Customer Reviews

Ordinary Thunderstorms

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The drop is closer than you think.

A young man - Adam Kindred - through a misfortunate occurrence is forced to change his life and persona. He becomes another person entirely and enters a world previously unknown to him: living, for a time, as a down and out in London. He truly disappears, goes underground and his previous existence vanishes.

The necessity comes from the fact that Adam is persistently hunted by a lone gunman, and comes close to being killed. The tragedy is that the new Adam eventually loses his own sense of morality and carries out a terrible crime, seemingly with little remorse or reflection.

Reminiscent of George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" we are taken into an underworld of poverty, crime and hopelessness, with no place for the ordinary morality we take for granted. The realisation that this world is so close to our ordinary lives is a sobering one - as well as the concept that a mere misfortune could send any of us plunging into its dark despair. Particularly chilling is the concept that an individual can be killed and the body disposed of so easily in a great city like London. All underneath our very noses.

William Boyd seems to invent, for this underclass, a type of street language - using words like "flat" and "Green Peas" - helping to immerse the reader into this bizarre world.

William Boyd has explored the concept of altered identities in other books but it is fully fleshed out in this tale.

The story moves along at a great pace - with each chapter bringing fresh developments in the plot. It contains so much:

- Psychopathic murders - hit men, contracts involving the security forces
- Financial intrigue, double dealing, insider trading, fraud
- Boardroom coupes
- An insight into drug testing and vast financial rewards certain individuals achieve
- Love and relationships

I thoroughly enjoyed this book - but was left with a profound sense of unease - speculating as to whether there really is an alternative society living in parallel to our own, and how close we all are to joining it.

William Boyd is a literary craftsman whose skills keep the reader enthralled and informed from the first page to the last. He is the antidote to all the overpraised writers fawned over erroneously in the current publishing climate of `name' and `brand' because they lucked into (often undeserved) popularity. Boyd is the real thing: a writer.

`Ordinary Thunderstorms' (the title reflects the way in which simple climatic phenomena can grow in complexity to major events) is brilliantly observed and meticulously written. No reader in the U.S. should stay away simply because it deals significantly with London and the Thames. It explains much that curious and intelligent readers want to know about any major world city, a stunning insider view that strips modern London to its truths.

Boyd takes us into the times, places and events with unerring skill, drawing out the characters with exquisite detail of appearance, speech, environment, motivation and behavior. This is a thriller of extraordinary dimensions, and one can only hope it will be filmed, to provide (yet again) counterpoint to the mindless drivel that passes increasingly for movie entertainment these days.

I will not reveal the plot. The suspense is excruciating, and who would deny a reader that pleasure? Suffice it to say that Boyd traces the life and transformation into other worlds and identities of a young British college professor, newly returned to the U.K. from the U.S., dragged unsuspecting into a murder for which he is considered guilty. As it evolves, the story encompasses a pharmaceutical-corporation deception of global intricacy, a murder-for-hire thug, a young black prostitute and her son, a revivalist mission, and the London police. Every character is memorable, every chapter turns the screw tighter, until the reader is caught up in the plot intricacies at ever-heightened levels of tension and anxiety. In this, Boyd shows his skills as a writer: it all fits, like the structure of a complex pharmaceutical molecule, and the necessary suspensions of disbelief are few and forgivable. This is entertainment at rarified levels of execution.

Boyd does one other thing, and it is important. He never overwrites. He uses only the right amount of unaffected words and appropriate levels of detail to tell his story. In this (read some of my other reviews for amplification) he provides a model for other writers who apparently can't stop themselves from telling us too much, in too lengthy and repetitive forms, and who seem to be in love with the sound of their own voices. Boyd "tells it like it is" as directly as he can. He richly deserves all the praise that is heaped on him in the UK.

Climatologist Adam Kindred has just finished an interview at Imperial College. It went very well, and he knows it. As he walks alongside the Thames, almost heady with the success within his grasp, a taste for Italian food suddenly comes over him. Surely that can't be too hard to find. "He crosses the road, having no idea how his life is about to change in the next few hours --- massively, irrevocably --- no idea at all."

The restaurant is excellent, and as he savors his scaloppine al vitello, he nods to a man seated nearby, also eating alone. They exchange polite greetings and a short, innocuous conversation ensues. But after the other man leaves, Adam realizes that he left behind a file. Fortunately, it has a name --- Dr. Philip Wang --- and an address on it. Did this fellow Wang do it on purpose? Could he maybe be trying to set up some lurid tryst? Adam pushes these thoughts aside and walks the file over to the address. And that's when everything goes horribly wrong.

Just when Adam thought he was about to celebrate a new, lucrative position, instead he finds himself running from the law. Panicked, he holes up for the night, thinking some sane resolution will occur to him shortly. By morning, there is a "wanted" notice in the newspaper, with an impressive reward for his capture. He actually considers turning himself in; he even goes to the police station. In the end, he loses his nerve and decides to lay low and wait for the cops to find the right man. In the meantime, however, he discovers that it's not just the police looking for him. He's caught between the proverbial rock and hard place, for if the police find him, he'll surely go to jail for a long time. But if the freelancer gets to him first, Adam will likely never make it to jail --- or anywhere else, for that matter.

In desperation, Adam tears open the file. If only he could understand what it is that he holds in his hands, maybe he'd be able to make sense of the situation. The only information that he finds useful is that Dr. Wang worked for a big pharmaceutical company, Calenture-Deutz. In fact, he seemed to be the head researcher in a very exciting battery of tests that may clear the way for a new wonder drug. The potential for enormous wealth is clear, and Adam knows how little value his life would have if he were to come between Calenture-Deutz and the promise of such unimaginably huge profits.

With a little over 118 pounds Sterling in his pocket, Adam becomes highly resourceful. He spends his money wisely, and finds a quiet place to tuck in and hide while the cops sort it all out. But the investigation doesn't go quite as he hoped, and the days stretch into weeks, and then into months. Adam follows where fate takes him, which leads him into grave danger.

Eventually, it becomes apparent to Adam that he must somehow intervene in Calenture-Deutz's plans, for they seem to be the key to the predicament he finds himself in. If he has any hope of regaining his old life, he must strike back and soon. Time is of the essence.

There's a lot going on in ORDINARY THUNDERSTORMS, some of it a bit far-fetched, but all of it entertaining to say the least. It's a clever new twist on an old scenario. You can't help but find yourself wondering, "What would I do if this were to happen to me?"

--- Reviewed by Kate Ayers

Having read Mr. Boyd's Any Human Heart and the 4 and 5 Starred reviews of Ordinary Thunderstorms , I was looking forward to reading THIS BOOK! After my home renovations proved to be difficult and lengthy, I needed a good book to sink my teeth into, but got a silly story instead. Don't get me wrong, Ordinary Thunderstorms starts with great promise like a Hitchcock film but failed miserably to sustain the intrigue that Hitchcock was known for.
Climatologist Adam Kindred has just finished an interview at the prestigious Imperial College and walks off his nervous energy along the Thames shoreline. Suddenly craving Italian food, "[h]e crosses the road, having no idea how his life is about to change in the next few hours --- massively, irrevocably --- no idea at all." Enjoying his meal, Kindred nods to the other solitary patron - Dr. Philip Wang - and strikes up a conversation with the Immunologist. But when Wang forgets a file, Adam suspects the other man has left it purposely...an invitation to a tryst, perhaps? Seriously!?! Ok, I'll bite.
Kindred decides to go to Wang's flat and return the file, and finds Wang on the bed with a knife in his abdomen, begging him to pull the knife out. Kindred does and realizes the killer is still in the apartment. Kindred grabs the file and runs. Now, the hapless Kindred is the police's chief suspect and the target of Wang's killer. Adam is sure that a few days underground will prove to be all the time the police needs to find the man who really murder Wang and he can go on with his own life. Highly improbable, but an interesting storyline.
But Boyd doesn't deliver a good story. Instead, this reader was subjected to social commentary: Religion and God are irrelevant (God in lower case John the Baptist is the real Christ), the Big Bad Pharmacist company, the weak and stupid CEO, the golden-hearted prostitute, and the obligatory gay son of said CEO. In that commentary, would the policewoman that caught the call meet and fall in love with a suspect the police force is looking for and not recognize the alleged perp? Or that an intelligent man would become a street beggar and then move in with the golden-hearted hooker and son? That he Adam himself would become a murderer himself and callously dump the body?
I would have stopped reading this book if it wasn't part of this Summer's Reading Challenge.

No doubt William Boyd is a terrific writer. His prose is tight and at the same time invests weight and foreboding in ordinary, day-to-day events. He also uses language so as to give the impression of an "inside look" at how things--spy networks, conspiracies, multinational corporations, criminal gangs--"really" work, even when it isn't. In Ordinary Thunderstorms, Boyd makes an attempt at the thriller genre, and, fortunately, he brings these skills with him. They are well-deployed and make this an enjoyable read, a good cut above an ordinary thriller. On the other hand, Boyd has not mastered the pacing (too plodding), the plotting (highly derivative, have you seen The Fugitive?), or the denouement (can you say "anti-climax") of the thriller genre. So good, but not great.

In this suspenseful story, set in a backdrop of big-Pharma corporate sordidness, a pharmaceutical firm Calenture-Deutz based in London is on the verge of bringing an unprecedented anti-asthma drug Zembla-4 to market. Their renown researcher Philip Wang practically stumbled into his discovery, but has led the effort to establish its effectiveness through numerous test trials. It's not too surprising to see a predatory competitor circling. The opportunity to make billions with an exclusionary patent drives an even larger big-Pharma firm in a takeover attempt. But very serious complications have arisen. People in the test trials have been dying unexpectedly, the fact of which has been well concealed by complicit medical and administrative personnel. But Wang is a scientist, not a fat-cat, with a predisposition to truthfulness. When he threatens to expose the cover-up, he is assassinated by a cold-blooded operative from a clandestine firm composed of crack ex-military types (can we say, Blackwater) that exists to clean-up such unpleasant messiness for soulless entities, like corporations.

It is at this point that the novel takes off on a harrowing, if not improbable, journey of survival and discovery, with any number of digressions into London life, much of it on the seamy side. Adam Kindred, a scandalized PhD climatologist, has just returned to London after several years in the US for a job interview, hoping to recover his life. Instead of renewal, his life takes a dramatic change for the worse. A kind deed on Adam's part to return a sheaf of papers after a chance encounter in a restaurant finds Dr. Wang with a knife in his ribcage and the killer apparently lurking in the apartment. Adam does the rash, stupid thing and runs, knowing that his fingerprints are on the knife and that he signed the guest register in the lobby - in his mind, overwhelming evidence. So begins a dicey, months-long life of changing identities and appearances, hiding in a thicket along the Thames where he bathes and even eats a captured bird, posing as a blindman/beggar, accepting church meals after agonizingly long sermons, living with a street-walker and her young son who she keeps drugged in a notorious London slum, and assuming the purchased identity of a fellow church attendee when he suddenly overdoses and then taking his job as a hospital porter. The relentlessness of the assassin makes all this movement necessary, as he patiently tracks Adam using money and violence to come ever closer.

A couple of other appealing characters appear. While it is hard to commiserate with CEOs, Ingram Frazer, the head of Calenture-Deutz and a man of some integrity, is being subtly shoved aside by ruthless execs, kept in the dark of the scheme to gain acceptance of a drug with lethal implications. His comfortable life is also being assaulted by some increasingly frequent signs of health problems. Rita Nashe is an attractive veteran policewoman assigned to the unit that patrols the Thames. She keeps intersecting with Adam, though usually indirectly, such as investigating a complaint of a protected bird being killed. Achieving some level of confidence in being armed with an official ID declaring himself to be Primo Belem, Adam actually meets Rita when he comes forward to identify a deceased woman from a sketch in the newspaper, the victim of a violent assault. Interestingly, the chemistry between Adam and Rita is pretty much immediate with a relationship developing - probing questions not being pursued. The recovery of the renamed Adam is further evidenced as he translates his job into a mission of accessing hospital personnel and data to dig into the damaging information that Wang had been carrying.

While this novel is hardly of the non-stop action variety, the plot moves along fairly well with a certain amount of timing that is fortuitous for Adam. The author's probing of the underside of London, the somewhat unsettled life of Rita, and corporate personalities and machinations adds substance without much cost to flow. Perhaps the biggest disappointment of the novel is the fizzling out of most of the interesting threads. Any tidy or justice-laden endings will have to wait for another day.

Ordinary Thunderstorms starts off like a conventional fast-paced thriller. Adam Kindred (a climatologist who studies clouds) is dining alone in London after a job interview. He makes casual conversation with the man at the next table, research scientist Philip Wang. When Wang leaves, Adam realizes that he has left behind a file in the restaurant and decides to return it to Wang's home. However when he gets to Wang's apartment, he discovers that Wang has been stabbed and is dying. He also realizes that there is someone still in the apartment. He panics and flees with the file. After wandering the streets for a few hours, he decides to return home and contact the police. But there is an armed man waiting for him and this causes him to run again and go into hiding. He's a wanted man: his fingerprints were at the scene. Can he clear his name before the murderer catches up with him?

All of this happens in the very first chapter. But rather than continuing at this pace, the story slows right down, almost stalling. We are introduced to a series of disparate characters whose connection to the main plot are not always obvious. There is Ingram Fryzer, head of the pharmaceutical company that employed Philip Wang. Rita Nashe, a policewoman who discovers Wang's body the day before she transfers to the Marine Support Unit. Mhouse, a prostitute living in a housing estate. And Jonjo Case, the ruthless murderer who is determined to track Kindred down. They are not all likable individuals but they are fully realized - real people. Then slowly, masterfully, Boyd cranks the tension up. The individual strands start to come together, although they don't always do so in the way you expect them to (or the way that they would in a John Grisham novel for example). Adam is a terrific hero: resourceful and quick thinking but still very much an ordinary man.

Ordinary Thunderstorms reads like a literary version of The Fugitive. Adam needs to find a way to survive in hiding while piecing together the evidence that can clear him. Ultimately it's a hugely satisfying read with great characters and a wonderful sense of place. I wouldn't describe it as a fast paced thriller, but as the tension builds it does become a very hard book to put down. The ending is perfectly satisfactory but also leaves you wanting more.

Have you ever set aside a book promising yourself to read it later, because another book came along that you were dying to read? Then another book comes along that was well hyped and then another. Eventually you find that first book under a pile of other books you have read. You finally get a chance to read it and it turns out this book is better than many of the other books you read since you first set this one aside. Ordinary Thunderstorms: A Novel is that book. Adam Kindred is a young man who strikes up a casual conversation with a stranger in a small Italian bistro in a suburb of London. From this minor encounter his life begins to fall apart like a tumbling row of dominoes. He is soon running from not only the police, but also a killer who is desperate to find him. Adam sees only one way out, to disappear. But how do you disappear in a city that has more closed circuit televisions scanning the populace than any other city in the world. How do you not leave a trail, when any financial transaction or a meeting with a public official could be recorded and lead back to you. It is after all, the information age. We are all tied in myriad ways to the grid. How do you utterly disappear in the heart of London? I enjoyed this book very much. I felt a couple of the scenarios were a bit thin, but the author pulled them off. The writing was very good overall. The characters were deftly brought to life. I found myself routing for the hero to persevere. Perhaps we all have that subliminal desire from time to time to vanish from our present lives and see if we could start over again. This book was provided for review by the well read folks at Harper Perennial.

Adam Kindred, a British climatologist who has been working at an American university, returns to London for a job interview. A chance encounter in a Chelsea restaurant gets him involved in a brutal murder, and some foolish steps taken in panic quickly result in his becoming a wanted man. What Adam does not at first realize is that this is not merely a police case; he has unknowingly stumbled upon information that could derail a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical launch, and the company has deadly resources at its disposal. The opening chapters show how astoundingly quickly a hitherto upstanding citizen can be reduced to nothing, barely able to keep from going under at the waterline of society.

Literally so. Almost all the story takes place by the River Thames: in a triangle of waste land by Chelsea Bridge where Adam hangs out, in the depot of the river police where a young policewoman starts making inquiries of her own, in the wards and morgues of the riverside hospitals, in a brutal block of high-rise apartments where Adam develops an unexpected relationship with a prostitute, in the gleaming new office buildings built in the former docklands. Boyd's intimate knowledge of the city and its river does much to counteract the unrelieved bleakness of the long middle portion of this book. He also imagines a wide range of characters from the homeless at a bizarre religious soup kitchen, through an assortment of slum bosses and professional killers, to sleek boardroom manipulators. And Adam, though stripped of resources, is by no means stupid.

Towards the end of the book, Adam realizes "that it was impossible for everything to be all right in this complicated, difficult, mortal life we lead." It is a realization that accords with Boyd's obvious interest in the fragility of identity (see also his ARMADILLO) and his moral relativism. Those looking for the nice clean ending of a traditional thriller will not find it here, and our hero is by no means heroic throughout. But it is a satisfying outcome and -- after the occasional suspension of disbelief required earlier -- a surprisingly realistic one.

I got as far as page 36 where I read that this young man was said to have murdered Philip Wang... what, no trial? To my knowledge, no English newspaper (even Murdoch-owned) would make such a claim before an arrest or trial... No wonder this novel was marked down to $4.95 in my local remainder shop. Enough said - find another book to read.