Review: A Certain Justice by PD James

A Certain Justice is a modern day legal crime thriller, and it delivers what you might expect from such a book.

DI Adam Dalgiesh is asked to investigate the death of Venetia Aldridge, a famous criminal barrister found murdered in chambers. At the time of her death, had just successfully defended Gary Ashe, accused of the bloody murder of his Aunt. Her life is turned upside down when she discovers that Ashe has commenced a relationship with her daughter and that they intend to be married. Could it be Ashe who has killed Aldridge, or even her own daughter who has killed her out of spite? Or is it more complicated than anyone can imagine?

I certainly enjoyed the book nad while I was reading it, I couldn’t put it down. The plot was engaging in a very dark way and it certainly felt significantly more realistic than a lot of crime novels.

I believe that the last point is largely because of the author herself.

I had heard PD James spoken of as one of the best as well as one of the most prolific modern day crime writers. Naturally this meant that I was keen to read one of her books. This was only enhanced when I heard her speak about her life on the ABC Radio National Book Show on the occasion of her 90th birthday. She seemed to have led a fascinating life in various government departments, including a lot of criminal and forensic sections of the government and so I was interested to see how her books were informed by this experience.

As said, it definitely seemed to. The book displayed an understanding of the criminal law system (I feel able to say that because I am a criminal lawyer in NSW Australia and the Australian system is based on that of England) and it also displayed an accurate understanding of the approach criminal barristers take to their work.

People are often harsh about crimnial solicitors and barristers. If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me how I could represent guilty people I would be a very rich lady (well, I'd be well off anyway). The reality is that most people who choose the criminal law as their career path (from a defence perspective anyway), it is more about the bigger picture than the smaller picture.
My only reservation with this book is that it hasn’t proved to be very memorable. Although I can remember being hooked on it while I was reading it, now that I have read it some time ago I can’t remember much about it. Certainly not much of the detail.

In the end, I would say that it was a great example of modern crime writing, nothing more and nothing less. 

 5.5 / 8

Enjoyable and worth reading if you have the opportunity.

Have you read much PD James? How do you think her books compare to other crime fiction writers?

Deception Point by Dan Brown

There's not much to say about Dan Brown's Deception Point.

I love a bit of Dan Brown for light reading. His books are easy to breeze through and don't take a whole lot of concentration to finish but they are is still exciting enough to grab your attention.

I had read Deception Point before but I picked it up this time for a bit of relief from Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (I think that will be the disappointment of 2011). It was relief… of a sort.

Deception Point is largely based in northern most areas of the world and is centred around a "scientific discovery" of magnificent proportions. Of course, not everything is what it seems and the cast of main protagonists have quite a task to get to the truth.

It was as predictable as they all are once you get used to Brown's formula. The mastermind is of course who the mastermind always is – an older male (usually white, because old white men rule the world - sorry, it's true) in a position of authority, who plays a main role in the story and is a sort of father figure to the main character. Same old same old.

My biggest complaint with this one was that it jumped between all the characters too quickly. Every few paragraphs I felt like one character stopped and another started – it went backwards and forwards so much it made me dizzy.

Having said all of that, it was enjoyable in a mind numbing way and it served it's purpose of providing me with entertainment (which I'm sorry but Wide Sargasso Sea certainly wasn't providing me with) admirably.

6 / 8

Enjoyable. I recommend it if you approach it with the right attitude. Perfect for a bit of escapism.

Do you enjoy Dan Brown's books? What do you like/not like about them?

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest by Stieg Larsson

This is the final instalment in Stieg Larsson's thrilling Millennium series.

The book begins exactly where it left off in Played with Fire. Lisbeth is in hospital recuperating from her horrific ordeal and her life is still in danger. She faces many significant criminal charges and her friends rally around her to help prove her innocent. In the course of these events, the usual characters uncover a government conspiracy intimately involving Lisbeth that has been in existence for many decades and which needs to be exposed.

I don't have anything original to say about this book. Many other reviewers have said it before, and most of what I have to say about this book I have already said in relation to the its predecessors.

The size of this book was quite off putting; it was so large that at times I found it difficult to hold in my hands. It was also probably the worst of the three novels for providing excess details that hold no interest to the reader. On this point, I did read this absolutely hilarious article in the New Yorker on this common complaint about the Millennium series. It is a comic re-write of the book, and you absolutely must read it if you have read these books!

The sub-plot involving Erika was a strange addition to the book. Don't get me wrong, I was guessing the whole time who her stalker would be (and I guessed right, go me!), but I didn't really understand why it had been included. I assume it was included because she was no longer working at Millennium and Larsson wanted to keep her in the story, but then, why make her leave the paper in the first place? I was just confused by it.

Having said all that, I was still engaged by the story; it kept me hooked until the end. I was pleased to see that some of the issues and relationships were tied up at the end, but it was also clear that Larsson meant there to be more books to follow. Lisbeth Salander is one of the most interesting characters I have ever read and I really enjoyed this originality.

All in all, I enjoyed this book. For me though, some of the 'wow-factor' had left by the third instalment of this series.

Summary

What kind of read is this?
A quick read given it's size, and a thrilling one.

Do I recommend this book?
Yes, it was a good read and I would definitely recommend that you finish the series off.

Do I recommend that you buy this book?
Yes. I have recommended that you buy its predecessors so it would be silly not to recommend that you buy this one. I think that the whole series will make a great re-read.

Star Rating

6.5 / 8

Really enjoyable, I couldn't put it down. I recommend it.

The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

After finishing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I couldn't wait to read The Girl who Played with Fire. This book was just as exciting and compelling as its predecessor.

The plot was complex, if not quite as 'meaty' as The Dragon Tattoo. We open with Lisbeth Salander travelling around the world with her newly acquired riches, whilst important events that will affect the course of her life unfold back in Sweden. She returns to Sweden and her new multi-million dollar apartment, to find that her guardian Bjurman is plotting his revenge against her. She finds herself the suspect of a triple murder, hiding from the police and hiding from a host of other evil characters that are after her. To complicate matters, the couple that she is accused of murdering have been working with Mikael Blomkvist at Millenium on an expose in relation to the sex trade. Blomkvist believes in Salander's innocence and sets out to help her discover the truth.

Although I want to review this book without comparing it to The Dragon Tattoo, it is very difficult to do so please bare with me.

The plot didn't quite have the zsa zsa zu that its predecessor did. I thought particularly that the link between the sex trade expose and Bjurman was particularly a weak one and took me some time to really understand. Having said that, the storyline still had me on the edge of my seat the whole way through. That's the thing I love about these books, the pace.

Similarly to the previous book, it was still Salander that made the book for me. She is one of the most interesting characters that I have come across lately and I loved learning more about her in this book. What we learn in this book goes a long to explaining how it is that she came to be her unusual self, and I understood a bit more how it is that she came to have that 'victim' aura about her despite her apparent strength of character.

Just as the things about the Dragon Tattoo I loved are the same things that I loved about Who Played with Fire, the things I disliked are the same again. In this book, though, my complaints are a little exemplified. There is just so much setting up of the plot that it feels like the book doesn't really get started until half way through. Also, what this book does that the first didn't do quite as badly, is give us lots and lots of useless little details that the reader just doesn't need to be bothered with. Here is a sample of what I mean, and I apologise about the length, Ill try and shorten it a bit:

"At 5.00 in the morning she stopped at the 24-hour 7-Eleven at the top of Hantverkargatan up by Fridhemsplan. She bought an armful of Billy's Pan Pizzas, some milk, bread, cheese and other staples. She bought a morning paper with a headline that fascinated her... She took the number 4 bus back to Sodermalm, where she got off at Rosenlundsgatan and walked home to Mosebacke. She made coffee and had a sandwich before she went to bed

I mean, come on! Do I really need to know all that? No. I don't. And this book is full of it. I get that in real life people go shopping and buy food, but unless it has something to do with the plot, I don't need to know about. It almost feels a bit as if Larsson is just trying to show off how well he knows central Sweden or something. Anyway, this was my biggest complaint about this book.

Again, I find myself writing a review that feels more like a complaint than I mean it to be. I still loved this book, it was so exciting and tense that I couldn't put it down.

Despite it's size I read it in two sittings. I can't wait to get to the third book.


Summary

What kind of read is this?
It is a very dark read, but it is gripping. Don't be put off by it's size either, it is an easy read.

Do I recommend this book?
Without reservation.

Do I recommend that you buy this book?
Absolutely. This is one that I think will stand up to re-reading.

Star Rating

7 / 8

Brilliant, couldn't put it down. Recommend that you buy it.

Book Details: Paperback, 569 pages, published by MacLehose Press, published in 2009, translated from Swedish to English by Reg Keeland.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

I am not normally into crime fiction, but this book was perhaps one of the most gripping and thrilling crime books that I have read for a very long time.

It has a complex plot involving two separate 'mysteries'; the disappearance of a young girl, Harriet Vanger, in the 1960's and the web of corporate corruption spun by the Wennestrom Corporation.

Michael Blomkvist has been found guilty of defaming the Wennestrom Corporation and his career is shot to pieces, particularly following his sentence of 2 months imprisonment. He insists, however, that Wennestrom is corrupt, and when Henrick Vanger (ex-CEO of the family owned and run Venger Corporation) offers proof of Wennestrom's corruption in return for Blomkvist assisting him to solve the mysterious disappearance of his niece Harriet Vanger 40 years ago, Blomkvist cannot resist. To assist him, he joins forces with Lisbeth Salander, a young, rather 'gothic' girl, with behavioural problems but skills perfect for such a task.

This book didn't have me hooked from the beginning, but perseverance paid off, and from about half way through the book I was hopelessly hooked.

Plot: The plot as twists and turns that I didn't see coming. It is also a lot darker than I expected it to be, with scenes of graphic violence against women. I am somewhat immune to these things because of the work that I do, but I am sure that some people would have found these scenes extremely shocking. I certainly found them shocking, mainly because I didn't see them coming and I am not sued to reading such graphic material in novel form. However, I very much appreciated Larsson's ability to give me as the reader something different to what I am used to reading. Sometimes it good to receive a shock like that. There are many women out there who suffer from these types of violence on a daily basis while most of us sit at home enjoying our happy lives.

My biggest complaint about the plot, and why I had trouble really getting into the book, is that Larsson spent far too much time setting everything up. I think the first 1/3 of the book is about establishing who all the characters are and how they are related. I know it has a complex plot, but this did become a little frustrating.

The book is written from many different people's perspectives and I found that the way in which is went between these different perspectives so frequently was at times quite distracting.

I was also surprised at how much additional book there as after the murder mystery was resolved. I wasn't really quite as interested in the Wennestrom Affair as I was the murder mystery, but I did appreciate that Larsson really tied off all the loose ends.

Characters: The characters were well formed I thought. I really developed a sense of who they were, particularly Blomkvist and Salander. I was surprised at Blomkvist's willingness to sleep with so many people, but each to their own.

For me, it was really Salander that made the book. I know a lot of characters in the book say this about her, but I think it is very true - you really got a sense of her as the victim. Despite her bravado, her intelligence, her strength and conviction, underneath it all her weakness and her neediness (I think) were palpable, and you couldn't help but feel for her. I particularly felt for her in the way in which her relationship with Blomkvist concluded.

Although I accept that most of this review so far reads more bad than god, the way in which Larsson sucks you into the story to the point where you cannot put the book down more than makes up for everything else. This is a book that I would recommend to everyone without reservation and one that I will definitely be re-reading.

Summary

What kind of read is this?

It is a very dark read, but it is gripping. Don't be put off by it's size either, it is an easy read.

Do I recommend this book?

Without reservation. It was really deeply and darkly delicious.

Do I recommend that you buy this book?

Absolutely. This is one that I think will stand up tp re-reading. 

Star Rating

7.5 / 8

Brilliant, couldn't put it down. Everyone should read it. Recommend that you buy it. 

Book Details:  Paperback; 533 pages; published by MacLehose Press in 2008; interpreted from Swedish into English by Reg Keeland