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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent Departure, 7 Jul 2002
John Gardner's new novel is a foray into historical detective fiction but, as one would expect with Gardner - always his own man - there is a twist; if the historical setting is only relatively recent (November - December 1940), the crime and its detection are modernistically bleak and spare. Not for Gardner the cosy Christie crimes of, say, Taken at the Flood - the Poirot story most firmly anchored in time by its references to air raids, beginning as it does in 1944 - for Gardner deliberately eschews the sanitisation of murder as practised by the classical detective story practitioners. Instead, with Bottled Spider, he gives full vent to the furies of the war years, counterpointing the indiscriminate mayhem of the Blitz with the handpicked slaughter of young women by an out of control freak. Gardner spares no one; certainly not the heroine of the piece, who suffers more at the hands of the unhinged murderer - garrotting his victims with piano wire - than a recently promoted WDS should have to cope with. But the aforesaid WDS, Suzie - 'with a zed' - Mountford, is made of sterner stuff and her odyssey from young, pretty WPC plucked to join the Scotland Yard Reserve Squad to fulfilled woman, via air raids, harassment, personal tragedy, and the pursuit of love, is endearingly depicted by Gardner in a smooth narrative that draws the reader in from cinematic opening to tense finale. The plot is splendidly convoluted, as one would expect, with a wide cast of sufficiently sinister suspects, and although the reader is aware of the thoroughly debased Golly Goldfinch and his penchant for piano wire from the outset, the intrigue comes from determining the identity of the man or woman behind him directing his malevolent hand. There are incidental pleasures along the way, too: the period detail is painstakingly pieced together (as one would expect of an author who lived through the Blitz); the characters are of their time and even minor ones are delineated with skill and care, their backgrounds authentic. Two, however, stand out from the crowd, pro- and antagonist, Suzie Mountford and Golly Goldfinch, the former as refreshing and delightful as the latter is unremittingly evil. Gardner takes us inside their minds, into their thoughts, carries us with them as they take the decisions that ultimately lead to their final, fateful confrontation. These two loom large over a novel with much to say about the climate of the early years of WWII, the spuriousness of some of the Blitz spirit, the relentless nature of organised crime whatever the national circumstances, and the sheer horror of living each night wondering whether it will be your last. With Bottled Spider, John Gardner, in the far from mellow autumn of his career, has changed direction once again: he is still the angry young man who penned the Boysie Oakes series but here he has forsaken the arcane intricacies of the espionage world for a swift and violent detective story outwith the customary margins of the genre. We are promised more of WDS Suzie Mountford and the London of the Blitz in future novels in the series. I for one can scarcely wait.
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by John Gardner
by John Gardner
by John Gardner
by Philip Kerr
