4.5 Stars for Cold Hillside

Cold Hillside
By Martin Cooper


Summary:

Cold Hillside is a crime story, but also an exploration of family loyalty and responsibility - when it turns out your brother was a bastard, do you still love him? Unfortunately, yes.

Simon Coltraine is a professional songwriter and musician. His brother Giles—market trader, rogue and amiable bully—is a small-time crook. When Giles is killed in what appears to be a car accident Simon returns to their childhood home to confront his memories. The story links the sunlit sweep of England’s West Country landscapes with the grubby shadows of London’s Kentish Town Road.

The Devil has all the best tunes.

The Review:

Sometimes I’ll read a book and think, “I wish I could write that well.” Cold Hillside is one of those books. If you like your stories linear, I wouldn’t recommend this. Mr. Cooper likes to skip around in time and tense, a juggler tossing up a new ball without fanfare, until you realize he’s got eight or ten in the air, and all you can do is applaud. Personally, I never had any problem following the timeline, and the shifts in tense were done with such skill that they never jarred.

The book starts out with a car crash. Given the blurb, the reader momentarily assumes it is the crash mentioned there, but soon learns it is not. Names are given, cryptic dialogue spoken, and the reader is left wondering. Later, after several forays back and forth in the timeline, one of the names pops up, and you realize you’ve had a glimpse of this character’s future. The clues to this book’s mystery are often given like that: little snippets of memory brought to the narrator’s mind by unfolding events. Simon has to deal with not only his brother’s death, but the realization that his brother was not the man Simon thought he was. Revelations about Giles' business dealings push Simon into a shady world that grows more dangerous the deeper he gets.

Mr. Cooper paints his settings and characters with delicious turns of phrase. Ordinary things take on a glow thanks to his distinctive descriptions. It’s as much fun to read this for the writing as for the story. The one complaint I have, and the reason I knocked off half a star, is that sometimes there is just a little too much description and it tends to slow things down. Perhaps that particular room isn’t so important that we need to see it so vividly. If you love loads of good description, this book will satisfy like few I've encountered.

The characters come to life with subtle ease. Some we get to know slowly, others we see through quickly, still others we get angry at when we realize what they were hiding from us. Some, we end up mourning, just as Simon does.

I didn’t want to put this book down, and felt seriously adrift when I finished it. I’m looking forward to Mr. Cooper’s next offering.

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