The Rosie Effect

I had so enjoyed Graeme Simsion's debut novel, The Rosie Project, featuring his dysfunctional scientist Don Tillman, that I was wary of reading the sequel. The first had made me laugh out loud in several places, and I wondered how Simsion was going to be able to match its humour and originality. I need not have feared, for Don Tillman's second outing continues to be just as charming and engaging as his Rosie Project was.

Rosie and Don have now decamped to New York, followed by their friend and serial philanderer Gene, whose marriage is on the rocks. Both of them are working at Columbia University, but things soon become quite complicated, not only because Gene has moved into their apartment, but also because Rosie has unexpectedly fallen pregnant. Predictably, Don deals with this news by going into overdrive, reading scientific papers on pregnancy, devising schedules and diets, and unintentionally driving Rosie to distraction. Don's eccentricity, which occasionally leads to unexpected and alarming outcomes may have seemed attractive and exciting to Rosie when it was just the two of them, but now seems to be a possible barrier to their future as a family unit. As the pregnancy progresses, she fears that Don won't be able to relate to their baby, and wonders if she would be better off as a single mother.

Simsion manages to extract humour and concern for his protagonists' future, without becoming twee or predictable. I found myself really caring about the feelings of a man, who is not noted for being able to feel or express his own emotions. I also loved the cast of characters he gathers around Don for male bonding and mutual support, and how Don becomes a kind of champion for them all.

It's a less obviously funny novel than the first, but this is because there is more at stake than two individuals and their happiness. I think that because of the stakes, it's a deeper, more engaging read; plus there are still cocktails and lots of great foodie details to enjoy.

Total Control

I think I've just read my first American blockbuster thriller, and I very much enjoyed all six hundred and eleven pages of it. It was top quality hokum, entertaining and strangely old, with its talk of modems and floppy disks, and yet technologically challenging. David Baldacci definitely did his homework, as he goes into great detail about the inner workings of the Federal Reserve Board, Internet fraud, terror plots to down airliners, corporate takeovers and the FBI.

His highly attractive and intelligent heroine, is Sidney Archer, an attorney at Tyler, Stone, who finds herself caught up in the murderous intrigue of a billion pound takeover battle for CyberCom, between two rival firms: Triton Global and RTG. When her husband, Jason is implicated in a fraudulent deal to sell one firm's secrets to the other, and then is presumed dead on a sabotaged passenger plane, Sidney's life and the lives of her parents, and young daughter Amy, are in grave danger.

Sidney sets out to discover the secrets that Jason was hiding from her, and in the process to clear his name; but with the FBI following close behind in the shape of experienced agent, Lee Sawyer, she has to stay one step ahead, and find out who she can trust.

Baldacci ramps up the pace and tension, as Jason's enemies close in on the beleaguered Sidney, and the Feds try to keep a tail on her. It was hard not to see the novel as one of those intelligent legal thrillers, like John Grisham writes, with Lee Sawyer's character played by Gene Hackman. It would be a big name, big budget affair, with one of those deep, raspy voiceovers on the trailer: "Total Control. Once you have it, you'll kill to keep it!"

So yes, a bit Hollywood in places, from the intelligent and beautiful, gun-toting widow, to the seasoned Federal agent, who falls under her spell, and the cold-eyed assassin stalking dark corridors, dispatching people in gruesome ways. We get a big gun battle, and a cliff top show down, and it's a rip-roaring read, full of suspense and dirty dealing from start to finish.