Paul Hardisty, plus the covers of Crimefest

Paul Hardisty at Crimefest
2015, photo by your
humble blogkeeper

Paul Hardisty's books include The Economics of Groundwater Remediation and Protection, Environmental and Economic Sustainability (Environmental and Ecological Risk Assessment), e-Study Guide for Environmental and Economic Sustainability, and The Abrupt Physics of Dying.

 I don't know about the first three, but ...Abrupt Physics..., Hardisty's first novel, reminds me a bit of Patricia Highsmith's The Tremor of Forgery or Pater Rabe's The Box.  The book is that good at evoking the sense of being lost in a hot country one is alternately sure one knows well, and despairs of ever knowing.  A bit of Graham Greene in there, too?

The land is Yemen, the protagonist an engineer in country to check water quality for an oil company, and you know what happens next: restive tribesmen, a violent and oppressive central government,  a venal corporation,  a military veteran questioning his own past, a— but I don't want to make the book sound more melodramatic than it is, because Hardisty portrays the milieu (its rugged topography and, in judicious glimpses, its history) so well. Now, let's see how he handles the book's recently introduced potential romantic interest.

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Clash of titles.

I met Hardisty at the recent Crimefest 2015 in Bristol, as I did the authors of the books pictured at left.

Another novel I bought at Crimefest, by another author I had not previously known, is The Human Flies, by Hans Olav Lahlum. Since Lahlum sets the book in Oslo, I feel an urge to call it East Side of Norway Story. I don't know why.

© Peter Rozovsky 2015