This year I read 60 books. In 2024 I read 59 and in 2023, 53 books, but I am getting a feel for the quantity I will get through, a little more than equivalent one book per week. This year the longest book I read was 851 pages. In fact it and the next two longest at 764 pages and 682 pages, were all non-fiction and about British politics. The shortest book I read was only 111 pages long but there were three others under 150 pages, one of which I read in a day.
Fiction
'Til Death Do Us Part' by John Dickson Carr
Published under Dickson Carr's real name in 1944, this novel, another in the British Library Classic Crime series, is actually set in an archetypal English village before the war had broken out. Though an American it is clear that Dickson Carr adored rural England. His at times almost poetic descriptions of the sights of the village at different times of the day add a richness to the novel not found in all detective stories of the time. As with 'She Died A Lady' (1943) which I read in October: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html the village he conjures up, in this case Six Ashes (perhaps influenced by Sevenoaks?) is an idealised - though feasible - English setting, not only in terms of its geography but also of the local characters, such as the squire at the manor, the doctor, the banker, etc. The only American perspective which stands out is when through a character he has to lecture Britons in general about how practical window screens to keep out insects are, despite their absence in most British houses.
There is a good psychological element to this story. The protagonist is a playwright, Richard Markham,who writes popular mystery plays. He has fallen in love with a newcomer to the village, Lesley Grant and becomes engaged to her. However, at the village fete held in the grounds of Ashe Manor, a fortune teller, apparently in fact criminologist Sir Harvey Gilman reveals to Markham that Grant has killed three men she was in relationships via a locked-room approach employing cyanide. Clearly Markham is torn in considering whether his fiancée is a murderess. Modern readers are likely to fall into thinking we are into 'Black Widow' (1987) movie territory, especially when Cynthia Drew a close friend of Markham's also appears to be antagonistic towards Grant and appears in apparently suspicious locations.
Cleverly Dickson Carr uses our expectations of how different types of individual in such a setting will behave to mislead us. I have to be careful with spoilers, but eventually it becomes apparent that Grant may not be the only one concealing a very different past. This book is the 15th in Dickson Carr's Dr. Gideon Fell series of novels and Fell does turn up quite late in the book. He is obese and you tend to think he is modelled on Ernst Gennat (1880-1939), the prominent (and overweight) Berlin detective active 1925-39. In addition, he seems quite superfluous. We already have Superintendent David Hadley on the scene. The tension between the two and with other professionals perhaps is realistic but at times feels laboured as if the various running around between various houses especially at nighttime. At the end you feel Fell has held back intentionally on providing the solution until the time was right for him to be able to be seen to trump both Markham and Hadley and gain the most kudos.
Overall, for at times challenging expectations, adding the psychological element of a protagonist in love with a perhaps murderer and a beautiful portrayal of an inter-war English village, this is worth a read, but be patient towards the end when things seem to begin to lag unnecessarily. Since reading this novel I have found a copy of Dickson Carr's first crime novel which I aim to read early in the new year.
'What Could Possibly Go Wrong?' by Jodi Taylor
This is the sixth book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's and follows pretty much the same formula as the previous ones. The heroine Max, now married to the Leon Farrell, due to her injuries in previous novels has a job swap to 'lighter duties' training up five new recruits to the institute. It is also revealed that when she was transferred into an alternate timeline from her original one in 'A Second Chance' (2014) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html and officially renamed 'Lucy' she has come to a world where the USA suddenly became an authoritarian dictatorship and Britons trapped there had to be smuggled out to safety.
The incessant mistakes and tragedies that the staff of St. Mary's suffer does become rather tiresome. As one character increasingly points out, they are actually pretty useless at their jobs and regularly put themselves unnecessarily in harm's way which does lead to deaths. In turn the deaths bring in a jarring element to the 'jolly hockey sticks' tone that otherwise is prominent in the novels, rather the way the torture scenes jar with the overall tone of the Flashman books (1969-2005). The strongest parts are Taylor's portrayals of the historic locations that the crews visit. In this one they go to the Valley of the Kings in 18th dynasty Egypt; a site of Homo Sapiens - Neanderthal interaction in stone age times; to meet with Ancient Greek historian Herodotus - very different from what is expected - and have a new run-in with the Time Police; to witness the execution of Joan of Arc and the Battle of Bosworth Field. In each location damaging mistakes are made and in one this leads as usually happens in these books, to the death of a crew member, in fact in this one there is an extra death.
As in other recent books there is also a mystery around who has betrayed the Institute to their antagonists. This again proves to be two people, one very unexpected and the other you might work out early on. This sub-plot and what it reveals about people suspected of treachery, adds an interesting element to the novel. I have two more books in the main series to read and then two short story anthologies. I do hope these move away from the set pattern of the books so far which has never really fully settled down into what it feels it should be doing.
'Sharpe's Escape' by Bernard Cornwell
About 20 years ago I read all of Cornwell's Sharpe books that had been published up until 2003 - 'Sharpe's Havoc' (2003). I read them in chronological order rather than the order in which they had been published, starting in 1981. Recently, however, I realised that I had missed out this one published in 2007. In terms of history, this book is set in 1810 and comes between 'Sharpe's Gold' (1981) and 'Sharpe's Fury' (2007) - one which I have not yet got a copy of.
Despite publishing the books over what is now a 44-year period ('Sharpe's Storm' is imminently due for publication), Cornwell has been very adept at keeping his character correct for the time period the book is set in. In this one there are callbacks to a grim scene in 'Sharpe's Prey' (2001) set in Copenhagen in 1807. Captain Sharpe and his usual band of riflemen with additional redcoat musketeers are part of the British retreat down Portugal to the refuge behind the Lines of the Torres Vedras, the vast defensive structure Wellington set up to defend Lisbon which led to the defeat of the French in Portugal and the slow progress of British and allied forces towards France.
This novel moves along briskly, with all the usual elements you would expect in a Sharpe novel. His very common background leads to friction with upper class officers, but he benefits from Major Hogan and behind him Wellington himself, who ensure that he can weather the behaviour of these men, notably in this novel, the commander of Sharpe's battalion Lieutenant Colonel William Lawford who is trying to bring on his young brother-in-law by effectively putting him into Sharpe's place in command of the Light Company. As it is following a well-told account of the Battle of Bussaco, Sharpe and Sergeant Harper set with the task of finding billets and destroying supplies in Coimbra so they cannot be used by the advancing French.
There is, as usual, personal tension between Sharpe and a treacherous Portuguese major and his explicitly criminal brother. As the British march on, Sharpe has to escape Coimbra along with Harper, an English governess - who develops greatly in the escape and a Portuguese captain Sharpe has met before when were both were lieutenants taking part in the British retreat from Oporto in 1809 ('Sharpe's Havoc' (2003)).
Despite the formulaic nature of many of the Sharpe scenarios, Cornwell is successful in making the stories different. Though we know already that Sharpe is alive still in 1821, there is an effective sense of jeopardy as they get clear of Coimbra through ancient sewers and seek a boat to take them downstream to the Lines of Torres Vedras, then to avoid being killed as they come up to them, themselves. I have a couple of other post-2003 Sharpe novels to read but am coming at them in chronological order.
'Sharpe's Command' by Bernard Cornwell
Following a break after 2007, in 2021 Cornwell began publishing a few more Sharpe novels. As with many authors with series these days, these were 'fill-in' books in between books in the series that had been published earlier. This is one of those books being set in May 1812 around the Bridge at Almaraz across the River Tagus in Spain. It sits between 'Sharpe's Company' (1982) at the Siege of Badajoz 'Sharpe's Sword' (1983) set during the Salamanca Campaign.
The error around his rank in this novel has been picked up. In 'Sharpe's Company' he was restored to the rank of captain after being refused that rank permanently in January 1812, earlier in that novel, due to a lack of a captain's vacancy. This was despite him being promoted to the rank locally back in July 1809 ('Sharpe's Eagle' (1981)). He is raised only to brevet major late in 1812 ('Sharpe's Enemy' (1984)) and then only due to the intervention of the Prince Regent. Despite these details and me previously complimenting Cornwell's success at continuity, there is confusion even just within this novel about Sharpe's rank with some calling him captain and some calling him major. At first I thought that was intentional to reflect how other officers saw him but now it seems to have been an error.
The attack on the bridge at Almaraz was an actual raid carried out behind French lines. The novel naturally involves actual people notably General Rowland Hill who commanded it, but also Lieutenant Love an artillery officer who with a team were able to shell the small French fort on the northern bank after the pontoon bridge across it had been broken. The sergeant of the 50th Regiment who killed a French officer with his half-pike also features. Other fictional characters are woven in to make it a Sharpe book. There is a treacherous Spanish partisan who is killed in a brutal duel by Sharpe's second wife, Spanish partisan leader, Teresa Moreno 'La Aguja' who features quite extensively in this novel. The riflemen under Sharpe's command play a leading part not only in the main battle but also in skirmishes leading up to it when they are carrying out correspondence.
The story of this action is complicated even historically with an assortment of forts on both sides of the Tagus to be taken into consideration. Cornwell does his best but it is at times a little bewildering about where everyone is going and in which direction they are firing. There is a map of the region at the start but a closer-in one of the pontoon bridge and the forts defending it would have been really useful. While Cornwell does describe the battles successfully and really keeps up the tension, the fact that twice Sharpe and his band are only saved by mounted charges by partisans suggests he was beginning to run out of ideas. Lieutenant Love's character seems to change sharply from when he first appears in the book to when he reappears at the end, calling on St. Barbara at every possible occasion whereas earlier he had been much more passive. It is always a challenge for authors to fictionalise genuine historical characters that we actually do not know much about, but it is a shame that Cornwell could not maintain consistency with Love.
I have 'Sharpe's Assassin' (2021) to read and given it was published two years before this one, though set three years later, I hope it still shows the complete skill that Cornwell once had or at least he used an editor to call out when he made mistakes or when what he was writing had lost its 'edge'.
'The Voice of the Violin' by Andrea Camilleri
This is the fourth book in the Montabalno series and is a brisk, straight forward detective novel. A woman, Michela Licalzi is found naked following both vaginal and anal sexual intercourse at a remote farmhouse she is having done up. There is no trace of her belongings beside a bath towel and her car which one of Montalbano's staff crashed into. The story follows solid detection work going through Licalzi's husband and her lovers. Ironically the prime clue to the motive is in the title rather than anything sexual. It is to reach this that Montalbano does solid detection, though at times bending the law such as breaking into the dead woman's house before her death has even been reported.
As before, Montalbano is regularly at odds with his colleagues notably his deputy Mimi Augello who in fact is more honorable than much online commentary suggests. The police switchboard operator Officer Catarella is portrayed as a buffoon added to by the translator, Stephen Sartarelli rendering his speech like a comic version of a New York Italian. There are fortunately signs towards the end of the novel, that Catarella is maturing, which is a relief. At times these points of friction seem really laboured so the interactions grate. It feels there is a lack of reason for Montalbano's behaviour especially when he can be charming to others, notably the old woman, Signora Clementina who has featured before and is becoming a kind of civilian assistant to Montalbano, for example, telephoning in tip-offs to the police that the inspector cannot be associated with.
There are the usual regular references to Sicilian food specialities. The inspector never seems to eat anything very plain and if it was not for his regular swimming you could imagine him becoming very overweight. The changes in his personal relationship with Livia from the previous novel 'The Snack Thief' (1996) are not followed up and indeed the 'happy family' expectation of that novel is terminated by François insisting he remains with the family he was fostered with for his own security especially in seeing the boys he is fostered with as his own brothers. I had thought that story line to be an unlikely one, but it also seems very brusque to abandon it this way. There are hints that Montalbano is going to have an affair with Anna, a friend of Michela's living nearby. It does not develop far in this novel and it will have to be seen if it is taken further or not. Montalbano has proven in earlier novels that he can have a platonic relationship even with a beautiful woman.
Overall, despite this difficulties, the novel is one of the better ones in the series through keeping to a proper detective story rather than going off down more outré paths.
'Science Fiction,The Great Years' ed. by Carol and Frederik Polk
This is a collection published originally in 1973 (my edition is from 1977) which collected together seven US 'pulp' science fiction stories published 1934-53. As you progress through it you see that much of the criteria for selection has been due to the Polks knowing the authors personally and in one case one, 'Wings of the Lightning Land' was written by James MacCreigh, a pseudonym of Frederik Polk himself. With this collection I did note as I did with 'The World of Null-A' (1940) by A.E. Vogt which I read in October https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html things that to a science fiction reader in the mid-20th Century would have seemed exciting or thought provoking, now can have a tendency to seem old hat as the points they revolved around have become so assimilated into Western culture in the meantime.
I first started reading this book in 1983 but abandoned it part way through the first story. This is '... And Then There Were None' published in 1951 by Eric Frank Russell is the longest in the book and I can see why I soon tired of it. It is very off-putting, because at 72 pages it is too long, but above all it is painfully smug. A diplomatic spaceship from Earth's extensive empire lands on a colonised planet which has had no visits from the rest of human space in 300 years. They try to find a leader even at a local level to talk to about the planet but keep running up against smug non-compliance from the population. It slowly and painfully transpires after a lot of these irritating encounters that the people feel they follow the teachings of Mahatma Gandhi and thus keep harping on 'I won't' and 'mind your own business', which they believe is an essence of Gandhi's viewpoint. This seems a typically American perspective.
They settlers have also adopted what we now call a 'gift economy' and as it is used at some local levels nowadays it is not as unusual to the reader as it would in 1951. The American angle comes through them being called 'obs' from 'obligations' which can be 'put' on to people and then shifted from person to person before someone 'kills' them. The self-righteousness of the settlers gets tedious very quickly and the apparent 'twist' of many of the crew deserting the ship to remain on the planet is no surprise. All of this is laid on so heavily, you can see how poorly Russell thought of his readers.
'The Liberation of Earth' (1953) by William Tenn, a pseudonym for an academic of the time, is much crisper and I feel better shows what good science fiction short stories can do. It is narrated by a survivor living on an Earth whose very shape has been distorted by repeated invasions by two warring sides in an alien war. They have used Earth as a base for this conflict with no concern for the impact on the humans (and presumably animals and plants) that live on it, harmed by the constructions and the by-products of their weapons. As well as distorting Earth a lot of its air and water are used up or contaminated. As the Polks comment in the introduction, in the early 1970s it would have been seen as a critique of the Vietnam War but it is easy to see how Tenn thought it up in the context of the legacy of colonialism which was very apparent in the mid-1950s. The portrayal of the alien invasions as different 'liberations', even from the humans' perspective, is a nice touch.
'Old Faithful' (1934) by Raymond Z. Gallun is primarily written from the perspective of an inhabitant of Mars, 774, looking down on Earth and developing signalling with an astronomer there. Condemned to have his life ended to conserve resources on Mars 774 boldly piggy backs on a comet passing close to both Mars and Earth to reach his correspondent. It is nice to see aliens not bent on invasion and colonisation, but like many humans, having an interest in knowing more about their solar system. Gallun does very well in envisaging an alien life form which, for example, does not hear but simply feels vibrations. It is also unlike much on Earth except large worms and this does seem to be a bit of a trend of portraying the alien in science fiction of the time. I guess a worm is also seen as inherently non-threatening. It is a sweet story about the character's endeavours and its hope for its own single offspring. Ironically exploration on Mars in the 21st Century suggests Gallun's portrayal of water on the planet might not have been far from the truth though back many millions of years before humans appeared on Earth.
'Placet is a Crazy Place' (1946) by Frederic Brown has an interesting context. It features a planet that loops around in a binary star system. Light slows down as a result to on the passage people on the planet can see a spectral projection of the planet effectively coming towards them which naturally causes concern. It is also a romance in that the protagonist resigns from his post only to find that a woman he has long been attracted to is just arriving at the base. It is quite a light story but interesting for the astronomical situation it explores.
'Wings of the Lightning Land' (1941) by James MacCreigh [Frederik Polk] is quite a straight forward space adventure when two explorers from a base on the Moon are transported across the universe to an alien planet where they manage to sort out what is going wrong with the deserted city they find there. The jeopardy seems genuine because we have no sense of whether either of them will survive. Added to that the female narrator suffers from hypothyroidism, known as 'cretinism' at the time the story was written which if unmedicated leads to severe decline in the sufferer's mental condition so that they become unable to cope with complex thinking and communication. Perhaps many light years from her medication, the narrator has a deadline to try to get home before her condition overwhelms her. It is still not that common to see disabled people in science fiction and as a Type 1 diabetic reliant on late 20th Century medication to keep me from suffering a painful death as a matter of course, it is something that always come to mind when I read time travel stories or indeed being stranded somewhere remote whether on Earth or elsewhere. The story is pretty good if rather disjointed at times.
'The Little Black Bag' (1950) by C.M. Kornbluth is a time travel story but only a medical kit from the future is sent back to mid-20th Century USA and helps out an alcoholic doctor due to its easy-to-use very advanced equipment. While it allows him to get back into practice and help out numerous people with a variety of conditions, this being the US health system he is soon pushed into doing cosmetic surgery in order to secure large fees to keep his assistant who is blackmailing him, happy. In that way it reminded me of something like an episode from 'The Twilight Zone' (broadcast 1959-64) or 'Tales of the Unexpected' (broadcast 1979-88). Like the best short stories it handily explores a moral issue bisecting with human nature and has a decent twist.
'A Matter of Form' (1938) by H.L. Gold is a bit of a body shock story. It is set in New York of the time where three bodies of catatonic tramps have been found with signs of recent surgery on them. While at times we see from the point of view of a journalist working on this story and his editor, the main protagonist is a down-and-out college graduate called Wood. He is inveigled into a scheme which turns out to be producing the catatonic men as a result of exchanging consciousnesses between animals and humans with the goal of moving those of ailing wealthy people into younger human bodies. Wood soon finds himself in the body of a collie. Much of the story is an adventure about how he escapes the vivisectionists and with his limited canine abilities draws the attention of the newspapermen to the scandal. Naturally we now think of 'Fluke' (1977) by James Herbert or scenes in 'Mars Attacks' (1996). Perhaps we can also see it in line with 'The Monster of Lake LaMetrie' (1899) by Wardon Allan Curtis which features a full brain transplant or .'The Metamorphosis' (1915) by Franz Kafka which looks at such a situation more from psychological rather surgical aspect. Overall, 'A Matter of Form' is an engaging story on topics of how we might communicate as a dog as well as an adventure of Wood being shot at and chased across New York by the surgeon's gangster associates.
Non-Fiction
'The Secret State. Whitehall and the Cold War' by Peter Hennessy
This book published in 2002 has what I am now seeing as the classic Hennessy style. It is very rhetorical as you would expect from a lecture or a radio programme of the kind Hennessy is well known for. There are personal reminiscences mixed in with numerous asides and quotes from people who were at the heart of the matter being covered. While this also went for 'Whitehall' (1988) and 'Never Again' (1993) both of which I read this year, the rhetorical style is probably more the case with this one as it was founded on four lectures that Hennessy gave. It covers the period that Hennessy refers to as the 'high' Cold War which he sees running 1947-69. In part this is to do with when government documents became available.
The UK adopted the 20-year rule in 2013, so from 1968 when the rule was shortened from 50 years, historians had to wait 30 years to see official documents in the archives. Consequently, in 2002 only those from before 1971 would be available. As it is certain documents are kept closed for longer, up to a maximum of 100 years, including ones concerning atomic and nuclear issues. However, a sub-theme of this book is how Hennessy, his assistants and a set of his students were able to reconstruct a lot of discussions and policies from the documents which were available. Some of these are replicated at length in the book.
The four main themes. First how the British assessed the risk of incidents, perhaps even war, with the USSR in the post-war period. Second the difficult development of a British nuclear deterrent and keeping it up to date as nuclear weaponry quickly evolved going from single aircraft dropped atomic bombs in 1945 to inter-continental ballistic missiles carrying thermonuclear warheads by 1957. Third how especially in the wake of the detection of Fuchs in 1950 and the defections of Burgess and Maclean the following year, steps were taken to filter out traitors from becoming part of the Whitehall 'machine'.
The fourth theme builds on the second and looks at assessments of what the impact would be on the UK if a nuclear war broke out and preparations that could be made. This leads into the final section focused on 'Turnstile' the secret underground base in the Cotswolds to which the rump of UK central government would have retreated. Another coup of Hennessy's was that he and two assistants were permitted to visit the base and take some photos. The book ends with a philosophical discussion of unleashing a nuclear holocaust and the revelation that the continued existence of the UK is indicated officially by the broadcasting of the 'Today' programme on Radio 4 at least once in a week.
This is a brisk but well informed book which, as I have noted before, is perhaps best for a general reader wanting to engage with these topics rather than a scholarly one. It is a shame given that in 2013 official documents dating from 1992 and before were opened, so covering the end of the Cold War, that a follow-up book has not been produced showing how the UK government dealt with things like detente, the invasion of Afghanistan, Reagan's alternating 'evil empire' and then peace talks phases plus the collapse of the Soviet Union. Maybe somewhere one of Hennessy's assistants or former students is working on it, given how infirm Lord Hennessy is now.
