The phrase "watching the dark" means different things to different people. As far as I am concerned, until recently WTD meant a Richard Thompson box set of three cds, which contained some fairly rare material. I am not aware of any previous use of WTD; the phrase would seem to come from the sleeve notes written by Greil Marcus.
But these days, it also means the title of a new book by Peter Robinson (in the DCI Banks series) - which internally refers in passing to the Thompson compilation. Frequent readers of this blog will know that I enjoy the police procedurals of Robinson, and the Thompson links are simply icing on the cake.
The first time through the book, I thought that there was too little active investigation; a fair amount of information fell into the detectives' hands through no intervention of their own - a passive technique which used to be frowned upon (in terms of literature; I am sure that most policemen would be only too pleased if vital information would fall on its own into their hands). But a second run through revealed that the detectives were somewhat more active than I had originally thought - although again, one key witness falls into their hands by default.
I wrote two years ago about the previous Banks novel, "Bad boy", and about editing mistakes (Robinson published a novel last year as is his habit but it was outside the Banks canon). This time around, I could only find three mistakes, one of which being a mistake in English grammar, one a debatable point and one definite mistake.
The grammatical mistake is towards the beginning of the book (location 2453 in my Kindle edition): "... and the most unattractive of the two [detectives]". If there are only two detectives, then the text should read "and the more unattractive". The superlative "most" implies at least three items whereas the comparative "more" means that only two items are being compared.
Chapter 7 begins with the sentence "Banks and Joanna were barely talking when they got to the hotel". To me, this implies that they had a row (on their way from Eastvale to Tallinn), but no such row occurred. Banks spent the flight listening to music whereas Joanna "had sat beside him with her laptop ... working on a report". Whilst it's true that there wasn't much conversation, the opening sentence implies that they were actively not talking to each other. To me, this sentence implies that the tension between the two is at a much higher level than events would seem to show. As I wrote above, this point is debatable; I think that this sentence could have been safely deleted, as I was expecting some terrific row on the journey.
The third mistake occurs in the third part of chapter 10 and was very subtle: Banks and Joanna are talking to someone in the spa town Haapsalu; at one stage, the person says "Here in Tallinn" - but they're not in Tallinn! This mistake, of course, is hardly important but it shows a lack of copy editing.
But these days, it also means the title of a new book by Peter Robinson (in the DCI Banks series) - which internally refers in passing to the Thompson compilation. Frequent readers of this blog will know that I enjoy the police procedurals of Robinson, and the Thompson links are simply icing on the cake.
This book starts off with a murder in a police rehabilitation centre which DCI Banks begins to investigate; long time sidekick DI Annie Cabot returns to the team after having been shot in the previous book, "Bad boy", which enables Banks to travel to Tallinn (the capital of Estonia) in order to investigate a thread raised by the initial murder. As I considering a short trip to Tallinn combined with my projected visit to Edinburgh next summer, this section was very interesting (and to be honest is one of the reasons why I read novels - one can always learn about different places and jobs).
The first time through the book, I thought that there was too little active investigation; a fair amount of information fell into the detectives' hands through no intervention of their own - a passive technique which used to be frowned upon (in terms of literature; I am sure that most policemen would be only too pleased if vital information would fall on its own into their hands). But a second run through revealed that the detectives were somewhat more active than I had originally thought - although again, one key witness falls into their hands by default.
I wrote two years ago about the previous Banks novel, "Bad boy", and about editing mistakes (Robinson published a novel last year as is his habit but it was outside the Banks canon). This time around, I could only find three mistakes, one of which being a mistake in English grammar, one a debatable point and one definite mistake.
The grammatical mistake is towards the beginning of the book (location 2453 in my Kindle edition): "... and the most unattractive of the two [detectives]". If there are only two detectives, then the text should read "and the more unattractive". The superlative "most" implies at least three items whereas the comparative "more" means that only two items are being compared.
Chapter 7 begins with the sentence "Banks and Joanna were barely talking when they got to the hotel". To me, this implies that they had a row (on their way from Eastvale to Tallinn), but no such row occurred. Banks spent the flight listening to music whereas Joanna "had sat beside him with her laptop ... working on a report". Whilst it's true that there wasn't much conversation, the opening sentence implies that they were actively not talking to each other. To me, this sentence implies that the tension between the two is at a much higher level than events would seem to show. As I wrote above, this point is debatable; I think that this sentence could have been safely deleted, as I was expecting some terrific row on the journey.
The third mistake occurs in the third part of chapter 10 and was very subtle: Banks and Joanna are talking to someone in the spa town Haapsalu; at one stage, the person says "Here in Tallinn" - but they're not in Tallinn! This mistake, of course, is hardly important but it shows a lack of copy editing.
