Reading for pleasure

The Girl in the Spider's Web

David Lagercrantz (MacLehose: £19.99; e-book £6.99)

This book, as indicated on the cover, continues the Stieg Larsson trilogy about the Millennium magazine's celebrated Mikael Blomkvist and Lisbet Salander, the girl of the title. This is a gripping story, superbly paced and joy to read. Never having read Lagercrantz, it is hard to say whether he sets out to write in the style of Larsson or whether he just writes as brilliantly well. Millennium is facing significant challenges, having received outside investment to keep it afloat. Blomkvist is searching for an exposé. He's also a problem. A chance encounter (one of three significant encounters in the story) opens up his horizon. A professor of artificial intelligence recently returned to Sweden to care for his savant child, faces mortal danger. Salander is already engaged, unknown to Blomkvist. Soon they are reunited in working to uncover the dark, murky unknown work of industrial espionage carried on by agencies of the US Government. Adding to this a significant character on the Salander spectrum, leads to a book worthy of the claim it portrays of continuing the Millennium series. There's enough left hanging for a follow-up which, if written with the same skill, will be expectantly awaited. It all blends nicely into a real page turner.

The Mulberry Bush

Charles McCarry (Head of Zeus: £18.99; e-book £5.79)

Charles McCarry is a prolific American author, who is described as having worked deep undercover for the CIA. This book is a terrific read, set primarily in Buenos Aires but with episodes in Berlin and the US. A young spy sets out to revenge the ill treatment of his father, a highly regarded spy, by the CIA. The back story evolves, but essentially the son engages with Luz Aguiler, whose parents were central renegades in the domestic politics of Argentina with which the young man's father was involved, but compromising deeds by the then CIA officers are revealed. In addition to Luz, we have the Russians in the form of Boris and Father Yuri. The characters are well developed and the narrative fast paced and engaging, ranging across the relationship between Luz and the son, his dealings with the CIA and Boris, as well as the simmering remnants of Alejandro Aguiler's comrades in arms. It all ends in a swift and unexpected dénouement. This took me back to reading le Carré and, stylistic aspects aside, McCarry's narrative is marginally less taut but equally gripping. A very satisfying read.

Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs

Lina Wolff (translated by Frank Perry) (And Other Stories: £10)

meat is cut as roses are cut
men die as dogs die
love dies like dogs die,
he said.

This is a difficult and intriguing work from the ever developing And Other Stories publishing house. Swedish author Lina Wolff begins with this quotation from Charles Bukowski, who was once described as “a laureate of American lowlife”. The bleak unfeeling attitudes of men towards women which feature in his work seem to represent a theme for Ms Wolff. There are two central characters, writer Alba Cambó and Araceli Villalobos, the daughter of Alba’s upstairs neighbour.

Although the book is in three parts, each of which seems to begin as a separate story, all three are intertwined. We first meet Araceli, when she is ousted from her bedroom by Alba’s housekeeper, Blosom. We learn of her early infatuation with a married man and follow her into translation school and a dalliance with prostitution. None of this happens in any sort of chronological order, but Alba pops up throughout. None of the male characters is a sympathetic one. Rodrigo Auscias, who purports to be Araceli’s first client, is a strangely disturbed character who has visions of people eating rotten meat, something which features once more in the brief explanation of the title. In a run down brothel a pack of male only dogs, each named after a writer such as the titular character, is kept. If one of the girls is treated badly by a man, the dogs are fed only rotting meat. Auscias is blackmailed by a lowlife character named Ilich, which in turn ruins his relationship with timber supremo Del Pozo (another deeply unlovable man) and his own wife. Alba’s final lover is a porn star called Valentino who disappears at the end. The other male characters are equally seedy.

Analysing this book for a review makes it sound unbelievably bleak: the reality is that it is a most engaging and engrossing read. The dark material is treated with lightness and ease. A first novel, it has won prizes and plaudits in the author's native Sweden. I wonder if we men will fare any better in her forthcoming novel The Polyglot Lovers.