Zero - Marc Elsberg

For fans of Black Mirror and conspiracy thrillers with a technological spin

This thrilling novel by Marc Elsberg is one of the more prescient novels of recent memory, due the knowledge of recent data swiping by Facebook and how do you know how safe and secure your online personality is from people who track your data and what you like and do not like.

Elsberg has crafted a paranoid conspiracy thriller in the vein of the man done wrong such as the 1970s American cinematic thriller like The Parallex View and The Days of the Condor, the only change of tone is the use of a female protagonist as the person in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Cynthia Bonsant, is a journalist, who starts to uncover the truth of a new Freemee App which infiltrates people's live through immediate gratification. Bonsant is on the lead of an anonymous activist called Zero who promises to uncover the truth of how big business is after your data.

As Cynthia gets closer to the truth and people around her become targets also, her safety is threatened by those she trusted.

Elsberg although crafting a decent thriller, has also written a glossary of how apps and online resources infiltrate our lives through our human need to gain instant satisfaction with a combination of chemical releases.  The data businesses garner from our usage rates and likes, tells them a lot about people and how possibly we could all become drones and cogs of a bigger operation.

While the thriller is a very good in places and goes along at a break-neck pace the stops for exposition sometimes drags down a good thriller to a chamber piece; which is unfortunate as caught between the devil and the blue sea Elsberg requires the exposition to create the paranoia in Cynthia for us to embrace her conspiracy.

Tellingly, the last word of the novel is left to the anonymous bloggers and hackers, who are still out there watching keeping an eye on those who are watching us.

Zero is out from Doubleday Press on Thursday 12th July

Joseph Knox interview

Joseph Knox - Author of Sirens and The Smiling Man

Joseph Knox garnered critical and commercial acclaim when Sirens was released in early 2017, he returns with the second in his Aidan Waits series this time Waits is investigating the mysterious death of a man in the fourth floor of a disused hotel whilst tackling a variety of professional and personal obstacles.

In spite of his busy media schedule this week, his publishers Transworld Books granted me some time with Joseph on the day of his book release.

• When you set out the first book ‘Sirens’ – did you have the plot for the sequel in mind already or did it come to you following the success of the first novel?

I was asked to write a short story for the Waterstones edition of Sirens, and it took place a little after the events of that book. As the story came to an end I realised that someone awful was watching Aidan, and that he was unaware of it, and I knew then that would inform the next book…

• Was there a temptation to keep Waits fighting his demons/addictions or was the journey of sobriety necessary to character development/arc?

There’s nothing more tedious than watching a character learn a lesson in one book and then be re-set back to normal in the next. Aidan will keep moving forward as long as I’m writing him. Also – his idea of sobriety is just to stop popping pills. Hopefully as long as he can keep drinking he’ll stay sane…

• Do you know someone like Waits or is he a collage of people?

He reminds me of one guy I know.

• I was struck by the warmth of the book, it is set in summer and I found that atmosphere radiating off the page, was that deliberate?

That’s very nice to hear, thank you. It was intentional to go for that as a reaction against the deep freeze of Sirens. Probably the same reason Aidan got off speed. I didn’t want to write the same book twice.

• How many drafts did you go through?

Agh, impossible for me to say I’m afraid. I rewrite every time I re-read, which is a lot, and when I was hacking at The Smiling Man I worked 20 hours a day for six months. I’d often re-write a scene several times before I let myself get up and leave. Lots and lots of drafts.

That's a lot of writing - ''I worked 20 hours a day for six months' 

• Did you lay out the plot or follow the Lee Child way of writing it as it comes to you and Waits?

As with Sirens I had a kind of tone, a kind of atmosphere that I was writing towards, but I’m afraid I don’t plan. Maybe my life would be easier, but I think the books, or certainly the characters, would feel less natural.

• What noir have you been reading lately? Anything else you recommend? 

Not what anyone else would really call noir, but my idea of it certainly (as it pertains to tone, language, atmosphere, weirdos and doom), Ottessa MoshFegh’s short stories, Homesick For Another World.

• Will we be seeing Waits again soon?

I’m working on the next Aidan novel as we speak. After that, I don’t know…

• Do you have a wish to write in a different genre?

 Not really. A lot of crime writers seem to come to the genre having crapped out of what they really wanted to do – but for me it’s true love. I feel like Smiling Man is so different to Sirens, and my idea for book three is so different again, that I can keep pushing forward and challenging myself in this genre. It helps that they take place in a kind of heightened noir-ish landscape where anything and anyone seems possible.

 The Smiling Man is out from Doubleday Press now in Hardback

The Smiling Man

Joseph Knox, got tongues wagging when his debut novel Sirens was released by Transworld Publishers in early 2017. The tale of Detective Aidan Waits' descent into hell as he succumb to his drug addiction whilst attempting to complete a criminal investigation; was a tale for our times, an anti-hero who wore his vices clearly - at times unlikeable, dishonest and yet equally charming and mysterious.

Waits returns in the sequel or second of the ongoing series, The Smiling Man.  Waits has now been banished to the graveyard shift with the only officer who would work with him, a large unsavoury character Sutton - who uses hand sanitiser religiously, it dripping from him like fat our of a chip pan.

Whilst this reader was fond of Sirens, the malevolent nature of Watts was something difficult to deal with - whilst it harked back to the bygone age of literary pulp noir such as Hammett and Chandler; their heroes Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe were certainly capable of bad things they never crossed the ethical line Waits practically triple jumped over.

The Waits we encounter in this second novel is an altogether different character, one who is aware of the harm he has caused and damage to his reputation and close relationships.  Now sober but stuck in a shift he can never get out of, investigating the thrilling world of dust-bin fires he fears he will never see the light of day until they get a call to the Palace hotel late one Saturday night.

There they see a security guard injured and further investigation leads them to a fourth floor room (413) that has a man tied up in a chair dead but with a Cheshire Cat grin on his face.  This unnerves Waits and the veteran Sutton, and so begins the case to find out who the Smiling Man is or was.

Waits encounters obstacles throughout and not from criminals but as much from his superior, the omnipresent Superintendent Parrs who has his sights set on Waits and would like nothing more than to put him out of the picture.

While the first book wallowed in the dark world of Northern Noir it was drawing, this book is lighter in tone due to a sober Waits being front and centre; his charm and magnetism coming to the forefront - though a bar-room brawl with a former enemy brings out the worst in him.

Whilst Knox focused on creating an atmosphere of noir in the first book, this is more of a tongue-in-cheek noir transplanting the talking of American noir to Manchester; oneupmanship banter flowing back and forth and with the action taking place over summer months there is a general warmth and sunny disposition running through the novel but always with that sinister underbelly ('Fate turns into karma at forty degrees')

Yet that is the cleverness within Knox's writing - the consistent juxtaposition of light and dark; good and evil; right and wrong; the warmth with which Waits is created is merged with the dark of the world he inhabits.  There is a lushness and rawness to the novel that radiates throughout and its a pleasure to read and see a young writer growing in confidence with each new work written.

The Smiling Man is published and released from Doubleday Press on Thursday 8th March

Last Stop Tokyo - Book review

The debut novel by James Buckler, published by Doubleday Press, follows in the footsteps of other debut novels by bright new voices of British crime fiction, Joseph Knox and Daniel Cole; where you have an unlikeable protagonist who does not fit the mould of crime novels, they are on the peripheries with a dark history looking for a change and seemingly unfamiliar with an ever-changing world they find themselves struggling in.

Buckler's lead is Alex Malloy, an English language teacher in Tokyo, who is running away from a tragic accident in London. From the outset, much is made of Alex's otherness in the Oriental jungle of Japan's capital city, his white skin, fair hair and Peter O'Toole blue eyes set him out from the crowd. However, as much as he tries to avoid trouble, trouble keeps finding Alex from drunken late nights with his friend Hiro, to the illicit relationship with Hiro's sister, Naoko; an affair that could prove deadly.

Buckler paints Tokyo as a city of vice and sin for foreigners, part-time citizens in a twenty four cityscape where they can get away with murder if they so wish.  From geisha girls who are treated like prostitutes, to unseemly businessmen who treat women as objects of lust to drug lords and vengeful work colleagues.

The trouble for Alex leads him to jail where he encounters Jun who cuts him a deal to get out of the predicament but this has a trickle effect on all of his relationships and those people's lives.

Alex is no saint and Buckler paints him as such, the moral fibre of British people has been called into question in novels recently especially the aforementioned Knox's Sirens where the toeing of the line between right and wrong is complexly handled in a nourish fashion involving double crosses, femme fatales and dark urban settings.

If you are seeking one of those fish-out-of-water novels where an Englishman is lost abroad this is not for you, what you have here is an Englishman experiencing the effect of a gradual resentment of the English values from overseas territories, people do not like English but Alex still finds his saviour in an understanding detective Saito who wants to bring down a yakuza king pin and sees Alex as integral to the investigation.

Buckler writes with a real zip and thrust to the proceedings which is useful where the book comes in at under 280 pages, however, there is a real surprise in the ending which turns the point of view of the book to Naoko ending from a surviving female perspective, which is fitting as Naoko, a female character written by a man who is not merely an object of desire but a fully rounded character.

The ending will pack a punch and is quite a brave step for the modern day novel, Buckler has written a standalone novel that is both enticing and yet downbeat which is not surprising given the current uncertain political climate we find as a people find ourselves.

Last Stop Tokyo is released from Doubleday Books on 28th August in Hardback and all e-book formats.