“It’s sodding Heroin Galore.”
We had a two minute silence in school yesterday.
Unfortunately, when it started I was in the middle of a timed dyslexia
assessment and had to let it run. We still managed a little silence, though,
especially because our bells ended up being five minutes apart.
When I got home after a long evening of meeting parents, I
needed something to help me unwind. Spurred on by my moments of reflection, I
found something entitled The
Somme In Seven Poems.
It’s a really powerful cocktail of wonderful poetry
and beautiful animation that is well worth a visit. It only lasts about ten
minutes and if you have access to BBC’s iPlayer, I’d urge you to go along.
The
poets demonstrate one of the wonders of the form, the ability to generate huge
emotion and energy in a very short space of time.
On a tangent, I’d recently been flicking through my Kindle
and stumbled upon a book by Stuart MacBride called Partners
In Crime: Two Logan And Steel Stories (Bad Heir Day and Stramash). It may
be a mouthful of a title, but MacBride shows off his own skills when working
within a short space to tell a couple of fantastic stories.
The first is set over Christmas. It involves a fishy missing
person case. When links to a local loan-shark are established, it appears that
there’s every chance that a murder’s been committed. To make matters worse,
Steel has been left a huge amount of money by a criminal she loathes on the
condition that she swallows her pride and delivers a glowing eulogy at the
funeral service. It’s moody, dark and wickedly funny. It’s also
attention-grabbing as an investigation.
The second deals with a gathering of criminal minds on the
Island of Jura. Some of the criminals are even supposed to be dead. DI Steel
has happened upon them while over there with her girlfriend and Steel’s keen to
keep the surveillance a secret from her partner to avoid trouble. To help her
she calls upon Logan McRae and he’s anything but happy to arrive on the island
in the middle of a patch of miserable weather. It turns out that Steel has
stumbled upon a shipwreck with a cargo of heroin and the criminals have
gathered to recover it and go their separate ways. It begins with a moody
tension, cracks on with a heavy dose of wit and ends in a climax in which
MacBride throws in practically everything bar the proverbial kitchen sink. It’s
a very entertaining piece.
All in all, this is a very satisfying read that will
brighten any day.
As a bonus, there’s a preview of a novel at the back. As far
as I was concerned, I’d read enough to know that I’ll be back for more sometime
soon.
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