Fiction
'Robin Hood Yard' by Mark Sanderson
This is the third book featuring Johnny Steadman an investigative journalist for the fictional 'Daily News' and Matt Turner, who in this book has become a Detective Constable in the City of London police. The book is set in 1938 and much of the action keeps to the City of London, which has its own police force, though with occasional jaunts into other parts of London under the Metropolitan Police. The story is mainly around a series of gruesome, almost 'locked room' murders and anti-Semitic attacks. The prospective Lord Mayor of London seems to be involved and there are other issues around Czechoslovak gold, the City of London being the home of the Bank of England and other financial businesses.
There is reference back to the previous books in which Steadman and Turner were abducted and photographed in apparently homosexual stances for blackmail by a local criminal. This has ironically stirred some gay interest between the two men though both of them are also attracted to Turner's wife. This is a deft way of getting in some gay and bisexual characters at a time when homosexuality was a crime in Britain.
The book moves at a fast pace though at times feels rather jerky. There is rapid switching between different perspectives which can be a challenge to keep up with. It conjures up the time period and the details of the City of London well, though due to the latter it does feel claustrophobic at times, and rather convenient that so much of the action takes place inside the 'square mile'. The one who turns out ultimately to be the murderer feels a little as if thrust in at the end rather than naturally developing from among the suspects that the reader has seen up to then.
While a well-informed and interesting book, at times it does not come together as smoothly as you might like. This book was published in 2015 and there have been no sequels.
'The Blade Itself' by Joe Abercrombie
Abercrombie is often seen as the godfather of the grimdark genre of fantasy novels. This novel does start of with very gritty text. One of the main characters, Sand dan Glokta, is a torturer for the Inquisition of the Union, a country in a fantasy world that we only learn about as the book progresses. There is Logen Ninefingers, a large mercenary-cum-bandit from the mountainous northern lands who gets separated from his band early in the book, though we also see their progress at various stages. Then there is Captain Jezal dan Luthar, a nobleman officer in the guard at the capital Adua aiming to win in a fencing championship. I must also mention Ardee West, one of the few female characters in the book, who Jezal falls for. The other woman character is an escaped slave, Ferro Maljinn aided, despite her resistance, by Yulwei the Fourth Mage. Ferro is really eaten up with revenge and is very violent. There is a great fight scene near the end involving her and Logen, which has a really cinematic feel to it.
This first book is effectively 'assembling the team' at the instigation of Magus Bayaz the First Mage who has been living remotely since the establishment of the Union decades before. It is an interesting twist that when he turns up in Adua with Logen, he is disbelieved rather than acclaimed as this great magic user. Magic does feature as Bayaz has both fire-wielding abilities and mentalist ones too. Logen can talk to spirits, though these are dying out. The trigger for the action is an invasion from the north by a leader who Logen previously worked for. Beyond that there are the Shankas, humanoids who are invading behind the northern army, rather reminiscent of the Game of Thrones
The grittiness of the novel, especially early on, does mark it out as grimdark. At times Abercrombie does dodge fantasy tropes. However, as the novel progresses, he rather falls into many of these. The relationship with Ardee seems inevitable, though she is a nicely feisty character. Though we see through the eyes of Ferro, she is all about antagonism. Bayaz's involvement with Jazal also reminds the reader of incidents from the Harry Potter series. This was Abercrombie's first book so maybe we should expect him to be coming out of the fantasy context with what he produced. Still, the book is sufficiently different to take and hold the interest, even if our adventurous band end up sailing off to distant lands at the end as if starting a 'Dungeons & Dragons' scenario. While I am not rushing out to buy the other books in the series, I would certainly pick them up if I saw them for sale.
'The City of Mist' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón'
If the charity shops are anything to go by, Ruiz Zafón is a popular author in my home town. His books, originally in Spanish, sold in the millions. He died in 2020 and seems to have garnered quite a following among English readers too. This is a short collection of short stories, some very short. Some he translated himself. Many feature the town of his birth and early life, Barcelona. In line with the magic realist approach which we often associate with Spanish-language authors, Ruiz Zafón manages to slip between gritty portrayals from across the 16th to 20th centuries. The term 'Gothic' is often appended to them and there are elements of literally fateful deals, of a labyrinth of forgotten books and of ghosts. These are mixed in with very human mysteries and despair. There is certainly a dark tone across the stories, even when this is moderate such as some kind of unknown lost chance for the architect Antoni Gaudí i Cornet or more bleak such as a young woman wasting away from illness.
At times you might be irritated by the brusqueness and as a reader almost feel dismissed by Ruiz Zafón going about his business. However, as is noted in the foreword, the stories tend to grow on you after you have read them. These days I see more books of short stories being published and yet you also encounter opposition almost hostility to them for lacking substance. Thus, how you engage with this book probably depends on how you engage with short stories as these are of the archetype. They work to engage you and unsettle you as the best (magic realist) short stories should, but give them time to achieve that.
Non-Fiction
'The Making of the English Working Class' by E.P. Thompson
First published in 1963, though I read the 1980 edition (955 pages), when I was a student this book was more renowned for existing than actually what it said, apart from the analysis of social class as being not something fixed, but a relational perception (re-)established with every interaction between people. However, while that aspect features at the beginning and I feel remains a valid approach, this book is much more than that. It covers the period roughly 1780-1830. Thompson does assume that the reader is familiar with the radical movements of the mid-17th Century and with the Reform Act of 1832 and the Chartist Movement of 1848. He refers to these quite often, but frustratingly does not really explore them.
I guess that this is Thompson's purpose. He is seeking to shine a light on the aspects of the development of working people, their experiences and their outlooks, that so easily get overlooked. We can see the late 1960s and the 1970s as being at the peak of 'everyday history' and this book certainly is part of that perspective. There is an immense amount of detail as Thompson looks not simply at the economic aspects of how England changed due to the Industrial Revolution, but also the inputs from religion and ideologies, especially coming out of the French Revolution. He draws attention to all the various movements and especially publications of the era which looked to develop or oppose the development of working people. At the outset while there were labourers a lot of working people were artisans. This time period saw the end of many crafts and their replacement by the water- and then steam-powered factory.
As Thompson shows well the picture was far from being a uniform transition and he picks out clearly how the impacts varied across England. The focus is on England, because as he notes, the impacts, especially of religion, on Scotland, Wales and Ireland did provide a very different context which would deserve books of their own. Saying that when people from those nations came into the English scene he does not neglect them. By taking a nuanced view of what was happening even within England, this allows Thompson to do deep analysis and his digging into the very varied experiences of Luddism show the value of this.
There is a lot going on in this book and all the names, publications and locations can be overwhelming at times. However, Thompson does also write with gusto and while analysing also sweeps the reader along with all the different incidents and voices that the book encompasses. It might look like a hefty tome, but as well as being informative I found myself moving briskly through it carried along by Thompson's energy. Despite its age, I do recommend it as a book that will alert you to things of which you might never have heard but also to show how effective historical analysis does not mean a book has to be a dull read.
'The German Empire, 1871-1918' by Hans-Ulrich Wehler
I have been very fortunate this month to have selected two excellent history books to read. I was struck a few years ago when speaking to a German living in the UK, at the time of the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War, that they thought historians had 'got over' what they saw as an inappropriate 'blaming' of Germany for the start of that conflict. I noted at the time that even books written by British historians seemed to have defaulted back to the 1930s explanation that 'everyone' had been to blame for the outbreak. This runs against the perception informed by the work of Fritz Fischer from 1961 onwards which showed how German policy had, if not created the context for war, pushed events towards it in a more active way than had been perceived. That line was the one which informed my university studies of German history, and indeed my teaching of it, but now in the period after the 1980s rows between German historians, to have faded away leaving the blame-everyone perspective to hold the field by default. In this situation, I feel it makes this book even more important now than perhaps when it was published in German in 1973.
Wehler is far from being an ardent Fischerite. Towards the end of the book he emphasises that we must take care to distinguish the aspirations of radical groups in German society, especially in terms of annexations, from the actual policies of politicians and even the military. Wehler is good on making clear that the context which is established sets parameters on what might and can be achieved. While he is seen as a proponent the Sonderweg (special way) interpretation of German history, in fact I would again argue he is not a zealot. In this book he shows how policies developing out of the agrarian revolution which came to Prussia in the 1850s and 1860s became a founding perspective for the German Empire created in 1871.
Particularly promoted by the capable Imperial Chancellor, 1871-90, Otto von Bismarck these became ingrained in German politics and society. The policies of Bismarck and his successors was to ensure that the attitudes favouring the elites, notably large landowners, but latterly big business too, kept up the primacy of these attitudes to the political and economic detriment of the large parts of German society. It was not only legislation and subsidies, but also the promotion of conservative civil servants especially in the legal profession, the linked lionisation of the state and the use of patriotism and aspirations to the elite that brought the middle classes to support the favoured policies of the elites. The successful wars of 1864-70 and the militarism promoted by policies, education and propaganda, did not guarantee the empire would go to war, but constantly made it seem a feasible step to take to resolve internal social pressures.
Wehler not only looks at these parameters and calmly demonstrates the difficulties that they made for Germany, but also shows convincingly how much danger they stacked up for the future. Given a legal profession and a military that had been filled with men of a particular outlook in an unchallengeable poisition, combined with the use of xenophobia and anti-Semitism as polices to connect people to the state, the reader comes away quite surprised that the Weimar Republic ever got off the ground. The advent of the Nazis was clearly well established as early as 1918 by what had gone before.
Wehler makes a very convincing case based on perceptive analysis. He does not overplay his hand and cautions the reader not to jump to easy assumptions, bringing out the nuances in what was said and done. Despite being 50 years old, I feel this book remains a very valuable analysis of Imperial Germany and indeed feeding into analysis of later periods in the country's history. It seems very apt especially now when issues around the political parameters that elites can establish and maintain speaks to what is happening both in democracies and dictatorships around the world.
Audio Books
I moved house in August so now have a longer commute to work. That means the revival of me listening to audio books as I have a good stash remaining from the mid-2010s when I commute so much.
'Agatha Christie. Three Radio Mysteries. Volume Four' by Agatha Christie; Radio Plays
Keeping with the policy I adopted previously, if the audio book is based on a book, I still review it, even if it is acted out as a play rather than read. This is a rather strange BBC collection from 2003, featuring a range of well-known actors including the late Richard Griffiths, Dervla Kirwin, Adrian Dunbar and the disgraced Chris Langham, who was imprisoned two years after these recordings were made. Though original short stories published by Christie in 1933-34, for the dramatizations they have been updated. Thus in 'The £199 Adventure' it is for a masking substance for performance-enhancing drugs that the character is sent to Milan to retrieve. The £200 he possesses would have been quite a lot back in 1933, at least equivalent to £15,000 today, if not two or three times that, nowadays even in 2003 the amount seems paltry. This first story is rather frantic and almost comical, with lots of charging around and shooting.
The second story, 'The Gypsy' is much more Gothic in tone and is well handled, bringing in questions about premonitions and reincarnation. The use of moorland and the sense of claustrophobia when one is trying to escape from what seems to be fated is well portrayed by the actors. The final drama is 'The Last Séance' which again is successful in terms of hitting the Gothic tone well, though the updating does raise some issues. Dervla Kirwan and Adrian Dunbar are an Irish husband and wife who work for an English noblewoman, as housekeeper and butler, which shows up the origins. The woman who comes to them for a séance, however, is an Afghan refugee, injured by an airstrike and wanting to contact her daughter injured in the attack who died as a result. However, the acting is convincing and it has a chilling edge, especially as Kirwan's character, able to contact the dead, is pregnant.
Overall, a rather strange package of plays, but generally handled reasonably well, if rather over-dramatically at times. Like good short stories, especially the latter two, make you think about them afterwards.
