Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens

Few matters of great political or cultural import have escaped the lacerating gaze of journalist, columnist and author Christopher Hitchens over the past four decades. British-born and Oxford-educated, and now a United States citizen, Hitchens has worked as a foreign correspondent and contributor to publications including The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair and Slate, in between producing 11 books (on Thomas Jefferson, Mother Teresa and atheism, among other topics).

His turn of phrase is rightly legendary. He once described Mother Teresa as a “thieving tyrannical Albanian dwarf”, and he is no kinder to the objects of his contempt and dislike in his memoir. His account of a meeting with Argentina’s murderous General Videla is one of Hitch-22’s finest passages: “I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer . . . Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush.”

Hitch, as he is called by those who know him, writes lovingly, almost romantically, of his dear friends the writers Martin Amis, Ian McEwan, Salman Rushdie and Peter Fenton – whole chapters are titled ‘Martin’, ‘Salman’, ‘The Fenton Factor’, and the book is dedicated to Fenton.

Though there is no suggestion that any of the friendships have been more than platonic, Hitchens is frank about the commonplace nature of homosexual encounters in British boarding schools, and his own participation in such adventures, having been dispatched to prep school at the age of eight: “The three great subjects of Beating, Bullying and Buggery are familiar enough to me in their way . . . “, and of the latter, “[t]he unstated excuse was that this was what one did until the so-far unattainable girls became available.” In the end, though, Hitchens concludes that the entire schooling experience was emancipatory, and in fact, the whole book, with one notable exception, is suffused with a sense of his appreciation of life.

Parts of the book are somewhat sluggish – I could have done without quite such an exhaustive recollection of his worthy experiences as a young political activist in Europe and Cuba – and the level of detail in relation to his public life, and his friendships, serves to highlight what is starkly absent from Hitch-22: any account of his relationships with his first wife or his current wife, the writer Carol Blue, or with his three children from the marriages. He explains this away, rather weakly, in a preface, where he notes that he can claim copyright only in himself, so as to imply that he lacks the right to share his family’s stories. But then, he calls it a memoir rather than an autobiography, so fair play.

(In a cogent review in the Guardian, Blake Morrison points out that Hitchens’ objective is intellectual historiography rather than emotional catharsis, which I think is on the money. He has never been one to talk about feelings.)

One aspect of his private life from which he doesn’t flinch is the suicide of his mother, Yvonne, when he was 24 (the aforementioned exception). It occurred as the result of a pact with her lover, with whom she had fled to Greece after the breakdown of her marriage to Hitchens senior, a Royal Navy man referred to by his son as The Commander. In the opening chapter, which bears her name, he movingly describes his last conversation with her and his journey to Athens to deal with the aftermath of her death. Characteristically, this is followed by an intellectual examination: ‘A Coda on Self-Slaughter.’

All beloved Hitchens topics are canvassed – atheism, God, Islam, his conversion from Trotskyism to conservatism, his support for the Iraq War, the Jewish Question – in service of a text that, depending on the depth of your existing knowledge of Hitchens may not greatly enlighten you as to the man, but will certainly leave you more informed than you found it.

4.5 / 5 stars: A rich romp through the mind and memories of one of the intellectual heavyweights of our time.

Note:

There is a sad addendum to the publication of Hitch-22: while on tour in the United States in June to promote the book, Hitchens fell seriously ill and was shortly after diagnosed with oesophageal cancer – the same disease that claimed his father’s life. In subsequent interviews, and in this extraordinary piece on vf.com, Hitchens has indicated his condition is terminal, though he may have up to five years to live. There is no sign that he feels sorry for himself, though; he said in an August interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper that his long-time heavy smoking and drinking – the cover of my copy of Hitch-22 features a close-up photo of the author mid-cigarette – made him a “candidate”. On a lighter note, he instructed Cooper to disbelieve any rumours he might hear of deathbed conversions.

Play Dead by Harlan Coben

It is rather curious that Harlan Coben opens Play Dead, a 20^th-anniversary reissue of the first of his mystery thrillers, with an introduction that hints at its unreadability. Is he being falsely modest? Self-deprecating? Or trying, in kindness and good faith, to guide the reader towards one of his later, better-constructed works?

That he is telling the truth in stating that he did not make any rewrites is clear. Play Dead is laden with cliché and soap opera-like interior monologues, creating a congestion that takes the book to an excessive 500-plus pages. Although these problems automatically relegate it to the thriller D-list, with adjusted expectations it is worth ploughing on for the pay-off.

What of the plot? We meet Laura Ayars, a preternaturally beautiful former model who now runs a successful business, and David Baskin, a basketball superstar who plays for the Boston Celtics, on their honeymoon in Australia. Madly in love, they have eloped after a whirlwind courtship and are unaccompanied by any relatives or friends.

The marriage is only days old when David heads out for an ocean swim – and fails to return. When a night has passed and there is no sign of him, a panicked Laura calls TC, a Boston police detective and David’s best friend, for help. TC gets on the next plane, but his best efforts fail. David remains missing, presumed drowned.

From here, the plot doesn’t so much thicken as veer wildly. Between an opening prologue involving an unidentified murder 29 years before David’s disappearance; brief passages depicting a unnamed character’s recovery from extensive cosmetic surgery; the apparently groundless resistance to the marriage by each spouse’s parents; and the emergence of a new basketball star with a game uncannily similar to David’s, the experience of reading Play Dead is like bumbling your way along a dangerously unkempt garden path. You know where you’re going, but getting there is a frustrating task.

I don’t want to be unduly harsh towards Coben: Play Dead indisputably shows the promise that he has since fulfilled, and for all the laboured unctuousness of the exposition he has evidently taken care with the plotting. The twist in the tale for which he is known is present here.

There are little delights to savour. The extraordinary obtuseness of one of his main characters, who can most charitably be described as as dumb as a bag of hammers, eventually stops being annoying and instead enhances the daffiness of the entire enterprise.

That, in the end, should be the expectation for what you might get from an afternoon with Play Dead – a residual sense of charming battiness. There are some ugly scenes and nasty people, but also firm friendships and true love of the candyfloss-and-paper-hearts variety. It’s worth reading for the schlock factor, and for the reminder that all good genre writers have to start somewhere, and a lot more skill and effort goes into creating a well-written thriller than the writers would have us know.

(If Play Dead leaves you with a weird filminess on the roof of your skull, wash it away with the sharpness of Caught, Coben’s 2010 thriller involving social media and missing children. It features every virtue and none of the flaws of his debut.)

 1 / 5 Stars: Days of Our Lives on crack.  Click here to view more Easy Mix Book Reviews.

The Killing Place by Tess Gerritsen

The titular ‘place’ of Tess Gerritsen’s pacy new thriller is stumbled upon by a hapless group of holidaymakers after, as befits a crime-driven novel in which suspense must be ramped up quickly and the pitch maintained, they suffer irreparable vehicular damage in just the fifth chapter.

Among those on board is Dr Maura Isles, a beloved recurrent Gerritsen character who has, against her better judgement, accepted the invitation of a weekend excursion to a ski lodge from a former classmate she has run into at a medical conference in Wyoming.

Now, in a snowstorm, the stranded quintet trudges along a lonely back-road looking for the slightest sign of civilization, and thinks it has found it in the form of a village bearing the sign KINGDOM COME. But the village is preceded by a two-mile long road, at the top of which is another sign – Private Road / Residents Only / Area Patrolled – suggesting that the Kingdom Come residents might not be warm and welcoming.

But needs must, and the book’s foreboding tone, set by the initial car accident in severe conditions, deepens further as the travellers arrive at a completely abandoned settlement. The garages hold cars, tables are set with plated food, windows are open and cupboards fully stocked. But where are the people? Why is the frozen body of a dog lying under a dusting of snow outside one house? And in another dwelling, where did the puddle of blood at the base of the stairs come from?

Back in Boston, where Maura lives, the apparent vanishing of the doctor prompts her friend, Detective Jane Rizzoli, to up sticks and head to Wyoming to assist the search team looking for the missing group. As the searchers work their way towards Kingdom Come, and evidence that the five may be lost for good is discovered, Jane is forced to rely on her instincts and a tight cadre of trusted colleagues as the reliably dysfunctional concept of the ‘religious commune’ hoves into the reader’s view.

Gerritsen’s style is unadorned, as befits the genre: there are few mellifluous descriptive phrases to demand re-reading and admiration. It is her characterization that is a great strength – after seven novels featuring Isles and Rizzoli, she is clearly comfortable with the pair and other than nudging them towards key plot points seems happy to let them take the lead.

They lack all the dimension of the key players of some of Gerritsen’s writerly rivals, but are permitted sufficient introspection and back-story to appeal to the imagination, and after all, an enthusiastic thriller reader only has to care a little for the protagonists to happily join their adventure.

Meanwhile, the sharpness of Gerritsen’s content can be attributed to her training as a medical doctor, and she has long balanced her practice with writing, logically producing (among the odd excursion into romantic suspense) a handsome back catalogue of medical thrillers in addition to the Isles/Rizzoli series.

In the case of The Killing Place, the end results of the characters’ quest for truth is surprising and unsettling, taking the novel, previously developing within a relatively narrow, personal frame, into the realm of the political and industrial. Even the most jaded reader will likely be shocked.

3/5 Stars: A solid thriller from a writer unafraid of venturing into the political. Click here to view more Easy Mix book reviews.

Sizzling Sixteen by Janet Evanovich

Stephanie Plum is a bounty hunter in Trenton, New Jersey. She works for her cousin Vinnie at Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, alongside the colourful Lula, whom she describes as “the office file clerk, wheelman, and fashion maven. Lula likes the challenge of fitting her plus-size body into a size 8 poison green spandex miniskirt and leopard-print top . . . [her] skin is milk chocolate, her hair this week is fire-engine red, and her attitude is pure Jersey.”

Lula is on a diet which allows her to eat one of everything: “. . . one pea, one piece of asparagus, one loaf of bread.” And one of each type of doughnut, as a drive-by of a pastry shop reveals. After 48 hours on the diet, she confesses to having gained a couple of pounds, but suspects it’s just water retention.

You might surmise that Lula is the best reason to read this fluffy 16^th installment in Janet Evanovich’s smash-hit Stephanie Plum series, and you’d be right, but that’s not an ungenerous assessment. In fact, Lula embodies the levity, archness and pure fun that explain the success of the series and the fondness constant readers have developed for its recurring co-stars.

In Sizzling Sixteen, the activities of Stephanie, Lula and their office manager Connie are severely curtailed when Vinnie is found to have been taken hostage by a local gangster, Bobby Sunflower, to whom he owes a gambling debt of $786,000.

Normally, the crew could turn to Vinnie’s illicitly wealthy father-in-law, Harry the Hammer, but since Vinnie was picked up by a Sunflower goon while “boffing a Stark Street ‘ho”, in flagrant violation of his marital contract with Harry’s daughter Lucille, Stephanie concludes that Harry is not the person to turn to for a bail-out.

So it falls to Miss Plum and her colleagues to find Vinnie and set him free without any of the good guys taking a bullet – or falling prey to a mobster’s pet alligator. Comprehensive and various assistance is provided by Stephanie’s on-off boyfriend, ‘Trenton’s hottest cop’ Joe Morelli, and (since Morelli and Stephanie are presently in an ‘off’ phase) a second love interest, a former Special Forces agent and now private security operative known only as Ranger, who uncomplainingly replaces each of the high-end vehicles Stephanie wrecks in the course of the rescue mission.

Like Evanovich’s earlier Plum novels, Sizzling Sixteen is characterized by plenty of action, a little gentle raunch and scenes that should be suspenseful but are instead uproariously funny, mostly because Stephanie and her girls refuse to take anything seriously. Their reaction to being confronted by a trio of henchmen who shoot through their office door is to lecture them about the cost of replacement; when a bullet graze’s Lula’s arm, she is specific in her indignation (“That a**hole shot me. Somebody get me a Band-Aid. I’m gonna be real upset if I get blood on this tank top. It was one-of-a-kind at T.J.Maxx. I was lucky to find it.”).

The lack of suspense is no flaw: the point is not what happens in the end, it’s the getting there. It’s like taking a frenetic hayride with the combined casts of The Sopranos and Jersey Shore, with frequent stops for doughnuts and fried chicken, and delivers lightness and elevation on a winter’s day.

3/5 Stars: One for the adventuresome escapist in you.  Click here to view more Easy Mix book reviews.

Broken by Karin Slaughter

My introduction to the scintillating crime scribe Karin Slaughter came last year with the re-release of her 2003 novel A Faint Cold Fear. Like that book, her new work Broken is part of her well-established series set in the fictional Grant County in Slaughter’s native Georgia, where she still lives.

This book, like its predecessors, centres on the crime investigation activities of Will Trent, special agent for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation; Sara Linton, the former Grant County medical examiner who relocated to Atlanta following a personal tragedy; and Lena Adams, a local police detective.

Former books in the series starred Jeffrey Tolliver, Sara’s husband and the chief of police. Jeffrey died in an incident for which Lena bears some responsibility and, four years on, Sara remains desolate and embittered. She has undeniable chemistry with Will, a brilliant detective who was raised in foster homes and battles daily with the triple burden of his childhood memories, severe dyslexia and an emotionally unavailable wife, whom he has loved since boyhood. Lena is similarly tormented and events early in the novel serve only to intensify her anguish.

Clearly, the title refers to Sara, Will and Lena as much as the novel’s plot. It could be argued that in crime writing, there is nothing new under the sun, and rather than try to craft an impossibly ground-breaking storyline, Slaughter focuses the tale on her characters. Thus, the suspense lies as much in how they will resolve their predicaments as in how they will solve the crimes.

Said crimes involve a university student, Alison Spooner, and her boyfriend, Jason Howell. Both are found murdered, with a peculiar wound indicating a common killer. Meanwhile, an intellectually handicapped local man apprehended for the Spooner murder commits suicide in his cell – but the circumstances of his arrest and the timing of his death raise questions about the propriety of the investigating officers’ conduct, and Will is quick to pick at the fabric of the carefully constructed explanations of Lena and her superior.

Slaughter refrains from overt political comment – rarely a sexy feature in a crime drama – but anyone who grew up in a small town in the South, as Slaughter did, and has seen as much of the world as she now has would struggle to remain entirely dispassionate. That one of the victims was a young white woman who worked in a diner owned by an older black man is a matter remarked upon, in less than refined terms, by the book’s most loathsome and pitiful character – who also happens to be Tolliver’s replacement as police chief.

It serves as a gentle reminder that for all the famed politeness and gentility of Southerners, there is a darkness just below the surface, and for the purposes of stimulating, character-driven crime fiction, Grant County is blacker than most.

Like all good modern writers in her genre, she makes a specialty of research, as evidenced by the lengthy list of acknowledgements (including of one of her finest contemporaries, Mo Hayder, and that writer’s recent forays into the murky world of forensic diving).

The topic at the heart of the plot is one target of Slaughter’s exhaustive enquiries and serves, when combined with the cleverness of her characterization, to leave the reader quite rapt.

4 / 5 stars: One of the best reads yet from a crime-fic master. Click here to see more Easy Mix Book reviews.

No Time to Wave Goodbye by Jacquelyn Mitchard

Jacquelyn Mitchard is treading familiar (and familial) ground in her new book No Time to Wave Goodbye. A sequel to her 1996 debut novel The Deep End of the Ocean, which spent 29 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, sold three million copies in its first two years of publication, and was chosen as an Oprah’s Book Club pick, No Time to Wave Goodbye re-enters the life of the Cappadora family 22 years after Beth Cappadora’s three-year-old son Ben was abducted.

The first book depicted Ben’s safe recovery, nine years later, from a home in a nearby neighbourhood, but as Mitchard now reminds us, he did not simply slide back into his place in his biological family. The lasting grief caused by the missing decade abraded the family ties, and Ben returned to live with the man he called dad – who had been genuinely shocked to discover that the boy he called Sam was not the real son of his now-deceased wife, whom he met when she was a solo mum to Ben/Sam.

Over the years, Beth and her husband Pat have battled, not always successfully, to come to terms with having to share their son, call him by another name and treat his ‘father’ with kindness at Cappadora gatherings. Evident fractures remain as the sequel opens and Ben, now a husband and new father, embarks on a new journey, as a documentary maker.

The project he has been working on with his ne’er-do-well brother Vincent and opera-singer sister Kerry is premiering in the tight-knit community in which the Cappadoras live. The opening chapters are alive with tension as Beth, who was not told of the documentary’s subject, watches a series of horribly familiar stories.

As a way of making peace with his past and telling the stories of other families like his own, Ben has found a group of families whose children have vanished in mysterious circumstances, apparently taken by strangers.

Beth’s shock is quickly replaced with pride, and as the documentary starts to gain national attention, the family is drawn closer than it has ever been.

The Cappadoras’ collective bliss reaches its peak at a prestigious awards event at which Ben’s film is recognized, but the same night another abduction occurs and lo, the decades-old nightmare resumes.

What follows is a dramatic shift in genre, excising Beth from much of the rest of the story and pitting Ben and Vincent against the elements in an action-thriller jaunt that I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find was inspired by the writings of Jon Krakauer or even Lee Child.

The story holds together and ends enthusiastically if somewhat implausibly, but it’s hard to laud a novel that makes quite so many demands on the reader’s suspension of disbelief, from the similarities between the past and present kidnappings to the awards event, the rescue effort and the final revelation.

It’s diverting and suspenseful and ultimately somewhat tiring. The Cappadoras are an appealing family of which many more tales could be told, but they might do well to stay at home and rest for a bit.

2.5 / 5 stars: The kids are all right.  Click here to see more Easy Mix Book Reviews.

Every Last One by Anna Quindlen

The action in Anna Quindlen’s elegant, moving new novel Every Last One takes its time coming; fully half the novel is dedicated to the delicate unspooling of the daily life of the Latham family: Mary Beth, her husband Glen, and their three teenage children, Ruby and her younger, fraternal twin brothers, Alex and Max.

The leisurely pace is not accidental. The reader must know the characters, be invested in their lives, to feel the full weight of the crucial event. (When the titular phrase ‘every last one’ is uttered, it is a heart-sinking moment.)

Anna Quindlen parses private life with a skill rivalling that of any contemporary writer; one suspects that skill is born as much from keen observation and long practice as natural talent. A former journalist who took up fiction writing full-time in 1995, she won the Pulitzer Prize for her New York Times column ‘Public and Private’, and her impressive ‘Last Word’ column graced the final page of Newsweek magazine for nine years until announcing her semi-retirement in 2009.

Additionally, she has written five earlier novels, all bestsellers, including One True Thing, which earned Meryl Streep an Oscar nomination when produced as a feature film in 1998.

Like Mary Beth, Quindlen has three children and a long marriage, and there is an authenticity and lightness to her writing that suggests it is a product of experience as much as invention. (A reporter’s habit that can’t be entirely abandoned, possibly.)

The Lathams live in a close-knit community in which it seems every child has played in every backyard – but not every bond has endured. Mary Beth was once best friends with Deborah, the mother of Ruby’s boyfriend Kiernan, but long-ago events caused an irreparable breach. Kiernan is spending more and more time at the Lathams’, and appears troubled, but Ruby is pulling away, and Mary Beth resists asking questions, having learned that the best way to find out what is going on in the lives of her children is to remain silent and alert.

Meanwhile, Max is sinking into a torpor from which his mother feels powerless to rescue him; he starts to see a therapist, but, with his mood failing to lift, Mary Beth’s anxiety intensifies. Like many mothers, she is the emotional heart of the family, perhaps subconsciously hoping that in fretting over her children, she is helping to protect them.

Quindlen writes ordinary, middle-class family life well. Mary Beth marvels at her daughter’s self-assured quirkiness while reflecting, with a mix of anguish and relief, on Ruby’s recent skirmish with an eating disorder. She yearns for some of Alex’s self-possession to rub off on his withdrawn brother. And she admires the relaxed approach to parenting of her husband, who tells her she is too involved in their children’s inner lives.

It all turns on a dime one evening, following a New Year’s Eve party at the home of Glen and Mary Beth’s close friends. Mary Beth wakes afterwards with a different life. With this, Quindlen poses questions that go to the heart of our existence: how much can one person survive, and when is it worth it to try? Quindlen’s mastery of the navigation of emotion makes the exploration of these questions a rewarding pastime.

3.5 / 5 stars: Sobering and stunning.  Click here to view more Easy Mix book reviews.

The Passage by Justin Cronin

The unusually breathless introduction by the Hachette publicist, combined with the trouble taken to set up a Facebook page (www.whoisamy.co.nz) made me rather suspect The Passage, the third book by American novelist Justin Cronin, might be not be just your everyday post-apocalyptic science-fiction fantasy doorstopper.

That hunch was borne out: the acknowledgements page of the 765-page tome features a nod to film director Ridley Scott (of Bladerunner, Gladiator and Robin Hood), who knows a good story when he sees one and has already snapped up the movie rights for a reported US$3.75 million.

Smart man. The Passage has ‘summer blockbuster’ written all over it, and what’s more, it is merely the first installment in a trilogy.

The opening sentences indicate the scale of Cronin’s ambition for his story: “Before she became the Girl from Nowhere, the One who Walked I, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years, she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy. Amy Harper Bellafonte.”

At the start of the book Amy, to all outward observations a normal, healthy six-year-old, is abandoned at a convent by her troubled mother. Taken first under the wing of a caring nun, then a grief-stricken FBI agent, she is present when a killer virus is inadvertently unleashed from a clandestine military facility in Colorado, turning 40 million people into vampirish ‘virals’ and leaving all but a handful of the remaining American populace dead.

The disease is part of a grand, top-secret experiment by the US government in which death-row inmates consent to be used as human guinea pigs in exchange for commutation of their sentence – not such a great deal, as it turns out.

Following the outbreak, after which Amy vanishes, Cronin introduces a group of survivors who wall themselves off in what is now the California Republic. A tight but necessarily merciless community of refugees from other parts of the country, they ward off the virals with high-octane lights and skilled combatants known as Watchers.

A breach of security, and the curious reappearance of Amy, only a handful of years older despite the passing of nine decades, drives them eastwards and into the sinister embrace of another group of survivors, who have developed quite a different way of defending themselves against gruesome annihilation.

The question of who else is out there, and whether it is worth taking the substantial risk associated with finding out, dominates the second half of the book. Can a post-apocalyptic world sustain any hope?

The Passage, an immensely brave and inventive novel that is justifiably earning Cronin comparison with the best work of Stephen King, spans a century after the release of the virus. This event occurs in a time not far from now; a world in which, perhaps fittingly, Jenna Bush is Governor of Texas.

The main story is interspersed with brief diary excerpts by some characters, which have been presented at the Third Global Conference on the North American Quarantine Period in the Indo-Australian Republic in April 1003 AV (after virus?).

The excerpts constitute the end of the story, but The Passage leaves us (and Amy) with 900 years to go – one can only hope that the rest of the tale proves as thrilling and transporting as the opening salvo.

4 / 5 stars: An irresistible genre mash-up that reinvents the vampire.  Click here for more Easy Mix Book reviews.

Our Family Table by Julie Goodwin

Seven-and-a-half-thousand people vied last year for a shot at $100,000 and a cookbook deal, with the ultimate victor emerging in the form of a 40-year-old New South Wales mother of three, amateur cook Julie Goodwin. The contest was the first Australian edition of the TV cooking show Masterchef, which proved as much of a hit Downunder as in Britain, where it originated.

The publishing prize has resulted in Our Family Table, a handsome, weighty compendium filled with family recipes, passed down through generations, and newer dishes given to Goodwin by friends and neighbours.

The tastes are doled out in an orderly, 10-chapter fashion, starting with breakfast and covering the usual suspects: side dishes, desserts, sweets, special-occasion dinners and Christmas feasts.

More inventively, a chapter titled ‘Feeding the multitudes’ contains the dishes Goodwin loves to serve to her family (there’s a spaghetti bolognese, heavy on the mince, a ‘ridiculously cheesy lasagne’, chicken parmigiana . . . do you detect a theme?), while, in a rather sweet gesture, the final chapter (‘Our family table) consists of blank pages for the recording of the reader’s own culinary treasures.

‘Wide open spaces’ was my favourite, with its recipes for the camping trips Goodwin writes about relishing as a child and now with her husband and three sons. An easy recipe for damper on a stick is accompanied by a delectable ‘Camp fire train smash’ of vegetables and a simple lemon risotto cooked in a pot over the fire.

Our Family Table could not be classified as avant-garde: it features trusty crowd-pleasers and the odd harkening-back to a 1970s dinner party (veal with mushroom sauce, cauliflower cheese). There are instructions for ‘Mum Coughlan’s passionfruit shortbread’ and ‘Grandma’s hazelnut chocolate biscuits’: comfort food rather than culinary feats.

A personal attempt at Goodwin’s great-grandmother’s six-ingredient treacle scones resulted in small, light and irresistibly tasty morsels. They were moreish without being overly indulgent, the recipe calling for just three teaspoons of butter and two tablespoons of golden syrup.

The book leaves you with a strong sense of who Goodwin is, with its quotes and cooking tips from her loved ones (‘Use the good china. Every day is a special occasion’) and personal anecdotes (she shares the trial-by-fire experience of learning to make the perfect poached egg during a stint at a Sydney café).

It is not for the would-be chef or advanced home cook; for someone comfortable with the most complex tasks of Elizabeth David or Julia Child, this compendium of family favourites would be unchallenging and I daresay uninspiring.

Rather, it can be categorized alongside the likes of the Edmonds Cookery Book as a useful and dependable resource for simple, crowd-pleasing fare. The dishes are straightforward, requiring no sophisticated equipment or cooking techniques. Such risky dishes as souffle are modified by being twice-baked, and Goodwin manages to make even the potentially intimidating crème brulee, with its call for a blowtorch, look manageable.

Our Family Table is the work of a woman who loves food and who is accustomed to finding nutritious ways to fill the bellies of growing children. For those with similar requirements it would be a smart investment, and as one of the loveliest-looking cookbooks I have seen, a harmonious addition to the shelves.

3 / 5 stars: Comfort, not cordon bleu.   Click here to view more Easy Mix Book Reviews

This Body of Death by Elizabeth George

“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

So goes the biblical line (Romans 7:24) that prefaces Elizabeth George’s door-stopping new crime thriller. One surmises that the ‘wretched man’ is her long-time protagonist, DI Thomas Lynley, who, as the novel begins, is absent from Scotland Yard on compassionate grounds after the murder of his wife.

The primary plot of this well-upholstered tome involves a young woman, Jemma Hastings. Wanting to make amends for past wrongs, her estranged best friend, Meredith Powell, visits Jemma’s last known address, a property in Hampshire. There, she finds Jemma’s boyfriend, Gordon Jossie, shacked up with a new woman, Gina Dickens. Gordon tells Meredith that Jemma decamped to London some months earlier without explanation, leaving behind her car and other possessions.

Thus Meredith begins an investigation, at the same time as Scotland Yard, upon the discovery of Jemma’s body in a Stoke Newington cemetery. Heading the police taskforce is Isabelle Ardery, who has been seconded as an acting replacement for Lynley within the Met. Encountering a mistrustful team, she sees that the best way to get the outcome she needs in the Hastings case is to persuade Lynley to return. (George writes conflict well, and later scenes of mutiny against Isabelle are some of the finest in the book.)

Isabelle has demons she is struggling to quell, and the perceptive Lynley notices their manifestations almost at once. Queering his pitch is the fact that the result of this investigation will determine whether Isabelle is permanently appointed or cast out, and their mutual superior, who favours Isabelle, has asked Lynley to keep an eye out for any hint that he may be mistaken.

The investigation is multifaceted and at least half a dozen viable suspects emerge. The team must interrogate the owner and lodgers of the boarding house Jemma was living in before her death, a psychic (one of the book’s less worthwhile characters) enters the picture, and when a Roman artefact of indeterminate value is found, the trail appears to lead back to Hampshire.

Cleverly, George interposes the main narrative with brief chapters elucidating a sub-plot reminiscent of the tragic case of James Bulger, the Liverpool toddler who was killed by two 10-year-olds in 1993. The eventual linking of the two storylines is unexpected and enhances the richness and pathos of the conclusion.

This Body of Death was my introduction to both George (writer of 11 novels featuring Lynley) and her DI, and I was struck by what an appealing and intriguing character she has created. Though there are several notable serial protagonists in crime fiction, I have not encountered one as well-drawn as Lynley: he is compassionate without being treacly, and inspires trust and loyalty among the jaded and battered members of his unit. He seems like someone you might know, and wish to emulate.

Additionally, there is a complex and opaque dynamic between Lynley and his former partner at the Met, Barbara Havers, a recurring character whose personal proclivities George is at pains to veil. I couldn’t decipher exactly what was at issue; other readers will likely show more intuition than I did. Doubtless, how the Lynley-Havers partnership plays out during the DI’s slow recovery will be one of the treats of George’s next work.

3 / 5 stars: Weighty but worth it.  Click here to view other Easy Mix Book Reviews.