Book reviews

Last year I was in London at the same as Robert Vaughn, (the man from U.N.C.L.E.) who was there to promote his autobiography, which apparently, he had written himself. So yes, this may seem a bit tautologous to the pedants, but of course, most of the celeb books are written by ghost writers, which, I find a bit spooky. (geddit?)

Well, anyway, at the time, I was vaguely tempted to shell out nineteen quid, buy the book and meet the great man as he dutifully dedicated my copy to...me. And of course, this thought flitted through my mind, gaining traction for all of, say two seconds. And I am pleased to say, I am glad I did not buy the book because it's crap, but I have just finished a library copy. Any "Hustle" fans will be disappointed; it gets two lines in the whole rambling book. U.N.C.L.E. fans would be none the wiser either. We get gems such as "all the exotic locations were done on the studio lot at MGM". Yeah, I had figured that one out. It's a desultory, hack job that leaves you none the wiser about anything, with plodding anecdotes that go nowhere and a strange literary tick whereby he writes "I met a bloke. His name was (insert famous name here)" That and Vaughn's obsession with conspiracies. (A lot of the book goes into his theories about he assassination of Bobby Kennedy).He tells us at one point that his FBI file, retrieved under freedom of information laws, concludes that he not a security risk. And neither is he of any interest. A grade A stinker.

Not so the only work of modern fiction I have read in recent times. "The Woman in Black" by Susan Hill - she of the Speccie blog. There is not a lot I can say about this book except that when you have finished it, you will be sorry. But in a good way. It's a ostensibly a ghost story, but it is also the writing of an author who is a master of the craft. It's not D H Lawrence, or even M R James, but it delights in intertextuality; the kind that rewards those who have at least read Dickens or Conan Doyle, and yet is in no way derivative. Enough. Just read it!