Reading matters

'Detour' by James Siegel

Fiction - paperback; Time Warner Books; 406  pages; 2005.   

First things first. If you read this book you need to check your brain at the door. Detour is not highbrow literature. Instead it's a fast-paced plot-driven romp that reads like a movie screenplay. It's well written in the sense that it's effortless to read. But if you're expecting something that will rock your world or make you see things in a different light or have you reassessing your life, then give this one a wide berth. It's enjoyable and entertaining. No more, no less.

Like Siegel's previous effort, Derailed (which was turned into a movie starring Jennifer Aniston), Detour is about ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances. In this case, a young New York couple, Joanna and Paul, travel to Colombia to adopt a baby as part of a fast-track scheme set up by their lawyer. Of course Colombia is a dangerous country -- a point which Siegel labours again and again throughout this long novel -- and there's a menace around every corner. Not surprisingly, the couple and their new adorable baby girl, Joelle, are kidnapped by left-wing militia -- and then things really heat up.

Paul enters into a deal to secure their release: he must travel to New York as a drug mule with 30 condoms of cocaine inside him. He has 18 hours to deliver them to an address in Queens and once the drugs are safely handed over, Joanna and Joelle will be free to return to the USA. If he doesn't hand them over, he will never see his wife and daughter again...

Of course -- you guessed it -- things don't go according to plan, but to say any more would spoil the plot...

'Derailed' by James Siegel

Fiction - paperback; Time Warner Paperbacks; 416  pages; 2004

This book takes the best bits of The Firm and throws in a smattering of Fatal Attraction to deliver a lightning-paced read with enough twists, turns and downright unexpected seismic shifts to keep you turning the pages late into the night (or, in my case, morning).

Charles is a well-paid advertising executive who's living a treadmill-like existence until he meets a beautiful stranger on a train. Besotted by the green-eyed Lucinda, he embarks on an illicit affair, momentarily forgetting his wife of 18 years and their sick teenage daughter. But his moment of pleasure turns quite unexpectedly into a violent nightmare in which rape, blackmail and murder all play a part.