The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

I have an unwritten list of books that I feel I should read. You know the sort of list: it’s fluid and well meaning, it has the most popular current books, books which will expand your knowledge and the classics. The sort of books that would sit on your shelf and make you look like you are knowledgeable and sophisticated. Once I buy a smoking jacket and monocle I’ll get them - possibly bound in leather….

This book was on the list. I loved, as a child, the 1975 film with Richard Chamberlain. It spoke to me and I loved watching it then and love watching it now. A few years ago, I picked up “The Star’s Tennis Balls” by Stephen Fry (a damn good read, by the way, and one I’ll cover sometime soon). Partway through I had a feeling of familiarity and realised I knew the story. That prompted me to buy The Count of Monte Cristo and, fortunately, I found a Wordsworth Classic version for £1.99 ($3.88). Shortly after beginning the book I was hooked and blasted through it in a few days. Not bad going for a book with 875 pages!

Enough chat, on to the novel. This complete and unabridged version is annotated by Keith Wren of the University of Canterbury (UK). Though the notes are not necessary to enjoy the book. This is a classic tale of heartbreak and revenge, set around the time of the French Revolution and the changing of power between Napoleon and the royalty. Edmond Dantes returns to Marseilles to hand back the boat he has assumed captaincy of and to wed the lovely Catalan maid Mercedes. Next to Mercedes, he loves his aged father and Mr Morrell, the ship owner. Unknown to him though, he has enemies - Danglars, the ship’s Super Cargo, has dreams of assuming the captaincy and dislikes Dantes’ easy way with the crew and naturally brilliant sailing skills. Fernand, Mercedes cousin, is deeply in love with Mercedes himself and hates Dantes as much as Mercedes loves him. And Caderousse, the amiable drunkard, allows himself to go along with the others, simply because he’s put out that Edmond has paid back his debts to him and has offered to lend money to him. By chance, Edmond has been to see Napoleon in exile and so he is denounced to the local magistrate, who has his own reasons to have Edmond out of the way. Shortly after returning home, Edmond is on the way to the Chateau d’If, to be imprisoned and forgotten about.

Fortunately for Edmond, the Abbe Farias is also imprisoned there and, after meeting up with him, teaches him languages, philosphy, logic, history, mathematics, science and everything else a young , driven man would need to make his way in the world. He also tells him of a great treasure that they should get when they either escape or are released. The Abbe dies and Edmond escapes alone and begins putting together his revenge…..

Despite it’s length and age, this book travels the story line at a cracking pace. I believe it was originally released in a serialised form, which mean that the author had to have something happen in each chapter to keep the audience reading. The films, though excellent, do not do justice to this tome. Edmond, in the guise of the Count of Monte Cristo, delivers his revenge in subtle ways that cannot lead back to him. Equally, he anonymously rewards those who either helped him or who were friendly to him in his previous life. It is also a tragic book, Edmond realises, too late, that not everyone deserves his revenge and that you can hurt the people you were trying to help. A moral tale, despite the scenes of violence and sexuality.

This is a fantastic read and, in fact, I am rereading it for the 5th time. As well as being able to read the novel in paper format, you can also read it online at Wikisource or download it at Project Gutenberg.

Mr Paradise - Elmore Leonard

The first thing you need to know about Elmore Leonard’s characters is that they are all impossibly cool. Even when they aren’t in a situation where they need to be cool, they just are. And this is what makes them so very readable. These people maintain their sang froid in situations that would leave people like you and me gibbering wrecks. You know, murders, interrogations, kidnaps, beatings, that sort of thing. And yet, in spite of all this, the characters are human and people we can relate to. They still have their human problems - divorce, insecurity, fear, loneliness.

This brings me to Mr Paradise. Tony Paradiso is an aged lawyer who hires a call girl and a friend to perform topless cheerleading while he watches recordings of football games. One night he is gunned down in his own home by an apparent home invasion. The police are called and quickly can see that they can clear up a number of seemingly unrelated crimes in one fell swoop. Such a seemingly simple story is told beautifully in Leonard’s spare style. No words are wasted, every sentence feels as though the author spent time examining them to see if they fit with the rest of them. This is deceptively simple writing which makes the story come alive.

Leonard writes contemporary stories, but his style makes these books appear to be set in the Roaring Twenties or Thirties. You can easily imagine any of the old time black and white movie stars bringing the books to the screen. It’s only when he mentions something modern - a music group or album, a film or TV show - that you realise that it’s set now. It’s odd, but all of his books seem to take place in a limbo, where gangsters and straights mix while wearing fedoras.

If you enjoy crime/detective thrillers and haven’t come across Leonard (and why not?) I recommend picking up at least one of them. My first foray into his crime writing was the excellent “The Black Dahlia” and I haven’t looked back.

I Am Legend - Richard Matheson

This short novel will often show up on the list of top books, and for good reason. I Am Legend is a true classic of both Science Fiction and Horror. This was filmed in 1971 as The Omega Man (starring the late Charlton Heston) and has been recently remade as I Am Legend starring Will Smith (in 2007). It is a very simple tale, but in no way superficial.

The story focuses on Robert Neville, apparently the last human being left on Earth, following a plague that turned everyone into a vampire. Neville is immune. He dedicates his days to hunting down the vampires in their lairs and killing them with wooden stakes while they sleep. In between he scours the radio waves for other survivors and fortifies his house. As well, he looks for the reason why he was spared and looks for a cure. Unfortunately for him and his mental well being, these vampires were his friends, family and neighbours. Ultimately he, and we as the reader, come to a startling realisation about reality and perception.

In these days where a novel is 500-600 pages long, it is easy to forget that it’s possible to create a story - a world - in a shorter book. Short stories and novelettes appear to be dying out somewhat and I find that a real shame. I believe that shorter novels can pack a greater punch simply because we don’t have enough time to become comfortable within the story. We are pulled along at the same pace as the protagonist and come to the same conclusions. Could this have been a better book if it were longer? No, I don’t think so. A longer book would have filled out the state of the planet, Neville’s mental state and sundry other things far better; but a longer book would have taken the immediacy away from the story and pulled in other characters necessitating a bunch of unnecessary subplots.

This is a book you can read in one sitting at just 160 pages long (depending on your edition, of course) it needn’t take you away from your real life for too long. The realisation of the situation will hit you just as hard.

The Sound of Laughter - The Autobiography of Peter Kay

For anyone in the UK, Peter Kay will be a familiar name. He rose very quickly to be one of the top stand up comedians in the country and plays to packed houses. Additionally, he created, wrote and starred in Phoenix Nights a weekly sitcom which topped the TV charts and cemented his name in the annals of comedy history. He is fairly unique in thst he specialises in “end of the pier” comedy: telling bad jokes and involving the audience.

His self penned autobiography deals with his childhood and his rise to fame. The whole book is incredibly lighthearted - no tales of abuse or tears over his poverty - and leaps around in time almost as if he were telling us the story in person. The gags are thick and fast in this book, every tale has either a character with a comedy name (when talking about his convent run schools he names the nuns “Sister Matic” and “Sister Act II”) or a funny story to relate. The overwhelming impression given is that he had a normal North West England 1970’s upbringing and came away with no damage - much like many other people.

If you are looking for an especial insight into the life of a comedian or a guide as to “how to do it”, this autobigraphy will not give you anything to learn. If you want to read about the life of a very funny comedian, and can accept that there are parts held back, then you will love this book.

Nothing To Lose - Lee Child

The twelfth and latest of the Jack Reacher novels by Lee Child. As usual, this tale finds Jack dragged into another situation where life and death are on the line and the bad guys are trying to keep him away from the truth.

Jack finds himself between two remote towns in Colorado: Hope and Despair. Despair being on his route he heads in to town to grab a bite to eat and to find a place to stay for the night. Instead, he is arrested, charged with vagrancy and deposited on the town border with instructions to go back to Hope. Intrigued and angry he decides to investigate and finds a lot that doesn’t add up - a town that is entirely owned by one man, a populace who seem happy to be owned and will fight to keep it that way and young women arriving secretly and leaving secretly looking for their men. In the end he will be forced to make hard decisions and risk it all.

Pretty much par for the course in any of these novels, Reacher is always one man against the machine. He is a likeable character, pretty near invulnerable, just smart enough to be one of us and just dumb enough to not be an out and out genius. The story has plenty of action and plenty of mystery to make it engaging and fun to read. I suppose.

So what went wrong? Reading the novel felt like a bit of a struggle to me. In places it almost seemed like it wasn’t part of the loose series. There isn’t any one thing I could put my finger on: there are lots of points in the story where Reacher is asked to take a look at himself and see what others see - on older man, scruffy, weather beaten with no home or belongings. While Child put the same energy into the fight scenes, Reacher seemed tired. Possibly, and I may be reading too much into it, Child is wearying of the character - maybe the author needs to take a break and/or write about a new character.

This isn’t enough to turn me off the series, overall they are just far too much fun to read. Reacher is the approachable loner, the maverick who cares about everybody if he meets them for more than a few minutes. If you are new to the series, don’t read this first - it deals with bigger events than those in the towns and these don’t always translate well to thsi character - pick up one of the earlier novels and start from there.

Forever Free - Joe Haldeman

Sequel to the novel The Forever War, this story picks up with William Mandella after many years of living on a remote outpost with his family and friends. They all live on Middle Finger, a planet set up to purposely not be part of Man in case Man realised that they need to add to their genetic mix. The settlers are becoming restless and are increasingly unsure about the motivation of Man and especially about the motivations of the Taurans. They arrange to take a ship to the farthest reaches of the galaxy and then return - as we know from the first novel, this will take a few months from the settlers point of view but would take several centuries from the point of view of Man. And then the ship starts to fail.

I have to say that I was not as convinced by his tale as I was by the first. The ending seemed overly contrived and, while I can understand the motivations of the settlers, I wasn’t entirely sure why they were rebelling against Man. There was an explanation about worries as to whether Man would want to wipe out the settlers, but since Man is far longer lived (they are clones after all) and the settlers children seemed to want to become Man more and more, there would be absolutely no need to wipe out the settlers. And the ending. The ending. I won’t give it away, but it was awful. It seemed that Haldeman had backed himself into a corner and couldn’t figure out where to go and so he put in the only logical ending - which was terrible. The problem is that first book was less concerned with individual characters as to what going off to war does to people and their view of the world whenever they rejoin it. Subsequently, it’s hard to now the characters well enough to want to follow them on this journey.

Read this story if you want to know what happens next, but don’t feel that you have to. It doesn’t really add much to the first book and you won’t miss much if you don’t read it.

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The Forever War - Joe Haldeman

This is an eternally popular novel. Written in 1974, it tells the story of William Mandella a soldier drafted into an interstellar war against the Taurans (actually Aldebranians, but that’s too hard to pronounce). What sets this story apart is that time dilation is a prominent part of the telling of the story. Although the soldiers are only fighting for a matter of a few months at a time, the distances involved mean that each time they arrive home many years have passed. By the end of the novel, the main character is almost one thousand years old, is physically aged in his thirties and has been in only a handful of battles.

The year the novel begins is deliberate so that it’s plausible for a Vietnam veteran to be training and fighting recruits. Soldiers are recruited for their intellectual prowess as well as an affinity for telepathy or other psychic skills. This deals with themes like the inhumanity of the war machine to those working within it. The soldiers have to accept that each time they return home, the planet will have moved on to a point where the planet will seem almost alien. The only option is to reenlist. Additionally, as the soldiers return home and get reoutfitted with the latest technology, by the time they next see action, the enemy will have already seen the weaponry and be able to defend against it.

As well as delivering an important message about warfare - it is basically a book about Haldeman’s time in Vietnam but in a sci-fi setting - it is also a very very well told story with strong characters and believable situations. It has won a Hugo and a Nebula award. And is well written and well worth reading.

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Ask The Parrot - Richard Stark

Richard Stark is one of the pen names used by the master story teller Donald E Westlake. It should be noted that Westlake is often named as the favourite crime author of the top crime authors - high praise indeed.

This novel begins at the end of the 2004 Parker novel “Nobody Runs Forever”. Parker is on the run after a botched bank robbery and the police are closing in. He is met by one of the locals who needs Parker’s help with a robbery. Since Parker’s need for a hideout and the local’s need for help with his robbery coincide, Parker agrees.

Parker is a bad man. He is a professional thief, sometimes violent and prepared to kill as a last resort. We are not given a picture of an angel with a dirty face, we are told over and over that this is a bad man. And yet, he is a likable character. Parker is always on the run from a botched robbery or is being forced into a bungled robbery or is taking revenge on someone for something to do with a robbery.

As we have come to expect from this author, this a very fast moving, well plotted story. There are no sub-plots to divert us from the main story and, as such, this means that we can stay with Parker until the job is done.

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High Profile - Robert B Parker

This is another very strong book from Robert B Parker - the sixth in the Jesse Stone series. Here we see a high profile murder (hence the title) occur in Paradise and the continuation of the romance of Stone and Sunny Randall - herself the main title of her own series. As one would expect from this series and from Parker in general, we have a lot of wisecracks, some great action sequences and the whole thing wrapped up in the end.

This book is, like all of Parker’s other novels, very fast moving and not too superficial. Parker has three main characters in his books - Spenser, Sunny Randall and Jesse Stone - and they are all either in therapy or dating a therapist. In fact, aside from all these characters being wisecracking, fast shooting, hard punching sensitive souls, therapy is the underlying theme between them all. Admittedly, it is a good way to move the plot along, but I am sure there are others that could be used. Older novels would have utilised the street snitch a la Johnny in Police Squad! This appears to be the Twenty First century version of that.

That aside, this is another tightly plotted murder story with a lot of human interest. The characters involved all develop further and they will continue on with this in the next books of their own series. Notably that fact that Jess and Sunny actually first got together in Blue Screen, the fifth Sunny Randall novel.

Stone is a pragmatic, quiet, recovering alcoholic who is the police chief in the supposedly quiet town of Paradise. Although, there have been several murders there now so I don’t think the town can still be called quiet!

read this if you like detective novels with a touch of humour and humanity in them.

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Bad Luck and Trouble - Lee Child

Number 11 and the latest in the Jack Reacher series, this book takes a small departure from the norm and puts Reacher at the head of his old Special Investigations Unit again, when they reform to investigate the deaths of part of their old team.

In some ways, this story is a natural progression in the series - Reacher is meeting up with his old friends and has seen that they have all settled down and joined the rest of the world with mortgages, pensions, families and the like. Of the team, he is the only one who has not settled down, the only one with no fixed address. He realises that he is older and not the man he used to be. But that, in my opinion, is where the book falls down. In the previous ten books we have a picture of Reacher as invincible and absolutely confident in his abilities. He fears no one and is sure that he will prevail. And in this book we have Reacher admitting that he’s slower and less than he was.

Additionally, Reacher is part of a team in this book - not just leading it, but an equal part. This is not the Reacher we have grown to know. Our Reacher is a loner, a maverick, a leader, an outsider. This Reacher is democratic and allows himself to be lead. He’s also unsure of himself, which is understandable since he’s catching up with friends who appear to have more than he does. But it’s just not right. We’re used to Reacher being Batman without the uniform, not this, this, mortal.

This one was a lot slower to get started than the previous novels and, as mentioned above, was a fair bit different than the rest of the series. Read it if you, like me, are a fan and want to know what else happens to Reacher, but don’t use it as a way into the series.

Additionally, my copy had a Reacher short story: James Penney’s New Identity at the back of it. Well told short story, but not canon. Lee Child has made it very clear that the one country Reacher has never really visited or worked in is the Unite States. And yet here we have a short story with Reacher working in and travelling around the US. It may seem like nit-picking, but this is the sort of thing you notice.

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