Mike Crowl enjoys a slow burning page turner.
MISTER MEMORY
Marcus Sedgwick
Hachette
Marcus Sedgwick has mostly written for the young adult market. This thriller-cum-whodunnit is definitely for adults. It concerns an apparent crime of passion, but like so much in the story, appearances are deceptive.
Marcel Despres is a man gifted with an infallible memory, a simple man who moves from the grape-growing countryside in France to an extremely seamy and corrupt late-19th-century Paris.
However, Marcel isn't simple, and the apparent infallible memory has its own quirks, one of which causes a considerable turnaround in the murder mystery.
Not long into the book, we think we know who the victim is, who the murderer is, and why he's been incarcerated in a mental hospital. In due course we'll discover that nothing should be taken at face value. There are a few characters we can trust, but not many.
Sedgwick certainly paints a vivid picture of the times, though occasionally the excess of detail slows the story down.
And he has a curious habit of warning us in advance of a twist to the plot. I couldn't decide whether this was an incentive to keep reading or not, though in my case it worked.
This is a slow burner of a story. Stick with it, because its twists and turns and shocks take fire as the book progresses.
Mike Crowl is a Dunedin author, musician and composer.
