My favourite Book of the Year 2020
It seems obvious that lockdown has encouraged a thriller binge, reading for fun and escape, so it should be no surprise that my favourite book of the year is:
Broken Don Winslow
Fabulous. Five or six novella length stories. Quite brilliantly written. Don Winslow has filled up the hole in my life left by the death of Elmore Leonard. It is the sheer joie de vivre of his prose, his fuckit let’s tell this story style, that makes him so readable.
December
The Dawn Patrol Don Winslow
A whole community arises before our eyes, of surfers, of cops, of cops who surf and surfers who cop, in Pacific Beach down by San Diego. Here we meet Boone Daniels, the ex-cop PI surfer and his crew including Sunny, Hang Twelve, Dave the Love God and Johnny Banzai, members of The Dawn Patrol who surf before work, to be replaced by The Gentleman’s Hour, older men who talk as much as surf. It’s an intricate California social world, set around La Jolla and the beaches, of a new world of modern housing estates, intruding on an old world of surfers. Breath-taking narrative and a delight to go along with.
The Winter of Frankie Machine Don Winslow
The surfing guys again. Many people want to get rid of Frankie Machine. If they can find him.
The Creative Spark. Augustin Fuentes
No not Muriel… Totally fascinating.
The Death and Life of Bobby Z. Don Winslow
A fascinating and absorbing breath-taking ride.
The Colossus of Maroussi Henry Miller
Travel writing. Miller in Greece. Lovely tales. Interesting he was great friends with Lawrence Durrell.
Eddie’s Boy Thomas Perry
Such a delight. Thomas Perry comes through for Christmas again. The Butcher’s Boy is back again. He cannot hide. So he must run, first to Australia, then to America, to try and destroy who is trying to kill him.
Maigret and the Loner Georges Simenon
So often with Simenon it’s the weather he starts, with, the early summer in Paris, the fog on the coast, the heavy barges ploughing along a rainy Seine. This one starts with a heat wave in Paris. Maigret investigates the murder of a tramp in Les Halles, the Covent Garden of the capital, which leads to the unsolved case of a naked girl, with two lovers, strangled in a nearby apartment. Was one culpable? All these years later the truth begins to unravel.
Broken Don Winslow
Fabulous. Five or six novella length stories. Quite brilliantly written.
November
The Silence Don DeLillo
Fine writing, slender book.
V2 Robert Harris
Both sides of the Vengeance Weapon unleashed on London in the last few months of WW2.
More terrifying than the V1, but it seems the tremendous cost of this final weapon to turn the war around was too much. It’s terror was real. It’s creator Werner Von Braun would defect to America at the end and take the US to the moon.
The Long and Faraway Gone. Lou Berney
A tragic shooting in a Mall Movie House. Time passes. Wounds are not healed.
Sapiens Yuval Noah Harari
Re read. Fascinating news about our species.
Girl, Woman, Other Bernadine Evaristo
This surprisingly won the Booker Prize of 2019. Sadly it didn’t win me.
Isle of Joy Don Winslow
As in “We’ll turn Manhattan into an..” A love letter to New York. 1996 early Don Winslow. Beautifully written.
The Third Man. Graham Greene
I read a first edition from 1950 to remind me what Greene is good at: storytelling, and prose. In his Introduction he disparages this story, as it changed when it became a film, but it’s still very good. Martin Amis said he didn’t like him and for the same reason I used to quote: God. You simply don’t want Him banging around in your books. Fortunately there are many fine Greene novels where He doesn’t appear. And they are much better than just good.
Inside Story Martin Amis
A very interesting book, which is a memoir written by a novelist as fiction. I always used to think of him as one of the new young writers but I realise that he is now over 70. This, appropriately is a Memento Mori, a book about death, and in particular about four, deceased, extraordinary men who played a huge part in his life: Christopher Hitchens his great friend, and a remarkable friendship it was too, his father, the novelist Kingsley Amis, and his closest friend the poet Philip Larkin, and Saul Bellow, an adopted father really, whom Amis considers the finest American novelist. Along the way we get very useful insights into the theory and practise of writing, and some lovely autobiographical scenes, frequently with The Hitch which are always thoughtful and touching. He memorialises the wonderful Hitchens and the bravery of his last years, when he was suffering so badly from the smoking that killed him and so many others.
October
Snow John Banville
And he does write brilliantly about snow, which pervades this whole yarn: a detective mystery tale about a dead Priest in a Protestant family Mansion, two hours from Dublin. A Prot policeman from the Garda has to deal with a Cluedo-like cast of characters. Quotes on the back compare him to Nabokov which is ridiculous. Here he is closer to Simenon. We know he loves Chandler as he wrote a whole book in his style and his affection for the thriller is obvious here in a very smart, interesting, Irish revenge story.
Say Nothing Patrick Radden Keefe
A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland.
A brilliant history of The Troubles. Essential reading. Quite brilliantly told. I loved every second of it, and lived through quite a lot of it in London. I think I even met the Price Sister at some trendy lefty thing in London. Fascinating. In any other year this contemporary history of Northern Island would be my book of the Year.
The Chain Adrian McKinty
A brilliant thriller, recommended by Don Winslow. A terrific narrative hook this highly readable page turner is currently Thriller Writer winning awards.
Fifty Fifty Steve Cavanagh
Another thriller with a clever narrative hook. Two sisters on trial for murder accuse each other. Who do you believe?
Maigret and The Loner Georges Simenon
A vagrant dead in Montmartre in Les Halles.
The King in Yellow Raymond Chandler.
Such a brilliant opening, it suggests to me he took a short story and expanded it into this novel which is never quite as good as it’s beginning.
Squeeze Me: A Novel Carl Hiaasen
Pythons in Florida. Funny and deadly. The perfect beach book but oh where is the perfect beach?
September
Thunderstruck Eric Larson
Two intertwined stories, the flight and arrest of Dr. Crippen and his lover Ethel Neve who were arrested on an ocean liner after an international hunt. Their capture as they fled to Canada was entirely due to transatlantic messages relayed for the first time through Marconi’s new transmitter. The other half of the book is the story of Marconi himself, his remarkable invention, his travails trying to make it work and his eventual success, marriage, etc. etc. The problem is that the story of the pursuit of the runaway couple, he wanted for the murder of his wife, she disguised as a boy, the chase all the way to the mouth of the St. Lawrence and their final arrest by the Scotland Yard Detective Dew, who arrives before them on a faster boat, is played out with the whole world watching, while they remained ignorant of the international excitement. This story is far more thrilling than Marconi’s squabbles with competitors and his many attempts to connect ships to shore, which cannot match the tale of a quiet cold-blooded psychopathic wife-murderer, a Doctor who chops up his spouse, disposes of her bones somewhere locally (probably the Canal) and then buries the skin and viscera under the cement in his basement coal cellar, all within 24 hours, without arousing any attention. I had not known that Crippen and his wife Cora were both American. Ethel Neve not. This book would be twice as good with half the material.
The Lion Thomas Perry
An English professor is offered a bizarre chance to get his hands on a believed extinct Chaucer poem.
A short story length book and excellent as usual.
Maigret and The Informer Georges Simenon
Always reliable. The perfect pocket book. The perfect palate cleanser.
Fifth Avenue 5 A.M. Sam Wasson
Audrey Hepburn, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and the Dawn of the Modern Woman.
Slightly pretentious sub-title but good fun. An enjoyable romp through the casting and filming of the movie. Including the song, the song, the song…. Moon River. When they did this as a musical in London (with Anna Friel) they unaccountably left out this amazing song which was as daft as leaving out What’s it all about? from the remake of Alfie.
The Beatles from A to Zed. Peter Asher
By a much-loved old pal, this is a very fine alphabetical stroll through the Beatle song canon. Stemming from his Radio show of the same name, it is deceptively simple and easy to read, but crammed with great perceptions and personal memories, it is an invaluable look at the serious business of song writing. Peter worked at Apple, while his sister Jane was dating Paul McCartney and he was often either present in the house while Lennon and McCartney were writing some of their classic Beatle songs, or else when in the studio recording them. Highly enjoyable and informative, his insights and memories make this a unique look at the greatest British composers of the Sixties.
Barbarian Days William Finnegan
A Surfing Life
A bit more than I ever needed to know about surfing. It won a Pulitzer Prize, and rightly so for it is very finely written but I had had enough of surfing after a while, only to stumble into the world of Don Winslow!
