SINGLE & SINGLE - Book review

John le Carré’s novel Single & Single was published in 1999 and deals with the world of finance after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, though of course it’s much more than that!

It begins in the present (1998) with Mr Wisner, a lawyer who worked for the finance company the House of Single & Single, facing the gun-toting Alix Hoban in Turkey. Wisner is aware that Hoban is affiliated to the Single firm and cannot understand why he is being held at gunpoint. It’s no spoiler to record that Wisner is shot dead (since it’s in the blurb!) A bit of a mystery.

Another mystery is in the form of Oliver Hawthorne. He’s is a peripatetic magic man, a conjuror, but there seems something unusual about his identity and past. He is wanted urgently by his bank manager (they had them in 1998, apparently).

Other mysteries include a Russian freighter being arrested and boarded in the Black Sea. And the disappearance of the Head of Single & Single, ‘Tiger’ Single, father of Oliver.

Mysterious Nat Brock is called in to investigate Mr Wisner’s purported suicide. He is not what he seems, a British Customs Officer...

Four years earlier, Oliver absconded from the firm of Single & Single when he discovered that his father was involved in financial chicanery with the Russian underworld, including money laundering and the dubious sale of Russian blood transfusions to America: ‘Human Blood is a Commodity – US Federal Trade Commission, 1966’) His conscience wouldn’t permit him to continue in the business, so he, ‘the idealist, the walk-in of all time’ contacts Brock...

Brock uses Oliver undercover and debriefs him when he can. ‘He had a priestly tone for these occasions. It went with a deep-felt sense of caring. When you take on a joe, you take on his problems, he would preach to his newcomers. You’re not Machiavelli, you’re not James Bond, you’re the over-worked welfare officer who’s got to hold everybody’s life together or somebody will run amok’ (p203).

‘Wasn’t that awful for you? Discovering your own dad was a crook and all?’ (p187). Reading this, I was reminded of Le Carré’s earlier masterpiece, A Perfect Spy, whose titular character, Rick Pym, was based on Le Carré’s own father, Ronald Cornwell. There’s the same love-hate relationship between father and son, and the exposure of flawed character.

Even though married with an estranged wife, Heather, and daughter, Oliver is not averse to carrying on an affair or two. His love-life might be described as ‘complicated’. ‘How is she, darling?’ Katrina cut in, with the special concern that mistresses evince for lovers’ wives’ (p213). Judging from the most recent revelations about his own affairs, the author definitely knew what he was talking about...

Oliver has returned from hiding to discover the whereabouts of his father. Not only for himself, but also to help Brock. It's a story of betrayal and redemption.

There are plenty of telling phrases and paragraphs one comes to expect from Le Carré, such as:

‘His eyes were water-pale and empty, and it was the emptiness that scared her: the knowledge that whatever amount of kindness anyone poured into them it was wasted. He could be watching his own mother dying, he wouldn’t look any different, she thought’ (p287). And: ‘Tractors sticking like slugs to their smear-trails’ (p322). And also: ‘White stubble grew where his brown hair had been, and it had spread over his cheeks and jaw in a downy silver dust’ (p3223).

And there are many varied characters to engage the reader’s attention throughout, not least Brock himself, his wing-woman Aggie, the beautiful but fragile wife of Hoban who is attracted to Oliver, the Russian dealers Mirsky and Yevgeny.

Considerable exposition is thrown into Chapter Seven, with lengthy unrealistic speech paragraphs, which slows down the narrative and causes the eyelids to drop...

Le Carré nearly always tends to play with the tenses. For this book, the narrative is past historic when detailing what is happening ‘now; for the flashbacks, he employs the present tense to depict past events and conversations!

The ending is tense and full of suspense (though not as good as The Night Manager in that regard) but I found it a little rushed. On the whole, however, it was a satisfying read.

Book review - Leviathan (Erast Fandorin #3)

Boris Akunin’s third Erast Fandorin adventure Leviathan was published in 1998, English translation from the Russian by Andrew Bromfield, 2004.  I read and enjoyed his first adventure, The Winter Queen in October, 2004. The second book in the series is The Turkish Gambit.

Fandorin started out as a police detective, and then worked for the secret police, and in this book he’s a diplomat, destined for service in Japan.

Leviathan possesses several idiosyncratic features. It begins with notes from French police commissioner Gauche’s file, regarding the mass murder of ten individuals in a Parisian mansion. Then there’s a medical report concerning the deaths – all but one being poisoned. A statuette of the Indian god Shiva was stolen, together with a painted shawl. The owner of the house, Lord Littleby was bludgeoned to death. Next, we have two press cuttings – one of which reveals that the statuette is found… A single clue suggests that the murderer would be a passenger on the luxury British steamship Leviathan sailing from Southampton to Calcutta. Gauche booked passage.

Gauche deduces that the criminal he seeks is one of the following: Sir Reginald Milford-Stokes, exhibiting signs of mental aberration; Mr Aono, a Japanese nobleman, silent and diffident; Mrs Renate Kleber, a pregnant wife of a Swiss banker en route to join her husband; Miss Clarissa Stamp, a newly rich English spinster; Mr Truffo, the ship’s chief physician; Mr Sweetchild, an opinionated Indologist; Mr Boileau, a tea trader and philanthropist; and, finally, the Russian diplomat, Fandorin.

The story is told from the point of view of a number of characters: Gauche himself (third person narrative), Milford-Stokes writing first person to his absent wife, Renate Kleber and Clarissa Stamp (both third person), Mr Aono (printed in two columns sideways on, no doubt to suggest the first person diary entries are written in Japanese [gimmicky, but not distracting]).

To be expected, there are other deaths and suspicion builds. There are revelations, and some poignant tales to tell. Gauche comes across as a bombastic self-important detective (‘It was possible to tell a great deal about a man from his moustache’) (p26) who tends to arrive at the wrong theories, often corrected by the imperturbable Fandorin.

Akunin captures the period – it’s 1878 – and the opulence of the steamship. ‘The breakfast served on the Leviathan was not some trifling Continental affair, but the genuine full English variety: with roast beef, exquisite egg dishes, blood pudding and porridge.’ (p43) He also reveals Mr Aono’s culture with great effect – which is not surprising since under his real name the author is an expert on Japan, has translated Japanese and served as the editor-in-chief of the 20-volume Anthology of Japanese Literature.

He exhibits a fine eye for detail and imagery, too. ‘in the flickering lightning the rain glittered like steel threads in the night sky, and the waves frothed and foamed white in the darkness. It was an awesome night.’ (p188)

The set-up, the mix of characters and the crime itself echo Agatha Christie, and this is not surprising since Akunin apparently set out to write Fandorin novels in every sub-genre of the detective novel. His first was a conspiracy, his second a spy case, his third this Agatha Christie homage, and so on. He has identified sixteen sub-genres, in all, and has written fourteen so far. In addition, he wanted to create different types of human characters. Indeed, the Wikipedia entry for Grigol Chkhartishvili (Boris Akunin) makes fascinating reading in itself.

In the entry List of best-selling books the Erast Fandorin series has sold in excess of copies. Typically, a new book in the series sells about 200,000 copies in the first week.

Interview on another blog

Thank you, Jeff Gardiner for inviting me over to your blog today!

Here it is:

Guest interview with an excerpt in a Russian psychiatric prison...
https://jeffgardiner.wordpress.com/2015/02/23/nik-morton-protagonist-in-jeopardy/

Torn from the news – ‘human trafficking’

Slavery is still with us, over a hundred years after it was ‘abolished’. Human trafficking is one unpalatable aspect of this international crime. It provides one strand to the convoluted network run by el Jefe in my thriller Blood of the Dragon Trees published by Crooked Cat Publishing.

 The work to fight these gangs is never-ending, as this report from the Costa Blanca News dated 7 August, 2009 testifies.

 

Book excerpt:

Anton Belofsky was a Russian oligarch, who enjoyed life and shared his good fortune with the beautiful people. His lavish lifestyle meant that he always kept an eye out for more ways to make money. This was his eighth visit to Tenerife in a year and each time he’d been paid handsomely for his trouble. After the fourth time, Customs became suspicious and decided he must be a drug smuggler. They gave his luxury cruiser Mara a thorough going-over but found nothing, and in fact spent a great deal of time and money replacing damaged furniture and locks. Some of the male customs officers had been very apologetic, possibly because Anton surrounded himself with up to ten beautiful women. Anton suspected that they lingered over their searches so they could ogle the scantily-clad women longer. No matter, his merchandize was unharmed and vastly profitable.

            This journey was no exception. As the cruiser approached Santa Cruz, he lounged on the plush leather couch on the stern upper deck and spoke with a nasal twang into his handset. ‘Nicolai, I want to examine the merchandize one last time.’

            ‘Very good, sir.’

            Moments later, Sorina climbed up the steps and offered him a smile. Her small round face was angelic, while her diminutive figure was the complete opposite; the voluptuous curves hardly contained in the red bikini suggesting demonic passion. She sent his pulse racing. ‘Very good, my dear.’ She was Romanian and didn’t understand English, Spanish or Russian, but she nodded at his gentle tone. She walked a little unsteadily in her red high heels and sat in an ungainly manner on the couch next to him. ‘You probably require a little more decorum. But you’ll do.’

            Next stepped out Gayla, big boned yet slim, with angular hips and a thick moist mouth. She wore a green swimsuit that tantalized with its many cutaways, revealing pale flesh in unexpected places.

And so the parade went on – Elena, Ludmila, Annika, Dorotea, Sofia, Pia, Tena and Lia. Ten women – from Greece, Italy, Russia, Romania and Sweden – smuggled in on false papers to provide pleasure for men with money.

Ten expensive women.

            Surrounded by his merchandize, Anton chewed his thumbnail and his thin lower lip turned down. Well, nine expensive women, he allowed. He must save one for el Jefe, as usual.

            ‘Sir,’ said Nicolai on the intercom, ‘Customs have radioed – they want to come onboard when we get alongside.’

            Belofsky snickered. ‘I bet they do – just to get an eyeful of our pretty women!’

- Blood of the Dragon Trees, (pp25-26)

 

 

Buy it from Amazon UK here

Buy it from Amazon com here

UK Kindle here

 

Amazon com Kindle here