I don't know how typical I am as I made _ and lost _ quite a number of friends through the years. Neighbourhood friends, school friends, army friends, social work friends, backpacking friends, foreign friends, family friends, male and female. Some best friends.
BETRAYAL by Danielle Steel 322 pp, 2012 Bantam paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 625 baht
Then life happened. We went our separate ways. They did something I didn't like. I did something they didn't like. Arguments, disagreements, misunderstandings, unrepaid loans, jealousy, hurt feelings, promises broken. I wonder what became of them. Who they married. Are they happy? Is anybody?
These thoughts came to mind while reading Betrayal, the 80th novel by Danielle Steel who asserts that 600 million copies of her books are in circulation. To her credit, she pens two works a year without a co-writer. To sum up her love stories in one word, they are smooth.
In the sense that an Olympic high dive is smooth and a single malt scotch is smooth. None of her novels have won a Pulitzer, much less a Nobel Prize for Literature. Yet they are good reads. You won't feel you wasted your time. An American, she lives in California and Paris.
Set in and around Hollywood, Betrayal focuses on director Tallie Jones. She has the magic touch when making movies, all box office hits. To be sure she's had two failed marriages, but figures she lucked out. Her daughter Max (Maxine) is going to college. Her lover Hunter dotes on her. Her assistant Brigitte is beautiful, efficient, her best friend.
An audit Tallie authorises turns up a fly in the ointment. Someone has been systematically robbing her blind to the tune of $25,000 a month for three years. The embezzler of nearly a million big ones must be close enough to have access to her banking papers. She hires a private investigator.
What Max uncovers, with photographs, blows Tallie's happy life apart. The reader needn't wait until the penultimate chapter to be told who did it. And who betrayed her. Those nearest and dearest _ except Max _ betrayed her in one way or another. Enter Jim, an FBI special agent, who catches and jails the rat.
Though unlikely that Tinseltown's top director only has $1 million to show for 17 years of megahits, the plot stands up. It makes the point that friends are ordinary people at heart. Don't assume that loyalty will win out when it comes into conflict with their own agendas.
PHANTOM by Jo Nesbo 453 pp, 2011 Harvill Secker paperback. Available at Asia Books and leading bookshops, 625 baht
Unlikely on all counts
Several months ago, a man with a rifle killed people in Norway on a shooting spree. He kept reloading and firing. As a Yank, I come from a country where law enforcement officers carry weapons. When a perpetrator doesn't put his down when told to, the Grim Reaper takes him in hand.
Apparently the Norwegian authorities learned their lesson for in recent novels about them they are carrying. The baddies do, so it's only fair. Harry Hole is the literary creation of Jo Nesbo. An intrepid Oslo inspector, Harry always gets his man. Or did until his superiors had him take an indefinite holiday.
Thinking to ease the stress of the job he loves so much, Harry took alcohol and drugs. Ordered to stop it, he went to Hong Kong and Bangkok where, we are asked to believe, he did. But they are wary when he returns to his homeland. Though he goes by the book, he's added chapters to it to suit himself.
Not given a case straightaway, he pulls a closed one. Open and shut. Not to his satisfaction, however. It has loose threads. Knowing the teenagers involved, he conducts his investigation to everybody's chagrin. Interviewing those involved in the murder, his gut feeling is that they've been lying.
Not least fathers meaning to protect their sons and daughters. As Harry uncovers discrepancies, there are attempts to kill him. Alas, Nesbo solutions to the cliffhangers (e.g. how Harry escapes drowning in a flooded tunnel) are beyond credibility.
The story expands to include the Nazi occupation. It comes down to drugs, smuggled via Amsterdam to Oslo. How Harry finds a stash is beyond belief. Spotting white specks on a rat in a house, he catches the rodent and licks the powder. Then follows it to where the drugs are hidden, being bitten in the process.
The protagonist is such a nice guy at heart that he passes his high school sweetheart to his rival for her affections because he realises that he himself isn't good enough for her. Even more unlikely, he goads the killer into shooting him. And the author has a dying man confessing his crimes at length to Harry before breathing his last.
Jo Nesbo lacks a fluid style, even when he has a good idea. Reading him is like walking through treacle. He clearly loves Oslo. This reviewer has been there and can see why.
