Review: Raven Black by Ann Cleeves

If you saw the recent BBC drama Shetland you might find Ann Cleeves's Raven Black confusing. Clearly part of the TV programme was based on it, but it seems that maybe two books were combined. It was the drama production that convinced me to try this novel. I enjoyed the show immensely and thought the characters were worth more attention.  I wasn’t wrong. The brooding scenery and the intensity of island relationships come across very well.  There was enough emphasis on detective Jimmy Perez’s position as an outsider – a Fair Isle man making a living on Shetland – to highlight the oppression of living in a community where everyone else has always known your business.

At least I finally got an explanation of why a Fair Isler had a name like Perez in the first place! I just wish I hadn’t spent the whole read swinging from parts I recognised to a completely new tale.  And I was stuck with Douglas Henshall's face as the main character. Not that I’m complaining. It’s a perfectly fine face, but I probably wouldn’t have cast him if I’d read before I viewed.

If you didn’t see the programme you will have no problems at all with this well crafted and well written tale. Cleeve’s writing is tight and easy to read.  The plot is convincing and the killer’s motives are justifiable (in crime writing terms) .  There are sufficient red herrings among the genuine clues and a smattering of old Shetland history and culture woven among the details of a more universal crime.

The book opens with two young girls on their way home after a New Year night on the town, visiting an old man to wish him well for the coming year. He has been a recluse since the death of his mother and is distrusted by the locals for his suspected part in the unsolved disappearance of a young girl many years before.  When one of the girls is later found strangled in the snow near his house the rumours begin.
Since I knew the TV version of the story I can’t tell you whether you’ll see the ending coming or not. I suspect you might. But it doesn’t really matter if you do. Read the book for the atmosphere and enjoyment of it. You won’t be sorry.

Thursday extracts: Pratchett and names

Whenever I write, one of my biggest challenges comes in finding believable names for my characters. I sometimes stoop to wandering around churchyards looking for suitable contributions from headstones.  Terry Pratchett has no such problem. The names he creates are instantly recognisable, even when they are totally insane.  In Dodger, his latest novel, the story is set in Dickensian London, and the dramatis personae includes some wonderfully descriptive names.

The dog is called Onan, by the way. I had to look that one up.

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Some of the lads and lasses were drinking outside the Gunner's Daughter, sitting on the old barrels, bundles of rope, hopeless piles of rotting wood and all the other debris of the riverside. Sometimes it seemed to Dodger that the city and the river were simply all the same creature except for the fact tht some parts were a lot more soggy than others. 

Right now, in this tangled, smelly but usually cheerful disarray, he recognised Bent Henry, Lucy Diver, One-Armed-Dave, Preacher, Mary-Go-Round, Messy Bessie and Mangle.

Dodger
Terry Pratchett
2012

Tree Time

It's Christmas again. That means the house will be in turmoil and nothing will be in its proper place and I shan't be able to find anything and afterwards I shall have to spend simply ages putting everything back in order. It's always me that has to do it. The others think it doesn't matter, that everything will be here somewhere and it's not like we ever really need to look a long way for things that have been put somewhere different. It's not like it's a big home.

Well I know that, and I'd not want to live anywhere bigger. It's cosy. We've been together a long while, and the sparkle might be a bit worn off since the old days but we're comfortable together. Him and me and the kids.

I remember the first time we met: that Christmas long ago. I fell for him straight away, in his red suit and his polished black boots. He winked and said my wings were beautiful, and called me his Angel. He's such a charmer.

Now we celebrate every year, on the tree, surrounded by friends and relations. It's not a bad life, even if I shall have to tidy the whole shelf when we get back in the New Year.

Oh well, here we go, it's time to shine.
Merry Christmas to all.
Love from the Bauble Family.

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My latest Thinking Ten contribution

Bravado

I'm back on Thinking Ten. It's got my creative juices going again, although so far I've not come up with anything that continues from the previous day's creation. But these four lads have appeared before.

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“Well this is a right wash-out if you ask me.”


That was Alan; always the first to complain about anything.

“Well no-one did, so shut it.”

Simmo. Putting an end to Alan’s whinge before it got out of hand; probably protecting Baz from feeling guilty. He was good like that. It had been Baz’s idea to sneak out from home, tell all the parents that we were staying at someone else’s house, but sleep out in the old shed on the allotment. He said it would be a laugh and we were all quick enough to agree, but none of us was quick enough to think it through. We had no food, no drink, no light, not even warm clothes, and it was freezing. Not to mention that we’d broken the shed window two weeks ago trying to get inside the place.

Nigel saved us in the end.

“Let’s go to mine. Mother won’t care if I say you guys are crashing on the floor for the night. You can all say honestly that you’ve got permission.”

Baz didn’t look too keen at first but he perked up at Nigel’s next announcement.

“There’ll be cocoa, and biscuits. And Dad brought that new street fight game home today and I’ve not had chance to try it yet.”

So we all trooped off to Nigel’s place, trying to look like we planned it that way.

Don't give up your day job

A computer expert in Florida has designed a program that is capable of writing stories. But don't panic, all your scribes out there: it doesn't write very good ones.

The software, called Xapagy, has been loaded with a lot of existing tales, translated into a language it can understand, then asked to create new writing of its own.  At first it was given a section of a known tale, such as Red Riding Hood, then asked to predict what came next.

Anyone who was taught English by a creative teacher in the 60s will be familiar with that technique. Xapagy looks for familiar connections within the given script, and uses them to create the next stage of the narrative. Here's an example of its work:

"My, what a big mouth you have Grandma," says Little Red Riding Hood, with just a hint of suspicion. The wolf sneezes. "Bless you," says the little girl.

The idea of the program is to improve the design of future robots; to make artifical intelligence more human and therefore more user-friendly. Experts predict that eventually it will be able to make up its own stories, once it has a large enough store of existing ones.

Xapagy's tale is told in the December 8 edition of New Scientist. I had to check that it wasn't from April.
The programmer's name? Lotzi Bölöni.

Weather

“There’s no such thing as bad weather. Only the wrong kind of clothing.”

We all turned to look at Nigel as he spoke the words, various expressions of disbelief on our faces.

“What a supremely stupid comment, you stupid fart,” came the reply, “Who the hell told you that bit of crap?” The speaker was Alan, by far the sportiest of the gang and probably the most put out by our current state. He could hardly sit still for a couple of minutes, let alone the fifteen we had been trapped inside the hut by the torrential downpour outside.

He shook his head again to try to rid himself of the rivulets running from his thick, curly hair and down his face, but he only succeeded in splattering everyone around him. A chorus of disapproving hails rose up in reaction and he got up and tried to walk off his excess energy. It didn’t work though, because he could only make three strides before he had to turn around and come back to where we were sitting, hunched up near the front and eyeing the waterfall that was cascading off the roof.

“My Dad says that the right sort of clothing can overcome even the worst weather.”

“My Dad.” Heavy with sarcasm. “My Dad! If your dad’s so bloody clever how come you’re just as drenched as the rest of us then?” That was Simmo. Nigel was the last of our lot to have a dad still living at home, and Simmo resented him a bit for it. Simmo’s dad quit home and moved in with the local pub landlady a year ago after the old bloke died of alcohol poisoning. Simmo’s mum reckoned his dad was going the same way and good luck to him. I think her bitterness just rubbed off on him.

Before the argument had chance to take off, Baz stuck his nose in. Literally. He’d taken his glasses off for about the ninth time and he was polishing them on his t-shirt. He’s close to blind without them and the combination of rain outside and us indoors was making the shed kind of steamy so Baz’s specs kept misting over. He leaned forward so he was only a couple of inches from the others, just so he could see them, and said: “Must be good to have a choice of what to wear.” He was somewhere in the middle of eight brothers so he was always lumbered with stuff that didn’t fit the older ones any longer.

That made us all stop for a while and think, or at least shut up, and all you could hear was a roary sort of noise and the splashing just outside the door. We sat like that for ages, just staring at the rain and listening to that engine sound. Looked like it was going to be a long summer.

Is it Friday again already?

There’s something about the eventual arrival of Spring weather after a long and miserable winter that brings out the best and the worst in people. I’ve seen how everyone has a happier expression and they are smiling at each other again. But have you noticed how awful their pasty skin looks in such bright light?

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More words for the G-Man. He likes them in bundles of 55 every Friday. Go check them out.

FFF55. Weekend Father

“Please sit down.”
“No. Mummy doesn’t make us sit down.”
“I’m sure she does. Sit down!”
“Don’t have to.”
“If you don’t sit down you won’t get ice cream.”
“You’re mean.”
“People are getting annoyed with you.”
”Don’t care what people think. Mummy wouldn’t care about people.”
“Mummy never cared about anything much. Including us.”
 

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55 words for the G-Man. Based on something I saw a year or so ago.

FFF55. Victory

Will’s motorbike wasn’t very powerful, but he dreamed of winning races just as soon as he was old enough to ride a big machine. He regularly practised his victory salute in readiness for the day.
At the inquest the lorry driver said Will could not have swerved because he had his hands in the air.

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Another 55 words on a Friday for the G-Man.

February's a nothing time.....

"February's a nothing month isn't it?" she said, "Nothing ever happens in February."

Her boyfriend was quick with an answer: "The guy who inspired the book Robinson Crusoe was rescued in February.
"The first public toilet in London opened in February in the 1850s.
"Al Capone was sent to prison in February.
"Frank Sinatra began his singing career in February........"

As he continued listing off historical dates she thought ruefully to herself: "I was trying to remind you about Valentine's Day you idiot. Trust me to have an anorak for a boyfriend!"

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Not restricted to 55 words for a Friday or being extremely short for a small stone - a microfiction inspired by the date.

FFF55. Helen's dilemma

Helen took a deep breath and prepared to explain it again. Her fiancé was looking at her with a strange expression: slightly confused and slightly annoyed.
“This has nothing to do with women’s lib and equality. I’m just not going to take your name when we’re married. 
“I refuse to be known as Helen Highwater!”

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55 words every Friday for the G-Man!

FFF55. Billy

“Stupid man,” thought Billy ‘the Dip’ Jackson. The bloke didn’t have a clue. He’d been the perfect mark – clearly a tourist and carrying cash in his back pocket. Billy counted out the notes until he came to the last sheet and read: “Enjoy your moment of gloating. They’re fakes. And I’ve now got your wallet.”

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55 words for the G-Man. Go and see what other people have produced over at Mr Knowitall's blog.

Thursday extracts: Jasper Fforde on books.

“Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.” ― Jasper Fforde, The Well of Lost Plots

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This quote is from the Thursday Next series of novels by Jasper Fforde. It's best if I let him explain:

"They are a series of books based upon the notion that what we read in books is just a small part of a larger BookWorld that exists behind the page.  A fantastical place populated by off-duty and sometimes mischievous bookpeople from the Classics to Fanfiction, and ruled over by the wheezing bureaucracy known as The council of Genres. It is their task to maintain the pageant and integrity of the books within their charge, and these efforts are sometimes thwarted by the very evildoers and bizarre plot devices that give the Bookworld its appeal. Aided in this endeavour but sometimes disagreeing with them are Jurisfiction, the policing agency within Fiction. The adventures follow one of their operatives: A woman from the Realworld named Thursday Next, whose reality-based credentials bring a dimension of independent thought to the proceedings, something that is often absent in the mostly predetermined Bookworld."

FFF55. More NaNo. Meet Bill

Sorry to keep throwing bits of my NaNo novel at you - but it's rather time consuming at the moment.
Here's another of the cast from the Sea View Hotel.

He dressed casually and his general impression suggested tweed. His outfits gave off a sort of browny-green aura, as if he had been carved from a part of the landscape, and they had the kind of texture that conjured up pictures of moorland and bracken. Sometimes I swear I could hear grouse calling around him.

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It's the usual Friday challenge for the G-Man. Go visit him to see more!

FFF55. Do not feed the birds

Do not feed the birds, the sign said. Flying pests are a health hazard and you could face a fine of up to £5000. But the gulls could catch chips in flight. And Mary could not resist watching their aerobatics.  Besides, they would have trouble finding £5000 from her anyway. Let them try to sue!

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It wasn't until after we fed our fish and chips to the gulls that we saw the notices. Ah well. The photos were good.

FFF55 is a weekly challenge set by the G-Man for a 55 word flash fiction story.

Thursday extracts: A lesson in forensics – and suspense – from Jeffery Deaver

Crime fiction is one of my little indulgences. I love reading a good murder story, and one of my favourite authors is Jeffery Deaver. He has a number of regular characters but maybe his best known is Lincoln Rhyme, the quadriplegic detective (played by Denzel Washington in the film The Bone Collector). Rhyme is not only a modern-day Sherlock Holmes, who can determine the most obscure facts from the least obvious observations, but he is also a forensics master.

Deaver loves to pass on the how and why of crime science and relates his lectures to the relevant stage in whatever investigation Rhyme is running. In this extract the crime scene technicians have removed a complete door and its frame from a site where a bomb was supposed to have gone off and destroyed all the evidence - except it failed to explode. The detectives assume that the perpetrator would not have bothered to use gloves because he was not expecting the door to survive. They are hoping to lift fingerprints.

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Fingerprints fall into one of three categories. Visible (the sort left by a bloody thumb on a white wall), impressible (left in pliable material like plastic explosive), and latent (hidden to the unaided eye). There were dozens of good ways to raise latent prints but one of the best, on metal surfaces, was simply to use store-bought Super Glue, cyanoacrylate. The object would be put in an airtight enclosure with a container f the glue, which would then be heated until it turned gaseous. The vapors would bond with any number of substances left by the finger – amino and lactic acids, glucose, potassium and carbon trioxide – and the resulting reaction created a visible print.

The process could work miracles, raising prints that were completely invisible before.

Except not in this case.

"Nothing," Pulaski said, discouraged, "Only glove smudges."

Jeffery Deaver. The Burning Wire. 2010. Hodder & Stoughton.

Just read

I've just updated my Just Read page . 
I really enjoyed this!

Bad day

Dear lorry driver
You know how irritating it was to be stuck behind that slow-moving juggernaut that you’ve just pulled out to overtake? Well think how much more annoying it would have been if you’d had to jam your brakes on to avoid driving into the back of him as he got in front of you.  I KNOW that you’re bigger than me, but in the playground that counts as bullying.

Dear workmate
When I say ‘good morning’ to you when you arrive in the morning, does it really take too much effort to reply? A monosyllabic grunt doesn’t count. Oh, and by the way, you can wash your own lunch dishes today. We’re all fed up with clearing up around you.

Dear boss
Just how am I supposed to know what you want me to do if you don’t communicate. I was hired for my office skills. If I’d wanted to practise clairvoyance I’d have moved to the seaside and set up a fortune telling booth.

Dear carpenter
The smoke from your cigarette break is drifting through my open window. If you’re working next door, why are you standing in our yard?

Dear shop assistant
I get twenty minutes for my lunch break. I did not intend to spend half of them waiting while you discussed your weekend activities with your friend who was in front of me in the queue buying a single item.

Dear postman
I don’t have a dog, so why are you afraid to push my post all the way through my letterbox? Do you realise that you left the back-end of my bank statement hanging out of my door for anyone to help themselves to? Identity theft is growing fast enough without your supporting it.

Dear cat
It would have been nice if you’d caught the mouse BEFORE it made a start on the fruit bowl.

Dear neighbour
I’m sure you love that style of music but the rest of the street don’t. We’d like to be able to sit in our gardens on the last sunny day of this week without being force-fed your taste.

Dear K
Thank you for making my life wonderful. As soon as you get home and hug me, the rest of the day’s irritations just fade away. I love you.

Three word week: Earwig

Prison life really suited Jimmy the Wig because of his habit. Jimmy’s nickname didn’t come from any lack of hair; he had such a thick thatch of black locks that many people thought it was a rug, but no. He got his name from being a natural earwig. He couldn’t stop himself eavesdropping conversations. He was compelled to do it, just like that disease, that obsessive compulsive thing, you know, OCD.  So being in prison was just right for him, surrounded by people with nothing better to do than discuss old exploits and plan new jobs for when they got out, and Jimmy became what they call institutionalised. He was happiest behind bars.

His only troubles came from the other side of his compulsion: he felt driven to pass on whatever he overheard. If he thought he was imparting a particularly exciting piece of news he would gesticulate a lot, so it left no-one in any doubt what he was doing.  At first it ruffled a few feathers when he chose to reveal something to the hotter heads in clink, but an understanding Governor solved that by putting him in a cell with Clothears Jones: deaf in one ear and didn’t listen with the other. Wig could say anything he liked and Clothears would nod and hum and har occasionally to make Wig think he was paying attention. That went on for years and life looked settled.

Wig had a number of jobs around the prison. They’d tried him on library duty but it made him edgy because no-one was allowed to talk in there, so they swapped him to cleaning the chapel. He loved that because he often overheard juicy confessions about dirty thoughts. So one day when he was polishing the brasswork and Phil Skillett came in to talk to the Padre he thought he was in for a treat. He was; just not the kind of treat he was expecting.  Phil’s nickname was ‘Fillet’ and it wasn’t just a play on his name; he was renowned for his knife skills and I don’t mean he was a good cook! Anyhow, him and the Reverend disappeared behind the curtain and Wig could hear the prayer bit as he dusted his way closer to the booth. He was comfortably in place when he heard Fillet admit he was the one who had shanked one of the screws two weeks ago.

Well that was too much for Wig. He dropped his cloth and dashed out to find someone to listen. Give the boy his due, he went looking for Clothears, but as bad luck would have it the cell was empty. Wig turned back just in time to come face to face with a chatty screw and he couldn’t stop himself from telling. He was still talking and waving his arms around when Fillet came back from chapel and saw him. Of course he realised straight away what was going on and Wig’s days were numbered.

They found Jimmy dead in his cell two days later and everyone assumed that Fillet had got to him somehow, even though he had been questioned almost non-stop since the secret was revealed. At the inquest, though, the sawbones reckoned there wasn’t a mark on him and there was no hint of poison. The coroner had no option but to call it natural causes, though I know he was wrong. I know what it should have said on the death certificate. To protect him from Fillet’s attentions the screws had Wig put in solitary confinement. I reckon he died of boredom.

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Three word week is a challenge set by Steve Isaak. ONce a week he provides three words or phrases and we have to write a (max) 600 word short story based around them. I've not done one for a couple of weeks but here's this week's go.
This week's words were: earwig, OCD and gesticulate. 
Check out the rules here.

How many?

The BBC 'most people have only read six books' thing has reared its ugly head again. I think it's been around for years but it's still an interesting exercise. Apparently, surveys show that most people have read only six of the list below. 
(Bold means I've read it. Italics means I started it and gave up. There are also comments.)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling  (I read the first four then she sold out)
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee (I really should, shouldn't I)
6 The Bible (What? All of it?)
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (My O Level book)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger (And I know why people -allegedly - go out and kill afterwards. I really wanted to kill Holden Caulfield!)
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald (It's on my list. It's on my E-reader!)
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame (lots of times - one of my favourites)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis (Yes, all of them)
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe  (See no. 33)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne (I LOVE Pooh!)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Not his best. Angels and Demons is better)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (And it felt like it!)
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (Give him back! One of the best books ever)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (Hated it)
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon  (Very clever book)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Because I hated 100 years... see 43)
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac (It's nonsense!)
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy (And it is.Never really enjoyed Hardy.)
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath  (Oh my gawd.....Was she the depressed one?)
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome  (It's on my list but I don't have a copy yet)
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery  (In French!)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (This is about the only Ian Banks I've never read. I've even read some Iain M Banks)
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare  (Not sure why they have this separated out. See 14)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo