Sat 8 Aug 2009
Archived Review: MARK BURNELL – Chameleon.
Posted by Steve under Bibliographies, Lists & Checklists , Characters , Reviews[3] Comments
MARK BURNELL – Chameleon. Avon; reprint paperback, March 2003. HarperCollins hardcover, 2002.
A spy thriller about a female assassin, the best in the business that there is. She’s Stephanie Patrick a/k/a Stephanie Schneider a/k/a Petra Reuter and quite a few others as the book goes on, and at the beginning of this 400-plus page novel, she’s burned out, in hiding from her British overseers, and (more significantly) from herself.
This retreat may be caused in large part, by events, in an earlier novel, The Rhythm Section, but since I seem to have missed the book completely, that’s only a strong conjecture.
But adding to a theory I’m still in the process of developing, there’s something I’ve decided to call the Heinz test. The precise numerical value is still subject to empirical study, and hence revision, but at the present time it goes something like this. If after reading 57 pages, and nothing in the book has happened that makes you really want to keep reading, why should you?
On page 57 Stephanie is the midst of being involuntarily rehabilitated, being fitted up for service again. And even though the problem she’s being groomed to tackle, something to do with plutonium being smuggled out of somewhere into somewhere, was moderately non-interesting, the reclamation project she’s being forced to undergo was engaging and challenging enough for me to give the book a tentative and conditional go-ahead.
There’s a re-evaluation stage that comes next, and I’ll call this one the Dalmatian test. When I got to this point, I stopped, and I stalled out again. If I may, I’ll quote for you a paragraph from page 101:
There’s more immediately following, three or more paragaphs in a similar vein. Information dumps like these occur far too often. Every minor character seems to have his or her own long history, and in turgid detail. Also making the book unappealing is that it’s also difficult to root for an assassin, whether she’s on “our side” or not. A writer like Donald Westlake can pull it off, a lesser author can not.
(Note to self: It’s obviously time to put Westlake on the to-be-read list, and maybe Eric Ambler too. See below.)
Ambler’s early heroes were ordinary people, as I recall, caught up in events beyond their control, and managing somehow to still survive. Stephanie has too many contacts, too much money, and even with all the psychological baggage she carries with her, and the love affair that’s all-too-apparently going nowhere, she’s far too competent at what she does for the reader to care.
Not this reader, at least. Not this time.
Bibliographic Data:
The Stephanie Patrick series:
The Rhythm Section. HarperCollins, UK, hc, 1999. HarperCollins, US, hc, 2000; Avon, pb, 2000.
Chameleon. HarperCollins, UK, hc, 2002. HarperCollins, US, hc, 2002; Avon, pb, 2003.
Gemini. HarperCollins, UK, pb, 2003.
The Third Woman. HarperCollins, UK, hc, 2005.
August 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
I read The Rhythm Section, and you didn’t miss anything. It is a boring rehash of cliche and mediocre writing accompanied by a major ripoff of La Femme Nikita (film and USA television series), without either the style or the humor. I can’t help but note the actress that played the role on television was named Petra.
The long and pointless detail of every minor characters personal history seems to be the authors ‘style’ and quickly grows tiresome since it almost never has a payoff or a point.
If the others are half as bad as the first one and this one sounds they all badly fail the Heinz test. Not to mention the smell test.
This is one of the more incompetent books I’ve ever seen published. The plot never does kick in, and such large chunks of the book are either lifted from the film La Femme Nikita or from countless other spy books and films that the only original thing in the book are the chunks of undigested exposition and background that read as if they were taken verbatim from Time or Newsweek.
I can only think that the publisher thought the blatant ripoff of La Femme Nikita would attract fans of that movie and series. If it did they were profoundly disappointed.
Even worse, it’s not enjoyably bad enough to be an alternative classic.
I suppose if they recycle all the copies it might make a decent roll of toilet tissue. For this one that is the highest fate it can aspire to.
August 8th, 2009 at 7:38 pm
I’ve read your entire commentary several times now, trying to be sure, but I’m going to assume from your last paragraph that you didn’t care for the book, David.
As far as the second in the series is concerned, page 101 was as far as I got.
I also noted when I was putting the bibliography together that books three and four were never published in this country. That wasn’t as surprising, though, as discovering that there were books three and four.
And some of the reviews on Amazon have been positive, so there’s obviously a market for this kind of spy fiction.
Equally obviously, though, it’s neither you nor I.
I do like the covers. Very attractive!
— Steve
August 8th, 2009 at 8:34 pm
The blatant ripoff of La Femme Nitkita was the main problem for me. If he had done it well, or had shown a little originality in doing it I would have been willing to go along for the ride. It’s not as if spy fiction (genre fiction in general) hasn’t always been derivative, but this goes far beyond merely borrowing an idea or style, and then does it badly to boot.
Did I mention I really didn’t like it?
Memo to Self: Don’t be so subtle.
As for Amazon, everyone likes something, and I suppose if you had never read another spy novel and never seen La Femme Nikita this might even pass for original. But even then the endless biographies of minor characters and the lack of any cohesive plot would have bothered me.
I suspect those attractive covers have more to do with there being four of these than anything inside them.