Then and Now

Strange that the best sellers of long ago continue to be the bestsellers of today. The world of the thriller hasn’t changed much since the eighties when I was heavily into it.

Read Ed McBain’s “Fat Ollies Book”. Heavy handed humor but it succeeded rather well. Very entertaining and very uptodate with references to 9/11, terrorists and all. And we actually get to read the whole of Fat Ollies Book in the novel (all 36 pages of it). The Ed Mcbain I remember was mostly heavy handed police detective fiction, I don’t know when humor started intruding into his writing. Must go back and read his earlier work again. Its amazing that a writer from the fifties has been at it regularly for the last 50 years, producing a book every two or three years. Very different from Mickey Spillane, who wrote in the 50s and 60s too, stopped (except for a book a decade) then came out with “Something down there” in 2003, which flattered to deceive. I liked the beginning, even the name Mako Hooker for the main character (like the shark and Mike Hammer of long ago) – but the latter half and the ending were lifeless. And the book was nowhere near as violent as My Gun is Quick or I the Jury, which were amazing for their time and amazing even now, for the rawness of the violence. These were his first two books and on the recent re-read were stunning. But apart from the violence of his thought process, Spillane never had anything interesting to communicate and his plots were never entertaining. The Snake, One Lonely Night (which started well but degenerated into McCarthyish anticommunism), Survival Zero (total crap) and The death dealers (actually starring a hero called Tiger Mann!) were totally avoidable. The Twisted Thing was a good read for its plot and because the villain is a boy. Am yet to read The delta factor.

Mario Puzo’s Omerta was excellent – unputdownable. As good as his magnum opus The Godfather from the seventies, though written just a few years ago. It does glamorize Sicilian gansters, but that holds true for the Godfather too. Omerta was so good that I re-read and re-enjoyed Godfather. Puzo has written very few books, but whatever he has produced is brilliant. I would never have guessed that Godfather was written so long ago and that too based on events just after the second world war – it could have been written yesterday. A timeless book.

Spy vs. Spy

I have always had fond memories of Bernard Samson as the most likeable fictional spy I have ever read about. Fortunately the story line of almost all the Len Deightons I have read had completely slipped my memory, making the re-reads well worth it. Berlin Game is still brilliant after all these years – the best spy story I have ever read including the Le Carre trilogy as well. Mexico Set and London Match were more like unnecessary appendages, written just to let us get more of Samson than to have any meaningful story. Hadn’t read the Spy Hook, Line and Sinker trilogy before. Also superfluous as regards story – the same characters going around the mulberry bush again. Spy Sinker, written from Samson’s wife’s viewpoint, filled in the story gaps but was horrible, lacking the main reason one reads the stories – Samson’s first person narrative. I was able to get my hands on the first of the next trilogy – Faith. More going round the mulberry bush, but having more action. Very enjoyable, once again. Must read Hope and Charity, as well as Winter.

Frederich Forsyth’s Fourth Protocol had a brilliant first half, one of the best spy stories I have read. But the plot is totally over the top – toning down the hyperbole would have made it much more enjoyable. Why bring nuclear weapons into it at all when an ordinary bomb would have served equally well? The Negotiator, which I read next was worse – a million characters whom I didn’t bother to keep track, except the main protagonist. There were some good moments though. But when Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev are fictional characters in a book – I cant stomach that. Especially when the so called exposure of the villain occurs at the end. You have been wondering - Is it the Vice President? The Secretary of State? Director of FBI or CIA? And then it turns out to be some completely anticlimactic Deputy Director of FBI (or whatever his position was – I have already forgotten). Disastrous ending. Forsyth's latest book The Afghan was also excellent, but not for his story. Instead, it’s the re-telling of the riveting details of the 9/11 bombing, the Afghan war, the assassination of Ahmed Shah Masood and the fight at Tora Bora which grip one. (Just as Odessa File is riveting just because of the details of Nazi genocide rather than the main story – I guessed the ending of Odessa File on the present re-read without difficulty, despite having forgotten the story completely) The actual fictional part of the Afghan was pathetic. Truth indeed has become stranger and more entertaining than fiction.

And shootout at Tora Bora seems to have replaced the shootout at OK Corral in the popular imagination.