Book Review: Slam by Nick Hornby

"Slam" is an amusing insight into the life of a teenager who is cruising through life, happy with his lot, until a small mistake changes his life forever. Nick Hornby is well-known for his books in which he writes about the feelings and emotions of the characters dealing with the type of situations that effect every day people and in Slam he does an incredible job of writing in the narrative of a teenager obsessed with skate-boarding.

This story is about how the main character, Sam, has to deal with the consequences of his actions as he is dealt with the problems of a man while still a teenager - the increasingly familiar issue of teenage pregnancy. What is interesting in this book is how Sam's perception of living with the consequences of his actions contrast with an alternative version of what could happen and how Sam, in the absence of a father figure, turns for life advice to the unlikely guru-like figure of the skater Tony Hawk.

Book Review: Whatever Loves Means by David Baddiel

Author, David Baddiel, sets his novel, "Whatever Love Means", during the hysteria surrounding the death of Princess Diana, in 1997, where a difference of opinion on how this historical event affects people's everyday lives drives the initial wedge between a married couple that begins a process in which, ultimately, several close relationships are utterly destroyed.

Played out to the backdrop of a national event in which many people try their best to turn into their own personal tragedy, a real rupture occurs in the life of Joe and his family as his wife dies in mysterious circumstances leaving him with their small child to look after. Not prepared to accept the official account of the circumstances of his wife's death Joe delves further into the tragedy only to find that he has been terribly let down by all of those who were closest to him.

Book Review: The World According to Bertie by Alexander McCall Smith

The "44 Scotland Street" novels are one of the series of books that Alexander McCall Smith is known for and this is the fourth installment. Set in Edinburgh the reader follows a snapshot of the lives of the inhabitants of Scotland Street, with the young Bertie as a central character, a boy who is unfortunate enough to have an over-protective and over-ambitious mother pushing him into music classes and yoga lessons when all he wants to do is be a normal little boy.

The strength of this book lies in the characters. Seldom have I read a book with so many interesting and unusual characters that quickly make the reader want to know more about them and find out where their story is going to end up; the art dealer and his new girlfriend the teacher, the Jacobites, the woman whose father "buys" her a husband and little Bertie himself. Unfortunately, this leads to the major weakness of this book; the reader never gets very deep into any of the characters lives, they are spread rather thinly through the book and not one of them has their narrative concluded. In other words there is no plot at all.

Book Review: Martyr by Rory Clements

Rory Clements' first novel, Martyr, is an intriguing crime thriller set in Elizabethan England. John Shakespeare is one of Francis Walsingham's Intelligencers, charged with tracking down Catholics and protecting Sir Francis Drake as England approaches war with Spain. In this novel Shakespeare investigates the mysterious death of one of the Queen's relatives and this drags him into the murky underworld of London and pits him against another of the Queen's powerful agents.

I have been a fan of detective novels since reading Sherlock Holmes as a teenager but have grown slightly tired of the standard crime novel recently so this mystery with an Elizabethan twist was a nice change. In this period there are no need for arrest warrants, information can be extracted through torture and threats while suspects can go missing without trace in the squalid prison system. The reader will find no subtle and scientific inquiry methods here, just rudimentary investigative skills, brutality and corruption; a wonderful change from jaded cops and high-tech forensic experts.

Book Review: Siege by Jack Hight

Siege is author, Jack Hight's, first novel, a fictional dramatization of the real-life siege and consequent fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Empire in 1453. In this novel historical characters are portrayed in the years preceding the battle of Constantinople and ultimately in the battle for the city itself as well as the aftermath.

This book tells this historical tale from several years before the events of the battle and the author builds the political intrigue in a manner full of suspense. The opening chapters of the book also introduce a set of characters that the reader can believe in, as well as care about, on both the Christian and Islamic factions that are a part of these events. Even though the events preceding the battle perhaps occupy a little too much of this book, this part of the novel is well-written and the reader becomes engrossed in the small events that shape the lives of the main protagonists.

Book Review: Beatrice & Virgil by Yann Martel

In Beatrice and Virgil author, Yann Martel, introduces the reader to a writer who has become famous for a novel that is about animals but finds producing his follow-up book too much of a challenge for him, particularly as his plans are for a novel that takes an original perspective on the holocaust. After rejection from his publisher Henry decides to move his family to another city for a fresh start and it is there that, as unlikely as it may seem, he meets another writer who is struggling to write his own allegorical representation of the holocaust using animals in the form of a play.

I am a great fan of Yann Martel's most famous book, The Life of Pi, so with that in mind I was looking forward to enjoying another piece of masterful storytelling from this author, particularly given the original and unlikely premise; unfortunately I read Beatrice and Virgil instead.

Book Review: Tooth & Nail by Ian Rankin

Tooth and Nail is one in the series of novels by Ian Rankin featuring the character Inspector Rebus. Scottish detective Rebus is summoned to New Scotland Yard, in London, to help catch a serial killer, named by the media "The Wolfman". At first Rebus struggles with the investigation and this is not helped by the frosty reception he is given by his new colleagues but when he makes a couple of allies he gets on the trail of the killer and rather than wait to react to the crimes he attempts to provoke the killer into providing some clues.

This book, refreshingly, does not fall into the many cliches that are often found in serial killer novels. The reader will find themselves eager to learn about the main characters as they are developed in the early part of the story whilst at the same time the fundamentals of the investigation are outlined. The investigation proceeds as more killings occur and some help from an unexpected source adds the mystery and finally the twist that readers come to expect from a detective/thriller novel.