bad book good book

welcome reader

once again, then, i have finished reading two (2) books since i last posted something on the subject of novels. and so to pass comment on them, as per usual, look you see. no idea if these are of any use or interest to anyone, but here we are. 

quite an interesting dynamic here, for as the title of this post gives every indication i have, at time of writing, recently finished reading one (very) bad book, which happily got followed up with one (very) good novel. in respect of the former, i do indeed have a "thing" where when i can tell a book is going to be rubbish i still read it to the end, out of a misguided sense of obligation. 

to be repetitive, as usual here's a picture of the two which i have read, followed by some brief, overview sort of comments. after that, then, consider one of them fancy *** SPOILER WARNING *** things to be in place. 

going from left to right, or if you will starting where i did, Not Dark Yet by Peter Robinson is sh!t. by that i mean really bad. more on that later, but quite soon. this is not the case with The Judge's List off of John Grisham, which was a taunt, exciting thriller and a most joyous read. 

right, a warning about spoilers has already been issued. further, any sort of Peter Robinson acolytes or groupies may well wish to depart now, so as not to read anything what might upset their world view. 

i kind of knew, well in advance, that Not Dark Yet off of Peter Robinson wasn't going to be much good. hoped it would be, but alas was resigned to it not being so. this i based on the last three or four off of him being well below average. of all the things i had to be right about (so rare an instance) why did it have to be about how this would be. 

provenance of my copy was, i think, or as far as i can remember, Tesco, where they have more or less dismissed the notion of a cheaper "book of the week" but for some select titles so-called club card members can get it cheaper. which i did. probably spent £3.50 on this. or more. however much was in retrospect too much. 

the plot? pretty much the only reason i picked this up and read it. curiosity. it's a (more or less) real time follow up to the previous one, which i cannot recall the name of. or, as it turned out, all that much of what it was all about, but i did have a vague memory of wishing to read up on how it all ended. this, with perseverance, i was granted, or given. had you also read the one before and were bothered by the sort of mock cliffhanger to it, then you can pretty much skim read this to get the answers to how it all ends. some detours on the way, including one incident where it comes dangerously close to being the case of someone lending the author a video of Chinatown and him being inspired by it, but effectively three or four chapters to conclude the story are spread out and separated by a lot of padding. and by that yes, i mean waffle. 

on the cover is a quote from some newspaper or other claiming it, the novel, or the writer, to be "the master of police procedural". the more you read of this particular novel the funnier that carefully curated quote gets, really. once again it's a case (excuse the pun) of Banks (whatever rank he now is in the constabulary) either sitting in a pub and having a little think, or sitting at home considering some music (which he does in this one a lot) whilst drinking, simply waiting for the villain to reveal themselves for no apparent reason. furthermore, if there is such a thing as "police procedural", much if not all of the plot here is driven by the protagonist disregarding such. 

every single writer is, of course, entitled to write what they will. it's their train set, after all, or book, if you like. but Robinson's perceptions of England since a certain referendum in (i think) 2016 is now just tiresome. for some reason he creates a scenario where everyone in the country bar three or four of his characters voted to leave the EU, and all of them just wander around, looking for angles and opportunities to be racist/xenophobic or what have you. i have little doubt, regrettably, that such things do happen. just not as often, nor as widespread, as he seems to imagine. 

it's a shame that the Banks novels have drifted to casual, colour by numbers, any waffle shall do. when i first read some of his books (thanks to Aunty, no the other one, getting me a set one Christmas) they were rather good and entertaining. as mentioned earlier, if it were not for the (very) tenuous hook of resolving the unresolved from the previous, i would not have touched this. nor shall i, i believe, bother with any further Peter Robinson novels. enough, just f*****g enough, thanks. 

by (happy) contrast, it is decidedly so that John Grisham shall continue to collect coins of money off of me each and every time he cares to publish a work. indeed, for provenance, i went early and high, for as the price sticker shows i went right ahead and totes paid Morrisons £5 to get this the moment i saw it. 

moving to the plot and i (really) had no idea that The Judge's List is (or was) a quasi-sequel to The Whistler, a novel of his from a few years ago. sure, the central character kind of sort of seemed slightly familiar, but no, one did not have to have read the previous to understand this, evidently. and none of that is really relevant to the plot. 

so, the (actual) plot. a department tasked with investigating claims of judges being naughty get a rather surprising call. rather than a judge being accused of corruption, bias or incompetence they find themselves dealing with the at first seemingly absurd idea that a highly regarded one has in fact been a rather brilliant serial killer for the best part of two decades. the person making the complaint has a family connection to one of the (alleged) victims, and appears to have spent the best part of two decades investigating it all, finding the links and seeing the pattern no one else could. could the claims be true? and what exactly could a body set up to simply investigate less dramatic wrongdoings do about it? 

doing what i can (above and here) to avoid spoilers, this is simply breathtakingly brilliant. i ended up reading this book within a week, in some instances reading around 100 (one hundred) pages a day. which, i know, is standard for many, but not really for me. this was a story i wished to just keep reading and following, and was (obviously) hooked from the start all the way through. to state it again, no prior knowledge of The Whistler, or any other Grisham novel, is required. had you never ever read one of his and wondered what "the fuss" or reputation was, you can dive into this and i would trust you would quite quickly discover it all. 

the trend, of late, for John Grisham appears to be if not "sequels" as such then kind of follow up works, featuring the return of some characters. of late, for instance, there's been two "follow ups" to his debut, A Time To Kill, and both were outstanding. whilst i don't find them his best, there's also the Camino variations he does. anyway, if Mr Grisham or a chum of his is reading, ahem. please consider having another look at the protagonist from Rogue Lawyer. that was such a stunning read i would really love to delve back into that world. 

partially, if not mostly, i do have a sense (or feeling) that i have short changed the John Grisham novel here. however, i would suggest that the less i say of a novel, the more i loved it, and would rather remain silent so anyone curious can discover the wonders for themselves. better, though, to warn people off the folly i found in the Peter Robinson one. 

anyway, that's that for this. perhaps i shall finish another two (2) novels (reading, not writing) before the fall, or end, of this year, but looking at the calendar, maybe not. 

be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!