I have recently read the latest novels by John le Carré and Michael Connelly, two of the writers who have been the subject of earlier blogs. One was up to my expectations, the other was not. Both are now published in paperback.
A Most Wanted Man (2008) is le Carré’s 21st novel and, for a man who will be 78 in October, the author is showing no signs of diminishing powers. The book is typical of his oeuvre in that, although it could be pigeon-holed as a spy thriller, it is so much more than that. Like Absolute Friends (2004), it is concerned with Islamic terrorism and involves well-drawn characters caught up in a world in which they are plainly out of their depth. There is a lot of dialogue and comparatively little action, but the book is nevertheless riveting. It is very apparent that the author is angry at the West’s conduct of the so-called War on Terror. Moral indignation and cynicism are rarely far from the surface.
Rating ****
The central character of The Brass Verdict (2008) is Mickey Haller, the defence attorney from The Lincoln Lawyer (2005), an outstanding legal thriller. Michael Connelly’s usual hero, Detective Harry Bosch, also appears, but in a somewhat peripheral role.
For me, the best elements of Connelly’s thrillers are the clever plotting, the smart dialogue and the sustained pace of the narrative. Here, although the novel gets off to a brisk start, I felt that it got rather bogged down in the middle, particularly in the section on jury selection, and was generally not as exciting as it might have been. The dialogue was up to the usual standard but, although the plotting was intricate, the story was implausible in certain key respects. Having said that, there was probably sufficient here to satisfy most of the author’s many fans.
Rating ****
Click on blue underlined book titles for Amazon product links.
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