BOOK REVIEW : KAREN CAMPBELL - SHADOWPLAY

Readers of old with long memories may recall that in May/June 2009 when TVV had a series of guests making contributions, one such person was the author Karen Campbell who regaled us with her tale of musical memories from the 80s. Read here for a flashback.

Today's posting is a short review of Karen's third published book entitled Shadowplay. Now some of you might think with Karen being a friend and past work colleague of mine from way back that I'm showing a degree of nepotism in using TVV to talk about a something that has nothing to do with music. But believe me, I'm doing so as I want to bring to your attention to something that is a work of the utmost quality.

Karen's three books have dealt with the lives and loves of characters who are part of the police force in Glasgow. As such, the publishers and many reviewers have talked of her as being a new and exciting crime-writer. But there's an awful lot more to her books that the average exciting pot-boiler or whodunnit, especially in this, what I have no doubt is he best book so far.

I should mention that when Karen wrote her piece for TVV, she told everyone that the third novel was going to be called Fade To Grey but it turns out that the publishers weren't all that keen, so Karen had to come up with an alternative - and Shadowplay is what it became. I reckon it's a far better title as an awful lot of what is really central and important to the story isn't always out there in the open....

Here's the basic synopsis. Anna Cameron, one of the key characters in the earlier books The Twilight Time and After The Fire, is promoted to Chief Inspector and moved to a new division in Glasgow one that is more affluent and middle-class than the tough housing scheme where she has spent much of her career. Everything should now be a lot easier..........except that Anna finds she has a boss she can't work with, she soon experiences a family crisis beyond her worst nightmares, there is a racially motivated murder on her patch as well as the mysterious disappearance of an old woman form an elderly care home. Oh and a real pain in the backside journalist determined to make a name for themselves as well as local politicians keen to have their say in it all.....

Shadowplay is more a book about how the central character deals with problems at work and problems in life than it is about solving crimes. And yet the crime element of the story is superbly written and is the sort of story that would lend itself perfectly to the sort of three-part drama that BBC and ITV are so fond of filling our schedules with.

It is a work packed with fantastic dialogue, much of it with a local dialect and what I would best describe as typical Glasgow humour, but one which also contains many wonderful descriptive lines such as 'The wind had been bullying clouds and brollies all day'.

And if you want an idea of just how difficult a job policing has become in the 21st century, how about this:-

"One week under her belt and Anna was still afloat, kicking knackered legs through seas of absence management, appraisals, applications, grievances, meeting with her inspectors, trying (and failing) to get round all the shifts both here and the at the outlying offices, endless, endless checking of databases and updates and correspondence, dealing with a parade of local worthies, an inter-schools netball competition and a stubbornly blocked toilet that refused to flush. Yes, maintenance of the leaky old building was also, it would appear, part of Anna's duties. In one week, Anna had become a politician, counsellor, administrator and janitor. The only time she would get to be a cop was when she donned her body armour and went on call."

One thing I want to get straight - you do not need to have read either of Karen's previous books to get straight into the nitty-gritty of Shadowplay. Yes, some incidents from her previous works have an impact on how situations develop in Shadowplay, but Karen provides enough narrative and description in this book to prevent any first-time reader from being perplexed or bemused.

It has been a long time since a work of fiction grabbed my attention in the way that Shadowplay managed to do. I raced through about 70 pages one evening, only putting the book down cos Mrs Villain was moaning about how late it was and the light from the bedside lamp was stopping her getting to sleep. The next morning, I phoned my office and said that as I had a quiet day in the diary I was now taking a day's leave.....and so allowed myself to get through the remaining 400 pages in one sitting. I reckon it will have much the same effect on the rest of you.

Shadowplay is available from most book shops in the UK, but can also be purchased online at places like this. Or if you live outside the UK, try your own local version of Amazon....

Karen's own website can be found here.

And just in case you're really only here for the music, here's a few obvious tunes:-

mp3 : Joy Division - Shadowplay
mp3 : The Go-Betweens - Karen
mp3 : Belle & Sebastian - Wrapped Up In Books

STOP PRESS

Don't just take my word for it. Shadowplay has just been put on the shortlist for the CWA Gold Dagger, one of the oldest literary awards in the UK.

There's 8 books in competition for the award.

Good luck KC..........