Book Review: The Secret Speech by Tom Rob Smith:

 Leo Demidov has more issues than the average literary homicide detective. Not just a drinking problem, an ex-wife and a passion for obscure music; Leo has done some Very Bad Things.

When we first met him at the beginning of Child 44, he was a loyal member of the Soviet secret police, both a true believer in the cause and naïve enough to be blind to the problems. At the start of this sequel, we get a flash back to those days - indeed, to his first infiltration mission, when he had befriended and betrayed a Russian Orthodox priest and his wife.

Since then, after the five years he spent in the forerunner of the KGB, he is a reformed man. Heading up a secret homicide bureau in Moscow (secret because the authorities would never publicly acknowledge that such an act occurs under the leadership of their perfect State), trying to atone for his former evils by bringing to justice murderers and protecting his fellow citizens.

Until events set in motion by that first betrayal come back to haunt him.

Unfortunately, this isn't a patch on the previous novel - although, to be perfectly fair, that would be pretty damned difficult; Child 44 was a borderline masterpiece, an incredibly taut thriller with interesting things to say and writing so good that the book was longlisted for the Booker Prize. Here, for whatever reason, the writing wasn't quite up to that standard, and the parts of the novel didn't fit together entirely seamlessly - in particular, the third act seemed rather disjointed from the earlier parts of the story. I suspect the issue is the author wanting to involve the characters as major players in the real-life events of the post-Stalinist USSR.

Still, this was a gripping read, with excellent characters, some intriguing morality, and a good examination of some of the horrors of a society unwilling to face up to its crimes, or even that it can possibly be in the wrong. I'll definitely be reading the next instalments.

Film Review: Lucy (2004): Stupider than we can possibly imagine

 Sweet baby Jesus, I feel significantly dumber for having watched that film.

I’d avoided it because of the stupid premise - the idiot idea that we only use 10% of our brain - but fancied a daft action flick, saw it on Netflix and thought “yeah, go on then.” I can suspend disbelief if a piece of work puts in the effort and remains internally consistent, after all.

Unfortunately, this film was not only more stupid than I anticipated, but possibly more stupid than I could have anticipated.

I’d heard enough to know that Scarlett Johansson got a package of drugs sewn into her abdomen by Korean gangsters, which was ruptured leading to her apotheosis - but as soon as this happens she begins to defy gravity.

Oh-kay, thinks I, is this a metaphor for the effects of the drug? If it was, I’d expect some change in lighting or some other visual queue. I suspect not.

Oh, she is instantly able to kill one of the bad guys with her bare hands and shoot another six like a videogame character.

And it just gets more idiotic. The character, Lucy, quickly develops god-like powers which she then fails to use when it would have been useful to do so. After the initial assault on Lucy, she is so powerful there is no sense of threat, no stakes whatsoever, as she can do literally anything she wants. And some of the lines are just cringeworthy; both Johansson and Morgan Freeman state “we were given life a billion years ago” - aside from a huge problem with the word “given”, this is just wrong as a quick visit to wikipedia would show. Freeman is supposed to be one of the world’s leading genetic researches but every word that comes out of his mouth is utter nonsense.

It isn’t a total shitshow - some of the visuals and action scenes are quite striking, and I’m actually quite impressed that Johansson and Freeman somehow manage to deliver their absolutely insane dialogue with a straight face (“you can type this shit, Luc, but you can’t say it!”)

Three out of ten if I’m being generous.