Books like Criminals

I had this book on my bookshelf for years…and was going on a trip and only wanted to bring paperbacks (easier to carry in my luggage) so I had already read two books by the author and liked them a lot (short story collection, Learning by Heart [written in 1986, read in 2002, gave it an A-]; novel, Eva Moves the Furniture [written in 2001, read it in 2002, gave it a A+]), so grabbed this one. Ugh, what a disappointment! Were they written by the same person? I disliked this book so much I am reluctant to read a book I got from her at the library, The Flight of Gemma Hardy (weighs in at 446 pages!).There were six things I disliked about the book.• The premise: a London banker uses the washroom in a bus station and hears what sounds like a baby crying in one of the stalls… Indeed, it is. It is all alone. He grabs the baby and walks towards the bus he is scheduled to ride on. He attempts to tell the bus driver that he found a baby but he has a slight stutter and can’t get his words out, and she is urging him to get on the bus so she can keep to her schedule, and so he says nothing, and sits down with the baby on the bus. Ri-i-i-ght. That sounds perfectly reasonable and sensible to me. After all it’s what I would do if I found a baby at a bus station! If I were high on some sort of hallucinogenic substance that is.• There is a book within a book. He is reading a novel that his sister’s husband wrote, and so parts of the novel are in this novel, Criminals. This “book within a book” worked for me in a recent book I read, The Memory Police by Yoko Agawa, but not this time. Maybe because I was working up a slow burn on the preposterousness of the novel, Criminals.• The writing was sophomoric at times. • His sister, who plays a key part in the book, had major mental health issues, but it was entirely clear to me what triggered it. It was embedded in the “book within the book” and I think I got a chunk of it but not all of it. Maybe if I had figured that out, I would have understood why she was whacko.• There are other plot lines besides the baby that are just unbelievable.• A woman of Middle Eastern descent living in London is negatively stereotyped in the novel. I don’t believe in political correctness but describing the woman the way Margot Livesey did was a turn-off to me.I probably should not have finished this book. But I had already read two of her works and liked them. Oh well. ☹