V for Vendetta
As much as I tried, as many times as I picked it up, I could not finish Steve Moore’s V FOR VENDETTA novelization. After nearly halfway through, I simply had to surrender.
Based on the Wachowski brothers film, itself based upon Alan Moore’s landmark graphic novel for Vertigo, V FOR VENDETTA takes a look into the uncomfortably not-so-distant future, when England is under rule from a Big Brother-type government so terrifying, its citizens are afraid to take a stand. Except for the mystery man known only as V, a caped revolutionary hiding behind a creepy Guy Fawkes mask and who makes his displeasure known via explosives. He earns a new recruit when he rescues a young woman, Evie, from a few unsavory street cops who catch her outside after curfew.
The scenes in which Evie gradually (and unwittingly) becomes accustomed to V’s world of anarchy are the book’s best, but it absolutely falters when the perspective shifts to the investigation and pursuit of these terrorists, which is roughly half. However, the biggest problem lies elsewhere: in the action. Moore’s descriptions of these scenes seem to go on for pages after pages (and do), to the point where you feel like events are being played out in slow-motion. A sci-fi political thriller shouldn’t drag its feet. –Rod Lott
[...] Set roughly a month after the soggy whodunit of THE WATER ROOM, this STAIRCASE finds Arthur Bryant and John May in dire straits. Though both of retirement age, their out-of-the-ordinary detective work is all they really have to live for, but their unorthodox methods have landed them in hot water with the higher-ups who threaten to close the division permanently. Then there’s the matter of “The Highwayman,” a V FOR VENDETTA-style masked, caped rogue whose murder of a pro-choice artist is something of a locked-room mystery, witnessed only – and partly at that – by a group of schoolboys touring the museum where her latest controversial installation is displayed. [...]