The Books I Read In February

Fiction

'Murder Underground' by Mavis Doriel Hay

Doriel Hay mainly wrote on rural handicrafts but she did produce three crime novels, I have two of them. This one was published in 1934 and is very much set in the Belsize Park district of North London and neighbouring areas, in particular Hampstead Heath. While the characters in 'Hickory Dickory Dock' (1955) are younger, and it is set post-war (though the dramatization for 'Poirot' (broadcast 1995) took it back to the 1930s) has the same feel with extensive discussions between residents of a single hostel/hotel. This novel mainly features the residents of the Frampton private residential hotel. 

An elderly resident of the hotel, Miss. Euphemia Pongleton is found strangled with the leash of her dog on the steps going down to the platforms at Belsize Park underground station. Her nephew, Basil and his cousin, Beryl have been fluctuating heirs to Aunt 'Phemia but the initial suspect is a worker at the underground station, Bob, who is 'stepping out' with a maid at the hotel and often walks Miss. Pongleton's dog. Another major character, Basil's love interest is called Betty throughout, rather than her full name, so it was clear Doriel Hay was thumbing her nose at the precept for authors against having more than one character with a name starting with the same letter. It is very easy at times to mix up Betty and Beryl as they are very similar in nature.

I think some readers, perhaps me included, will feel rather disgruntled by the approach adopted in this novel. It is certainly different to that typical of most detective novels. Especially in the early phases of the novel, there is simply discussion between various sets of characters and long stretches of dialogue. In fact the police detective, while spoken about is not seen by the reader until very late on in the book.

 Three other characters effectively advance the investigation. They are a resident, Mr. Blend with his convenient archive of newspaper cuttings of various peculiar crimes, prompts Mrs. Daymer, another resident who is bohemian in style and a crime novelist, and Gerry Plasher - Beryl's fiancé - to travel to Coventry to chase up on a similar old crime. This particularly is seen by the police to make Plasher suspicious. Contrary to the advances the trio make, Basil, who was actually in the station where the body was found finds it difficult to keep his story straight, so pulls in numerous others to try to avert suspicion from him. However, trying to conceal a pearl necklace of his aunt's he had pawned just makes it more complex.

Doriel Hay does write a  largely credible crime story though one largely based on dialogue. Aside from Basil, a very Bertie Wooster character, she manages pretty much to avoid stereotypes though slips at time into it as with Mrs. Daymer's clothes and with the hotel's maid, Nellie. It can be frustrating when things twist around so much but I suppose it is a sound portrayal of how the people around the edges of a murder behave and they are often the people left out of crime novels, something the author clearly wanted to redress here.

'Fevre Dream' by George R.R. Martin

Having read 'The Armageddon Rag' (1983) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html and 'Tuf Voyaging' (1986) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html?m=0 back in 2024, I got into conversation with the novelist and prolific book reviewer Dr. Laura Tisdall: https://drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/ While she enjoyed 'Tuf Voyaging' she did suggest I turn to this other non-Game of Thrones novel by Martin. While the ending is far too protracted, throughout this novel is well written. Louisiana vampires might now be commonplace but what Martin did with this one, published in 1982, was instead come from the focus of a steamship captain, Abner Marsh, working the upper tributaries of the Mississippi in the late 1850s. The Fevre is an actual river running from Wisconsin to Illinois and feeding into the wider Mississippi network. Even by the end of the novel in 1870, the river has been renamed the River Galena after the town it passes through just before joining the Mississippi.

Having lost four steamships to the previous year's ice flows, Marsh is approached by Joshua York who we steadily find out is a European vampire who relocated to the USA. He pays for Marsh to commission the largest, most opulent, and importantly, fastest, side-wheeled paddle steamer, the eponynmous 'Fevre Dream'. This he does and the two go into business, steadily working southwards until operating on the Lower Mississippi including into New Orleans. York is hunting other vampires operating in the regions they pass through in an attempt to convert them from killing humans to using his concoction instead, a kind of mid-Victorian version of TrueBlood. However, York's mission is not straight forward and once he encounters the old, powerful, cruel 'bloodmaster' Damon Julian and his vicious entourage things deteriorate. Marsh stays loyal and brings the novel, finally to a conclusion.

The whole concept even in the realm of vampire stories, is very refreshing, especially if we see how long ago the novel was written. However, what lifts it higher is Martin's attention to detail. Without having a lecture, along the way you learn so much about the riverboats - they ran on wood (and occasionally lard) in the 1850s, the people who operated them, the landscape and various locations up and down the rivers. The descriptions are really rich and I am sure even for US readers were really engaging. There are very good points of tension and indeed sometimes a sense of hopelessness in the face of power, but as some of the reviews have noted, that is actually what readers once expected from vampire stories rather than the approaches of the 21st Century. I wish Martin had ended the novel more sharply. There was no need to drag it on into the post-American Civil War period, even if he was insistent on the drawn-out climax. If you have the patience then this is a good read, especially in the first five-sixths of the novel.

'Munich Wolf' by Rory Clements

As someone who has written four detective novels set in Munich in the early 1920s I was fascinated to read this one set in that city but in 1935 when the Nazi regime had been established firmly in Germany. A young British woman, Rosie Palmer, one of many rich young Britons, is murdered while in Munich for the summer, learning German, partying and in many cases thoroughly engaging with the Nazi regime. Unity Mitford, genuinely a good friend of Hitler features heavily in the novel, alongside many other people who were part of the regime in and around Munich and Nuremberg, at the time. 

Inspector Sebastian Wolf is assigned to investigate the case. He benefits from the fact that his uncle is a very wealthy local politician. There is demand for a speedy resolution so as not to upset the negotiations around the Anglo-German Naval Treaty. Wolf is quickly handed a convenient suspect in the form of a Jew, Karl Friedlander who had had a relationship with Rosie in Britain that they continued in Germany, much to the disgust of Rosie's family and the racist Britons around them. Friedlander is executed but of course, he was never the murderer and the marks on Rosie's body, despite the disappearance of the photographs, were actually runic rather than Hebrew. To stop that coming to light, a homosexual linguistic's professor, a friend of Wolf, Caius Klammer is also murdered.

Given the context, Wolf faces a lot of obstacles and indeed physical attacks on him as he tries to resolve the case. On paper this sounds like a decent plot. Having read all of the Bernie Gunther (1989-2019) series of books by Philip Kerr which often involve investigations in Nazi Germany, I expected it to be of a similar quality. There are some aspects which are handled well. Clements portrays different parts of Munich effectively. He is also decent in the characterisations of the Britons and some of the Germans. Wolf's relationship with his girlfriend Hexie, his mother and his son, are done pretty well. However, other bits are two-dimensional. 

Wolf is a Murder Commission inspector investigating a high profile murder, but lacks a sergeant until one is transferred from the Political Police division (at the time run by Heinrich Himmler and not yet part of the Prussian Gestapo which was run by Hermann Göring). He seems to have no other detectives that he can command. In addition, he lacks senior officers, there are no superintendents, he simply reports to the deputy president of the Bavarian police. Yes, this man would be involved, but all the layers between him an Wolf, indeed a wider detective force, seems entirely absent.

There is a heavy-handedness. Yes, under the Nazi regime Jews and homosexuals would be blamed when guiltless, but the casual murders on the streets which are so prevalent in this novel, had come to an end with the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. It is improbable at this stage that a police inspector would be sent to the Dachau concentration camp by a lower ranking officer for not showing sufficient respect for Hitler. Wolf seems, despite his rank and standing, appears to have no authority of his own and is simply a catspaw for his uncle. The conversion of his assigned sergeant, Hans Winter, as a result of Wolf blackmailing seems far too abrupt. He starts as almost a comic nasty Nazi and then in an instant is a supportive collaborator with Wolf. Clements could have had similar points of tension made more subtly, more effectively, but really takes a sledgehammer to these aspects which quickly riles on the reader.

Overall, this story could have worked well. Clements shows he can write well, but here only when on the topics which particularly interest him. As he outlines in an essay at the end the whole milieu of rich Britons in Munich at this time, was the thing he was really interested in and as a result, the other aspects, necessary for an actual crime novel are just like theatre sets, not more substantial. At times, they are painful. There was no need to reference at the beginning, a zither player in the cafe or the men in Lederhosen. It seems Clements does not feel he can draw the reader in unless he piles on the Germanic tropes, scraped from 'The Third Man' (1949), 'Cabaret' (1972) and 'The Lady Vanishes' (1979 version). I still have not forgiven Kerr for featuring the Drittemann movie company in 'A German Requiem' (1991). The reader, who will often know and spot these conceits, feels that the illusion is broken. Anyway, I will certainly not be looking out for any more of the promised Sebastian Wolf novels.

'The Scent of the Night' by Andrea Camilleri

This is probably the most straight forward of the Montalbano mysteries. It has a lot of the usual characteristics such as the intermittent relationship with his long-distance girlfriend, the inspector eating high cuisine fish or shellfish dishes every day, deserted houses in the backwaters of Sicily and the - in theory - comic police phone operator. However, this is a neat and tidy story around the disappearance of Emanuele Gargano who was running a Ponzi scheme fraud. Naturally there are a lot of people who have lost money to the scheme would profess to want to kill the man. His middle-aged, besotted secretary waits for his return but then it transpires that Gargano's assistant has also disappeared after trying to lay a false trail buying tickets to various European cities. An unreliable eyewitness who hallucinates, not only leads Montalbano to where one of the bodies has ended up, but ultimately allows him to comprehend where that of Gargano actually is. This, the sixth novel in the series, benefits from being 'dialled down' a little. I have never found these books 'comic' as some describe them and indeed attempts at levity have been laboured and distracting. This one just gets on a does the business in a satisfying way while still encompassing the traits which mark out Montalbano stories.

'The Courts of Chaos' by Roger Zelanzy

This is the concluding book in the Princes of Amber pentalogy. Having discovered that his father, Oberon, has been masquerading as his old comrade, Ganelon, Corwin now has to go on a long journey to carry the Jewel of Judgment [sic] to the final climatic battle outside the Courts of Chaos. His brother Brand's attempt to erase the Pattern of this universe to install one of his own leads to a vast storm sweeping across all the different realms Corwin can pass through. Corwin's journey is I imagine intentionally like those of characters in 'The Faerie Queen' and 'Gawain and the Green Knight'. In addition to attempts by Brand to kill him or at least take the Jewel, there are others along the way who seek to tempt, seduce, harm or kill Corwin. He does seem rather gullible, perhaps because he is weary and concerned about being swept up by the unrelenting storm.

There is the battle outside the Courts of Chaos which leads to victory for the good (or at least amoral as opposed to immoral) side. Corwin is reunited with the son he was unaware he had, Merlin and a replacement king is found for Oberon who had already given his life in trying to prevent the storm destroying this universe. Probably not a spoiler to say that the new king is not Corwin but one of his siblings. There is some pontificating from Corwin at the end about what it all means, but it does not go on too long. There is some of the lengthy dialogue between the siblings - though fortunately less than in the previous novel - to continue to unknot the overly-complex plot Zelanzy had created and you do feel that like George R.R. Martin with his A Song of Ice and Fire, that he made it so knotty that he lost control of it. Fortunately the Amber novels come in at around 150 pages long, rather than 500-800 pages.

While at times the books in this series have been a bit irritating, I recognise that Zelanzy was trying to do something a bit different to what had been in fantasy up to then. The mixing of our world and a whole host of realms was in line with developments of the 1970s but he handles it differently to Moorcock. His usual of modern language and a kind of easy-going attitude that we perhaps associate with mid-1970s USA rather than the kind of quasi-medieval or barbarian tone adopted by so many fantasy novels before. I also have to remind myself that some 50 years on and with a lot of fantasy fiction published since then, some things that now appear hackneyed were fresher back then. The leprechauns trying to tempt Corwin to stay beneath the ground drinking was old hat even back then.

Zelanzy's focus on an extensive family rather than nations, the use of things like the Pattern, a challenging maze that both balances reality but can also present personal benefits or challenges and the Trumps (!) to contact family members and teleport to them, remain quite distinctive. I imagine at the time these aspects must have seemed refreshing even if now they may have lost - for a reader today - some of their spark.

Non-Fiction

'The Nine Lives of Otto Katz' by Jonathan Miles

This is about the Czechoslovak secret agent for the USSR, Otto Katz (1895-1952 executed). He was a successful propagandist and spy in the 1930s-50s. He adopted a string of identities and as Miles shows he was able to adapt his demeanour effectively to be convincing in each. He was involved in theatre and literature right throughout, moving as his Soviet masters required, from Prague to Berlin, Paris, London, civil-war Spain, New York and Hollywood. He was popular among leading celebrities of the movie industry. Katz was strongly anti-Nazi having witnessed the rise of Hitler at first hand in Berlin. He was able to enlist liberals into fund raising and propaganda events such as the 'trial' in London testing what had been put out by the Nazis around the Reichstag Fire. 

As Katz remained loyal to Stalin's regime, taking part of purging the non-Stalinists from the Republican side in Spain and not questioning Stalin's behaviour even when the USSR was in alliance with Nazi Germany 1939-41, Miles feels that any liberal Katz influenced must have either been pro-Soviet or deluded. He is dismissive of any other motive for opposing the Nazis. The author really buys into the McCarthyite attitude that there was really no way to oppose Nazism without being a Communist unless you were hard right-wing. This is despite the fact that he highlights people in Katz's various circles who became suspicious of him and either distanced themselves or cut him off completely. It seems to Miles that one touch is sufficient to contaminate someone entirely. Katz's loyalty did not pay off and he was one of the last to be executed in a purge by Stalin.

The book is academically robust with lots of references to sound sources. While there is lots of interesting detail, almost all of which is absent from Katz's Wikipedia entry, Miles seems obliged to make his story overly dramatic and at times it is not clear if he was meaning to write a thriller rather than a historical analysis. Especially at the beginning of the book there is a lot of jumping around in time and topic when in fact given the complexity of the story and the various aliases there needs to be real clarity. While I learnt some things from this book, Miles's melodramatic approach but above all his inability to see that not all (in fact most) anti-Nazis were not Communist and his repeated insistence on this point makes this an irritating book to read.

'Establishment and Meritocracy' by Peter Hennessy

This was the last, the newest (2014) and the shortest of Hennessy's books that I possessed. It is only 68 pages long. However, given what I have said before about despite his years in universities, Hennessy has not really shaken off the journalistic approach, this format works well for him. As usual he blends in personal memories and outlooks with quotes and input from notable people across the period. He looks at how the British Establishment is defined and how while the old structures like the elite public schools, the military, House of Lords, judiciary, etc. remain, there are new facets to the Establishment especially in terms of those influential or powerful in media and in finance. He looks at how meritocracy rose as a concept, in particular in terms of his beloved civil service, decades before the publication of  'The Rise of the Meritocracy' (1958) by Michael Dunlop Young put it into common parlance.

Reading the book more than a decade after its publication we can see in which facets Hennessy was very prescient. As he notes throughout, both the principles are about establishing hierarchy whether that is simply through birth or through recognition of a greater competency in certain skills. It is still a hierarchy and he cautions about the fate of those deemed to lack 'merit'. He warns of the possibility of a vicious populist backlash which would baulk against meritocracy instead seeking a hierarchy built on other characteristics. He notes wealth would be one of these, but perhaps did not spot that race would be thrust back into such thinking too. He does also pick up on how the 'ladders' that people of his generation were able to climb from relatively humble backgrounds, were liable to be removed or closed off. These things have all come to pass both quietly and in terms of vicious insistence, accompanied by violence, of a racial/wealth hierarchy by the populists and their supporters, even when it is actually detrimental to those supporters themselves. 

Hennessy here was not setting out to be a prophet but given his love of analysing how British society and politics function, he actually highlighted trends that would manifest in the following years in the way that he does tentatively caution about.

The Books I Read In January

Fiction

'It Walks By Night' by John Dickson Carr

I only found this Dickson Carr book recently. It was his first published novel (the British Library version I read also includes a short story he had printed in a college magazine) coming out in 1930. Whereas the books by him that I read last year, 'She Died A Lady' (1943) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html and 'Till Death Do Us Part' (1944) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html were almost exemplars of 'Golden Age' crime novels set in Britain, this has a very different feel. It is set in Paris of the 1920s and features Henri Bencolin, a juge d'instruction, which anyone who watched the 'Spiral' ['Engrenages'] (broadcast 2005-20) knows, rather than the police, play a major role in France in investigations. He featured in five of Dickson Carr's novels. The novel is told, however, from the perspective of Jeff Marle, a young American friend of Bencolin's and he is aided by Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Grafenstein.

Dickson Carr was very much influenced by the work of fellow US author Edgar Allan Poe and his 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841) similarly set in Paris. In fact Poe's influence goes deeper because, as the title suggests, this is not really a detective novel but more a Gothic horror one. This can be seen from the outset as the murder victim, the Duc de Saligny, is killed by being beheaded in a card room of a seedy though expensive Paris night club which is also a front for drug dealing. It is a locked room mystery which was a common approach for Dickson Carr.

 As I have noted before, Dickson Carr was very good at describing the scenes in which his stories were set though in this book it is often to give an air of sinister settings and a feeling of impending doom, which he does well, once you accept this is not a typical detective story. The sense of preordained death and misery is further developed by the fact that Bencolin seems to know what is going to happen in advance and at the end has all the answers yet fails to reveal them as the investigation continues. This seems to have come from the gimmick the publishers introduced in that the final section of the novel was sealed and if they had not broken the seal readers could return their edition for a refund. However, reading right through, it does make you feel: 'why did he not mention this before?', though admittedly the necessary clues are there and sometimes laid on a little thick.

Two further aspects add to the Gothic feel. While the Volstead Act which introduced Prohibition in the USA in 1920 is mentioned, we also pick up on the very strong US opposition to narcotics at the time with legislation in 1909 and 1924. Characters believe that the smoking of marijuana would kill the user within five years and in the meantime permanently distort their sense of self and make them see hallucinations. I am no supporter of even 'soft' drugs, but am aware that the effects are not as severe as shown here. European countries of the time had a much greater tolerance of drug abuse, in part because of the range of narcotics consumed by First World War soldiers. Drugs turn up quite regularly in both Sherlock Holmes stories (which Conan Doyle was publishing as late as 1927) and Agatha Christie novels. In this novel the narcotic abuse is also linked over to the psychoanalytical aspects, especially around questions of identity. Thus we have a context in which characters, especially women, are in a deadly hallucinatory state at times, uncertain of who they and the people around them, are.

This is a different read to other books in the British Library series that I have read. I am not a fan of horror and this is effectively a psychological horror book which seems hemmed in by strong views of the time. The publisher's gimmick also rather distorts the book making it feel even less realistic, but perhaps realism was not what Dickson Carr was seeking, rather this rather nightmare-like context in which no-one can really be certain of anything around them.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that many of these elements are found in the short story at the end, 'The Shadow of the Goat' (1926). This features Bencolin but really comes over very much like an episode of 'Jonathan Creek' (broadcast 1997-2016) in which a supposedly impossible, demonic like disappearance is explained. It is not bad.

'Lies, Damned Lies and History' by Jodi Taylor

It has been more than 45 years since I have abandoned reading a book, but I came very close with this one. It is the seventh book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's time-travelling series and from almost the outset I have found dealing with the erratic tone of the novels, difficult. They go between what I have termed 'jolly hockey sticks' almost humour of a British educational institution with harsh tragedy. This one takes that right up to the limit. I guess Taylor felt that despite all the deaths and life-changing injuries inflicted on her characters she had to raise the jeopardy level as the series continued. However, it is incredibly bleak and exudes immense hopelessness that you quickly want to distance yourself from. Only a convenient deus ex machina stops this book effectively becoming a psychological and even physical horror, given it is dealing with a heavily pregnant woman.

Yes, in this novel, the protagonist, Max is pregnant. This has minimal impact on the dangers she is thrust into. As one character noted a couple of novels back the St. Mary's Institute is largely staffed with incompetent people who put themselves and quite often history as we know it, at risk. While Taylor seems to battle in deciding what kind of novel she is writing, her strength does lie in her portrayals of the historic incidents that her characters visit. The series would have been better if these had formed larger parts of the novels as with them she really shows her abilities and raises fascinating questions about what went on. They, unfortunately, feature as little more than 'episodes'. Yes, it it is legitimate to say that the novels are more about the development of the protagonist as she moves from being a very immature young woman (though her age is not clear in the early books given she already has a doctorate) to a more accomplished, caring but still incompetent woman somewhere in her thirties.

The first visit in this novel is to a hilltop fort in 6th Century Wales where the people, aided by the man who effectively is remembered as King Arthur, fight against Saxon attackers. The location and the risks are well described. The way the male members of the St. Mary's party avoid having to fight and thus risking altering history, is ingenious. The jeopardy is well done and I really thought we were going to see a step-up in these books. The giving of a sword to a local hermit, brings in a mystical element which has not been present before. Coming back to modern times as is typical St. Mary's alerts its parent university, the fictional University of Thirsk so they can locate the sword and 'discover' it. However, this leads to a series of disasters in the area and Max and her friends steal the sword back. This gets them all set back in their careers and Max simply put on mundane duties for much of the book ahead of her maternity leave.

There is another fascinating trip back in time when the disgraced team travel to 1216 to see what they can recover from the crown jewels that King John supposedly lost in the Wash so it can be discovered by Thirsk bringing such wealth and prominence as to restore St. Mary's in its favour. There is a great scene in which we see a tidal surge crashing out of the Wash. Realising they cannot retrieve anything from the chaos it leaves, they go back further to see what they can grab earlier, almost like the 'Time Bandits' (1981).

Eventually restored to some standing within the institute, Max moves steadily to her maternity leave. However, leaving on her final day she is abducted and put into an utterly impossible situation in which she will be compelled to prostitute herself in some barren unknown past or abandon her child. This marks the return of Clive Ronan, the prime antagonist of these novels though he has been quiet for a while. I know Taylor wants to make him see a genuine threat but she goes far too far for what is supposedly packaged as a 'jolly' book and moves into the realm of the torture porn movies like the 'Saw' (2004-23) series. I do really think this book should have carried a warning. I am uncertain now if I will read any more in the series even though I own three more of them.

'Sharpe's Assassin' by Bernard Cornwell

With 'Sharpe's Storm' coming out late last year, this was now the penultimate of the Sharpe novels I had not read. It was published in 2021 and is set in 1815, with Sharpe moving on from the location of the Battle of Waterloo to chase down remnants of Napoleon's forces and then for the majority of the book hunting those seeking to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris while he is part of establishing the occupation and the post-Napoleonic system. This is an interesting period to pick as in the older Sharpe novels, all we had seen of him after becoming a lieutenant colonel for the battle, was set in 1820-21 in 'Sharpe's Devil' (1992) by which time Lucille, his French wife, is dead and the wars in Europe are long over. Chasing after the Fraternity secret society allows Cornwell to show us early 19th Century Paris with all the left-overs from Napoleon's reign and also aspects like the vineyards contained within the city walls one of which proves to be the base of Wellington's would-be assassins.

As usual there are annoying, misguided officers, but Sharpe now in command of a British battalion is able to act on a larger scale. Saying that he does draw on his remaining riflemen and there are some great scenes fighting across Paris and then a confrontation at the vineyard with his final antagonist which did, however, remind me of the duel in 'Rob Roy' (1995). It was also good to see him enjoying time with Lucille. While Teresa Moreno his Spanish wife killed in December 1813 is a wonderful guerilla leader, it is nice we see him enjoying his relationship with Lucille who treats him far better than his uppity British wife Jane Gibbons. As there is no formal divorce and Jane, in theory, lives to 1844 Sharpe's other marriages are bigamous. Overall I enjoyed this book and found it engaging.

This was an interesting development for Sharpe and the book is better handled than 'Sharpe's Command' (2023) which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html  I do hope that Cornwell's editors took a firmer hand with 'Sharpe's Storm' to avoid the inconsistencies that so weakened Sharpe's Command'. I will have to see once the book reaches a charity shop near me.

'Excursion to Tindari' by Andrea Camilleri

This is the fifth book in the Montalbano series and is a straight forward police procedural. The only hiccough seems to be the inconsistency in the inspector's relationship with his deputy, Mimi Augello. I do not know if this is due to the translation, but whereas in the first three books Montalbano seemed to have contempt for the man and there was often friction between them, by the time of  'The Voice of the Violin' (1997) their relationship appeared to have sharply shifted. This is especially notable as the books follow each other tightly in terms of chronology feeling to cover a matter of weeks at most. Anyway, in this book Motalbano is so enamoured with Augello that he tries to stop his leaving for Sicily to live with his fiancée, a police officer, in Pavia. This is because he cannot envisage diminishing his team. His scheme is not too difficult as Augello is a womaniser and his boss engineers for an attractive young woman he has encountered in this book's cases to become friendly with Augello.

As with a number of the Montalbano books, there are two cases which seem unconnected but ultimately are locked together. One is the disappearance of an insular elderly couple, the Griffos, on the eponymous coach excursion to Tindari. The other is the shooting dead of a young man, a Nenè Sanfilippo, at the entrance to the apartment block where the Griffos lived.  He is into pornography and one of his sexual encounters provides the link between him, the Griffos and a third person.

This novel was written in 2000 and as seen in the previous book, technology is becoming part of police work. Not only is the user of scanners important but the horrendous crime behind the fate of the three victims is permitted by the use of a remote building that is well equipped with phone lines and internet connections. As before, Montalbano tries to navigate his way around the mafia who seem to favour him for their revelations. It appears that an old don is going to give up his fugitive grandson, but naturally it ends the way most things do with the mafia. This aspect, this helplessness in the face of the plans of others is added to by this floundering that Montalbano feels faced with what crimes the new technologies may permit.

There are the usual elements of the inspector eating a wonderful array of Sicilian cuisine, predominantly sea food, his long-distance relationship with Livia and the return of his ambivalent one with Ingrid who tends to act as a dea ex machina. In this novel she happens to know one of the women who features in one of Sanfilippo's videos that provides the final link in the chain. Overall this is a solid police procedural novel which is clever in its mechanics and makes good use of the Sicilian landscape and the food of the island.

'The Hand of Oberon' by Roger Zelanzy

Like I imagine quite a few people of my generation I did not come to Zelanzy's Amber stories through the books but through the Dungeons and Dragons module, 'Dungeon Module X2: Castle Amber (Château d'Amberville)' (1981) by Tom Moldvay. This makes use of the Amber family from Zelanzy's novels, but puts them into the Averoigne world of another author, Clark Ashton Smith. Anyway, this is the fourth book in Zelanzy's series. I read the first one in the series, 'Nine Princes in Amber' (1970), many years ago, so had some idea of that context.

The books of this pentalogy follow Corwin one of the numerous princes and princesses of Amber, a medieval style world that sits alongside our own which Amberites as they are known refer to as Shadow. In Shadow they are able run versions of themselves and they have different abilities to manipulate. There are also other realms they can visit including Rebma a mirror world of Amber under the sea, Tir-na Nog'th a sky city accessible when the Moon is shining on it and the Courts of Chaos. These things probably seemed a bit fresher in the 1970s than the tropes they have hardened into. These worlds are defined by the Pattern a kind of labyrinth that you find in European cathedrals. If someone from Amber is able to walk it they can achieve certain powers, notably attunement with the Jewel of Judgment [sic] which controls weather and has other powers.

In the first book, Corwin awakes in 1960s USA with a memory loss and it takes time for him to find out who are what he is before becoming embroiled in family feuds. The stories focus on the struggle for the throne of King Oberon, the father of all the princes and princesses who had disappeared at the opening of the series. Various siblings form factions to try to seize or protect the throne for others. A lot of this has gone in the preceding three books. Much of this book is about Corwin wandering around trying to untangle the various conspiracies. Chapter 2 also has an extensive info dump that recaps the entirety of the plots of the previous three novels. This feels really levered in. It reminded me of US TV documentaries in which after an advert break you get an extensive recap of everything that had been covered just minutes before.

The first half of the 188-page book is very slow. If you were someone who had read the preceding books then you would not need all this detail, except in a few places where deception had taken place. There is a lot of dialogue but really the book only starts going in the second half when Corwin in league with various of his brothers and a sister, and the neutrality of some, goes in search of his brother Brand who is seeking to erase the Pattern by spilling Amber prince blood on it so he can establish new worlds dominated by him. There are some clever encounters both on the Pattern and in Tir-na Nog'th. The set-up for the final book 'The Courts of Chaos' (1978), which I have a copy of, is soundly made with the revelation of who Oberon has been disguised as.

Overall, there are elements to this book which are decent fantasy and at the time must have seemed fresher still. In some ways Zelanzy (a little like Martin) has tied himself in knots by trying to be very clever with the family feuding. This would be less of a problem if he did not feel obliged to untangle every last thread for the reader before pushing on with the narrative. I think this fourth book suffers more than the others because it is very much a linking book to the the climax.

'Dictator' by Robert Harris

This is the final book in Harris's trilogy which charts the life of the Roman lawyer, orator and politician Cicero. The previous two books were 'Imperium' (2006) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html and 'Lustrum' (2009) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html This one covers the final decades of Cicero's life in which the Roman Republic he worked so hard to maintain was effectively ended with a civil war and Julius Caesar becoming a corrupt though magnanimous dictator before he was assassinated. This was followed by a second civil war among Caesar's adopted son and close associates of Caesar. Like a lot of people I was probably familiar with Caesar's assassination in isolation without all the context building up to it, let alone what followed before his adopted son took over and became Emperor Augustus, condemning Rome to being a dictatorial empire until its final end, in Western Europe, at least, 400 years later.

This book is told through the eyes of Tiro, Cicero's genuine secretary who was accomplished himself and developed short hand. This perspective allows Roberts to show not only the very complex politics of the times with the rise and fall of a string of politicians and generals, but also the personal side in Cicero's life and the tragedies of his period in exile, collapsing marriage, the mistreatment and early death of his daughter, his ill-advised second marriage and the fluctuating attitudes of his son, brother and nephew, who were supporters of Julius Caesar. He does capable portrayals of leading men like Pompey, Caesar and Octavian who in their different ways relied on Cicero. There are also the less familiar individuals like Clodius who caused so much harm and Milo who saved Cicero at various times. 

Thus, though we know the outcome, Roberts does very well in bringing tension and real drama to the story as it unfolds. He provides ample information on the Roman world and its political churn but using Tiro he is able to put this into a form which the reader can follow without difficulty nor turning it into a history or politics lecture. Tiro's life advances though he keeps close to Cicero. He is freed and given a farm in thanks for all his efforts. We also get to see inside not just the temples and public buildings but a whole range of homes of people of different wealth levels.

Perhaps reading this book in 2026 was the wrong thing to do. At regular points in the slow but steady climb of Julius Caesar to dictatorship you see him and his supporters using tactics to distort and ultimately destroy the semi-democratic process of the Roman Republic which could have come right from current headlines about the USA. The risks those trying to resist the steps he takes, also remain the same, though in fact these days the person is liable to be shot dead rather than sent into exile for some years.

I do heartily recommend the entire trilogy. Some might worry that will be very dry, almost academic in nature, but these books show Harris's skill at its peak, weaving excitement and drama into real life historical events to make what unfolds as tense and engaging as any of the best thrillers. 

Non-Fiction

'Putin's Killers' by Amy Knight

This is an interesting if rather galling account of the political assassinations carried out on the orders of Vladimir Putin. It was published in 2017, but my edition was an updated one from 2019 which had been extended to cover the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter using the Novichok nerve chemical in Salisbury in March 2018. They survived but Briton, Dawn Sturgess died as a result of the attempt and her friend, Charlie Rowley suffering severe illness. Knight shows the historical background of Russian political assassinations and looks at Putin's career before going through various cases, perhaps the best known being Alexander Litvinenko also murdered in Britain this time using Polonium-210. 

Knight shows how patterns are repeated with typically Chechens being assigned and/or blamed for the various murders. Putin promises to catch the killers of his opponents, but the Russian legal system is very slow to do anything about the cases and eventually finds scapegoats. Many of those who are employed to do the killings, as the Skripal and Litvinenko cases showed, are incompetent. This demonstrates that the Russian government is not really concerned if their part in the killings is recognised, and in fact it adds to the intimidating factor of carrying them out. Like many semi-dictators, Putin is very petulant and is infuriated by any attacks on his policies notably the brutal war in Chechnya but also of any he feels has betrayed him. Despite the publication of this book, the killings have continued as can be seen in the case of lawyer Alexei Navalny who died in prison in 2024 from maltreatment following a sham trial.

Knight who has written extensively on contemporary Russian politics maintains a quiet optimism throughout this book, that Putin will be overthrown and that those who murdered for him would be brought to justice. However, it is now 9 years since the book first came out and nothing has changed. The approaches she shows here in detail continue and Putin's position appears under no threat. 

Knight's writing style is very brisk with lots of sub-sections. At first I found this a little too speedy a style, but as I progressed I realised given all the names she mentions and the twists of the various assassination set-ups and aftermaths, it helps the reader keep a handle on all the detail without becoming bogged down in it.

'Muddling Through. Power, Politics and the Quality of Government in Postwar Britain' by Peter Hennessy

Similar to 'The Secret State' (2002) which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html rather than new material, this is a collection of output from Peter Hennessy in other media such as radio programmes and lectures. However, much of it lacks even the linking theme that 'The Secret State' and is rather a 'muddle' to coin the phrase. Some of it is very esoteric. There is a whole chapter which simply recounts a discussion between the MPs Tony Benn and Enoch Powell on their ideas for the royal prerogative in the parliamentary system. Given that this book was first published in 1996 and the issue of the royal prerogative was to feature notably for legislation of the Blair government which came into office the following year, it was a missed opportunity to explore the issue better than simply hearing the views of two opposing old politicians. 

There is some interesting stuff on what might happen in terms of procedure with a hung parliament which was quite expected in the mid-1990s but did not really come about until 2010. There is a peon to the British Civil Service delivered as a lecture at the Civil Service College. Perhaps Hennessy was right to push its importance as though it was abolished in 2012, the National School of Government was established in 2021 with a campus at the former college's Sunningdale site. There is more material about Britain's relationship with nuclear weapons which covers a lot of the ground (sometimes in the same words) as these issues are handled in 'Never Again' (1993) and 'The Secret State'. The section on Britain seeking its role on the global stage and a study of the Suez Conflict of 1956 is better and has some interesting insight.

The best bit of the book are the vignettes of all the post-war Prime Ministers. As is typical for Hennessy he draws a great deal on the comments of those who worked with those people, and in a number of cases the former premiers themselves. Though short, these provide insightful essays of their periods in office and the personal contexts around those. The one on Margaret Thatcher is very rushed and Hennessy shows his distaste for her from the outset. There are no quotes from her colleagues or civil servants who served her. Given he wrote that piece in 1992, soon after she had left office, he probably felt it was too soon to really analyse her 11 years as Prime Minister.

Back in the late 1990s I heard someone very negatively compare Hennessy's work to that of his university colleague Donald Sassoon whose latest book 'Revolutions' came out just in November. Having met both men, I certainly would never say a warm word for Sassoon as a person. However, having read four Hennessy books over the past few months I can see why he is criticised for his historical writing. Yes, he is able to access aspects of British politics which otherwise would be unknown and he is a very good interviewer. Yet it seems that he 'rechews' the good elements he gets so much that unless you are unfamiliar with his body of work you might see them repeated multiple times. I now feel that his work is less than the sum of its parts, though there are 'gems' in those parts. He is also a great radio broadcaster and his programmes, many of which are available via BBC I-Player do show off his particular skills to the best and in a way this book, apart from the prime ministers' sections, does not really do.