of father figure Cyrus, hones killing skills, at first on a perennially reincarnating uncle figure and then on strangers. L. C. Barlow writes convincingly, if a little at a distance, of this unlikeable world, especially the gory parts. But it is only when teenage Jack begins to explore his house for the source of Cyrus’s power, that the book accelerates and I thoroughly enjoyed the final third with its sinuous plot twists. For horror fans and toe dippers like myself.

Once I inform you that “Black Mountain” is dark and hardboiled noir, I trust you’ll self select. If you’re a fan of Ellroy or his peers, you’ll find plenty to like here. The second instalment of the adventures of Isaiah Coleridge, a huge, part-Maori ex-mob enforcer now hanging out his PI shingle in the Hudson Valley, a headless mobster starts off proceedings, and the action grows heavier by the chapter, involving a semi-mythical killer and corporate connections. Coleridge has a philosophical bent and Laird Barron’s writing veers towards James-Lee-Burke-style lyricism, atmospheric to my ear. The dialogue is snappy and mostly effective. “Black Mountain” is a smooth ride through well-traveled genre terrain and if that’s your thing, it’ll while away some evenings.