The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'Rounding the Mark' by Andrea Camilleri

This, the seventh book in the series, is quite a gritty one. Montalbano actually swims into the corpse he then ends up investigating. The victim had been tortured and it transpires they are not alone. Refugees and economic migrants coming into Sicily was as hot a topic back when the novel was written in 2003 as now. Trying to help a boy who is among those brought ashore backfires terribly and further exposes a people trafficking gang making use of illegally built luxury houses. The novel almost then morphs into being like a James Bond novel with the inspector invading one of these homes from the sea where he encounters he base of the activity and where the corpse he found was tortured in an outré way. Fortunately, unlike in all those numerous 'Dad adventure hero' stories, his age, now in his early 50s tells and while he succeeds in uncovering the criminals he pays a high physical price.

Aside from these aspects there are all the usual elements of the inspector eating a wide array of regional seafood dishes, having strange interactions with his staff and an ambivalent relationship with his sometime informant, the Swedish former racing driver, Ingrid Sjöström while his actual girlfriend remains hundreds of miles away and Montalbano remains ambivalent about marrying her, despite their advancing ages. While there are dark elements in many of these stories, this one perhaps is the darkest yet. The action scenes at the end jar a little but at least Camilleri does not portray his protagonist who eats too much, smokes too much and probably drinks too much, as being superhuman, even if he has the recklessness of a much younger man.

'Circumpolar!' by Richard A. Lupoff

While Lupoff wrote lots of books called 'What If?' they turn out to be him simply moaning about books that should have received more prominence in the science fiction awards of the 1950s. This one, though, is an extreme alternate history book. Not only has human history played out differently, so the First World War started in 1912 and ran for only one year, leading to the abdication of the Kaiser and the killing of the Tsar but the continuation of their imperial regimes. The greatest difference is that the Earth is a disc. This book was published in 1984, though the first of Terry Pratchett's novels featuring a disc world (rather than Discworld) was 'Strata' and came out in 1981. Lupoff's disc is different and owes more to the Flat Earth models promoted online today, i.e. the rim of the world is surrounded by ice rather than water tumbling off into space as it does in Pratchett's model. The world is laid out rather the way it is pictured in the symbol for the United Nations, but there is also an axis at the North Pole, which actually goes through the planet to the other side.

The premise of the novel is that in 1925 two teams set out to win a prize by flying to the flip side of the world. There is an American team of Amelia Earhart, Charles Lindbergh and Howard Hughes who go over the ice wall south of South America and competing against them is a German-Russian team of Princess Irina Lvova (daughter of Georgy Lvov, Regent for Tsar Alexei due to his haemophilia), Rittmeister [Cavalry Captain] Manfred Freiherr [Baron] von Richthofen (the 'Red Baron' of our world) and his younger brother Lothar von Richthofen who in our world became baron on his brother's death in 1918 but in this alternative is not but has risen to the rank of Rittmeister instead. They aim to fly through the access hole and so emerge at the northern pole of the flip side.

Some of the criticism of this book you will find online is rather peculiar with complaints about the swearing, sexual innuendo (which is mild even at its strongest - clearly a reviewer very far from the spicy romantasy genre which is currently so popular) and disparaging of Manfred von Richthofen. I know some people dislike parallelism in alternate history, i.e. the inclusion of people from our world in very different circumstances where there is a likelihood they would not have been born, but when you are going for an extreme alternative as here, it is useful to have some familiar points of reference for the reader. The action moves between the two groups and the challenges they face are handled well. The German-Russian team encounter a Viking like civilisation and the Americans a kind of pre-Columban American civilisation, both lots have advanced technology and the visitors from our side are drawn into local conflicts.

The geography of the flip side is very different to our side with lots of islands of varying sizes rather than large continents. Some of the wildlife is also very alien, though some of it appears to be the basis for monsters that feature in legends of our world. Generally if you do not subscribe to the criticisms noted above, this is handled pretty well. Some sections jar as when Lvova goes off with a wizard to his castle in a swamp and there is some creature which appears a threat and the Americans also turn up there. You feel Lupoff lost track of what was going on there. Lvova is not an ideal person to have had along anyway, unlike Earhart, she is highly superstitious and puts down a lot of what she sees to demons. She lacks technical skill beyond being able to wield a rifle. In contrast, Earhart is well represented and uses her abilities to good use. The conspiracy of the support team for the German-Russian effort leads to a tense conclusion and the inclusion of Eugene Bullard a pioneering black US pilot.

Despite its flaws and losing its way at times, the novel is interesting both for the alternatives it suggests, but also for capturing the tension of the 'pulp' story tone and the aviation achievements, of the time, notably the round-the-world voyage of the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin in 1929 which was sponsored by the US media mogul William Randolph Hearst.

'Stamboul Train' by Graham Greene

I have been passed a lot of Graham Greene novels by my father so they will feature quite a lot in the coming months, probably years given the number. This book published in 1932 and was made into a movie in 1934. It features characters on board the Orient Express right from Ostend and while it rather grinds to a halt at Yugoslavia it does finish off in Istanbul following the outcome for some of the characters. While there are tensions and the uncovering of secrets, this is far from a glamorous portrayal of the train service even less so than Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express' (1934). Greene is much more interested in his small cast of characters and their interlocking connections.

At times the book has a really seedy feel to it. One of the characters we follow is an Austrian burglar, Josef Grünlich who seduces a lodger in order to gain access to a wealthy man's safe which ends in a murder. He gets swept up in the arrest of Dr. Czinner, a Yugoslav revolutionary who is returning from exile in Britain to take part in an uprising in his home country. He is not only identified by the alcoholic journalist, British but a correspondent in Köln, Mabel Warren who tries to get an exclusive story with him and ends up following the train in a car after her money is stolen by Grünlich.

Warren is a lesbian travelling with her current partner Janet Pardoe who from the story seems to be bisexual. Reaching Istanbul she begins to transfer her affections to the Jewish businessman in the currant business Carleton Myatt, who has also travelled on the same train. Pardoe is the daughter of Stein a business rival/partner of Myatt's. On the journey, in contrast, Myatt has slept with Coral Musker, a chorus line dancer heading to Istanbul for a job who he feels sorry for. However, she is taken off the train with Czinner and Grünlich by Yugoslav authorities only to be rescued by Warren who lines her up to be Pardoe's replacement, if she survives the ordeals she suffered in Yugoslavia. There is also a successful cockney author, Quin Savory.

Written this way it does rather sound like a soap opera. I guess that the interactions between the various characters might seem forced. They are all well drawn and that combined with the description of the various locales across Germany, Austria and into Yugoslavia and Turkey are probably what gained Greene credit for the novel. People note he refers to Istanbul as Constantinople. Its name had only been changed in 1930. Stamboul remained a district of the city. What is striking is how explicit it is in having a lesbian and a bixsexual character. I suppose people could read past the references but surely a woman talking about another woman being in her flat each morning in pyjamas and mixing drinks, would have been misintepreted by few. The challenges Myatt faces as a Jew and the concerns this brings in him and motivations for acts he does, reminds us that him travelling in Europe at the time would have faced various risks, let alone the simple prejudice. That, however, simply adds to the rather seedy tone of the book.

Ultimately the book is about perceptions and people manipulating others through various means. It is intellectually engaging but I could not really get over how bleak it ultimately feels.

'Serpents in Eden' ed. by Martin Edwards

This is a collection of crime short stories in the British Library Classic Crime series, brought together by Martin Edwards who often writes the little essays at the start of the books and is the editor for a number of these collections. This one features stories set in the English countryside. They vary in when they were published and in quality, but this is a nice read with some interesting stories. 

Perhaps the best comes, unsurprisingly from Arthur Conan Doyle. As the title suggests 'The Black Doctor' (1898) is about the murder of a doctor who is black. He practices in a small Lancashire village in the 1870s and is engaged to the squire's daughter. The fact that Conan Doyle could feature this character, and while it might be seen as unusual, it is not seen as impossible, is something to shove in the front of those very vocal people online who claim there were no black people in Britain before 1948 and TV programmes are simply being 'woke' to show them. As might be expected from a short story the murder of the doctor is not overly complex, but the timing of when he was seen and where is well handled with a nice twist that perhaps a modern audience might foresee, but overall it is done smoothly.

The Irish crime writer, Matthias McDonnell Bodkin is probably completely forgotten now, despite writing a couple of popular series in the 1890s and into the early 20th Century. The story here, 'Murder by Proxy' (features one of his enduring characters Paul Beck who collaborates closely with the police and is one of those with an air of authority that people hurry to aid him. The shooting of of a wealthy man is shot dead in his Dorset manor house and it seems clear who the culprit has been, his nephew. However, though close questioning and observation, Beck is able to overturn the assumptions and prove the identity of the murderer. It is not a locked-room mystery, but having an obvious suspect and overturning that is a nice approach and it is done in a credible way.

G.K. Chesterton is best known for his Father Brown detective stories, but 'The Fad of the Fisherman' but features another now far lesser known detective, Horne Fisher, who in this story mixes with members of the Cabinet at a manor house in the West Country of England. The conceit is that the host is obsessed with fishing and spends his entire day fishing away on a small island in a river running through his land. This does seem a bit contrived but enables a time-shift mystery that the detective works out from the evidence. There is a red herring of a mysterious man in the district, but the killer is actually from among the minister's colleagues. Not as good as it could have been but some lovely portrayals of place.

E.C. Bentley was a friend of Chesterton and followed him as head of the Detection Club of authors, but had only brief success with his crime novels. This one. 'The Genuine Tabard' is actually a question of fraud rather than murder, set in Gloucestershire. How the fraudsters abuse a vicar's generosity to set up convincing confidence tricks is well worked out and credible. This did remind me a little of one of Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected and I am sure fraudulent antiques sales in rural areas remain common even today. You only have to watch 'Bargain Hunt' (2000- ) to see some of them in action. The story is crisp and is largely a revelation of what has been going on.

Herbert Jenkins was a successful publisher as well as an author, though he died in 1923 before many of the novels of the 'Golden Era' were written. 'The Gylston Slander' set in North-West Hampshire features his detective Malcolm Sage who has a successful detection agency and travels to Gylston to deal with poison pen letters which as Edwards notes in his introduction, was a trope of stories of the time. The victim in this case is the vicar's daughter accused of having a tentative affair with a married man. While it is an archetypal story of the dynamics of an English rural village of the era in fact the solution comes from technical details such as analysis of papers and handwriting. Thus, it comes off nicely as a balance between these two facets, though these days the crime itself would probably not be taken as gravely as in back then, unless we see it rather like a modern stalking case.

Henry Christopher Bailey, Edwards tells us, largely wrote short stories rather than novels. 'The Long Barrow' by is centred around an archaeological dig of a Stone Age barrow in Dorset though carried only by an elderly academic and his assistant. Consequently it rememinded me a bit of 'The Dig' (novel 2007; movie 2021) and the 1914 'Treasure'/'Return' section of 'Ulverton' (1992). The detective is a doctor who advises the police, Reggie Fortune. He is called in to investigate threats against the diggers and having dismissed these uncovers a greater conspiracy which involves murder. Edwards observes that Bailey's character was seen as morally old-fashioned so lost popularity in the post-1945 period. However, this is a neat story that modern readers might foresee, though it is played out well and with a good portrayal of the countryside in which it is set, a uniting factor of the stories in this collection.

Richard Austin Freeman apparently wrote stories1907-42.featuring what we would term these days a forensic scientist, Dr. John Thorndyke. 'The Naturalist at Law' sees Thorndyke, through analysis of the flora and forna of two English streams, prove that a civil servant did not drown himself in a Buckinghamshire stream but died at one in Essex. This combined with other clues leads him to the murderers. The focus is on the piece-by-piece analysis of water samples and other physical clues. Thorndyke, initially working for the man's insurers does not follow through the case to trial as he has done his part. I think we tend to think of things like 'Silent Witness' (1996- ) and 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' (2001-2015) and its spin-offs, as being modern phenomenon rather than something with a long history.

Unfortunately the entry by Margery Allingham, of the Albert Campion stories, 'A Proper Mystery' is rather silly, seeing the quick resolution of sabotage at an Essex country fair.

Anthony Berkley is one of the authors whose novels in the British Library series I have already read: 

https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html

https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html

https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/09/the-books-i-read-in-september.html

Like those novels, his story here, 'Direct Evidence' again featuring his novelist amateur detective Roger Sheringham, subverts expectations. It appears incontrovertable given the number of witnesses that Jimmy Meadows, brother of a tennis champion, shot dead his married lover Mona Greyling in Dorset. Sheringham travels down from London, in part suspicious due to the very public, noisy murder and step by step unravels what has actually occurred. Again, perhaps a modern reader will get to the solution quicker than one of the time, but as with those novels, it is well handled and is a pleasure to see the assumptions overturned by careful detection.

'Inquest' by Leonora Wodehouse - P.G. Wodehouse's step-daughter sees the poisoning of a rich elderly man John Hentish, in Gloucestershire with an overdose. So far, so standard. The real twist is the morality of the story and the motive of the killer which rather subverts the usual expectations of murders for inheritance. I think even today - the author died in 1944, aged 39 - it would draw attention, and likely complaints, if it was dramatised. However, it is nicely refreshing and as Edwards notes it is a shame she died pretty young and was unable to produce more stories. You can imagine her being a rival to Patricia Highsmith.

Ethel Lina White is probably best known for 'The Lady Vanishes' movies based on her novel, 'The Wheel Spins' (1936): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2012/01/books-i-read-in-2011.html 'The Scarecrow' is a neat psychological mystery of a young woman, Kay, in a rural house being threatened by an escaped criminal who had attacked her three years earlier. The isolated farm house in stormy weather and the growing anxiety are well handled. The detection of the criminal, Waring, however, is very much of its era and would not have been possible today. However, very taut and well executed, reminded me, perhaps unsurprisingly of Daphne Du Maurier's 'The Birds' (1952): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html

The next story is by Leo Bruce [Rupert Croft-Cooke] the pseudonym Croft-Cooke, a mainstream author used for his crime novels. 'Clue in the Mustard' at times feels a little like a spoof. The protagonist is Sergeant Beef and there are characters like Ripton Crackliss. The story is set in 'one of the home counties'. The murder is effectively by overheating the victim. Beef is interesting as he is working class and one of his prime hobbies is gardening which actually helps him in this case. It is a shame this did not have a more serious tone or that he selected a bit less ridiculous names, a Beef resolving a case involving mustard, is unnecessary.

The final story is 'Our Pageant' by Gladys Mitchell best known for Mrs.Bradley novels published 1929-1984 and dramatised in 1998-2000 starring Diana Rigg in the title role. It is a short short story which sees a murder during a Morris dance at said pageant - the location of which, somewhere in England, we do not learn. The motive might seem a bit pathetic but how the identity of the killer is worked out is deftly done. While brief it is satisfying enough.

'The Ninth Rain' by Jen Williams

One of my businesses mean I always have a lot of fantasy novels in stock, though I realised that I was not reading any of them and buying different ones for my own consumption. Last month with 'Clockwork Prince' (2011) I decided to start borrowing some off my sale shelves to read. This is the second. I knew nothing about it before starting it. It is the first in a trilogy and while I found hints of Michael Moorcock and Anne McCaffrey it is a fresh approach to a fantasy story.

It is set on the continent of Sarn. Most inhabitants are humans, though there are also a dwindling number of Eborans, who are very tall, pale spindly people with various abilities. Living in the city of Ebora they were sustained to have lives of centuries by Ygseril a tree which issued a sap. However Sarn is periodically attacked by aliens in very large spaceships known as behemoths. One abandoned one has become a moon of the planet. From these come various horrific creatures which hollow out people to make into drones and others which cover the landscape in an impenetrable deep varnish. Their presence also contaminates the land leading to mutated plant life. Eight times they have been defeated by the 'rain' issuing from Ygseril which drops vast war beasts to fight back. After the eighth rain Ygseril died and the Eborans were compelled to to sustain themselves on human blood though this in turn brought the bloody flux which has been slowly killing them off as well as leading to animosity with the human population.

An Eboran who breaks out from the city is Tormalin. He ends up working for Lady Vincenza 'Vintage' de Grazon, a middle aged adventurer from a farm harvesting mutated grapes, who is keen to understand all about the invaders through exploring the remains they have left behind. These are typically haunted by parasite spirits, highly dangerous part spectral part physical monsters. The two encounter Noon, a fell witch who has escaped from the horrific prison of The Winnowery, where those who show the power of being able to turn energy they drain from others into a powerful green fire are kept imprisoned and exploited to create a rare drug and metals. The novel follows the trio as they explore various sites of behemoth crashes and discover more about their opponents, while dodging various monsters and those sent to try to recapture Noon. There is a lot of action including on a train powered by fire created by witches. Ultimately it comes back to Ebora, where Tormalin's sister, Hestillion has remained, reaching mentally into Ygseril to try to revive it, with unexpected consequences.

The world building is commended and while there are some things you might expect, this is a long way from a Tolkienesque fantasy world. The characters are well drawn and believable. The actions keeps up a good pace and while you expect the trio to survive, you do see nasty outcomes for others. I am not going to rush out and buy the next book in the series, but if you are looking for an interesting fantasy series you can do much worse than this one.

'Flashman on the March' by George MacDonald Fraser

This is the twelfth and final Flashman novel, set in 1867-68. MacDonald Fraser has been very capable at finding out forgotten campaigns of the 19th Century to send his protagonist into as well as the more famous one. This features a genuine British military mission deep into Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) to reclaim British prisoners from the so-called Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia, a mad warlord who had seized and held officials sent to him. Flashman as is typical is sent into this situation, initially to try to recruit another tribe to help in besieging Theodore's fortress of Magdala. The country is in civil war between various Christian (people forget that the Coptic Church is the oldest continuous Christian denomination and it sent black crusaders to fight for the Holy Land) and Muslim factions and rivals for various local thrones.

Of course, Flashman has sex with any woman who is willing that he encounters. For much of the time, he travels with skilled guide Uliba-Wark but the two fall out. Flashman ends up a prisoner of Theodore and witnesses his very erratic behaviour and his cruelty in arbitrarily killing hundreds of people. Due to his character flaws, the British were able to capture his mountain fortress and Theodore took his own life.

There is less torture of Flashman than in the other novels though he is dangled over a great height with a mechanism which could drop him in an instant and we see that fate happen to others. I think to some degree this is because Theodore's tortures and killing in themselves are horrifying. Not since 'Flashman's Lady' (1977) with Queen Ranavalona I of Madgascar carrying out torture en masse do I think we have seen it at such scale.

Anyway, even though we know Flashman is going to live (the books open with his biography showing he 'lived' to 1915) the action is handled well. The portrayal of the terrain of Ethiopia is really interesting let alone all the historical details over this very expensive and now overlooked expedition which had a surprisingly low mortality rate and did not have the British take over the country. Anyway, this means, finally, after 38 years, I have now read all the Flashman novels.

Non-Fiction

'Cruel Crossing' by Edward Stourton

This is an eclectic and at times highly erratic book. Amongst the rambling narrative, however, are important historical details. The book which was tied into a BBC Radio 4 programme looks at the routes taken by people escaping from wartime France across the Pyrenees. Throughout, periodically, Stourton outlines a memorial walk he took along one of these routes. In between he rather randomly mixes in stories from individuals who were aided to escape and those who, or whose families, helped those escapees. He also puts in lots of various bits of wartime history but not in a particulary structured way.

In Britain the escape lines drew particular attention with the broadcasting of the drama series 'Secret Army' (1978-79) which featured a line running from Belgium to Spain, largely for aiding downed Allied airmen to return to Britain. Stourton is scathing of the comedy series that spoofed quite closely that drama, ''Allo, 'Allo' (1982-92) but makes no mention of the earlier, well informed series that shapes many people's perceptions even now of the escape lines. 

While featuring downed airmen and other military personnel, often drawing on their memoirs, Stourton does do a good job of showing they were not the only ones who were got away via these routes and he points to Jews and political dissidents from Europe, then later Frenchmen being compelled to labour in Germany. Another important thing is him highlighting the concentration camps run by the French government before the war broke out largely to hold Republicans fleeing Spain following Franco's victory in the civil war in April 1939 that were then put to use by the Germans when they took over France. There are vignettes of things such as the Red Cross children's home at Château de la Hille and the Central Asian troops sent into the region near the end of the war.

The book naturally has stories of tragedy and betrayal as well of successful escapes. Perhaps the rambling style rather blunts the impact of these horrific stories which may make it readable. The penultimate section is a rather extensive but inconclusive reflection on any sense of guilt or apologism in post-war French society, that a little jars. Then it is back to the travelogue of following the route.

I know it can be hard to make a book from a broadcast series. In addition, Stourton almost had an embarrassment of material though much of it is disconnected, only really in the same vicinity to each other due to the geographical connection. Still, if you have the patience to pick among the disparate pieces there are not simply moving and at times uplifting stories, but also important pieces of history that are not often overlooked.

The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'Metropolis' by Philip Kerr

This is the last of the Bernie Gunther novels, the second published posthumously. Unlike the ones leading up to it, rather than straddling two time periods and going into the 1950s, this one is focused purely on Berlin in 1928. Consequently, despite Gunther encountering a range of celebrities and indeed spurring the development of the movie 'M' (1931) is more of a down-to-Earth detective story, not involving espionage, and all the better for that. Gunther is new to the Murder Commission in the Berlin police and is charged with the murder of four prostitutes and then with the killings of disabled war veterans. The two topics can be seen as quintessential foci for a Weimar Republic novel, something emphasised when Gunther meets both George Grosz and Otto Dix, attends rehearsals for the 'The Threepenny Opera' and spends time among representatives of the criminal rings and the Berlin night clubs. It is almost as if for this final book, Kerr put in every element which a reader might expect for a novel in that context.

I do find the 'name checking' rather tiresome and it rather exposes the 'wiring' of the novel too much. An encounter with one of these famous people of the era would have been sufficient. However, setting this aspect aside this is a decent crime novel and like the best of Kerr's work really gets you into the place and the time while providing a convincing series of events. As the last novel, it is nice that it effectively takes you back to the first in the series, 'March Violets' (1989). While the quality of the Gunther novels varies and his 'conceits' can be irritating, for the large part they are really engaging and much less of the unnecessary tangle that those of Volker Kutscher set in the same context are prone to. I will miss the Bernie Gunther books.

'City of Heavenly Fire' by Cassandra Clare

This is the sixth and final book in Clare's The Mortal Instruments series and like the preceding ones follows on directly from the one before which I read in July: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html  As you might expect this one works to the climax with the protagonists of the novels coming to the final showdown with the heroine Clary's estranged half-brother, Sebastian/Jonathan who is threatening to conquer Idris the home of the Shadowhunters. It requires all the young people to go into a hellish realm to fight him and save all the Shadowhunters especially in stopping them being termed into obedient zombies of Jonathan, and naturally the Earth. It does rather feel like a typical YA story, given the range of abilities, more like the Famous Five, than the Buffy team. Clary and her love of all the books, Jace, have sex, even though I am concerned they are underage - something the TV series was careful to alter - and have holy lava running through them. In many ways especially in the other realm, while they still all have the sassiness of New York teenagers, it is more like a usual fantasy novel quest. While a lot of people get killed, even relatively major characters, there is a satisfying ending for the world and even for Simon, Clary's childhood friend and vampire who is stripped of his powers. 

The series is almost an archetype of YA fantasy coming out from the USA. Perhaps reading it when it came out 2007-14 it would have seemed fresher than now. However, now so much of it is common across a whole host of books. However, credit must be given to Clare for her deft control of her material and knowing what her prime audience are seeking. It does appear as if she is developing characters in this one for a follow-on series, but as yet that has not manifested and perhaps suitably she has gone on to similar, but as far as I understand, not directly connected stories.

'Stonemouth' by Iain Banks

I do not know if I am picking the wrong books to read from Banks's work, but after 'The Crow Road' (1992) I feel I am seeing too much of him writing kind of family epics set in different parts of Scotland. This one is set across a few days in the fictional town of Stonemouth, on the North-East coast of Scotland, north of Aberdeen. It does really pander to stereotypes of Scotland, with bleakness, violence, suicide (mainly from a bridge, one of Banks's obsessions) alcoholism and drug abuse being dominant. In some ways it is also like a Western. Stewart Gilmour now successful in lighting buildings artistically returns to the town to attend the funeral of an elderly man he had known well. The town is divided between two crime families. Historically he fell in love with, Ellie Murston, the daughter of one of these and was engaged to marry her. As the novel unfolds we find out what he did that so angered the woman's brothers who chased him from the town, so I will not give that away. Gilmour has to seek permission from both the families to return to the town even for a matter of days. He does reconnect with old friends both male and female from the place and much is about the different roads they have followed in the years since.

The book feels pretty much like an Ian Rankin novel, with the portrayal of tacky wealthy houses and seedy pubs and clubs in the town. The fact that violence can occur almost in an instant and something that happened five years earlier with harm to a sense of propriety rather than anything else can be sufficient for someone to draw a gun, is chilling and realistic, but you did wonder if we needed to see it again. Rankin, among many others, has this well covered. Ironically Banks brings in another common thread from his novels, that of the rather pathetic man in love with the (almost) unattainable woman, that we saw in 'Walking on Glass' (1985), The Crow Road' and 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I have all read this year. 'Stonemouth' could be seen as a (bleak) romance, not quite a 'Romeo & Juliet' story but certainly about trying to have a relationship when others feel they have a right to police it. I see that the novel was dramatised for television in 2015, but I saw too many episodes of 'Taggart' (broadcast 1985-2010) to want to seek it out.

'Jumping Jenny' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkeley Cox]

This novel from 1933 is another in the British Library reprint series. Like Cox's other books I have read: 'The Poison Chocolates Case' (1929) - https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html and  'The Murder in the Basement' (1932) - https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html in this one, the author seeks to subvert the standard approach to crime writing of the time, something he was familiar with from being the founder of a club for crime fiction authors of the time. The setting is a party at a large country house populated with upper middle class people all dressed as murderers from history. There is a gallows tree on the roof from which hang three mannequins, one female. This proves to be the site of the death of the most obnoxious guest Ena Stratton, a noisy exhibitionist who whines when not the centre of attention. Roger Sheringham, the crime writer and amateur detective is one of the guests. However, in contrast to most crime novels of this ilk, when accused of the murder himself, he goes to great lengths not simply to prove he was not the perpetrator but also to clear the man he thinks was the killer but happens to be a friend of his.

While the setting is a well known one, Cox is deft in his writing and you really engage with the story as Sheringham works hard to persuade the other guests that his account of what has gone on, and that Ena committed suicide, is the correct interpretation, in particular around the location of a specific chair. Once more in Cox is gently critiquing crime novels and how they contort things to make the story work, to a lesser extent than in 'The Poison Chocolates Case' but in a way which is of interest to anyone who has read the classic crime novels of the era. The ending has twist upon twist which simply brings that critique right home.

'Cursed' by Benedict Jacka

Well, as I said when I read the first book in this series, 'Fated' (2012) back in December 2018, https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/12/books-i-listened-toread-in-december.html I did come across the next book, this one, and bought it. It is written in the first person as we see Alex Verus, a mage with the ability to see the future, trying to run his business in Camden and train his apprentice Luna to control the unluck curse she has. Quickly he is drawn into attacks on magical creatures that live in modern day London and is particularly concerned for Arachne, his friend who is a giant spider that happens to be a dressmaker living under Hampstead Heath. With the character and the milieu of the Light and Dark mages established in the previous novel, there is less of the info dumping in this one and this means the action can move on more briskly. Jacka maintains the 20-something character of Alex and how he is perhaps too easily trusting and love/lust gets in the way especially when dealing with Luna and Meredith a charmer mage.

In general Jacka steers clear of predictable tropes and manages to world build well both in terms of the magic world and contemporary London (though Hampstead Heath is far less deserted at nighttime than portrayed in the novel, but I can see why he did not reflect that here!). It seems to 'work' both in terms of magic and the magical items. There is some real jeopardy and the betrayals are handled well. The series now stretches to 12 books and Jacka has a blog which he keeps up to date, which provides lots of background information on the books and his other activities: https://benedictjacka.co.uk/  'Taken' (2012) is the next one in the series. Again I will not rush to buy it, but if I see it, I would get it.

'Midwinter' by John Buchan

This novel from 1923 has many of the usual Buchanite traits, notably rich descriptions of the landscape, though in this case of the West Midlands, Peak District and Cumbria rather than anywhere in Scotland. It also has a protagonist being pursued all through these landscapes. However, aside from those aspects the book is a shambles. It is as if Buchan had too many ideas and did not know how to fit them all together. The story focuses on Captain Alistair Maclean who has come to Scotland in 1745 with the Jacobite army led by Prince Charles Edward. Maclean is sent ahead as the army moves from Scotland into England to sound out potential support in the south Midlands and co-ordinate offers of support from Wales.

It becomes apparent that among the English sympathisers someone is intercepting vital messages and betraying the Jacobite cause. Ill-informed the Jacobites advance too slowly and cautiously before retreating from Derby back to Scotland where they are crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. This could be a gripping story but Buchan handles it poorly. Maclean does eventually identify the traitor, but the result is an anti-climax. He falls in love with Claudia Norrey one of the English sympathisers but she is devoted to her slippery if rather guileless husband and Maclean slowly realises he could never win her heart even if he killed that man.

Maclean does face jeopardy most clearly in being held to be thrown into a maelstrom in a pothole. However, much of the novel, he is sick, exhausted and imprisoned while the invasion advances around him. When he meets government supporters and even a general of the government army, they have genial chit-chat and there is no threat, just convoluted genteel conversation. Apart from some short stretches all sense of jeopardy is neglected. In addition there is an deus ex machina, the eponymous Midwinter, a kind of travelling man who has an extensive network of common men able to aid him and his friends at the drop of a hat or in fact the whistling of a tune. They are a neutral force in the conflict but able to rescue Maclean repeatedly.

Samuel Johnson, the dictionary composer appears as the former tutor and mentor of Claudia Norrey and keeps crossing paths with Maclean, ultimately doggedly following him across the country. While Johnson tempers Maclean's reactions to those he feels deserve death he appears more as a point of curiosity as a real life character in a fictional story but at a time when his whereabouts were unknown. He adds little except to drain more of the drama from the book. We do not even get to witness the Battle of Culloden which might have been a suitable climax, instead, Maclean through his tardiness and failures notably his personal obsessions takes on blame for the failure of the invasion.

While the descriptions are good, the life has been taken from this story and it is not a patch on 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898). If you want a decent novel set around the Jacobite invasion I suggest 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) by D.K. Broster instead.

Non-Fiction

'Akenfield' by Ronald Blythe

When I bought this book, in a Penguin edition published in 1969, I thought it was fiction. However, it turns out to be an oral history of a rural village in eastern Suffolk. Though in reality it has a different name, the stories recounted to the author were all genuine. By interviewing people from a whole range of roles and standings in the community, from those on the bread line to the landowners, and public servants like police, teachers and trade unionists it aims to get the story of the place in the 20th Century and look at the changes the 1960s were bringing, in terms of society, the economy and agriculture, especially the training of new farm labourers. There is some nostalgic charm to it, such as the comments about bell-ringing. However, other parts are as bleak, almost as harrowing, as a book by Studs Turkel. What it alerts you to is while a lot of the focus of the 1930s Depression is on industrial closures, the countryside suffered just as much and in fact a kind of neo-feudalism reasserted itself, with the workers on poverty pay and at risk of losing their tied cottages. It also highlights the migration of Scottish farmers to take up abandoned farms in Suffolk.

For all the gloom of the accounts - and despite the improvements of the post-war era, the future still looks bleak at the time of writing, especially in terms of the fragmentation and segregation of village society - it is fascinating to hear the words of the different people. Sometimes they go off at a tangent which Blythe is happy to keep in. Social and oral history were really seeing a real burst of interest at the time the book was published and you can see why it was acclaimed. These days it is very useful for anyone writing a story set in the English countryside of the time, much less rose-tinted than some portrayals we see. It is also useful especially for that leavening of the story of the Depression which reached far beyond the Jarrow Crusade and South Wales coalminers in terms of its impact.

The Books I Read In August

Fiction
'The Poison Chocolates Case' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkely Cox]
Like his 'Murder in the Basement' (1932) which I read back in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html this one from 1929, in many ways fits the writing of the 'golden age' of British detective novels, but also does well in subverting the genre. This one also features author Roger Sheringham and to a lesser extent Chief Inspector Moresby. In real life Cox established a club of detective authors and provides a fictional version of such a club in this novel. The members look into a 'cold case' in which Graham Bendix was given a box of poisoned liqueurs that had been received by an acquaintance of his, the disreputable Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had in turn been sent them at their gentlemen's club. Taking them home, Graham's wife, Joan eats many more of them and dies. In turn the six members of the club provide what sounds like a feasible explanation for the crime, who the intended victim actually was and the motives behind it. While they all bring in additional information, each of the explanations are effectively dismissed by other members of the club. In addition, in 1979 Christinna Brand and then in 2016 the introducer of this edition, Martin Edwards, provided their own chapters with two further explanations.


This novel might frustrate many readers because we never actually find out the 'truth'. In large part this was Cox's intention and it was pointing out to the fans of crime fiction of the era how easily they could be directed, even manipulated, into accepting an explanation which in fact might be no more feasible than any other. In that way it works as a kind of meta-fiction and would be useful for those who are interested in the 'mechanics' of classic crime fiction. The various characters are well drawn and there is a good insight into English middle/upper class society of the time. Cox avoids being smug in showing 'behind the scenes' and does really leave it to the reader, and whilst giving his message does not patronise us with his cleverness.


Some might find the novel repetitive and maybe it should be approached as a well-crafted exercise more than a standard detective story. However, apparently it was enjoyed by Agatha Christie. She had produced the short story 'The Clue of the Chocolate Box' for The Sketch in May 1923; it later appeared in 'Poirot's Early Cases' (1974), but while Cox uses a similar approach and mix-up, he does not seem to be critiquing Christie's story, unless one sees him having a go at detective fiction of the time in general.



'Tuf Voyaging' by George R.R. Martin
This is a collection of 8 short stories published mainly published in Analog magazine (one in Andromeda), 1976-85. They are science fiction and feature an obese, vegetarian, cat loving man called Haviland Tuf. He acquires a derelict 'seed ship', a 30Km long spaceship built to inflict biological warfare on enemies. The opening story is like the movie 'Alien' (1979) raised to a higher power as a group of looters are transported to the ship, 'The Ark' and face a range of horrendous diseases and creatures unleashed by the vessel in its own defence. While the stories were written out of sequence, the order in which they are organised here, works well and if you did not know otherwise you would imagine this had been created as a 'fix-up' book, i.e. a sequence of stories providing an overall novel, from the outset.


Tuf travels around between planets colonised by humans using the power of his ship's facilities to push the different colonies in directions that he prefers. One plagued by over-population needs repeated visits. Others are addicted to arena fights between ferocious animals, one is facing the rapid evolution of super-predators and a further one is suffering from a religious zealot trying to turn the clock back in terms of technology. Tuf is not a likeable character. He is snide in his behaviour and very picky in his language, constantly (sometimes very annoyingly) showing up the lack of logic in people's speech. He is self-righteous, though sometimes you would agree with the approaches he takes. While the smugness of the main character can jar, overall, the book even though it was put together, comes over as well constructed. There are rich portrayals of different colonies, their leaders and their challenges which do seem feasible. The opening story is gory, but it does settle down in the following seven.



'Prester John' by John Buchan
As 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html clearly showed Buchan's engagement with the south Scottish countryside which would feature in later novels, this one published in 1910, brings out his personal connection and interest in South Africa. It features another young Scot, this time David Crawfurd, who is offered employment at a trading post in northern South Africa, following the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). While there he re-encounters a black African church minister, John Laputa, he had run into back in Scotland in his youth and suspected, despite his preaching at kirks, that he was into black magic. It soon becomes apparent that Laputa is seeking to bring together various tribes and rise up against British rule, both drawing on the legend of 'Prester John' the mythical 'lost' king in central Africa and authority granted by wearing The Great Snake, a priceless ruby necklace that supposedly belonged to Prester John.


Clearly the book is pro-colonial and as you might expect the characters have a paternalistic, racialist approach not simply to the Africans but also the Portuguese, who at the time ruled neighbouring Mozambique. However, so that Crawfurd does face a real challenge, the rebels are not shown as fools and Crawfurd has a very challenging time trying to defeat Laputa and aid the defeat of the uprising. As is typical for Buchan there is a lot of rushing around the countryside. His portrayal of the landscape and its climate is always a strength of his writing. In addition, in part because of misreading the introductory essay, I had assumed Crawfurd would not survive the novel and the jeopardy, especially the exhaustion and scrambling across the rocky landscape seemed genuine. While very much of its time, you can see why Buchan's books have well outlasted the other 'empire adventures' written at the time.




Non-Fiction
'Fontana British Battlefields: The North' by Philip Warner
This is a 1970s book that appears to have been written in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey, certainly it gives details of which of their maps relate to the battlefield sites and how to reach them. This was the second book in a series covering different regions of Britain. By 'the North' it means England from Nottingham to the Scottish border. It gives crisp summaries of battles from Stamford Bridge in 1066 to Preston in 1648. It is adept at contextualising these in the broader contexts such as the Wars of the Roses and the War of Three Kingdoms and would be useful if visiting these areas. Whether the directions would remain accurate some 50 years on, I do not know. However, as part of the popular local history movement of that era it provides a useful and engaging brisk survey of the various battlefields ably putting them into both the local and wider contexts. I bought this book second hand some 40 years ago and while I see you can buy them second hand online and indeed there was a re-release in the 2010s, I have never myself stumbled across another since.


'Encyclopedia of the Third Reich' by Louis L. Snyder
Though I read it cover-to-cover, as the name indicates, this is an alphabetised reference book on an array of individuals, organisations and other aspects of the Nazi Regime. In fact, it goes back long before 1933 to look at the racialist and anti-Semitic writing and philosophies and the people that produced them, which fed into Nazi ideology. The edition of the book I had was published in 1998 but it is quickly apparent it was not revised from its original 1976 edition, so continues to show a lot of people still alive who were dead by the date of this edition's publication. There are consequently some gaps which would surprise the modern reader such as the fate of Martin Bormann and Josef Mengele. There is nothing more than speculation on the perpetrator of the Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in November 1939, whereas we know it was carried out by Georg Elser, a woodworker and clock maker, who was arrested trying to escape across the Swiss border; imprisoned and later executed in April 1945.


Being an American publication, there tend to be lengthy quotations from American journalists and commentators of the time, that are longer than the topic really warrants, for example, on the signing of the armistice between France and Germany at Compiègne in June 1940. Another oddity is that it goes into some detail on particular aircraft or tanks, but does not do this generally. It is most useful if you want to find out about the history and the role of particular individuals in the regime, especially those of the second and third rank and how they interrelated to more senior members and each other. It is also useful for connecting between acronyms and German terms for things such as various organisations and their English translations.


What was most alarming was just how much of the Nazi and nationalist/racialist language which is quoted in this book sounds as if it comes straight from so many speeches and social media of today. It is really chilling when the same terms, the same blaming and excuses are right there.

The Books I Read In March

Fiction

'The Murder in the Basement' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkeley Cox] 

I have been given quite a lot of the classic crime novels that the British Library has found great success in re-releasing over the past decade. Most are from the 1920s and 1930s (some earlier, some later) and were often good sellers at the time but have been forgotten by subsequent generations. This was the first of those books I had (not by date of publication but by surname of the author) that I have. Berkeley is not well known these days but was actually a founder of the Detection Club which counted renowned crime authors in its membership.

This novel is a classic of the genre, revolving around a corpse found in the basement of a semi-detached London house that a married couple have just moved into which after the body is finally identified, proves to be linked to a small fee-paying preparatory school just north of London. The private school setting is one that turns up often in books of the time, this one was published in 1932; even Hercule Poirot has a case at one. 

Berkeley has two protagonists that he had used in a previous novel Chief Inspector Moresby and author Roger Sheringham who has a connection to the school. The novel is effectively divided into three parts.The first focuses on identifying the corpse. Then the middle part is actually a novel in the novel that Sheringham has written detailing the tensions between various members of staff as a basis for Moresby's further investigation. The third part is tackling the issue of the prime suspect and whether it can be proven that they did and even if they should be the prime suspect.

The first part of the novel can rather lead you to think this is a going-through-the-motions novel. It is very police procedural in identifying the corpse with what was available at the time. However, Berkeley lifts the novel through the conceit of the novel in the novel and then in the third part, disentangling issues around the prime suspect. You come away feeling that it is greater than the sum of its parts.

'The State of the Art' by Iain M. Banks

This is a collection of science fiction short stories by Banks. The fact that at the end of the month in which I read it, I struggle to recall all of the stories, says something as I was not overly impressed. This may be because it was published in 1991 and as a result the 'unfailing inventiveness' which the review from 'The Guardian' states now may seem well established tropes and indeed rather pretentious. There is a sentient plant in 'Odd Attachment' plucking a human apart. 'Descendant' is about the relationship between a crashed spaceship pilot and his intelligent space suit, that actually felt like a story from the 1950s or 1960s as is 'Cleaning Up' about alien technology appearing all over the Earth at random. The concepts they explore are well known now. Perhaps the strongest stories come from Banks's Culture setting. 'The State of the Art' about Culture explorers coming to Earth and getting too involved, while quite commonplace is reasonably well handled as is 'A Gift from the Culture' about a super-powered weapon to be used for an assassination.

In many ways this book shows that Banks was grounded in the science fiction of the preceding decades. He even explores a Moorcockian set-up with fragmented text in 'Scratch'. Thus, if you are new to science fiction this book will be a good introduction that is quickly consumed and highlights many themes that 20th Century science fiction concerned itself with. For me, though, I had been expecting more and so reading it was rather mundane.

'The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard' by Arthur Conan Doyle

This is a collection of 8 short stories featuring a French hussar during the Napoleonic Wars. Many have likened him to Harry Flashman in (1969-2005), Gerard is not as intelligent as Flashman, but certainly has that self-belief. He thinks that he is very successful with the ladies, but in fact we never have anything more than his word for it, probably due to these stories being published in literary magazines at the end of the 19th Century. While they are brisk, Conan Doyle does really show his skill with the short stories, which in fact most of the Sherlock Holmes adventures were as well. There is a good attention to detail as Gerard finds himself in different parts of the war, from what would now be Poland across to Portugal. Conan Doyle brings out the different arms of the forces and nationalities too and these form a sound basis for witty stories. My edition was only 188 pages long so you could get through it in a single sitting. I do recommend it, if this sounds like your kind of thing.

'The Other Side of Silence' by Philip Kerr

This is the 11th Bernie Gunther book and features him working as a hotel concierge on the French Riviera. In contrast to the previous novels, despite for some brief asides to 1937 and 1944/45, most of this one is set in 1956. Set at the height of the Cold War and during the Suez Crisis it is much more of a spy novel than a crime novel. As is typical, Gunther crosses paths with someone from his past, in this case an SS captain, Harald Hennig that he knew in Berlin before the war and then in Königsberg [Kaliningrad] near the end of the war. The story features real people particularly the British author, Somerset Maugham and his nephew both of who lived on the Riviera at the time. Maugham is being blackmailed and is encouraged to use Gunther as a go-between with the blackmailer. It soon is revealed, however, that the scheme is more about getting to the British intelligence agencies as Maugham previously worked for them. Following the defection of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, there appears to the East Germans and the Soviets a way to embarrass the British especially with their allies the Americans who are increasingly dubious of them.

Compared to the previous novels, this one has little action and much more dialogue, so feels more like a John Le Carré novel. It is a slow burn in terms of determining what is going on with the various blackmailing. The settings in rich houses and hotels on the Riviera in the 1950s is very well portrayed.  The scene which needs to be noted is how Gunther adeptly manages to turn what is being done to set him up, against his antagonists. Given what we know of the character, we know he has the skills, but Kerr renders the scene admirably. Gunther again gets to sleep with a woman young enough to be his daughter, though in contrast to The Woman from Zagreb' (2015), the previous novel in the series where this happens, this one has a more feasible explanation.

Overall, this is different to the other Gunther novels and may appeal more to those looking for a kind of classic spy novel rather than a detective one.

Non-Fiction

'The Pelican Guide to English Literature 1: The Age of Chaucer' ed. by Boris Ford

I read the 7th volume in the revised version of this series, 'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' edited by Boris Ford back in August 2021: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html  The various writers who contributed to that volume were very dismissive of the authors they were asked to comment, without exception judging them as far less competent than authors and poets of previous centuries. In Volume 1, fortunately, the attitude is much more positive. I imagine that is because the contributors were eager to promote medieval literature including the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland but also far less well known authors. The only one who really suffers disapproval is Edmund Spenser who while recognising he was an author in a transitional period, Derek Traversi feels was not as good as he could have been and was too derivative of outdated approaches something he puts down to Spenser's disappointing career in public service.

As Ford notes a lot of these texts are not easily available to the general reader, so entire texts are included in the second part of the book after the critiques of the first part. Thus there is an interesting range of stories and plays, particularly allegorical ones. As there is reference to work from different parts of England and indeed Scotland, you can see the regional variations in English of the time. Especially in 'Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight' (still attracting attention as the 2021 movie showed) we see specifically north-western English with words that seem drawn from Swedish, Dutch, German and French. A lot of the stories have religious themes which is unsurprising given as contributors note, the importance of miracle plays in culture of the time. In addition, what is shown in this book is simply what has survived and it is certain there were many other works that are now lost.

Thus, this is an interesting book for people who enjoyed Chaucer or Langland or who are interested in having an insight into what concerned medieval people (and what made them laugh) and what they would watch or have read to them. The thing is, while there are numerous footnotes outlining what various words mean and after reading a lot of it, you get a feel for some of the commonly used words, for the most part you are rather wading through Middle English texts and this needs a lot of attention and patience. I think the effort is worth it for what is revealed. However, this is far from being an easy book to read and will take you a lot of time and effort. Ironically the easiest chapter is the incongruous one on medieval architecture, which I am not sure why it was included.

'The Goebbels Diaries, 1939-1941' translated and edited by Fred Taylor

Fuller collections of Goebbels diaries have come to light since this edition was published in 1983. However, this one does provide a slice of them from which we can learn a lot. Josef Goebbels was both the Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Gauleiter of Berlin. As these diaries make clear he was very close to Hitler and indeed murdered his children and wife and committed suicide with Hitler in the bunker at the end of the Second World War when other leading Nazis had fled.

The diaries provide interesting insights into facets of the Nazi regime but reading them at this time, constantly made me hear echoes of populist attitudes and rhetoric which has become so common again in the 2020s. Throughout Goebbels is painfully smug. Any speech he, let alone Hitler gives, as well as their writing is assumed to be the most important thing in not just Germany's but the world's media. Goebbels even believed that this propaganda effectively killed former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in November 1940 when actually he died of bowel cancer.

Any Nazi event is seen by Goebbels as the biggest and best that has ever been hosted. Goebbels bitterly complains that all claims, especially those by the British are lies that must be vigorously contested and they, especially Churchill, will pay the price for this in the future. Yet, he also outlines all the lies he is pumping into other countries whether neutral or the enemy. This double standard is apparent incessantly and for someone living in 2024 seems very familiar.

Goebbels's attitudes do lead him to make mistake. All through 1940 he keeps expecting the British to surrender. Every bombing raid he insists is lowering the British morale to a point that it is unsustainable for the country to continue fighting and that the Americans are losing faith in the British. In contrast he dismisses the air raids on Germany as almost minimal and insists that German morale will not be harmed by them. You slowly see a change and by 1941 even Goebbels recognises that if the German public can persist under such attacks that there is nothing to say that the British and Soviet publics can too and that imminent surrender is far from likely. However, this initial attitude applied not just to Britain and the USSR but to Yugoslavia and Greece, does remind us that the Germans went into these battles with strong assumptions of quick and easy victories. Goebbels's access to Hitler and his ability to interfere in aspects far outside his assigned portfolios adds to this fact.

The preparations for the invasion of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Greece are interesting. The internecine battles with Nazi officials and other departments become tiresome but do show how chaotic the Nazi regime was. The Foreign Office in particular seems despised by all sides of the regime but retained power and influence. It is hard to swallow Goebbels wittering on about his beloved children, his numerous houses and the art works he is buying. These statements do nothing to humanise the man and it is clear that he finds it difficult to comprehend anything outside his own desires.

I found this book useful to contextualise the ones I have been reading in recent years about the Nazi regime and to show some of the reasons by what often seemed to be irrational policies and behaviour by its staff.