The Guardian is my new favorite newspaper. Saturday’s review:
Gardiner is brilliant at making the over-the-top seem utterly convincing. Her heroine, Evan Delaney, is a paragon for our times: tough, funny, clever, brave, tireless and compassionate. In the very readable Kill Chain, she chases round the world to save her father from kidnappers,
and is pitted against worthy opponents - especially the pair of chemically altered whores with the bodies of children but “eyes stained with age”. The pace and inventiveness never flag, and the climax, which takes place in the terrifyingly impersonal container depot in the port of Los Angeles, is both nailbiting and moving. But the brilliant writing is what puts this thriller way ahead of the competition. As Delaney sprints across central London to rescue 11-year-old Georgie from a horrific fate, she notices a neighbourhood “like a scene from Peter Pan, brick Georgian buildings with dormer windows along the rooftops, from which children should fly away, first star to the right and straight on till morning”. Reading the fifth Evan Delaney book first is not a problem, but you’ll probably want to go back and read the others. Intelligent escapism at its best.
Joanna Hines
Okay, time to go dunk my head in the back-to-normal bucket.
11 responses so far ↓
djpaterson // June 25, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Great review! Well done Mrs O’Death.
Snart // June 25, 2007 at 4:15 pm
Killer review, Meg O’Death. And isn’t this review the reason all writers fear first drafts? Wasn’t your first draft something like Evan being chased by refugee Lutheran schoolgirls, ending in a free-for-all mud-wrestling bout in a riverbed in Ventura?
My gosh, if this isn’t inspiration for all writers to dig deeper and go for those new images. I doubt if Hines would have been inspired by the neighborhood “where buildings were stacked like big rectangular things and pigeons squatted like lumpy gargoyles along the rooftops.”
Great writing lives forever! Bravo!
Meg // June 25, 2007 at 4:25 pm
“…being chased by refugee Lutheran schoolgirls, ending in a free-for-all mud-wrestling bout in a riverbed in Ventura?”
You’re confusing my first draft with your last camping trip, Snart.
Snart // June 25, 2007 at 5:48 pm
Oops. My bad. Life is such a blur! Yours must have been the flesh-eating beetles and the face cream showdown. Now I remember!
jojo moyes // June 25, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Meg - I was going to email you to see if you had seen this. (hah!)
Wow. Top work, fella. And richly deserved.
So… Stephen King, and now the Guardian. What next?
Jojo XX
susan // June 25, 2007 at 11:47 pm
Intelligent Escapism at its best… Pace and inventiveness never flag. Both nailbiting and moving….
Terrific review, and you deserve every syllable of it.
Ken // June 26, 2007 at 5:47 am
I’m all aquiver with anticipation, Im way behind the rest of you (Mission Canyon) so any Kill Chain spoilers will be forgotten by the time I read it.
Hearty congrats on the review Meg, you exhibit all the signs of a misspent childhood.
Meg // June 26, 2007 at 7:57 am
Jojo - thanks! Hope you and your gang are busy tearing up Essex!
Ken - my childhood was, alas, wisely spent. That’s probably why I act out all kinds of mayhem on the page, in compensation.
Susan - thanks. Now back to the current sh*tty first draft…
Patti // June 26, 2007 at 11:13 am
Um, yeah, that’s why I, like, you know, like your books so much.
My mom is visiting for the rest cure after dealing with much of the funeral and estate detritus, so I’m going to plant her with China Lake in chair in the backyard (carefully watered with a gin and tonic) this afternoon. Welcome to the ride, Mummy!
Vicki // June 27, 2007 at 3:00 pm
I’m so jealous others have read this book and I’m still waiting. Meg, how can we get your books faster in the States? I read Stephen King’s article in EW and have been devouring your books ever since. It takes for ever to get them.
Evan is my new hero. Keep ‘em coming.
Meg // June 28, 2007 at 8:20 am
Thanks, Vicki. I’m working on it… starting next year, Dutton will publish my books in the US. And I’m writing a new novel as fast as my fingers can type.
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