The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'The Secret of High Eldersham' by Miles Burton [Cecil Street]

Being published 1916 onwards, Street wrote over 140 novels in his career (he lived until he was 80) and apparently so that it did not look like he was flooding the market, he used a range of pseudonyms, one of which was Miles Burton. This novel, another in the British Library Crime Classics series, his second featuring Inspector Young of Scotland Yard and an amateur detective, Desmond Merrion. This combination of professional and amateur reminded me of the John Bude novels I have read recently, to the extent that, unprompted, Google's AI told me that it was written by Bude, even though it was published in 1930 and Street was far more prolific than Ernest Elmore. Burton also features a stoic manservant for both Merrion and one for his old friend too, reminiscent of Magersfontein Lugg in the Campion novels (1929-68).

The story is set around High Eldersham a remote village on the Norfolk coastline which is well portrayed. It reminded me, perhaps unsurprisingly, of Ronald Blythe's oral history book, 'Akenfield' (1969) which I read last year:  https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-books-i-read-in-september.html These days the context fora crime novel of a small village where there are crimes and folk horror - witchcraft rituals are involved in this story - has almost become a cliche, but was probably fresher when the book was written, almost a century ago. The pub landlord, a former police sergeant, is found stabbed efficiently to death in his pub and Young is sent to investigate and uncovers occult practices. Finding it difficult to penetrate the closed community of High Eldersham he calls on the services of his friend Merrion, who seems typical of amateur detectives of the time, in being free to gallivant around with little need for employment.

I think the modern reader would see what is going on sooner than perhaps one from the 1930s would. We are more familiar with drug smuggling and dealing perhaps than they would be. This does tend to make the two protagonists seem a little slow on the uptake. However, the two intertwined threads are well handled. There is good use of the locale and much activity on the river and shoreline, that at times reminded me of 'The Riddle of the Sands' (1903) by Erskine Childers. Burton is good at making it hard to determine the reliability of the people Merrion interacts with and this is what lifts it from what nowadays might seem a rather overly-familiar set-up. It was an enjoyable read, though as a reader in the 2020s, perhaps a bit more predictable than for readers of its time.

'A Trail Through Time' by Jodi Taylor

This is the fourth book in the St. Mary's Chronicles series, though that has rather been muddied by subsequent 0.5 and 2.5 books in the series which I do not have. This one picks up very shortly after the preceding one, 'A Second Chance' (2014) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html In that the protagonist Dr. Madeleine Maxwell's lover, Chief Technician Leon Farrell was killed. She travelled back to the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 where she received a fatal chest wound. However in an explicit dea ex machina, Clio the Muse of History, in the form of Mrs. Partridge shifts her into an alternate reality where it was Maxwell who died rather than Farrell. At the start of this book they are dealing with this change when the Time Police from a different series of Taylor's novels, burst in, presumably because switching timelines is an anomaly. They then pursue Maxwell and Farrell to various times and locations. Ultimately they are caught at this world's version of St. Mary's College, where some things are the same but some are different, and people find it hard to accept Maxwell's 'resurrection'. There is then a bloody battle with the Time Police.

Taylor's books certainly 'jump the shark' on occasion and I did feel that she felt she had backed herself into a corner with the previous book, so almost had to sweep the board clean and start again in this parallel universe. It is also a bit confusing because you can now read books by Taylor seen through the eyes of the Time Police as I did back in April 2024, with 'Doing Time' (2019) which portrays them more sympathetically than the fascistic, violent portrayal in this book written five years earlier.

I have previously commented how there is a degree of ambivalence in Taylor's books, though in some ways I feel this gives a 'tweeness' which probably helps explain their popularity. Though St. Mary's has time machines a lot of its equipment, and indeed the behaviour of the staff, seem stuck in a nebulous mid-20th Century situation. In this way it is reminiscent of the Harry Potter books in making supposedly contemporary Britain actually look more like something from the 1950s-70s and with that kind of upper middle class perspective seen in boarding school books rather than reflecting broader British society even in that time period. This ambivalence has extended to Maxwell herself, who though having a doctorate, comes across almost like someone in their late teens. This is addressed a bit better in this novel notably between the passionate sex between Madeleine and Leon at the end.

I do not know the motivation behind this kind of ambivalence, I do wonder if it is to take the 'edge' off some of the horrors that the characters witness. Leading characters are killed but the places and times they visit also have their bleakness. A brief trip to 14th Century London leaves Maxwell having to treat a colleague who has almost immediately been mugged and caught the Black Death. Taylor does not hold back in the details of the disease or the treatment. I know she sets the St. Mary's characters as generally lovable, bumbling 'disaster magnets', but after a while just how often things go wrong becomes tiresome. There is enough jeopardy in where they travel let alone oppression in their own time, without adding all this on. It is particularly notable when Maxwell and Farrell are on the run through different times in the first half of the book. You feel like saying 'enough already'. The 'jauntiness' of the narration, combined with the tweeness of the contextualisation does knock hard against the grimness.

As before, the strength of the novels is in the portrayal of the different times and places in the past with all their bleakness. With this novel you do want the characters to stop for longer as Taylor is excellent at bringing out Ancient Egypt in the 1530s BCE, Pompeii at the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the aforementioned Black Death London. I do wonder if she thinks readers will tire too much of these, and perhaps as someone who taught history I am more interested in these elements than others, but they are a real strength in Taylor's writing and it would be fascinating to see what she could do with a 'straight' historical novel. I still have a number of these St. Mary's books to get through. I did feel with this one, that despite some flaws, the storytelling is settling town a bit more in its 'tone'.

'Siege' by Richard Foreman

This seems to be, not the US playwright who died this year, but the Richard Foreman one who wrote historical series such as Sword of Empire, Sword of Rome and Spies of Rome but I cannot find reference to this The First Crusade trilogy on that author's websites. This book published in 2019 is 156 pages long in my edition so feels more like a novella than a full length novel. It follows two Englishmen, Edward Kemp, a man-at-arms, though with high status among the crusader nobles despite his humble background and sometimes godless attitude. There is also Thomas a priest and translator working for Prince Bohemond of Taranto.

It is set in 1098 outside the walls of Antioch in Syria where the First Crusade was held up for six months besieging the huge, well defended city until a traitor allowed them access just before an army led by Kerbogha of Mosul fell upon the besiegers. The protagonists get involved in the betrayal and then the storming of the city by the crusaders. 

Foreman is good at portraying the tension between the different factions in the crusader army especially between Bohemond and Count Raymond of Toulouse. However, the prime problem is how the book flits between different points of view, not only of the two main characters, but these nobles and others, Bishop Adhemar and even characters back in Constantinople, often jumping between different perspectives on a single page. This is something that beginning writers are warned against. It does not help with the clarity of the storytelling at all.

Yes 'touché' meaning 'touched' is a word in French from the 13th Century onwards coming into English. However, its use as Foreman shows it, like a response when a fencer is hit by the tip of their opponent's sword, especially when it is only a verbal 'joust' dates from the late 19th Century. So many cliches turn up in the book, sometimes two in a single sentence. You are constantly jarred by things which sound to come from our time rather than the 11th Century and this constantly weakens Foreman's portrayal of the time. At least unlike some authors of war stories set in the Middle Ages, Foreman does feature female characters. However, overall, the book really feels like it needed a decent developmental editor, to stop the almost random jumping between points of view and to encourage the author to find more effective terms than anachronistic ones or a string of cliches.

Non-Fiction

'The Napoleonic Source Book' by Philip J. Haythornthwaite

This book does what it says on the title. It provides a general chronology of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, looks at the methods of fighting on land and sea, then goes through all the different states involved including down to the tiny Italian and German ones, providing details of their armies and notably their uniforms. There is then biographies of the leaders and key generals of the conflicts. There is an interesting section on sources about the wars available when the book was published in 1990, but also including visual sources which is something I have not seen before. There is also a glossary of terms. I imagine, especially given all the details about the uniforms that it was intended as something for wargamers to use and develop their model soldiers and scenarios for them to fight. It moves along briskly, though if you read it right through there are naturally points of repetition. However, it is good for drawing attention to 'forgotten' aspects of the conflict and notably for challenging accepted denigration or hagiography of those involved in the wars.