At last, two solid books! But immediately, I am plagued by doubt – both of these were written in my lifetime, so to what extent am I simply a victim of circumstance? Had I been born 30 years earlier, would the novels of the 70s be hitting more of a personal sweet spot? I have such doubts as to the worthiness of my ranking! And yet, having set myself the task, I must solider on.
Mick Herron’s Dead Lions and Patricia Cornwell’s Cruel and Unusual won the Gold Dagger in 2013 and 1993, respectively, but despite that they both seem to be wholly modern (with one exception I will come to). Rather than time, it is their tones that set them apart. Dead Lions is very much the updated spy thriller – rather than a single super-agent in a tux, Herron has multiple points of view from his team of agents, all of whom are human, with very human failings; in fact, the concept of the whole series is that the particular agents we follow are the dregs of MI5. Led by Jackson Lamb, a disgusting but incredibly effective spy, they careen around London solving an extremely convoluted mystery that twists multiple times in multiple directions. Jackson’s perfect comprehension of the situation is never in doubt, so the real tension if it the rag-tag team of would-be spies can get their acts together enough to keep up with him. Herron does a solid job juggling half a dozen characters, but they do tend to feel cut-and-paste at times, with a different personal issue filled in to their own particular MadLib character sheet. The quips in particular sounds as if they all come from the same mouth, and as quips are frequently used by Herron to end conversations, it begins to feel like all our POV chapters are a hive mind talking to itself. Nonetheless, the pacing holds true, building slowly but constantly before it comes to a close in the last few pages.
Some of Herron’s plotting devices (a non-existent cat and mouse) as exposition tools feels a bit easy, like he was tired after writing the core of the novel and wanted to give himself an easy intro and outro. Similarly, there are some guns very clearly being put on mantelpieces for the continuation of the series. I believe there are something like half a dozen Jackson Lamb books at this point, and I suspect they would make quite decent spy movies if someone got around to it. It feels, indeed, that they were written in a very cinematic style. We are given no insight into the thought processes of Lamb himself – as he is always three steps ahead, doing so would ruin the plot for the readers – so his dialogue is what we hang on the most. The other characters, less interesting (boozed out secretary, tough lesbian, stereotype subverting Black man, anti-social super-techie Asian man, and so on), die or fight as needed to keep things moving, but Lamb’s grappling with the puzzle is the key piece – without the mystery element, this would be a mediocre thriller at best. The final few scenes where (surprise, surprise) it all comes together are fun to watch resolve, but were so elaborate, and for so little reason (yes, the clues were planted early, but the stakes, once revealed, failed to make my jaw drop) that it became almost academic. Nonetheless, there is promise here, and I suspect I might pick up some more Jackson Lamb in the future.
Patricia Cornwell is more inscrutable. Cruel and Unusual is one of her Scarpetta series, captained by the eponymous Dr. Kay Scarpetta, a medical examiner (and also lawyer) in Virginia. It’s clear that Cruel and Unusual is well into the middle of the series, at least, from the slightly confusing detritus of previous plots that washes up – sometimes explained, sometimes not – every few chapters. Dr. Scarpetta has killed someone in self-defense, her boyfriend died when a bomb went off, she had a bad relationship that somehow impacted her relationship with her niece, and so on. It’s not that those complexities spoil the novel, it’s that the character herself is really quite…boring. She is clearly extremely intelligent, she has quite a cast of characters around her (Cornwell’s world-building feels more lived in and deep than Herron’s, but it might be down to practice), the plot setup is solid – and yet Kay herself seems pale and transparent as a character. She speaks like a robot, her actions are thoroughly predictable, and while her core is built of admirable ideals she still comes off like lukewarm dishwater. It’s every around her that does the heavy lifting, she seems to simply show up and ask questions that they then answer. She helps synthesize the answers, but it feels more like a dot-matrix printer spitting out a page that an emotional climax.
Cruel and Unusual also hasn’t aged well in several ways. There’s some casual racism about Black people, particularly in the beginning, that is jarring. A victim’s father doesn’t trust Black people; Dr. Scarpetta idly notices to herself that a neighborhood used to be white and upscale – she doesn’t finish the thought but it’s crystal clear how the reader should complete it; the Black death row inmate around whom much of the plot centers seems like a caricature (dumb, rural, immediately became a drunken addict upon exposure to the city, brutally murdered a beautiful white woman). Cornwell also turns the volume up to 11 when it comes to using a character’s word choice and grammar to indicate class. The rough detective who is touchingly devoted to Dr. Scarpetta frequently says “Yo.” in answer to questions, and conjugates perhaps half of his verbs correctly. The precocious niece is perhaps the most annoying character in the book. Before I criticize, I have to see this is, in part, because her area of expertise – technology – has not aged well. The niece understands UNIX, at a time when SQL was an advanced programming language, and so becomes our source of technobabble. Fiercely intelligent, the core idea of the character is sound enough, if already a bit hackneyed, but the execution made me wince periodically – either she was spelling out how tables are connected in the fingerprint database, or she was being our source of exposition for how Scarpetta really felt despite her icy exterior. After a fair amount of time and emotion is spent on this relationship, the niece is subsequently dumped like an overstuffed garbage bag when it comes time for the plot to move on. Then again, this could be my own bias talking! These characters and their relationships may well have been the best thing going, at the time. What I now see as off-the-shelf secondary characters might have been early generations who, copied dozens of times over, I saw on televisions and in other books influenced by this one. I can judge Cruel and Unusual on an absolute basis, but I feel duty-bound to acknowledge that 20-odd years ago, this might have been cutting edge stuff (and indeed, the pieces of the plot involving UNIX probably were!).
As my updated rankings demonstrate, these are solid books, even if Cornwell’s entry feels a bit dated. More to the point, they are both parts of series, meaning that so far 4 of my top 5 books star protagonists that return at least once more. I wonder if this is my penchant for worldbuilding making itself known: I suspect that authors going for a series spend that extra time shaping the ninety percent of the iceberg below the surface in ways that we pick up on subtly. More secondary characters, more relationships, more history – it adds a depth and flavor that is hard to imitate. Also, as satisfying as the mysteries are, when the puzzle is solved it’s nice to imagine that characters who have won us over have a future to walk into, a world of their own beyond being our avatars in a satisfying but brief logical quest. Lots more reviews to come – I wonder if series will continue their dominance of the rankings!
Updated ranking:
- Dick Francis – Whip Hand
- Mick Herron – Dead Lions
- Patricia Cornwell – Cruel and Unusual
- Ruth Rendell – A Demon in My View
- James McClure – Steam Pig
- The Rage
- Monkey Puzzle
- Skin Deep (not recommended)
smq.world 