The Books I Read In October

 Fiction

'Dark Matter' by Philip Kerr

This is a standalone crime novel from Kerr, set in London at the end of the 17th Century when scientist Sir Isaac Newton was a leading member of the Mint housed at the Tower of London charged with combating forgery. The story is seen through the eyes of a former soldier, Christopher Ellis who is employed as an assistant-cum-bodyguard as he investigates a number of murders around the Tower and of people connected with it. Newton is very much presented like Sherlock Holmes, which given his polymath abilities, perhaps was not an inaccurate presentation. The novel really conjures up London of the time and the religious tensions as well as those between different staff employed at the Tower which was also an arsenal. The story works well with the perpetrators seeking ways to throw Newton off the scent and different deaths not all being connected to each other. 

The one flaw I see in this book are the sexually explicit scenes. I know Kerr felt a need to include Newton's niece, Catherine Barton, who kept his house at the time and that she 'progressed' in society by becoming the mistress and the wife of a nobleman and a politician, but all of that could have been covered without two scenes that are verging on the pornographic. I understand Kerr wanted to portray 'bawdy' London - a sado-masochist nightclub also features - but it really jars the rest of the novel. Barton is in the book too much to be ignored, but not enough to be developed beyond her sexual proclivities.

'Casablanca' by Michael Moorcock

This is a rather scattergun collection of essays and short stories from Moorcock. They are typical of him and I had read the one about the frozen cardinal in 'Other Edens' (1987). The title story about checking out a potential leader of the Maghreb in the near future is not bad but like most of the stories in the collection does not really go anywhere. 'Goldiggers of 1977' has an interesting premise in that people are using the Sex Pistols as the basis for a revolution in British society. It features Jerry Cornelius, his family and usual related characters so the idea is dissipated by the erratic rhetoric between them largely around locations in London popular in Moorcock books. The essays have reasonable pen portraits of Mervyn Peake, Harlan Ellison, Angus Wilson, Maeve Gilmore and Andrea Dworkin - who actually features a great deal among the other essays. Moorcock tries to chart a path between wanting the exploitation of pornography stopped without falling back on censorship or Puritanism and makes a case, largely launching from Dworkin's views that it can be tackled through a Feminist approach. However, it does not come over as a strong or clear argument.

This whole collection is very patchy and while Moorcock might have felt he was being as challenging and provocative as he was back in the 1970s by the time this was published in 1989, he comes over as grumpy and indeed at times petulant. The whole tone reminded me much of public statements of Alan Moore who never seems happy with anything and gives the air that he believes he can understand things that no-one else is capable of comprehending.

'Familiar Rooms in Darkness' by Caro Fraser

In many ways this is very much a literary family drama, with the compulsory big group scenes at a house in France. However, the questions Fraser asks about who/what a biographer should be loyal to and the question that comes up a lot now about whether we can continue to value someone's work when we learn that the person did nasty/criminal things, raises it a bit above most books of that kind. The story is around the fictional poet, playwright and author Harry Day. Nearing the end of his life he employs a journalist Adam Downing to write his biography. Day dies early in the book and Downing continues working with his family including his wife, his ex-wife and his two children Charlie and Bella. However, increasingly he encounters people that knew Day in the 1960s (the book was published in 2004 and is set contemporaneously) but who were not on the list of people for Downing to interview. Steadily this reveals much darker sides to Day, starting mildly with the question of his children's paternity and his sexuality to much nastier secrets. Downing has to navigate these elements which would make his biography a draw and the stories that the family members have long told themselves are the "truth". Downing falling for Bella simply adds to the confusion as he is increasingly asked to portray the stories the family told rather than what actually occurred. While rather trope-laden and probably referencing people I do not know, it does go a bit further than I had initially expected in questioning the set-up.

'An Illustrated History of the Gestapo' by Rupert Butler

Compared to Butler's 'Gestapo' (1981) which I read in 2022: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/04/books-i-read-in-april.html this book is much more toned down and far more respectful. It was released in 1992 in part to raise funds for the preservation of Lidice in Czechia which was levelled and its population massacred following the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague. It a well-informed sober way Butler outlines the growth of the Gestapo and those involved with it. It analyses the different approaches of the organisation in different parts of Europe and looks at what happened after the war to the perpetrators. It includes short biographies of some of those ordinary people affected by the Gestapo's activities. The photographs included do add to what is being told and have been chosen well to inform the reader. Overall while this might appear a brasher book than his earlier one, in fact it is a far better treatment of this grim element of German history and very useful for a general reader seeking to know what that particular arm of the Nazi regime was about.

'A Portrait of Europe 1300-1600: Authority and Challenge' by Donald Lindsay and Mary R. Price

This book was published as a contextual read for students of the time period. It works very well at that in large part rather than trying to progress chronologically through the era, by instead focusing on specific topics or the contexts created by particular individuals. There are very complex topics notably the Reformation and the Catholic Reformation, but the brisk writing really manages to provide detail without bogging you down in it. It is good in presenting the role that Ulrich Zwingli played in Protestantism which tends to be overshadowed by Luther and Calvin. For a book published in Britain it avoids being Anglocentric and it provides useful information on Russia and the Ottoman Empire, both with important roles, but which too often in general texts get left out as being 'peripheral' to Europe. It also does a good job of the complexity of the Netherlands fight for independence. Occasionally strange ideas from the authors break through, e.g. as on the origins of gunpowder, but overall it is a useful book for those wanting the historical background for fiction or dramas set in this time period.