My Weekly Book

A bittersweet moment, this. After an intense spell of working through the entire series of Modesty Blaise novels that started at the end of last year, with the help of a devoted fan who was kind enough to read the whole lot out loud,this signifies the end.

As a fan of thrillers, I like a John Grisham novel as much as the next thrill-seeking escapist. Thus I was interested to see the review of the latest on in the New York Times.

This, the penultimate book in the Modesty Blaise series, is most notable for the really striking change of tone that sets it apart from the other volumes – and, purists may say, not always to the good.

A great way to start 2008: having this short story collection read out loud in front of the fire. We’re busy reading our way through the entire Modesty Blaise pantheon (OK, the novels plus those strips that are more accessibly reprinted) and Pieces of Modesty is a first. It’s a short story collection technically bridging the period between the major adventures of The Impossible Virgin and The Silver Mistress but the stories were, in many cases, written earlier and then not published. Many of them were, apparently, even illustrated. And, as the Wikipedia article on this collection points out, some elements are re-used in the newspaper strips.

This is a first novel by an American ex-pat, non-fiction writer and journalist who has settled in Dublin and who is said to have based it on a real-life case he actually worked on. I enjoyed it greatly, but came away asking the following question: to what extent is this book actually a thriller and to what extent a literary novel?