Gone Girl

Title: Gone Girl
Author: Gillian Flynn
Pages: 432 (ebook)
Published: June 5th 2012
Published by: Crown

Marriage can be a real killer.

On a warm summer morning in North Carthage, Missouri, it is Nick and Amy Dunne's fifth wedding anniversary. Presents are being wrapped and reservations are being made when Nick's clever and beautiful wife disappears from their rented McMansion on the Mississippi River. Husband-of-the-Year Nick isn't doing himself any favors with cringe-worthy daydreams about the slope and shape of his wife's head, but passages from Amy's diary reveal the alpha-girl perfectionist could have put anyone dangerously on edge. Under mounting pressure from the police and the media--as well as Amy's fiercely doting parents--the town golden boy parades an endless series of lies, deceits, and inappropriate behavior. Nick is oddly evasive, and he's definitely bitter--but is he really a killer?

As the cops close in, every couple in town is soon wondering how well they know the one that they love. With his twin sister, Margo, at his side, Nick stands by his innocence. Trouble is, if Nick didn't do it, where is that beautiful wife? And what was in that silvery gift box hidden in the back of her bedroom closet?

Nick and Amy started out as the perfect married couple. Very much in love, and neither too demanding of the other. Then the recession came along and both of them lost their jobs in the space of a few months. When Nick's mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, he decides that they're moving back to his home town in Missouri to help his sister look after their mother and father. This is when things start to go wrong, and two years later, on their fifth wedding anniversary, Amy goes missing. There are signs of a struggle in the lounge, and forensics show cleaned up blood in the kitchen. Where is Amy?

This isn't really my kind of thing at all. I'll occasionally dip into crime thrillers, but very rarely, and I'm only reading this for my book club. For all that, it wasn't bad by any means, and I didn't not like it or anything. It's just...not my thing. If it was, I'd probably appreciate it a lot more.

Because this is a very clever book, with clever characters and a storyline with twists and turns abounding. It all makes sense, and looking back there are hints in the very early pages of some of the underlying things which later come to light. The whole thing has been very cleverly thought out, and both Amy and Nick make sense as people when you learn of their respective backgrounds, the way they've been brought up and the kinds of people their parents are.

At first, it felt a little like I was being clobbered around the head with adjectives, but this soon settled down. Or I just got used to it, in which case I'm willing to attribute it to the two narrators being writers. Others I know who've read it have commented on the excessive use of language, but in all honesty I didn't notice anything particularly out of the ordinary. Maybe I've just grown used to swear words in the media, or maybe it's just differing sensibilities. Either way - be aware of this, and know that this is definitely not a book for younger readers!

Nick is a very likeable guy, for the most part. Yeah, he has his idiotic moments but he makes sense as a person, especially given the horrific situation he finds himself in. He's trying to make it seem like he hasn't killed his wife despite some pretty damning evidence by hiding the things that might back up what's already there, which in the end only makes things worse. He's flawed - very flawed - but he is essentially a good guy, I think. He just got a little lost and made some stupid mistakes, which he himself is willing to admit to.

Amy...Amy is a difficult one. We see her through her own diary entries for the most part, and a little through Nick's memories of her. She comes across as a very sweet, likeable person, if a little bitter about the literary counterpart her parents created of her: Amazing Amy. No pressure growing up at all!

There was a twist I didn't see coming, although again looking back it wasn't a complete surprise, but the ending was a little predictable once it came down to it - it just wouldn't have made sense for the outcome to be anything else.

A good book and an intriguing read, and I can see why it has propelled Gillian Flynn into the limelight. Would I read anything else by her? I probably wouldn't pick it up, but I wouldn't actively avoid them by any means. Again, it just comes down to the fact that crime is not my thing.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie

Title: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
Series: Flavia de Luce #1
Author: Alan Bradley
Pages: 382 (paperback)
Published: January 19th 2010
Published by: Bantam

It is the summer of 1950 - and at the once-grand mansion of Buckshaw, young Flavia de Luce, an aspiring chemist with a passion for poison, is intrigued by a series of inexplicable events: A dead bird is found on the doorstep, a postage stamp bizarrely pinned to its beak. Then, hours later, Flavia finds a man lying in the cucumber patch and watches him as he takes his dying breath. For Flavia, who is both appalled and delighted life begins in earnest when murder comes to Buckshaw. "I wish I could say I was afraid, but I wasn't. Quite the contrary. This was by far the most interesting thing that had ever happened to me in my entire life."

I grew up reading Enid Blyton adventure books: kids running round and solving mysteries; The Famous Five mostly but also bits and pieces of The Secret Seven. They were set in a different time, when four children (and their dog) could go on holiday together and snoop around new places. Sweetness was recommended to me by a friend, and as soon as he told me about it this sort of the thing was the first thing that came to mind and I was quite excited by the idea.

Flavia is a fiercely independent 11-year-old girl living in a big old house in the English countryside. She has two very annoying older sisters and a passion for chemistry, a love which riddles the entire book in the form of her thoughts and role-models. She is clearly incredibly intelligent and has spent much time learning about all things chemical, aided by a laboratory inherited from a long dead relation - one of the benefits of an ancestral home I suppose! When a dead body turns up in the garden, Flavia wastes no time in trying to get to the bottom of what's going on.

Bradley has created a very good leading lady in Miss Flavia Sabina de Luce. She is smart and quick-witted, if a little forgetful at times. Some things are forgiveable given the amount she learns in such short spaces of time, but forgetting that the local post office will be shut on a Sunday and going wandering about the back of it because of it was a little unbelievable. Though of course you couldn't have had her and the plot kicking their heels for a day, waiting to find out certain important pieces of information.

And of course, this is still a crime novel so the there are the requisite lengthy expositions about the past so that motives can be uncovered, and the the big long explanation at the end where all the clues are brought together. All this is necessary, but these are the things I don't like about crime books and may be part of the reason I don't really read them any more.

Flavia is really the only central character; there are secondary characters with whom she interacts, but her main companion is herself and her musings are all internal. I think it would have been nice for her to have someone to bounce off of, and also so she wasn't working everything out for herself but I can understand why she is so solitary given the nature of her two sisters. Maybe this is something that may be built on further in the series? Though her companion would have to be quite brilliant in their own way to keep up with Miss de Luce!

The writing itself is very easy to read and very descriptive of the surroundings, maybe overly so at times. On a number of occasions I was actually pulled out of the story and noticed just how much description was being used and it was a little distracting, but then Flavia herself is very observant so it is the way she sees the world, and probably quite useful in all her sleuthing.

I don't really have any complaints about this book, but while it was very good it wasn't amazing. There maybe wasn't quite enough happening during her actual detecting: there was a big finish, but after the inital murder the rest of the story is just her finding out stuff. Still, a very enjoyable book, with a mystery with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing and a nice story all-round. A series I'm sure I'll carry on with at some point.