SF writer Charlie Stross — who's rightly proud to have been shortlisted for a Hugo (The Herald) and must today merit a blog award for the shortest entry (after "suffering for your art") — has beaten me to my noun.
"Get them, read them, think about current politics in the middle east, feel your head explode. NB: contains raw, undiluted anger. May cause burns to mucous membranes. Not to be taken internally."
Anger.
A step ahead of me (eyes to the right at his place for the "Dead Trees"), Charlie's given us a brief review of 'Felaheen', the "capstone" to Jon Courtenay Grimwood's 'Arabesk' trilogy.
'Effendi' (paperback 2003) is also an angry book, but the anger's neither raw nor undiluted.
The crime thriller builds up a mighty head of steam, but subtly holds both the emotion and the reader in check until the climax in court.
Back in El Iskandyria, the astute Ashraf al-Mansur has become chief of detectives, his first case a multiple murder mystery. Since Raf is a glutton for trouble, the man he's investigating is Zara's dad, his would-be father-in-law, Hamzah Quintrimala.
Since 'Pashazade: The First Arabesk' did much of the scene-setting (as did I in my review of it here and at my place last September), Grimwood is more sparing with his fine brushstrokes for the city itself and even stronger on character, to equally potent effect and with as many twists, turns and tributaries as the Nile.
"'Safety off,' said the gun.
Stood beside Sergeant Ka, Zac said nothing. He'd spoken little enough when he was alive and now he was dead he talked even less . . .
Ka thought that strange, because Zac's sister Ruth had also said little from the time she'd been captured to the moment she died. But now she talked so much that Ka couldn't concentrate on watching the growling trucks that rolled across the scrub towards him.
'Distance?'
'Half a click and closing . . .'
Status and range. That was all the plastic H&K/cw could manage. It was an incredibly stupid weapon and the boy with the bone cross, feather amulet and boots several times too big didn't know why the manufacturer had bothered."
This is not Isk. This is Sudan. 'Effendi: The Second Arabesk' is no more sci-fi or conventional crime thriller than 'Pashazade' was. And Grimwood's alternative today's world is no fantasy heaven and hell.
Hence the anger: a tightly controlled rage laser-sighted in sparse but very telling prose, with wit, lightning humour and compassion, at some of the headline horror targets of our own First and Third Worlds.
Like, just for instance, the use of child soldiers and the manipulation of "terrorism" in the affairs of state. In fewer than 400 pages, Grimwood takes a scalpel to some of the worst aspects of a modern Africa instantly recognisable to anybody genuinely familiar with the continent.
That he can balance this against one or two of Africa's best features, write sexily about sex and make you smile in the process is considerably to his credit.
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