Snakehead
Anthony Horowitz
(Walker Books €??)
BACK in the days, I contracted rheumatic fever, and spent some weeks in the boarding school infirmary, far from human contact.
I was infectious, so all the books I read had to be burned after they touched my nasty hands. In a feverish, hallucinatory state, I discovered Victorian penny dreadfuls.
These usually had evil Oriental or Central European villains with moustaches and devilish cunning.
There tended to be a slightly iffy sexiness about them, with daring young heroes being stripped off and tortured, wrestling bad guys, and having awfully strong relationships with male mentors.
And the villains were great - ahh, Fu Manchu, with his drooping moustache, and his beautiful daughter who left a lingering scent of mimosa in her wake.
Alas, all this is gone - but wait, no! Young Alex Rider to the rescue.
Alex no sooner splashes down in a space capsule in Snakehead when the Australian secret service recruits the 14-year-old, and within a breath he's in a wrestling ring in Thailand, wearing only silk shorts and showing off his karate skills, greasy with sweat.
The villain, Major Winston Yu, with his unhealthy love of England and his mum who put him through Harrow by working as an assassin, has the dastardly plan of killing off a bunch of wealthy do-gooders including a pop star and a billionaire property developer who plan to 'Make Poverty History'.
All 14-year-olds, of whatever age, will enjoy this.
Monday, 26 November 2007
The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife by Anon
The Desperate Diary of a Country Housewife
Anon
Collins €??
COUNTRY livin' is the life for me, reckons the freelance journalist Martha Mole, and off she and her husband go to live in Paradise.
Anon, apparently, is Daisy Waugh, who has written the Country Mole column in the Sunday Times for a couple of years.
In this very, very funny book, Martha Mole finds herself all aloney-o for most of the time, with her husband living in London and visiting on occasional weekends.
He starts out living on a fold-out bed in his office, but soon - as Martha's friend Hatty splits up with her lazy lump Damian, he's living in Hatty's place, while he helps Hatty to send Damian's script to the Oscars.
Martha, meanwhile, is stuck in Stepford. She's pretty whiney to start with, but by the time she's had an affair with the builder, got pregnant, got a Bonnie Tyler haircut from the local hairdresser (horrors!) and gone to live in the bath because the smell of paint intensifies her morning sickness, you'll be sick from laughing.
Martha is obviously a born and bred city girl, who regards country people as moronic mumsies.
She compounds her miseries by writing a column, a la Country Mole, and her neighbours soon begin to ask her if she's the one who's writing it.
Since she gives them all mocking nicknames and reveals all their secrets, she's definitely heading for trouble.
It's a very, very funny book, and the perfect Christmas read. Apparently, the author's back in the city now.
Anon
Collins €??
COUNTRY livin' is the life for me, reckons the freelance journalist Martha Mole, and off she and her husband go to live in Paradise.
Anon, apparently, is Daisy Waugh, who has written the Country Mole column in the Sunday Times for a couple of years.
In this very, very funny book, Martha Mole finds herself all aloney-o for most of the time, with her husband living in London and visiting on occasional weekends.
He starts out living on a fold-out bed in his office, but soon - as Martha's friend Hatty splits up with her lazy lump Damian, he's living in Hatty's place, while he helps Hatty to send Damian's script to the Oscars.
Martha, meanwhile, is stuck in Stepford. She's pretty whiney to start with, but by the time she's had an affair with the builder, got pregnant, got a Bonnie Tyler haircut from the local hairdresser (horrors!) and gone to live in the bath because the smell of paint intensifies her morning sickness, you'll be sick from laughing.
Martha is obviously a born and bred city girl, who regards country people as moronic mumsies.
She compounds her miseries by writing a column, a la Country Mole, and her neighbours soon begin to ask her if she's the one who's writing it.
Since she gives them all mocking nicknames and reveals all their secrets, she's definitely heading for trouble.
It's a very, very funny book, and the perfect Christmas read. Apparently, the author's back in the city now.
Sunday, 18 November 2007
Overheard in Dublin Again by Gerard and Sinead Kelly
Overheard in Dublin Again
Gerard Kelly & Sinead Kelly
Gill & Macmillan
THE ONE I remember is the clerk in a newsagent in Dublin Airport. Lorcan, the customer who reported the conversation was buying Moleskin brand notebooks, and when he went to pay the €17, the saleswoman was shocked at the price.
"That's because they're Moleskin," he explained. And she murmured to herself, "Ah, the poo-ur moles."
There's something so sweet about it.
These web anecdotes are probably as typical of Abu Dhabi or Dakar as they are of Dublin, but every city thinks its own eccentricities are unique.
Here you have the southside boy in a shop who, asked if there's anything he wants, says "Thanks to a good education and wealthy parents I want for nothing; however, I do require a copy of the Irish Times."
There's the beggar looking for "any spare change" and the passer-by who says "Sorry, I've only a fifty" - so the beggar replies "That's all right, I'll give you change."
The bus driver who slams on his brakes, then apologises over the intercom that "some GOBSHITE" just ran the red lights in front of him.
At the All-Ireland hurling final the crowd are warned to stay off the pitch. The game ends, the crowd surges onto the pitch, and over the tannoy comes "Plan B, Plan B, Plan B" - as "PLAN B" is displayed in huge letters on the big screen.
Still selling like hotcakes, this is undoubtedly going to be the year's favourite stocking-filler.
Gerard Kelly & Sinead Kelly
Gill & Macmillan
THE ONE I remember is the clerk in a newsagent in Dublin Airport. Lorcan, the customer who reported the conversation was buying Moleskin brand notebooks, and when he went to pay the €17, the saleswoman was shocked at the price.
"That's because they're Moleskin," he explained. And she murmured to herself, "Ah, the poo-ur moles."
There's something so sweet about it.
These web anecdotes are probably as typical of Abu Dhabi or Dakar as they are of Dublin, but every city thinks its own eccentricities are unique.
Here you have the southside boy in a shop who, asked if there's anything he wants, says "Thanks to a good education and wealthy parents I want for nothing; however, I do require a copy of the Irish Times."
There's the beggar looking for "any spare change" and the passer-by who says "Sorry, I've only a fifty" - so the beggar replies "That's all right, I'll give you change."
The bus driver who slams on his brakes, then apologises over the intercom that "some GOBSHITE" just ran the red lights in front of him.
At the All-Ireland hurling final the crowd are warned to stay off the pitch. The game ends, the crowd surges onto the pitch, and over the tannoy comes "Plan B, Plan B, Plan B" - as "PLAN B" is displayed in huge letters on the big screen.
Still selling like hotcakes, this is undoubtedly going to be the year's favourite stocking-filler.
Overheard in Dublin Again by Gerard and Sinead Kelly
Overheard in Dublin Again
Gerard Kelly & Sinead Kelly
(Gill & Macmillan €??)
THE ONE I remember is the clerk in a newsagent in Dublin Airport. Lorcan, the customer who reported the conversation was buying Moleskin brand notebooks, and when he went to pay the €17, the saleswoman was shocked at the price.
"That's because they're Moleskin," he explained. And she murmured to herself, "Ah, the poo-ur moles."
There's something so sweet about it.
These web anecdotes are probably as typical of Abu Dhabi or Dakar as they are of Dublin, but every city thinks its own eccentricities are unique.
Here you have the southside boy in a shop who, asked if there's anything he wants, says "Thanks to a good education and wealthy parents I want for nothing; however, I do require a copy of the Irish Times."
There's the beggar looking for "any spare change" and the passer-by who says "Sorry, I've only a fifty" - so the beggar replies "That's all right, I'll give you change."
The bus driver who slams on his brakes, then apologises over the intercom that "some GOBSHITE" just ran the red lights in front of him.
At the All-Ireland hurling final the crowd are warned to stay off the pitch. The game ends, the crowd surges onto the pitch, and over the tannoy comes "Plan B, Plan B, Plan B" - as "PLAN B" is displayed in huge letters on the big screen.
Still selling like hotcakes, this is undoubtedly going to be the year's favourite stocking-filler.
Gerard Kelly & Sinead Kelly
(Gill & Macmillan €??)
THE ONE I remember is the clerk in a newsagent in Dublin Airport. Lorcan, the customer who reported the conversation was buying Moleskin brand notebooks, and when he went to pay the €17, the saleswoman was shocked at the price.
"That's because they're Moleskin," he explained. And she murmured to herself, "Ah, the poo-ur moles."
There's something so sweet about it.
These web anecdotes are probably as typical of Abu Dhabi or Dakar as they are of Dublin, but every city thinks its own eccentricities are unique.
Here you have the southside boy in a shop who, asked if there's anything he wants, says "Thanks to a good education and wealthy parents I want for nothing; however, I do require a copy of the Irish Times."
There's the beggar looking for "any spare change" and the passer-by who says "Sorry, I've only a fifty" - so the beggar replies "That's all right, I'll give you change."
The bus driver who slams on his brakes, then apologises over the intercom that "some GOBSHITE" just ran the red lights in front of him.
At the All-Ireland hurling final the crowd are warned to stay off the pitch. The game ends, the crowd surges onto the pitch, and over the tannoy comes "Plan B, Plan B, Plan B" - as "PLAN B" is displayed in huge letters on the big screen.
Still selling like hotcakes, this is undoubtedly going to be the year's favourite stocking-filler.
The Principessa by Christie Dickason
The Principessa
Christie Dickason
Harper €??
SOFIA is a gritty, cautious princess guarding her life as she stays by her dying father, a man as lethal as a spider.
He's killed her mother for objecting when another woman's son, the creepy Ettore was raised to be heir.
Ettore has killed Sofia's pliable young husband, who might have provided another heir to cut him out of the succession.
Now her father has sent to England for a 'firemaster' - a dynamite expert who's turned from war to fireworks - supposedly to organise a grand funeral fireworks to celebrate his transfer to the throne of Heaven.
Back in England the firemaster, Francis Quoint (hero of Dickason's The Firemaster's Mistress) is sent by kingmaker Robert Cecil on this top secret mission.
Turns out that the mad old prince wants more than fireworks. He wants Quoint to propel him safely to Heaven, so he can persuade God in person that he had reason for all those rapes and murders.
A good plan, but technically difficult.
There are some great characters - the Arab slave secretly restoring Moslem documents in the hidden library, Ettore's moustachioed giant bodyguards.
Dickason's writing benefits from her strange background. Born in the US, she grew up in Thailand, Switzerland and Mexico, among other places. It gives her the ability to imagine the extraordinary.
She isn't writing as fluently here as in the predecessor, but it's an entertaining story of mythical 17th-century city-states and murderous plots, interlaced with a heaving bosom or two.
Christie Dickason
Harper €??
SOFIA is a gritty, cautious princess guarding her life as she stays by her dying father, a man as lethal as a spider.
He's killed her mother for objecting when another woman's son, the creepy Ettore was raised to be heir.
Ettore has killed Sofia's pliable young husband, who might have provided another heir to cut him out of the succession.
Now her father has sent to England for a 'firemaster' - a dynamite expert who's turned from war to fireworks - supposedly to organise a grand funeral fireworks to celebrate his transfer to the throne of Heaven.
Back in England the firemaster, Francis Quoint (hero of Dickason's The Firemaster's Mistress) is sent by kingmaker Robert Cecil on this top secret mission.
Turns out that the mad old prince wants more than fireworks. He wants Quoint to propel him safely to Heaven, so he can persuade God in person that he had reason for all those rapes and murders.
A good plan, but technically difficult.
There are some great characters - the Arab slave secretly restoring Moslem documents in the hidden library, Ettore's moustachioed giant bodyguards.
Dickason's writing benefits from her strange background. Born in the US, she grew up in Thailand, Switzerland and Mexico, among other places. It gives her the ability to imagine the extraordinary.
She isn't writing as fluently here as in the predecessor, but it's an entertaining story of mythical 17th-century city-states and murderous plots, interlaced with a heaving bosom or two.
Sunday, 11 November 2007
Daddy's Girl by Lisa Scottoline
Daddy's Girl
Lisa Scottoline
Macmillan
NAT GRECO is her daddy's little girl, her brothers' little sister and her boyfriend's little woman.
Amid all this diminution it's nice when a sexy colleague in law school brings Professor Nat out to a prison where he's representing prisoners pro bono.
Scottoline fans will be unsurprised when a murderous riot transpires, and soon young Nat is running for her life, with hair hacked and dyed and sporting pink-rimmed glasses - 'like Fugitive Barbie'.
Scottoline doesn't hit her stride until well into the middle of this thriller, but when she does, her ditsy heroine becomes lovable and funny.
There are enough twists to satisfy the most avid gasp-seeker, and even a little instruction as the Underground Railway - the secret slave-smuggling route to Canada - is dragged into the plot by the hair of its head.
One scene where Nat flees screaming - 'they were in a mall. In other words, girl country' - and the mallsters turn on her pursuer in righteous rage will make every chivalrous heart smile.
Perfect train reading, not grabby enough to make you miss your stop, but an entertaining story to pass the journey.
Lisa Scottoline
Macmillan
NAT GRECO is her daddy's little girl, her brothers' little sister and her boyfriend's little woman.
Amid all this diminution it's nice when a sexy colleague in law school brings Professor Nat out to a prison where he's representing prisoners pro bono.
Scottoline fans will be unsurprised when a murderous riot transpires, and soon young Nat is running for her life, with hair hacked and dyed and sporting pink-rimmed glasses - 'like Fugitive Barbie'.
Scottoline doesn't hit her stride until well into the middle of this thriller, but when she does, her ditsy heroine becomes lovable and funny.
There are enough twists to satisfy the most avid gasp-seeker, and even a little instruction as the Underground Railway - the secret slave-smuggling route to Canada - is dragged into the plot by the hair of its head.
One scene where Nat flees screaming - 'they were in a mall. In other words, girl country' - and the mallsters turn on her pursuer in righteous rage will make every chivalrous heart smile.
Perfect train reading, not grabby enough to make you miss your stop, but an entertaining story to pass the journey.
Do You Want What I Want? by Denise Deeegan
Do You Want What I Want?
Denise Deegan
(Penguin Ireland €??)
ANOTHER illness-mediated story from Denise Deegan, whose unfortunate characters have been strafed with everything from leukaemia to bipolar depression.
This time it's Aids, or the suspicion of it, as young doctor Rory is attacked by a needle-jabbing addict as he makes a visit in a rough Dun Laoghaire flat block.
As Rory faces the prospect of Aids or hepatitis he takes a deep look at his life with girlfriend Louise, and realises that maybe he wants more.
In fact, maybe he wants kids. But Louise doesn't. And so he grows closer to his motherly sister-in-law Orla, abandoned and divorced by Rory's callous brother, who's gone off with a young wan and gelled his hair in search of his inner teenager.
And he wants kids more and more as he becomes involved with Orla's foster-child, whose mother has overdosed and is trying to pull herself back together.
Orla's teenage daughter is hitting the sauce, and alcoholism looms.
ER fans will love this, though all these illnesses are starting to look like literary Munchausen by proxy syndrome
It's a story that pulls the reader in, with appealing characters and surprise twists, and a final devastating childbirth - no, not saying who's giving birth here - with plenty of beeping monitors and emergencies.
Denise Deegan
(Penguin Ireland €??)
ANOTHER illness-mediated story from Denise Deegan, whose unfortunate characters have been strafed with everything from leukaemia to bipolar depression.
This time it's Aids, or the suspicion of it, as young doctor Rory is attacked by a needle-jabbing addict as he makes a visit in a rough Dun Laoghaire flat block.
As Rory faces the prospect of Aids or hepatitis he takes a deep look at his life with girlfriend Louise, and realises that maybe he wants more.
In fact, maybe he wants kids. But Louise doesn't. And so he grows closer to his motherly sister-in-law Orla, abandoned and divorced by Rory's callous brother, who's gone off with a young wan and gelled his hair in search of his inner teenager.
And he wants kids more and more as he becomes involved with Orla's foster-child, whose mother has overdosed and is trying to pull herself back together.
Orla's teenage daughter is hitting the sauce, and alcoholism looms.
ER fans will love this, though all these illnesses are starting to look like literary Munchausen by proxy syndrome
It's a story that pulls the reader in, with appealing characters and surprise twists, and a final devastating childbirth - no, not saying who's giving birth here - with plenty of beeping monitors and emergencies.
Sunday, 4 November 2007
Gomorrah by Susan Knight and Marta Wakula
Gomorrah
Susan Knight and Marta Wakula
Fairground Press
IT'S NOT often that writers in Ireland take a risk. Most stay safe within genre, writing chicklit as fluffy and pink as a favourite teddy or haunted thrillers with sex woven through.
But Susan Knight has embraced the dark side with this disturbing collaboration with Polish artist Marta Wakula.
Booting out the concept of any narrative-driven high-concept plotting, she brings us into the desolate world of a city overtaken by a night-black eclipse in which horror roams.
A helmeted policeman sneaks along the streets following a full-breasted woman carrying a child, and we know he's up to no good.
A bearded geisha girl strips before a fairground crowd while a limbless man writhes in her discarded kimonos.
In the interrogation cells, a woman learns to lick the officers' boots and never to call for her lost child.
The illustrations, brutal, almost jabbed on to the page with a savage black line, match the vicious action of the text.
Not a book for café reading, but if you want your dull world turned upside down, this is the one for you. An underground classic contender.
Buy this book
Susan Knight and Marta Wakula
Fairground Press
IT'S NOT often that writers in Ireland take a risk. Most stay safe within genre, writing chicklit as fluffy and pink as a favourite teddy or haunted thrillers with sex woven through.
But Susan Knight has embraced the dark side with this disturbing collaboration with Polish artist Marta Wakula.
Booting out the concept of any narrative-driven high-concept plotting, she brings us into the desolate world of a city overtaken by a night-black eclipse in which horror roams.
A helmeted policeman sneaks along the streets following a full-breasted woman carrying a child, and we know he's up to no good.
A bearded geisha girl strips before a fairground crowd while a limbless man writhes in her discarded kimonos.
In the interrogation cells, a woman learns to lick the officers' boots and never to call for her lost child.
The illustrations, brutal, almost jabbed on to the page with a savage black line, match the vicious action of the text.
Not a book for café reading, but if you want your dull world turned upside down, this is the one for you. An underground classic contender.
Buy this book
I Saw You by Julie Parsons
I Saw You
Julie Parsons
(Macmillan €??)
SPECIALITE de la maison for Julie Parsons is terrified parents, with a side dish of creepy stalkers.
Her fans are used to settling cosily into a story of brutally murdered beauties and their heart-riven, guilt-stricken, and finally vengeful mothers.
This time the ex-students of a nice wee Protestant boarding school in the Wicklow Hills are turning up dead, apparently by suicide. But surely not.
They come from tough stock, the headmaster says. "They are the descendants of empire builders...came to Ireland with Cromwell."
Except for Marina Spencer, who has, he sniffs, "no hinterland" - which is why she was the only kid expelled after a bullying scandal years before.
The author showed bad judgment in starting this thriller with a man chained in a shed in Ballyknockan.
Many of Julie Parsons' fans will probably say what I said: "Oh, wait, I've read this one", and put it back on the shelf without buying it.
She reintroduces some of the characters from 1998's Mary, Mary - inspector Michael McLoughlin, now retired, sets out on a private investigation of Marina's suicide, and Mary's mother from that first book also reappears.
The story is slow to start - much of the first half is taken up with flashbacks to the earlier story and the past of the current one.
But once it finally takes off, it gallops like a hunt through the hills, and readers will whip through the final pages, unable to sleep for dread.
Julie Parsons
(Macmillan €??)
SPECIALITE de la maison for Julie Parsons is terrified parents, with a side dish of creepy stalkers.
Her fans are used to settling cosily into a story of brutally murdered beauties and their heart-riven, guilt-stricken, and finally vengeful mothers.
This time the ex-students of a nice wee Protestant boarding school in the Wicklow Hills are turning up dead, apparently by suicide. But surely not.
They come from tough stock, the headmaster says. "They are the descendants of empire builders...came to Ireland with Cromwell."
Except for Marina Spencer, who has, he sniffs, "no hinterland" - which is why she was the only kid expelled after a bullying scandal years before.
The author showed bad judgment in starting this thriller with a man chained in a shed in Ballyknockan.
Many of Julie Parsons' fans will probably say what I said: "Oh, wait, I've read this one", and put it back on the shelf without buying it.
She reintroduces some of the characters from 1998's Mary, Mary - inspector Michael McLoughlin, now retired, sets out on a private investigation of Marina's suicide, and Mary's mother from that first book also reappears.
The story is slow to start - much of the first half is taken up with flashbacks to the earlier story and the past of the current one.
But once it finally takes off, it gallops like a hunt through the hills, and readers will whip through the final pages, unable to sleep for dread.
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