I have a real fondness for Carl Hiaasen. I have never yet been disappointed by one of his books, but I realise that they are probably not everyone’s cup of tea. I do have a love of the surreal, and Hiaasen appeals to that in large doses.
Star Island introduces us to Cherry Pye (real name Cheryl Bunterman) who is a whiney, self-centred overtly sexual young pop starlet with no singing ability at all, and on a downward spiral to ruin.
In order to keep the paps off of her tail, her manager mum has employed the services of Ann DeLusia – an almost perfect double of the singer lookswise, but whose inteligence, sass and general likeability set her miles apart. And somehow, Cherry knows nothing of Ann’s existence.
When an over-enthused pap kidnaps the wrong girl, just when Cherry is on a massive bender, the wheels are set in motion for a showdown between an obscure bunch of characters – including the wonderful Hiassen staple Skink, the one-eyed former Governor of Florida who resides in the mangrove swamps, lives off the land and brings his own form of justice to those he feels deserve it.
I do have a soft spot for Hiaasen, and I haven’t picked up one of his for a while. I don’t think this is his best book by a long shot, but oh my, I was in for a totally unexpected treat as I got this as an audiobook from Audible.
It was narrated by Jeff Harding (which meant nothing to me when I picked it up, but have since found out that he’s “Hi, I’m Ed Winchester!” from The Fast Show) and I have firmly decided that Jeff Harding should read absolutely every comedic American book!
He was fantastic – the voices were brilliant, and it completely made it. It almost felt more like a play. I’m not sure how much of my enjoyment was the actual book, and how much was him. But I now don’t think I’d want to read another Hiaasen when Jeff can do it for me!
This time next week, it will be the first anniversary of Amy Winehouse’s tragic death.
I’m not generally a particularly soft-hearted person, and although I have felt a tinge of sadness when a celebrity has died, I am not one of those to get all weepy and claim that I loved them, and that their very existence changed my life etc etc.
I remember it was late on a Saturday afternoon and I had been having a bit of a doze before going for a night over the pub, when I first saw the messages coming through on Twitter that she had died. I remember quickly turning on the news channels and flicking from Sky to BBC and back again. It was a story that felt inevitable and yet it was still shocking. She was just 27. She was amazingly talented.
I was stunned. I was even more surprised when I realised that I was crying. I sent a text to The Man who was already over the pub, and then I put my Back To Black album. Followed by Frank. I cried some more. Such a waste.
I also remember that there were a lot of people who tried to belittle her death as the day before had seen the absolutely shocking murders of 69 people by Anders Behring Breivik. Many people were posting on various social network sites saying things like, “Get it in perspective, this is one druggie girl as against a huge number of innocents!”
I found that particularly hard to deal with. Why did one have to be weighed up against the other? Why couldn’t people be upset about both events?
Personally, I think that the reason that Amy’s death struck a chord with me that day in a different way to the Norway murders was because the murders were just too catastrophic, sickening and difficult to even comprehend. Whereas the loss of a young, talented, troubled girl was far more easy to picture, understand and believe. It doesn’t mean that I wasn’t as disgusted and shocked by the murders at all, and my heart went out to every one of the victims and their families – and those poor kids who will have to live with that memory for the rest of their lives.
Anyway, this is meant to be a review.
I got this from Audible as an audiobook. The foreward and the epilogue are narrated by Mitch himself, but it is understandable that he wouldn’t be able to read the rest of the book, so that is done by Rupert Farley – and he did a commendable job…I imagine he was picked because he sounds somewhat like Mitch, and he managed to read with what sounded like so much pride and emotion that during a lot of it, I forgot that it wasn’t Mitch!
This whole book is heart-wrenchingly full of love. You can feel it with every story. From Amy’s childhood, as a precocious, funny, impossible-to-teach child where she found school a bit of a bore, and longed to perform to her well-reported rise and subsequent fall and tragic end.
There were particular moments that must have been difficult for him to write – the time that she met Blake who he quickly realised was a bad influence on her and the moment he finally realised that Amy was actually doing Class A drugs and had a habit. This wasn’t any old father-daughter relationship, they were a tight-knit unit and not a day seemed to go by that he didn’t speak to her.
From the moment he realised she had a habit, he kept diaries and documented Amy’s life – the highs of Frank and Back to Black, various live performances and her Ivor Novello awards to the soul-destroying years of trying to get her to give up the drugs and her subsequent descent into alcoholism.
Hearing Mitch’s side of the various tabloid stories, Blake’s imprisonment, Amy’s stage-fright, the fights with Blake’s family and the fact that she had been off of Class A’s for three years before her death were quite eye-opening.
On the last day that I was listening to this, I was wandering around Camden (where I have worked for 5 years) and I took a different route to usual and walked past Amy’s old house while I was listening to Mitch telling the tale of when he found it for her – and it all just felt so poignant.
Everything feels laid bare, and I doubt if anyone could read this without wanting to give Mitch Winehouse a massive hug while they shed a few tears.
I picked this up on Audible as part of their sale.
It was narrated by Lisa Coleman (remember nurse Jude from Casualty) whose voice seemed to be a perfect fit for the part. Young-sounding and slightly rough around the edges, it was just how I imagine lead character DC Lacey Flint to sound.
Soon into the book, I realised that this wasn’t the first of Lacey’s stories – this is actually a follow-up to Now You See Me that features her and her boss DI Mark Joesbury. Although there were many hints as to happenings in the first book, I didn’t feel that I needed to have read the first (although I am probably going to go back and read it anyway as I enjoyed this one so much).
We start with Joesbury and Lacey being reunited after a traumatic incident obviously at the end of the previous book. There have been rather a high number of suicides amongst students at Cambridge University and Joesbury wants Lacey to go undercover as a student to see whether she can find out if there is more to this sudden spate than just unhappy youngsters.
There is a line of thought that there could be online activities including forums that may be harboring an environment that encourages particularly vulnerable students to take their own lives. Lacey’s task is to portray herself as such a girl, and see whether anyone tries to exploit her. The only person who knows what she is really at the University for is the student psychologist who believes that there is a pattern to the suicides.
The book actually starts with the final scene – a woman about to jump from the roof of a University building and then flashes back to explain how we got there. It was a real proper thriller. And actually pretty thrilling. I loved it. There were some great descriptions and the action was fast-paced.
There was just enough new information dripped out each time to make you think “Ohhh…” and see things in a different light. Unlike many thrillers I have read, it wasn’t obvious who ‘the baddies’ were until near the end when the author was ready to reveal what was really going on.
It really one of the best thriller / detective stories I’ve read in a while, and I think the audiobook was a huge credit to it.
I picked this up as an audiobook from Audible when they were doing a 2 for 1 sale on a selection of titles, I had some credits to use and it sounded quite fun. However, I did NOT realise that it is apparently number 14 in a series of Agatha Raisin books.
It was read by the ever wonderful Penelope Keith, who apparently played Agatha in the BBC adaptations of the stories – something else that seems to have totally passed me by (and I love a good radio series, I do!)
Agatha is a self-styled sleuth, based in the sleepy Cotswolds. I am thinking Miss Marple, but somewhat updated. Alhough Agatha is early middle-aged, she doesn’t come across as completely dowdy, and can have a bit of a mouth on her.
She’s a really great character, and although the book stands alone pretty well (I didn’t lose what was going on through any of it, as each of the characters that had obviously been in previous stories were given enough of a quick back-story with context to see how they fit in) part of me wished that I had started the books from the beginning, just so that I could see her character grow. I know I can go back and read them, but I know where she ends up, so there’s some mystery taken out of it all.
Anyway, an old woman in the next village is complaining about strange goings-on in her house – she swears that it is haunted. Agatha is vaguely interested, but it is only when her new next door neighbour, the rather dashing Paul Chatterton asks her to go along and investigate that her interest is really piqued.
After their visit, Agatha and Paul think someone is obviously just messing around – either kids, or the woman herself for attention, and don’t think much more of it…until the old lady is found dead.
This is quite a lovely gentle book – part detective novel and part a commentary on English village life, and I was totally won over by it. And Penelope Keith’s narration just made it all that more appealing! My only gripe really was that there was far too much time spent on describing Agatha’s various outfits and how much make-up she did or didn’t have on. I am guessing that it was to show that even though Agatha was a bit of a hard-ass on the outside, she had the same self-doubt, image-issues and romantic inclinations as almost every woman in the world.
If you’re interested in a bit of light, well-written entertainment, give Agatha a go – the series starts with The Quiche of Death.
My London Life In Reviews 
