DYING WORDS By Shaun Hutson – Reviewed

I like Shaun Hutson. His books are invariably entertaining. Mindless violence, action-packed, thrill-a-minute page-turners, Hutson provides a Hollywood Blockbuster of a novel.

Dying Words, whilst not his best work, is still a good solid read, and offers some nice insight into Hutson’s mind as we see two writers, one a grossly successful horror writer, the other an intellectual biographer, both are prime suspects in a murder. Then another body turns up. Then another. Detective Inspector Birch has no clues, the murders were committed in closed rooms, flats or houses, all locked from the inside. But as Birch digs deeper he starts to find out secrets that no one wants uncovered…

What starts off as a simple crime novel, ends with a fantastic twist that unfortunately doesn’t come as much of a surprise. It wouldn’t have been believable at all if it had, but the lead-up is pretty clear.

Although the book lets down with the lack of surprise, it’s still a Hutson book, rip-roaring action throughout, and unflinching in every sense. Hutson peers into the nooks and crannies other writers are afraid to even think of, and that’s what we want.

Shaun Hutson churns out his books with such regularity that it’s hard for the average reader to keep up, in which case if you haven’t read one of his novels there are better ones out there, but for the passionate fan or collector then this will fit nicely on your shelf with the rest of Huston’s novels.

It’s a shame that I’ve recently read a similarly themed book by Paul Kane, which does the whole crime/horror novel with a little more skill and panache, and after that I’m afraid that Hutson doesn’t quite measure up.

Of course Hutson still delivers his trade-mark in-your-face style and plenty of action, the first few chapters alone are brilliant. But Dying Words doesn’t work as well of other books of a similar kind, and Hutson has produced better. Not his best and not his worst, and who wants to read middle-of-the-road anyway?

THE SNOWBALL: WARREN BUFFETT AND THE BUSINESS OF LIFE By Alice Shroeder – Reviewed

Despite this being an epic book, I expected more.

How can you sum up the Oracle of Omaha? The most successful investor in the history of investing?

For a man over seventy years old, having his life described in a little over 700 pages gives us about a 100 pages per ten years. Even though the first page is so awash with description (of Buffett sitting in his office) that it’s difficult to read, what we don’t get in the full Warren Buffett. We get a version, the tight-fisted, thrifty, intelligent, teacher, who’s more at ease with numbers than he is with human beings, and certainly more comfortable dealing with a class room full of students than he is with his own children. A man obsessed with making money and keeping it. To the point where much of the time his family acted almost, but not quite, as a distraction, and Buffett doesn’t particularly like distractions.

The failure of this book is the lack of detail about some of Buffett’s investments. Probably the most important part of his life, not only for him but also for most of his readers. We get the glamorous stuff, and we also get the dirty stuff, but where’s the detail of the stuff that made him his money?

Most of the information contained in the book can be found on Buffett’s wikipedia entry. The details of his earlier life are interesting, and the milestones he achieved in his early years are quite extraordinary. But I want a map. I want to see what he invested in, at how much and why: I want a description of how he made his billions. I don’t understand how a book so huge and detailed about Buffett’s life but be so bereft of such important details.

For a financial analyst Shroeder doesn’t seem very interested in the money.

This is certainly an interesting book, and Warren’s life as a self-made man certainly holds your attention. But the missing details of his investments, the things that are skipped over, or just not even mentioned, serve to give us only half an image of this great investor.

Buffett is still my hero, with the knowledge gained from this book even more so. We share much in common, he had a paper-round, as did I. Buffett was making money as a child, as did I, once getting in trouble at school for telling my friends toys. Buffett also skirted a bit too close to the law, well, I’m refusing to comment on that! He was also buying shares before he was sixteen. I bought shares in my mother’s name because I was too young to have them in my own. Unfortunately, and I really don’t know what happened (perhaps discovering horror novels), but our paths diverged and I’m not a billionaire.

This is a personal and probably the most detailed of the books on Buffett, and yet it still doesn’t manage to capture the complete man. It does capture most of him, and it’s a moving story, but I almost feel short changed.

Amazing book, and yet still slightly disappointing.