The Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly

At the end of my review for The Lincoln Lawyer, Connelly’s previous book about Mickey Haller, self-proclaimed “sleazy defense lawyer”, I suggested that the Bosch-meets-Haller sequel wasn’t far away and here it is.

Detective Bosch and Haller are half brothers, something Bosch knows but Haller doesn’t. Haller has been off the scene for a couple of years after being gun shot and then becoming addicted to pain killers. At the beginning of The Brass Verdict, he’s about to make a tentative return to work when 31 active cases drop into his lap.

Another lawyer has died in suspicious circumstances and left Haller his practice. Unfortunately, the dead lawyer’s briefcase and laptop were stolen, so Haller has to scramble to get up to speed. One of the 31 cases is a high-profile Hollywood murder case. So far so good, but then Bosch turns up and starts asking questions about the dead lawyer and why he was fielding phone calls from the FBI, and what happened to $100,000 that disappeared from his bank account, and Haller finds himself caught up in the sleazy tactics of his predecessor before he’s quite ready to get back to full-time work.

This book, like The Lincoln Lawyer before it, is a fascinating read. The level of detail you get as Haller builds his case is extraordinary; you wouldn’t think the minutiae of practising law would be interesting, but they are. Haller is always searching for the “magic bullet”, the key piece of evidence which will blow the case wide open and plant reasonable doubt in the minds of the jury. Connelly is so very practised at writing this kind of thing that it’s all too easy to find yourself unable to put the thing down at one in the morning. A genuine page-turner that builds to a gripping climax.

Highly recommended.

Bold as Love by Gwyneth Jones

First published in 2001, Gwyneth Jones’ Bold as Love is an odd mix of prescience and confusion. Whoosh goes the sound of many of the pop-culture references in this novel going over my head; dong ding are the bells that ring.

The counterculture. We know who they are; we might even agree with them on many points; we might even consider ourselves part of the counterculture. Except, it’s never as simple as just one culture, or just one counterculture. The problem with countercultures is that we can often disagree as violently with each other as we do with the Man.

‘But that wouldn’t be a problem for you, would it, Sage? Being a Celt yourself.

‘Yes it would,’ said Sage, cheerfully. ‘I hate ‘em, crystal swinging faggots, neo-fucking Bronze Age dykey matriarchs with their fuckwit psychic powers. Sooner they get wiped out by that mutant-cholera epidemic they are asking for, the better I will be pleased.’

Dong ding, indeed.

Climate campers, road protesters, tree-huggers, war-stoppers, custard-throwers, Tarot fanciers, eco-mentalists, organic organists, Alternatives, herbalopolists, homeo-pacifists, indie rockers, bikers, Islamists, Nationalists, anarchists: all of these and more could lay claim to the countercultural title, and most of them make an appearance in Bold as Love. They’re hardly likely to agree to disagree. A lot of them probably live in Brighton, which is where the author lives, it says here. Brighton seems to be Flake Central at the moment. All the flakes I know live there.

Britain is falling apart, the infrastructure is crumbling, everything is in crisis. The political classes are short termers, incompetent grafters and opportunist chancers. Dissolution festivals are going on all over the place. It’s like August Bank Holiday weekend on designer steroids. One of the political chancers hits upon the idea of inviting some leading counterculturalists to some kind of think tank summit with the aim of healing the rifts of Broken Britain and/or making the government look cool. Some of them treat it as a joke.

Our heroes are Ax, an obscure indie rocker with gifted guitar fingers; Sage (aka Aomoxomoa), some kind of Grateful Dead-worshipping immersive electronic multi-media artist billionaire; amd Fiorinda, a fucked-up teenage singing sensation of no fixed hairstyle (Rutles joke). They find themselves caught up in events (in the case of Ax, as part of a Master Plan), but then fall victim to one who is playing the game more seriously than they. Things take a dark turn.

At times this is inspired; at times you can almost see events like this unfolding for real. Elsewhere, it sometimes feels as if you’re viewing things from too-oblique an angle; you want the camera to turn around a bit and give a clearer view. There are some disturbing elements too. Child abuse, casual drug use; the characters hide behind masks and you wonder whether you like them or not; or care. It’s dense and seems to go on forever, and reaches no real resolution (there are no less than four sequels, and a confusing web site that positively screams www.1996.com).

In the end I’m not sure. I found it interesting, enjoyable at times, boring at others. I wanted it to end, and found myself strangely moved in places. The acid test is whether I’d pick up one of the sequels, to continue living with these characters for another 400 pages or so. The answer is, not right now, maybe later.

I’ve overdosed on SF this summer. Just read a Michael Connelly and it was like a breath of fresh mountain air. I might read another of these, later. I like Gwyneth Jones’ style

Cautiously recommended.

Science Fiction: The Best of the Year 2008 Edition; and 2007 Edition; both edited by Rich Horton; also: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: 26th Annual, edited by Gardner Dozois; and, The New Space Opera 2, edited by Gardner Dozois and Jonathan Strahan; and, Eclipse 2, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Phew. I’ve certainly, probably, overindulged in the old science fiction anthologies this summer. So what else is new?

Here are three very different approaches to the science fiction anthology. Gardner Dozois has been creating a doorstep of around 300,000 words every year for the past twenty-six, with each collection offering a wide variety of writers and styles, and a brilliant diversion. Once you’ve amassed a collection of these, er, collections, you have a pretty comprehensive survey of the development of science fiction writing over the past three decades. It’s in the nature of these anthologies to offer reprints of previously published work, so, for example, if you subscribe to Asimov’s, or Locus, or have read any original collections in that year, you’ll recognise quite a few of the stories. But Dozois has good taste, and rarely includes a story you’d consider skipping. I’ve possibly skipped just a couple in all the many volumes I’ve devoured.

So, where do you turn for a collection of brand-new, previously unpublished work? That’s the job of the original anthology, of which The New Space Opera 2 is an example. I’ve previously reviewed, and enjoyed, Volume 1 (though the first edition didn’t mention that there’d be others). With this second edition, Dozois and Strahan have again commissioned a collection of bang-up-to-date new stories, which is just as enjoyable as the first. Amazingly, none of the writers in this second edition were featured in the first, showing just how many talented writers are working at the moment.

Another original anthology, also edited by Jonathan Strahan, is the Eclipse series. I’ve previously reviewed Volume 1, and – as promised – Eclipse 2 was published late in 2008. I have to confess to feeling a little disappointed in Volume 2. There are a few good stories, but the mixture of fantasy, slipstream, and SF didn’t grab me this time. Your mileage may differ, and the series is certainly worth supporting.

The nice thing about Eclipse, or the Asimov’s anthology I reviewed a while ago, or (to a lesser extent) The New Space Opera, is that the books aren’t massive bricks and so are easier to carry around with you. Sometimes you don’t want to be weighed down by 300,000 words, and its this niche of the market that Rich Horton’s “Best of the Year” clearly targets (links: 2007; 2008). Though he draws from the same sources as Dozois, he producers slimmer volumes with fewer stories. In effect, he boils down the field even more than Dozois. As such, there are some stories that will appear in both volumes – though not as many as you might think.

Like Dozois, Horton does a good job of picking a wide variety of writers and styles, but each story is entertaining and worth reading. I noticed a maximum of four in each volume that had also appeared in the Dozois collection, which isn’t too bad.

There has to be a word of warning to those considering the original anthologies here, or indeed Strahan’s YA original anthology The Starry Rift. Inevitably, any story printed in an original anthology will be under consideration for the “Best of the Year” collections, and this is what I found this year. Quite a few of the stories in Dozois’ 26th annual were in Eclipse, or The Starry Rift, or The New Space Opera. So the wider you read, the more likely you are to find yourself reading the same stories twice… or more.

Still, most of these come highly recommended. Dozois sets the standard for completeness, but Horton is the one for those who want less weight, or just want to dip a toe into the water. As for fans of space opera, The New Space Opera collections are essential reading.