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.