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.
