COMEDYDoughnut
Tom Holt (Orbit)
★★✩✩✩
Tom Holt is better than this. He is the master of the comic conceit played out with outrageous daring and with memorable characters.
His comedy is one of awkward predicaments, but in a plot that involves clumsy scientist Theo getting lost in the multiverse with literally an infinite number of escape routes then the comedy of restriction is somewhat lost.
It is as though that, offered such riches, he loses his discipline and focus. He writes wildly, never looking back, and in the end characters end up flinging vast slabs of emergency exposition to explain a lazy plot hole that we hadn't spotted because the story is lacking traction.
The bones of the plot are this: Theo Bernstein loses his job after destroying the Very Very Large Hadron Collider.
When his mentor Pieter van Goyen leaves him the contents of a safety deposit box in his will, Theo's life takes a turn for the better - or worse.
He finds the key to the multiverse and travels to worlds where anything is possible but given infinite power his needs are limited and his problems grow exponentially.
Neat idea lost in space.
CRIME
The Hiding Place
David Bell (Michael Joseph)
★★★✩✩
The disappearance of Justin Manning 25 years ago rocked an American small town.
His sister has been haunted by the boy's murder for years, especially now the man jailed for the crime has been paroled. A detective is also beginning to suspect something's not right.
David Bell is an authentic voice packing his novel with detail and tension. This is a fine read. The only failing is that this is territory that has been covered many times before.
