Fiction
'Agent 6' by Tom Rob Smith
I picked up this book in a charity shop, but should really have looked back at my review of Smith's previous book, 'The Secret Speech' (2009) but it had been eight years since I wrote it: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2017/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html so I had forgotten my previous warning. This book turned out to be as bad as I had expected back then. It is portrayed as the final book in a trilogy after 'Child 44' (2008) and 'The Secret Speech' featuring the former secret police officer Leo Demidov. As reviewers at the time noted, Smith fails to recapture the crispness and insight of the first novel. This book is a real mess. The premise is really contorted. Demidov has left the secret police but in 1965 his wife who we see him first encounter and pursue and his adopted daughters are permitted to travel to the USA to take part in a singing event at the United Nations. While there his youngest daughter and then his wife get mixed up in a successful plot to assassinate the black, Communist American singer Jesse Austin. This leads to the killing of both Austin's and Demidov's wives.
The rest of the book, taking place into the early 1980s is about Demidov trying to get out of the USSR so he can travel to the USA and find out who was responsible for the assassination and killing of the two women. However, this takes many years. There is a tiny chapter in which he tried to get over the border into Finland but a lot of the book is taken up with him operating in Kabul as an agent, following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and then trying to get with a local agent and an orphaned Afghan girl to the USA where he finally finishes off his investigation before returning to imprisonment in the USSR.
The novel is effectively a series of fragments of story that are ill-connected. The portrayal of the situation in Afghanistan seems convincing but as Smith favours, very vicious in nature. Reviewers at the time commented on how it is often lifeless. The novel at 545 pages is far too long and like 'The Secret Speech' is gritty and yet really stretches credulity. Smith has gone on to write two other novels and has moved into scriptwriting for example for the TV series 'London Spy' (broadcast 2015). You often heard it said that 'everyone has a book in them' and it is clear that for Smith, 'Child 44' was that book and nothing he has produced since has come close to the quality of that. For some reason he lacks the ability to be in control of his material. He has the historical research but seems at a loss what to do with it and so goes for 'alarums and excursions' apparently with the view that these make a novel engaging, whereas in fact they reduce its coherence and feasibility. I will try to remember to stay well clear of his other novels if I see them on sale in a charity shop.
'Shiang' by C.F. Igguden
This is the second book in the Empire of Salt trilogy and is set two years on from 'Darien' (2017) which I read in February: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-books-i-read-in-february.html However, most of the main characters from the first book are only mentioned or encountered briefly. Only the Fagin-like character Tellius and his now lover, Lady Sallet, head of one of Darien's Twelve Families feature to any real extent. Most of the novel is about two groups of swordsmen travelling from Shiang to Darien. One lot led by sword saint Hondo are seeking revenge on Tellius for sharing the Mazer form of sword fighting, with people of Darien.
The second group is led by a man called Gabriel who has been brought back from the afterlife to inhabit the body of a leading swordsman who was suffering a cancer and was being experimented on using one of the powerful stones which fuel a lot of magic in the world. As a result, Gabriel and the three others returned from the afterlife with him are gifted with superhuman powers. Gabriel seizes control of Shiang before moving to take Darien.
As with the first book we receive a passing comment which shows us that this is Earth, but clearly some distance into the future when so much has changed. It is not made clear but Darien [Dalian] and Shiang [Xi'An] are old Western names for actual cities in China.
Both groups venture through mountainous regions, bickering among themselves and with people they encounter, with this breaking out into violence, especially for Gabriel's group. Hondo's group faces more casualties. In sequence both reach Darien where with the help of a premonition from an elderly noblewoman the city has been prepared to face some kind of grim invasion. Eventually Hondo's group allies with Tellius and the Families of Darien to fight the superhuman attack of Gabriel and his group. The final battle is substantial.
The fact that only a few elements are carried over from the first novel, makes this one really feel like standalone. It would have been nice to find out what had happened to many of the other characters in that first book as Tellius for much of it was on the sidelines. Overall, it rather feels a bit like a Marvel movie, with two groups of super-powered rivals working their way to a final showdown. It is not bad for that though none of the major characters are sympathetic. Really the only person who is engaging is Marias a slave and admirer of the man whose body Gabriel possesses.
The novel is not bad and has some fresh ideas. It is mature rather than YA in the way it does not pull its punches in terms of the viciousness of what the characters suffer or how challenging working relationships can be especially with two men who 'know' they are the best at what they do. I do have the third book, 'The Sword Saint' (2019) to read and hope it recaptures the freshness of the ideas, situations and characters seen in 'Darien'.
Non-Fiction
'The Crossman Diaries. Condensed Version' by Richard Crossman, edited by Anthony Howard
Note this is the condensed version covering just the period of the two Labour governments, 1964-70. Unusually for the time Crossman made audio recordings rather than wrote a diary. In full as Howard notes, these run to 3 million words. Of these 1.06 million have gone into the published 3-volume version of his diaries. This version still runs to 300,000 words (compared to about 90,000 words for an average novel) and in my edition, including references, ran to 764 pages, the longest book I have read this year so far. When published in the 1970s they attracted a lot of attention and indeed condemnation, but were seen as the best insight into the running of the UK government that had been made available.
Richard Crossman (1907-74) entered Parliament in 1945 as a Labour MP and rose to be a Cabinet minister when Harold Wilson came to power. He was successively Minister of Housing, Lord President of the Council/Leader of the House of Commons and finally Secretary of State for Health and Social Services. The fact that Crossman recorded his thoughts means that the text flows in a brisk way when compared to the 'The Robert Hall Diaries, 1947-1953' (1989) which I read in February. However, this does settle down as the diaries progress through the years and it is clear Crossman who was 63 by the time Labour fell and an elderly father of young children, was becoming tired.
At first he is a very clear admirer of Harold Wilson, but his impression, especially due to Wilson's persistent prevaricating and game playing with a range of ministers, erodes this. Him pressing on with the necessary but highly flawed 'In Place of Strife' approach working really just one-to-one with Barbara Castle alienated so many. Crossman's portrayal of the ministers notably of George Brown, but also people like Michael Stewart, Peter Shore, Fred Peart, Ray Gunter and especially James Callaghan highlights just what poor quality there was in the higher levels of the governments. So much of what he outlines shows the government floundering, ironically even more so after it had achieved a decent majority in 1966 than when it had a tiny one 1964-66.
While the Starmer government coming into office in 2024 had a much larger majority it is interesting to note how many of the same problems it faced compared to what the 1964 Labour government and its successor had to tackle. Notable was how far Labour were constrained by the Conservative approach to the economy of the previous 13 years and to a large part this choked off any real new directions in terms of policy and this is something true in 2024 as it was sixty years earlier. Of far less concern these days is the balance of payments and the exchange rate. However, there was recognition back then how the IMF and Swiss bankers had far greater control over the UK economy than the government itself. These days multinational corporations fill that role.
Though Johnson was far from being a Trump there was a difficult relationship throughout with the USA as it threw itself ever deeper into Vietnam. The issue of immigration as now, was also a big topic at the time, in part of the expulsion of Kenyan Asians with British passports. There was Enoch Powell's explicitly racist rhetoric in place of nowadays Farage and the online bigots, but still presenting a challenge at elections both for Labour and the Conservatives. As a result the good intentions of Wilson and his ministers, for Crossman especially around reform of parliament, particularly the House of Lords, but also in public housing and the health system were simply drowned in these other 'crises'. Crossman barely touches on what are seen as the successes of the period in terms of rights such as abortion, homosexuality, divorce, etc.
It is an insightful but disheartening read. As has become apparent with the current government, those of 1964-70, we hemmed in so much by Conservative economics and right-wing rhetoric which was amplified by such a large portion of the media. Reading it gave me the clear impression that Starmer, even with a decent majority from the outset, will be unable to achieve anything substantial and will be channelled in to being simply a watered-down version of the preceding Conservative governments and serving the needs of those already with immense wealth rather than the mass of the population, whose appropriate ire at how they continued to be treated is distracted by the focus on immigration. Of course, times have changed a great deal, but there is much in these diaries which can be seen as a warning to the current government and Labour supporters of how little success they should anticipate.
