Nov 13 2007
Two book reviews: ‘Restless’ and ‘Strip Tease’
There’s something greatly satisfying about spy books. There’s intrigue of course, the cloak and dagger stuff, but there’s also thinking yourself into the character’s position and whether you could cope as well as they would. Could you walk out of your home with a wallet full of money and a warm coat, never to return? Forget about forging friends and confidants in favour of the safety of Queen and country? Could you kill a man?
Restless by William Boyd, has two interwoven timelines in the life of a woman who worked as a British spy during the Second World War. The first is about her life in the war. The second is what affect it had on her and her child in the 1970s. It’s pretty enjoyable: you get a real sense of how permanently it alters the spy character to live without trust all the time. She doesn’t have the ability to let her guard down. It even mentions Scotland at the beginning, when she goes to Edinburgh to do training missions.
Strip Tease is a bit more, uh, low brow. It’s by Carl Hiaasen after all. But it’s no less fabulous: as the quote on the front from PJ O’Rourke says, “better than literature!”. This one’s about a single mother working at a strip club to get enough money to divorce her criminal husband. Then she gets tied up in politics because a horny old Congressman beats someone senseless with a bottle of fizz during her dance act. And then there’s the Florida sugar industry and headless drug dealers and men who ‘boost’ wheelchairs, etc. This is Carl Hiaasen.