tony's review
4.0
At one point Alan Rusbridger, Davies' editor at The Guardian, is quoted as describing the events of this book as being like “living in a [a:Stieg Larsson|706255|Stieg Larsson|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1246466225p2/706255.jpg] novel, full of endless plots and dark machinations”.
The story is certainly as complex, but unfortunately Davies doesn’t tell it as well as Larsson. Occasionally he hits his stride, and everything flows well, but having everything largely emerge in chronological order just didn’t work for me.
For people who have had continuous exposure to the phone-hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry over the last few years, and mostly just want a more in-depth explanation of what went on, this probably works better — and for them, this is likely an excellent book. I, however, had enough superficial knowledge of what had gone on for the topic to not be entirely new to me, but not quite enough to keep from regularly stumbling over things that Davies seems to take for granted. There are so many different things going on that it's often difficult to keep track of all the different strands without already knowing which things are going to turn out to be most important.
The book is divided into three sections, and by the end of the first I was close to giving up. Chapter 7, however, which introduces Section 2, is superb. It reads much more like a standalone article, providing a lot of wider context about Rupert Murdoch's political influence, and should probably have opened the entire book. After this, things pick up significantly, and the remainder of this section comes as close to the breathless page turner as Davies ever gets, before everything gets bogged down again in Section 3.
There’s a constant feeling of cautiousness throughout the book, where Davies knows (from bitter experience) that if he makes even the slightest error, the Mudoch press and apologists will find it, amplify and distort it, and try to use it to discredit the entire book. This is certainly understandable, but it’s continually jarring, and the book gets so mired in making sure its facts are as accurate as possible, that it makes it harder, rather than easier, for the deeper truths to shine through, other than when Davies explicitly switches into preaching mode.
I certainly enjoyed most of the book, and learned a lot from it, but I kept wishing it were a different one. ★★★☆
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