Book Review: Two good (but not great) books

There is a category of book that I like to call "the goods, not the greats". These are books - can be in any genre - that are enjoyable, that succeed on one or two key axes, but have weaknesses that mean they either fail to meet their own potential or just don't land with me fully as a reader. They are books I often enjoy reading - once - but would never consider revisiting. This month, there have been two books that fit this bill for me: Graeme Macrae Burnet's historical mystery / thriller, Case Study, and Gareth Brown's fantasy thriller, The Book of Doors.

My first introduction to this author was his 2015 novel His Bloody Project, which I read as part of my 2016 Booker Prize shortlist reading. I really, really liked that book, and thought it a significant literary achievement as well as being immensely engaging and readable. Case Study, which was on the Booker longlist in 2022 but didn't make the leap to the shortlist, is the second Burnet book I have read, and while I did enjoy it, I rate it considerably below His Bloody Project overall.

Burnet uses a not-dissimilar schtick, albeit in a very different time period and cultural moment, in Case Study as in His Bloody Project - purporting to be the finder / editor of found manuscripts / journals of "real" (actually fictive) people connected to notorious criminal or potentially criminal actions. The two central characters of Case Study are Unnamed Journal Writer / "Rebecca Smyth", and fictitious psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite, in early 1970s London. The journal writer, a clearly unstable and cloistered young woman, is convinced that Braithwaite has induced her sister, Veronica, who was one of his "patients", to take her own life, so she decides to try to prove his involvement by consulting him herself under an assumed name / identity, "Rebecca Smyth" (which persona is much more wordly, confident and accomplished than the journaler herself).

To say much more about the plot per se would be to spoil the story, so I'll instead comment on what I think is the central thesis of the book (or at least of Collins Braithwaite): that there is no such thing as the singular authentic Self, but that we all, in fact, contain multitudes, actually being different people at different times, and that is both natural and positive. This is hardly an original notion, but Burnet does use Braithwaite's character as a way of effectively and persuasively exploring the possibilities and exposing the deficits of this model of thought, especially when taken to its extreme ends.

The journaler is, to me, the more interesting of the two protagonists, but this may be because Burnet provides an intimacy with her inner world that isn't there for Braithwaite. Her writing style is at first irritatingly prissy, but quite quickly, that becomes darkened and complicated in ways that are both intriguing and chilling.

I was disappointed with the conclusion of this book, so much so that I docked a whole point for the last chapter. I felt the book was trying to do a big shock reveal that landed as neither. I also felt the final section overall was rushed and not well-executed, and this did reduce the book's effectiveness. It is a shame, because the rest of the story is a strong, well-told psychological puzzle with some thriller elements, and a banging ending would have made it a triumph. Overall, it's a 6.5/10 for me

Earlier this month I read a book billed as "cosy fantasy", which I thought was largely unsuccessful, so moving to a "fantasy thriller" (for want of a better descriptor) was bound to be a change of pace. This book is certainly not a cosy, although it does have some classic fantasy elements in play, especially "motley crew becoming found family" schtick. 

The plot is a mixture of a magic book (arguably, acting as macguffins) hunt, a heroes and villains clash, and a learning about yourself journey, all tied together with a very respectably played and internally consistent time travel device. (By this I mostly mean narrative device, although it is in fact one of the magic books, the titular Book of Doors, that is the mechanism that allows it to occur).

I really enjoyed the story of this, and the careful way that plot points were set up throughout the first third of the book for development later. I thought the pacing was sometimes a little clunky, but it smoothed out in the final third (which is the best section). I was delighted by the magic books themselves, both as a concept and as drivers of the plot overall. The book isn't richly descriptive or in any sense lyrical, but it's written vividly enough that that doesn't really matter. Thrillers are never long on description, and fantasy thrillers are no different!

Where I felt the book was weakest, and the reason I see it as only a 7 despite having a solid 8 plot, was in the character work. The main protagonist, Cassie, reads like a fully-developed person (the moving sideplot involving her grandfather is a big part of this), but of the other hero or neutral characters, including those whose POV we get from time to time, none of them, with the possible exception of Mr Webber, really made it past thin cut-outs, even Drummond (who I think was meant to be an equal protagonist to Cassie, but just ... isn't).

As is not uncommonly the case, Brown does better with the villains - The Woman is genuinely very scary, Dr Hugo Barbary is a vile vicious thug, and even the baddies we meet more briefly are more convincingly full people than any of the "goodies". The scene at the auction, which pits several villains against each other as well as against various goodies, is one of the best in the book, and pulses with genuine narrative tension and real stakes (always something every thriller needs).

Overall, the inconsistency of the character work was enough for me to drop this down from "very good" to "pretty good" in my rating. That said, I enjoyed this book, and I'm glad I read it. I doubt I'll re-read it, but I'd definitely be open to trying another title by this author. 7/10 for me.