show Feb 18th 2010

Guests this week are Brian Lowen & Maggie Perkovic.
Books being reviewed are:
Denial by Peter James, Man of War by Alexander Kent
Child 44 by Tom Rob Smith, The Whit eQueen by Philippa Gregory
Never Say Die by Tess Gerritsen
Oh and Happy birthday to Gemma Cunningham!
What a special week it was this week Maggie, talking to Terence Frisby about his book 'Kisses on a Postcard' and the forthcoming musical based on this. What a lovely man! I bet he was a cheeky, angelic looking boy! The interview will be aired in a week or two, don't miss it and in the meantime look up his site which is: www.kissesonapostcard.com

Maggie, Tom Rob Smith's book - Tom has worked as a screenwriter for the past five years, including a six-month stint in Phnom Penh storylining Cambodia's first ever soap. . That’s interesting Maggie – you could get in touch and work along with him, join the 2 soaps together Scilly Penh!

Alexander Kent, oh dear Brian not got good reviews and sounds like you agree with them!

As for Tess Gerritsens book - Well less than halfway through this book and I was thinking 'am I reading a crime thriller or a Mills & Boon!?’. But I had an interesting response from the author about this review; "It actually is an old Mills and Boon Book, re-released years after Gerritsen became successful with her later medical thrillers. You might want to check out the entry on this topic over at
http://www.tessgerritsen.com/blog/yes-its-a-romance-please-stop-bashing-me-over-it/"
So, upshot is if you want a thriller read books published after 1997!

Tom Rob Smith - Child 44

Review by Maggie Perkovic on show 18th Feb.
This book was first reviewed by Malcolm Martland last year on the show and although he was not a great fan I thought I might like the historical content of Russia after the defeat of the Zsar and the life under Stalin's rule.
In Stalin's Soviet Union, crime does not exist but still millions live in fear. The mere suspicion of disloyalty to the state, the wrong word at the wrong time can send an innocent person to his execution.
Officer Leo Demidov, an idealistic war hero believes he's building a perfect society but after witnessing the interrogation of an innocent man his loyalty begins to waiver and when he is ordered to investigate his own wife, Raisa, Leo is forced to choose where his heart truly lies.
Then the impossible happens. A murderer is on the loose, killing at will and every belief Leo has ever held is shattered. Denounced by his enemies and exiled from home, with only Raisa by his side, he must risk everything to find the criminal that the state won't even admit exists. On the run Leo soon discovers the danger is not from the killer he is trying to catch but from the country he is trying to protect.
That is the blurb on the back cover and I must admit the opening chapter where a very thin pet cat is killed in a rather unpleasant way for food, I must add, did not endear me to the following chapters.
I have read the 'Russian Concubine' and the 'Concubines Secret' with all the ensuing "blood and guts" but this book seems to me to almost glory in the descriptive killing scenes!!
We all know that of many countries Russia has suffered a lot. Its people have starved, they have been used and abused but in this book I found it very hard to sympathise with the characters and that is wrong. Despite an intelligent and atmospheric book without that empathy with the characters the story fails.
'The Secret Speech' by Tom Rob Smith appears as an extract at the end of this book. It features Leo, Raisa and two young girls orphaned by the state when their parents were accused of helping an enemy of the state, he and his wife are now their guardians and yet they blame him for their parents death!!
Maybe someone might review this at a later date??
Review by Maggie

footnote from show host: In an interview with the author he was asked about this book and this was his comment (taken from Amazon.co.uk):
'It was inspired by a true story, a killer called Andrei Chikatilo who murdered over sixty children, girls, boys, over a period of ten years. Reading about the case I realized this wasn’t a criminal mastermind who’d evaded capture through devious skill. He’d gone on killing for so long because the system refused to admit he even existed. He should’ve been caught on numerous occasions but the prejudices of the State got in the way and, as a result, tragically, many children died. I felt such a tremendous sense of frustration reading about the events that I saw its potential as a piece of fiction. The real killer murdered in the 1980s. In Child 44 I moved the story back to the 1950s, when the stakes were much higher for someone who dared to risk opposing the State'.

New Years Eve show 2009

What was your favourite book of 2009 and least favourite? That was the question I put to my guests (Maggie Perkovic, Ro Bennett & Babs Simpson) and the listeners. Also visitors & possibly a local or two, logged their favourites throughout the year. So here's what my guests had to say:
Ro's favourite: Janet Evanovitch - Finger Lickin 15. Ro loves the humour of her books and looks forward to the next year when the follow on comes along.
Ro's least favourite: Susan Hill - The Beacon. The story was boring, the characters easily forgetable and the plot? It left Ro wondering what was that about?

Masggie's favourite: The Great Lover by Jill Dawson: Maggie loves this era early 1900's, and really enjoyed reading about Rupert Brooke, who was held up as a glamorous romantic poet,(see her review on this blog).
Maggie's least favourite: Jacky Trevane - Invisible women: Maggie enjoyed the first book 'Fatwa' but didn't enjoy this one as she felt it was just cashing in on other peoples tales.

Bab's favourite: Markus Zusak - The Book Thief: Death is a brilliant character in this very unusual book. It is beautifully written and set in the WW2 era which Babs loves. But on a par was 'Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary Society' written by Annie Barrows & Mary Ann Shaffer. Again set in 1940's during WW2 it told of the German Occupation of Guernsey through letters.
Bab's least favourite: Victoria Hislop - The Return: Babs loved the Island (based on a Cretan leper colony) but this book set during the Spanish civil war was a disappointment. I felt that I was reading an article from an encyclopaedia and the story around it was dull and predictable. I had to agree with Babs on this one!
Some listeners comments:
Steve Watt: Best Book - undoubtedly 'Wolf Hall' by Hilary Mantel A brilliant historical novel but I have to put a word in for Cormac McArthy's 'Border Trilogy' (see reviews in this blog). As for the worst I only managed the first three pages of 'The Lost Symbol' by Dan Brown - admirably and accurately described by the Guardian as 'a steaming pile of clunk.'

Ellie: best & worst both by same author Stephanie Meyer. Best, 'Eclipse', because it had a lot of action and bit of gore. Worst, 'New Moon',because nothing much happened in it.
Win Grant: Best book Hilary Mantel - Wolf Hall
Toby (St Martins Bakery): Jose Saramago - Blindness

Here's what the visitors said:
BOOK, AUTHOR & COMMENTS

Paul Torday - Salmon fishing in the Yemen: excellent read, unusual, reminds me of tv series 'yes misister'

Dodie Smith - I capture the Castle: My favourite book ever! Especially the bit with the escaped bear on the train

Jo Verity - Sweets From Morocco:I wrote it!

Edwar Cummings - Ghosts of Rosevear: Very interesting - and a good read too based on an island off St Agnes

Mark Haddon - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightime: About autisitic boy sometimes amusing & shocking, a real insight

Thomas Bloor - Worm in the Blood: Wonderful love story that shouldn't work but really does make me cry

Tom Rob-Smith - child 44: Gripping crime novel set in Stalinist Russia. Realistic and ultimately haunting

Ian Sansom - The Case of the Missing Books: Quicrky & humourus novel about a Jewish librarian who takes up a job in Ireland only to find all the books missing

John Connelly - Bad Men: Spooky crime thriller set on an island off the coast of Maine USA

Sue Monk Kidd - The Secret Life of Bees A wonderful story out of nowhere which sends you on a roller coaster of emotions but end up feel good. Set at the start of the 1960's civil rights movement.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez - 100 years of Solitude a complex & involving story of one family in South America. It slowly tells a potted history of the continent as seen through eccentric eyes.

Terry Pratchett - Unseen Academicals: Brilliant!

Stephanie Meyer - Twilight Saga: NEVER a fan of romance, but enjoyed Twilight! Currently curbing my obsession!

My favourite? Chris Cleave 'The Other Hand', it really made me stop and think differently about some of the plights of immigrants held in detention centres.
Worst: Spies of Warsaw by Alan Furst: boring & dull and I didn't care what happened to the characters (who were they anyway?).
Happy New Year to all! (definition of a hangover: Wrath of Grapes!)

Tom Rob Smith – The Farm

Review by showhost

This is the author of that great trilogy ‘child 44’.  This was an unusual format for a novel.  Daniels Parents when they retired, left England and bought an isolated farm in Sweden, the country where his mother, Tilde, was born.  The reason they said was to go back to basics and live off the land, being self-sufficient.

A phone call from his father shatters his life.  He tells Daniel that his mother is not well, she is dillusional, imagining and accusing people of terrible things and is in a mental hospital.  As Daniel makes plans to get to Sweden to find out what is going on his mother rings.  She has left the hospital and is on her way to him.  He is not to believe anything his father tells him, nor tell him that she is on her way to Heathrow.  She will explain everything when she sees him.

What follows through most of the book is a narrative of chronological events told by his mother, accompanied by pieces of evidence she has collected in her satchel.  She paints his father as being part of the conspiracy to have her institutionalised along with their neighbour Hakan.  Daniel has to decide who to believe.  There is a little change of scene half way through the story as they move location to evade his father, who has come to collect her. 

Daniel finally goes off to Sweden in search of the truth. 

This is totally different from Child 44.  Daniels partner is a bit player as well as his father really.  It is well written but strange and a strange ending.  I also found the conclusion with Mia a nothingness.

Tom Rob Smith – Child 44

Review by showhost

Story begins in 1933, Ukrain, Soviet Union.  People are dying of starvation, the animals are gone –all eaten.  People boil shoes, eat the bark off trees & even each other.

We jump to Moscow 1953.  Stalin has the country in a grip of fear, run by the state police, it is a brutal regime.  People are tortured/murdered if they speak out against the state or are accused of doing so.  People are still scraping around for food & living in hovels but crime does not exist, that is an order.  If a family is killed then it is for the good of the state, it is not a crime, it is necessary to keep order.

When the body of a young boy is discovered on the railway tracks in Moscow his family are convinced he has been murdered.  The boys father is an officer in the Malitia.  Leo, a high ranking officer in the state security, has been sent to convince the family otherwise.  But later events make Leo question this, he sees an innocent man interrogated and killed and then he is asked to follow & interrogate his own wife. .  His dissent has him disgraced and sent to the Ural mountains with his wife Raisa.  The discovery of another childs body with the same cause of death remind Leo of the boy in Moscow.  As Leo and his colleague start to ask in other towns a pattern of child murders, near railway tracks & woods, begins to immerge.  Leo begins to think the unthinkable, that there is a murderer killing children for no reason – a serial killer.   The state need to silence Leo before he causes anarchy.

This story is connected with real events.  It is a disturbing but addictive thriller.  It portrays excellently the terror and hardship that the Stalin regime inflicted upon the Soviet people and what a dictatorship was like.  It’s an amazing book.

Tom Rob Smith - Agent 6 (and the trilogy as a whole)

Review by showhost july 2015

This is the final book in the trilogy which started with Child 44 and now I have finished it I feel bereft of a good intelligent,read!   All three books have the lead character Leo Demidov, a Russian agent, former KGB and his wife and adopted children. The trilogy starts in 1933, Ukrain, Soviet Union.  People are dying of starvation, the animals are gone –all eaten.  People boil shoes, eat the bark off trees & even each other.  Story jumps to Moscow 1953. and Stalins rule is brutally portrayed in this thrilling book, as Leo the in the secret police looks for a child murderer, against state protocol.

 Second in the trilogy is The Secret Speech.  The year is now 1956 and Stalin is dead.  The country is in turmoil with Kruschev writing a secret speech denouncing what the Stalin authority had done to its citizens (this is referring to Nikita Krushchev's indictment of Stalin at the CPSU Congress in 1956).  This causes riots within the prisons and the criminal element become the hunters and the named officers who carried out the tortures under Stalins rule, becoming the hunted.  The book also takes us back to 1949, to Leo as he was, a ruthless agent hunting those who speak out against the state.  To the events which started to prick at his conscience and to the reason he is being hunted by the underground movement and there is a danger to his wife and adopted children.  But he is also fighting to win the support of one of his children who turns against him and fights with those opposed to him.

Agent 6 is an addictive page turner with the action back where it belongs   It goes back to 1950 Russia, Leo is in the Secret Police.  American negro singer Jesse Austin who is a Communist and a key figure to the plot, has come to Russia.  Leo’s job is to keep an eye on him and try to make sure he only sees the Russia the government want Jesse Austin to see.  Leo also finds the diary of a young artist, who is subsequently arrested and punished after he reports his find.

Fifteen years later Leo, his wife Raisa and their two adopted daughters are living in a cramped apartment.  Raisa and their two daughters are leaving for America. Raisa is leading a diplomatic mission and has organized a concert in New York - a joint choir of Russian & USA school children.  Unexpectedly their daughter Elena wants to go.  Leo can’t go as he is not allowed out of Russia, he is not now a secret agent.  When he finds Elena’s diary his initial reaction is to read it but he stops himself as that was what he would have done in his former life, a life he has left behind.  Had he given in to the impulse, he would have forbidden his daughter to go and stopped the chain of events which are about to unfold.

On American soil we meet unsavoury FBI agent Jim Yates who is another central figure to the plot.  The Russians try to get Jesse Austin, a broken man since his Russia visit, to attend the concert but he is warned by the FBI what might happen to him if he does.  Tragedy happens in America with espionage and counter-espionage. 

The change of events is sudden and dramatic and what follows is Leo's journey to reach America to avenge the tragedy.   Leo is sent to Afghanistan to train communist agents.  Leo has immersed himself in Opium and work.  He attempted to get to USA once but failed.  The Opium is the only way he can live in the present.   He lives in squalor.  But there is finally a way to reach America - as a spy !  Finally he may learn the true events of that fateful day in New York and who Agent 6 really is.

This is a story of political intrigue, political change and it’s effect on the people and Leo's unconditional love for Raisa and his daughters. 

Of all the three books Secret Speech is the weakest.  Maybe it was overly political and had Leo living through the kind of torture that would kill anyone else let alone be fit enough to fight back and escape.  Don’t get me wrong I still enjoyed it but not as much as first and last in trilogy.  But what a read.