Recommended Reading

Adult Fiction

 

The Impossible Dead, by Ian Rankin

Reviewed by John O’Connell, www.guardian.co.uk

 

Book two in Ian Rankin's post-Rebus series of procedurals continues the job, begun in 2009's The Complaints, of breaking in the reader. Or rather, if you're one of those Rebus fans disappointed by his successor, Inspector Malcolm Fox, consoling you for your loss in a way that says, ever so gently: "This is where I am now – deal with it."

 

I must say, Fox works for me. Divorced and in his mid-40s, he's quieter than Rebus and warier of confrontation, but no less complex. Too many people see what they want to see. A concomitant of Fox's gift for objective scrutiny is that he sees himself clearly. To this end he stays alert, preferring Appletiser to alcohol, refusing to waste energy on such niceties as the preparation of nutritious food. He's old-school scrupulous – the kind of man who worries he might have taken advantage of a woman by sleeping with her when she was slightly drunk and he wasn't.

 

Yet his essential decency has made him an outsider in the force, hence his consignment to the internal affairs team whose fate it is to be despised and insulted to their faces and behind their backs as that "merry band of fuck-ups". Fox's desperation to be seen as a proper policeman is a weakness his enemies exploit. It's also what spurs him on.

 

The novel opens with Edinburgh-based Fox and his colleagues Kaye and Naysmith arriving in Fife to investigate whether a detective, Paul Carter, was protected by his colleagues after a sexual assault charge. Carter was shopped by his own uncle, an ex-cop. But when the older man is found dead and surrounded by papers relating to a cold case from the mid-80s – the death in a car crash of a lawyer called Francis Vernal – Fox wonders if Carter might be guilty of something worse than lechery.

 

And what of Vernal? He was notorious for his involvement with radical Scottish separatist groups, especially the Dark Harvest Commando, who took samples of contaminated soil from the Hebridean island of Gruinard, used for anthrax weapon testing during the second world war, and sent them to government offices. As Fox pursues his hunches, a new generation of nationalists plan their own spectacular.

 

"Polaris and acid rain," muses Kaye at one point. "Seems like ancient history." He's been researching the early 80s, when Scottish nationalists looked to Ireland for inspiration and nuclear fear hung over the UK. "I really got into it," he tells Fox. "Even found some clips of a TV show – Edge of Darkness." Even without this nudge, it's obvious The Impossible Dead is a homage to Troy Kennedy Martin's peerless 1985 drama about the anti-nuclear movement. Edge of Darkness was portentous but plausible, only going off the rails in the final episode when it decided to turn into a Bond film. Frustratingly, The Impossible Dead makes the same mistake, squandering its amassed gravitas with a tidy but frankly Scooby Doo ending.

 

Until then, though, it's excellent, not least on the level of technique. One of the joys of Rankin is his sixth sense for when the reader needs a recap, an empathy that extends to his treatment of his characters: the relationship between Fox, his damaged sister Jude and elderly father is depicted with care and tenderness.

 

So doubters be damned: The Impossible Dead is taut, compulsive and hugely satisfying, with plenty to say about the limits of memory and the dangers of historical idealism. If this is where Rankin is now, I'm not sure I want him to be anywhere else.

 

 

Madame Tussaud

Reviewed by Marie (http://www.burtonbookreview.com)

 

Readers have many ways to hear of the atrocities of the French Revolution, but Michelle Moran's is one that should not be overlooked as among the best. Through the eyes of Marie Grosholz, the famous sculptress known later as Madame Tussaud, we become witnesses to the crimes of the anarchists who stylized themselves as Revolutionaries. With what first begins as a documentary view of the fall of the monarchy under Louis XVI, Madame Tussaud evolves into a passionate first-hand look into the horrors and the fears that the French people faced during the Revolution.

 

The novel begins as a sedate look at the salon of wax figures that Marie is running with her Uncle Curtius, which is a pleasant trade that allows her mother and she to thrive. Her greatest ambition is to be noticed by Queen Marie Antoinette, and is not until much later that she realizes that this one ambition for greatness could mean the guillotine for her family. Marie is extremely talented in portraying the wax sculptures with lifelike accuracy, and the salon does become recognized throughout France especially after the Royal family visit. With a devastating turn of events, the revolutionaries also visit the salon and her uncle, who becomes one of Robespierre's National Guard. The politics of the Third Estate and the plight of the poorest people are well developed in the story, and it is with a crescendo of suspense and fear that we read on as King Louis's head is brought to the salon's doorstep.. with several other horrors beforehand that pulls you into this story of a remarkable time and a woman who showed great fortitude and resilience during those times of extreme crisis.

 

There are many notables in the novel, from the royal family to the revolutionaries, and then there are those members of Marie's small circle that help bring a stunning clarity to the tenuous position Marie found herself in every day during the Revolution. Not knowing what was the right thing to say at any given moment (for the king or for the people?) as Marie was forced to put aside her morals and sense of right and wrong, in fear of those leaders who were making names for themselves as writers of political papers that brought chaos to the kingdom and the monarchy. No one was safe, innocent women and children were slaughtered just as the King and Queen were.

 

Although the start of the novel felt a bit rushed to document the events of France that brought the monarchy to its knees, the climatic story redeemed itself as this reader became completely engrossed in the travails of Madame Tussaud and her friends. I had little knowledge of the devastation the Revolutionaries caused for the entire country, and was stunned at the sanction of murder that was committed in the name of freedom. The seemingly simple title of French Revolution brings to me now a new found respect for those that lived, died or endured during the Revolution, such as young Marie Grosholz, and it is only through the magnificent storytelling via Michelle Moran from which I have achieved this. Brava to Michelle Moran for another job well done for a spectacular (heartwrenching and nerve wracking!) piece of work. P.S. The last book I read took over a week, this took two days.