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Friday 06 March 2015

Crime writer and the case of a revenge review

When Philip Kerr’s novel received a less than glowing review from a fellow author, he took it on the chin.

Philip Kerr and Allan Massie: Crime writer and the case of a revenge review
Authors Philip Kerr and Allan Massie Photo: Abbie Trayler-Smith/Glyn Satterley

But when his follow-up book merited a second bad write-up from the same reviewer – Allan Massie, the historian – the best-selling crime novelist appears to have opted for a dose of revenge.

In the second such case in recent weeks, a user by the name of “Philip Kerr” has posted an 813-word diatribe on Amazon.co.uk trashing Massie’s latest book, The Royal Stuarts: A History of the Family That Shaped Britain.

The review is laden with jibes about Massie’s work, describing him as a writer of “worthy but mostly unread novels”, decrying his sources as “hopelessly outdated” and listing alleged factual errors.

“When I pay twenty quid for a 'nuanced’ history of the Stuarts I don’t expect to be served up a slab of cheesy prose from a crappy old novel,” the post said.

The book asserts that all Scots can trace their ancestry to Robert II, the first monarch of the House of Stuart. “By the same token if you go back far enough we all share our ancestry with a turkey. And so alas does this book,” the review stated. Kerr is from Edinburgh.

If readers of the review were taken aback by the bitter tone, the closing paragraph provided an explanation.

“Good manners and honesty prompt me to mention that Alan Massie [sic] has reviewed my last two novels with a distinct lack of enthusiasm,” the post said.

“For the first review I say good luck to him. If he didn’t like my book, then that’s fair enough. He’s entitled to his opinion which is that I can’t write for toffee. Maybe I can’t.

“He should however, have excused himself from reviewing me a second time. In my opinion that’s bad manners. I’m of the opinion that authors should avoid reviewing the books of their peers and, usually, I stick to this principle, but I’ve made a special exception in Mister Massie’s case. . .”

Kerr is the creator of the Bernie Gunther books about a German private detective. The reviews by Massie concerned the two most recent instalments, A Quiet Flame and If The Dead Rise Not, published in March 2008 and October last year.

In the first, Massie concluded: “The novel is enjoyable enough, good-quality airport fiction. But that’s all it is, which is sad, because the early Bernie Gunther novels were so much more.”

If The Dead Rise Not featured “an unconvincing plot and a still less convincing love affair” but remained “an agreeably readable novel”.

Last night, Massie was taking the matter in good humour. “I am quite amused to find that Mr Kerr has taken such deep umbrage that he has clearly gone to the trouble of reading my book in order to slate it in an unsolicited review.

“For a professional writer to do this without a fee is agreeably unusual,” he said. “The 'crappy novel’ I quote from is by Sir Walter Scott and is, in my opinion, rather good, even if not one of Scott’s best.”

Kerr was out of the country last night and could not be reached for comment to confirm if he was the reviewer, or if an impostor had posted using his name.

In April Orlando Figes, a history professor at Birkbeck College, London, admitted posting anonymous reviews on Amazon in which he called books by rivals “pretentious”, “awful” and “curiously dull”.

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