Tangled Web UK Review April 2007
Nightlife by
Thomas Perry
hbk out April 07
Published by Quercus
at £12.99
Hugo Poole, something shady in Los Angeles crime, hires top ex-District
Attorney's investigator Joe Pitt to make sure that the Portland, Oregon police
enquiring into the murder of Poole's cousin Dennis, get the right man.
Dennis is the straight man of the family, a blameless computer salesman. As
it happens, it's not a man that did for Dennis, much as Joe Pitt feels it to be,
it's a woman. The nemesis of Dennis, we know from the opening chapter, is
Tanya Starling, just starting out on a career of murder and mayhem. And
Tanya, we soon realise, is a chameleon who takes on the colours of just the
kind of woman that will attract her next male target.
Yet to make up her mind about the sex of the killer is Sergeant Catherine
Hobbes, the astute Portland policewoman who leads the murder enquiry. She
is uncomfortable with being saddled with Pitt, but after manoeuvring him out
of the case, she is surprised by some personal feelings
of regret...
There are at least two takes on Thomas Perry's new novel. One is that he has
written an absorbing, well-upholstered thriller, no disgrace to the New York
Times best-seller list for which somehow you always feel it was destined. And
you've got to rate a book with two contrasting women, a escalating battle of
wits, an increasing pace as Catherine gets ever closer in both geography and
time (though dissipated somewhat towards the end as the struggle returns to
Catherine's home territory), and a splendidly bizarre climax.
The other take is that within this longish novel, there lurks a shorter, more
electrifying, if noirish book. Tanya and her ever-changing identities
(persuasively elucidated) is by far the most interesting character in the book,
the portrait of a growing sociopathic personality, to this reader at least,
convincing and real. Did we really need the less than fascinating Mr.Pitt? Or, if
we really needed a male character of some longevity, perhaps something
more could have been made of Hugo Poole, who gets a charged chapter to
himself early on – and thereafter is reduced to a bit part. Now that would have
been an altogether more edgy experience.
But then Tanya would have remained the nightmare of the few – and Thomas
Perry would not have his New York Times best-seller. You choose
(
Bob Cornwell
)
Thousands of New and used Books at your Fingertips...
Support Tangled Web - Buy Your Books Online
