The stories are indeed rather special and they develop the crime genre in a fascinating direction. Owen Keane fulfils many of the roles of a priest – he offers pastoral care to his “parishioners” and feels an imperative to save or rescue them. More often than not, it is he who decides when and how to offer help, responding to a need that is not apparent to others.
Category: Book Reviews
Book Reviews
A review of A Pocketful of Noses: Stories of One Ganelon or Another by James Powell
All twelve are solid detective stories, the solutions often hingeing on a new understanding of the original situation, an inconspicuous fact being recognised as crucially significant. However, it is the entertaining historical background that Powell provides for San Sebastiano which raises these tales above the rest.
A review of Aphelion by Emily Ballou
Ballou has created a much more complex novel in Aphelion than in Father Lands, but it’s no more difficult to read as a result. The complexity of time, place and multiple view points is dealt with sensitively and with a sophistication that is always tempered by Ballou’s great love of character and language, and an undercurrent of enduring humour that’s never far beneath the surface.
A review of The Do-Nothing Boys by Tony Nesca
Some of this novel is clumsy and a little repetitive, but the ferocity of Nesca’s writing is indomitable and covers weaknesses with something that approaches indisputable glory. He is a poet writing prose and dealing with material that is so close to him that he often struggles to manage it objectively. It is raw honesty from one of life’s damaged angels and worth your attention.
A review of De la Bourdonnais versus MacDonnell, 1834 by Cary Utterberg
Summing up, De la Bourdonnais versus McDonnell, 1834 is both a wonderful tribute to the two outstanding chess players of the early nineteenth century and a worthy record of a match series whose importance has been too much neglected and too little recognized.
A review of Future Perfect by Robyn Williams
With a hefty dose of humour, the reader is encouraged to consider the impact of what we do today on how the future might look. While the book isn’t didactic, and is often jocular, Williams makes it clear that whether or not the human race survives, and in what shape, is something that we have to imagine and work towards.
A review of The Unknown Capablanca by David Hooper and Dale Brandreth
Overall, this is an excellently researched book which presents a welcome (and a considerable: 208 games!) selection of Capablanca’s minor masterpieces.There is an index of endgames, along with the usual indices of players and openings: a helpful feature.
A review of The Happiest Days of Our Lives by Wil Wheaton
I’ve been reading his blog for so long now that calling him Wheaton, or Mr. Wheaton is just as odd as trying to call my junior high teachers by their first names now that I’ve grown. From that standpoint, The Happiest Days of Our Lives reads for me less as an autobiography than as stories being swapped over beers by a couple of old friends remembering the Good Old Days.
A review of Making Money by Terry Pratchett
Pratchett shows his usual flair – wonderfully Dickensian – for names. Lipwig’s girlfriend, a very abrasive young woman, is Adora Belle Dearheart. And the fun gathers in the last quarter of the book to reward the persistence of the reader.
A review of Long Afternoon of the World by Graeme Kinross-Smith
The photographs become everyone’s close people. The times and places become our own memories of what we’ve known, and been and where we’ve ended. It is, indeed, a long afternoon – and at the end of it is evening. Though this isn’t a fast novel to read, nor does it leave the reader with a denouement in any sense. Yet it is both beautiful, and powerful in its ability to draw out, like a great poem, the core meaning of a moment.