Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'Revelation' by Bill Napier

This book is pretty much like 'Nemesis' (1998) by Napier that I read in April: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/04/books-i-read-in-april.html It combines heavy duty science, in this case the possibility of deriving power from zero-point energy with a kind of Dan Brown academic-in-an-adventure story. This one has chemical formulae in it. Napier is pretty good at explaining the science but it does leave a very peculiar book. In this one a glacier scientist is brought in to help extract a frozen Soviet aeroplane from a breaking up ice sheet in the Arctic. It seems to hold diaries from Lev Petrosian, an Armenian scientist who worked on the US atomic and hydrogen bomb programmes before suffering persecution by the authorities during the McCarthy era. The hero of the book, Dr. Fred Findhorn, rushes all over the planet along with an translator of Armenian, trying to find out what Petrosian discovered. They face an array of enemies from US intelligence to a Japanese corporation to millennial cult, all seeking to get their hands on what Findhorn has uncovered. We also go back to see what Petrosian suffered and the book is pretty decent on the paranoia of 1950s USA and to some degree how it actually drives Petrosian towards the Soviets.

The book is frenetic, going between Scotland, the USA, Greece, Japan and Switzerland. There is a lot of casual but brutal violence. A scene in a Swiss chalet is particularly violent. As with 'Nemesis' there is a lot of expositionary conversations and Findhorn tracking down specialists at a conference on a small Greek island who are happy to talk about the possibilities of what Petrosian may have found seems very contrived. Findhorn who has a brother with a secure flat and happy to fund flights all over the place; two young translators happy to go along with an older man whose life is constantly in danger also stretches credibility, but I know from many thrillers, not just Brown's but also Ludlum's that these are well established traits. Napier seems to feel obliged to add in tons of science in a way that most thriller authors are not. I guess it is nice to learn something real from fiction, but it does conflict with the frenetic pace he is also seeking, leading to a very 'bitty' feel to the novel. This was the only remaining Napier book I had and while both were curiosities I am certainly not seeking any more of them.

'The Manor of Death' by Bernard Knight

This is the 12th of the 15 books in Knight's Crowner John series. The 15th is a prequel. However, this book really feels like closing the sequence. The novels have not covered a great deal of time, so far running from November 1194 to April 1196. However, at the end of this one a lot of what we have become familiar with in the books is brought to an end. Sir John De Wolfe is to be sent from Devon to work in London. His bitter wife, Matilda has again withdrawn to a convent, but this time probably for good; his Welsh mistress, Nesta, has married a stonemason and returned to Wales, selling up her inn, which is then passed to John's Cornish bodyguard, Gwyn and his family to take over running. Thus, all the things that have been built up over the previous books are no longer as they were. It is naturally rather bittersweet, but I guess by this stage Knight felt he was rather going round all of the old established patterns once more. Given the society of the time, there were few options short of killing off one or more of these characters. As is made clear, John cannot marry Nesta and she is not happy to remain simply a mistress; he cannot divorce his wife even if she becomes a nun.

All of this only comes to fruition towards the end of the novel, though the groundwork is laid throughout. Most of the book focuses on pirates operating from the port of Axmouth which while a small seaside town was a significant port in the Middle Ages. De Wolfe has a very frustrating time trying to get any information on what is happening. With the priory that owns the town and various officials standing on their privileges they constantly rebuff his attempts even when the number of murders of witnesses increases. Ultimately De Wolfe pulls of a 'sting' operation and we finally get through to him dealing out some justice.

I am tempted to seek out the three remaining books to see what happens. However, you could finish the series on this one because it is clear that what follows will be very different from the 'police procedural' with an established 'cast' of characters in and around Exeter.

'Resistance' by Owen Sheers

I saw the 2011 movie of this novel, which had been published in 2007, about ten years ago and was not overly impressed. It is superficially an alternate history story set around the Second World War. In contrast to many using this as a starting point it is not set in 1940/41 with a German invasion then, but rather one coming in 1944 following the defeat of the Normandy landings that June. The biggest change in fact is a one far less explored and that is that by 1944, the Soviets have been pushed beyond the Urals and while they break out during the course of this book, the ability to shift troops from the Eastern Front to France and then Britain has allowed a slow German conquest of the UK.

The novel is set in a small isolated valley in eastern Wales where the Mappa Mundi medieval map from Hereford Cathedral has been concealed. A team of six German soldiers, let by a captain Albrecht Wolfram, who was a scholar of such work in Oxford before the war, are sent to locate the map. This brings them into contact with the women on the handful of farms in the valley who at the start of the novel have been left by their husbands who are all part of the Auxiliary Units, particularly the Special Duty Branch, to act as a guerilla force and as intelligence agents, respectively, in the event of an invasion. We see very little of the men, only a George who lives nearby but was not from the valley and his recruiter 'Tommy Atkins' who is taken by the Gestapo and later killed by Wolfram's unit.

I can see why the movie was very uninspiring because very little happens in the book, so the director, Amit Gupta, had little to work from. The book is a very different thing. Where it shines is not in terms of the alternate history. This is really only required to set up the 'bubble' of the cut off valley populated by women and girls and their interaction with a very small unit of occupiers. Sheers is a poet and the strength of this book is that for much of the time, it is effectively a prose poem describing the valley through the seasons; its plant and animal life, seen through the eyes of various characters. We often jump quite quickly from one to the other and witness things though almost all of them during the course of the book. Even the developing (inevitable) romance between the captain and Sarah Lewis appears very slowly and is rather rushed to the end, rather weakening the choices that both make. Much better are the other interactions between the two sides, notably the modus vivendi that the soldiers develop with Maggie, effectively matriarch of the valley.

In terms of narrative there are many things you might challenge. However, it just about hangs together. The reason why I would recommend this book, though, is not for the story, but for the beautiful images of a particular place from how the light moves through the valley, how the ice and the water moves and changes, how the animals behave, even the buildings and their contents, the nearby ruins. The descriptions are so rich it is a pleasure to read them. It does not make an exciting book and certainly not a great movie, but as something else, much more poetic, it works well to engage you.

Non-Fiction

'Macmillan. A Study in Ambiguity' by Anthony Sampson

It is interesting that while contemporary Conservatives will talk about Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill and even Stanley Baldwin, I cannot recall any mentioning Harold Macmillan. This is despite him serving as prime minister for 6½ years during one of the most prosperous periods of modern British history. I guess for many in his party his criticism as Lord Stockton of the first two Thatcher governments has made him a pariah. Certainly with the zealous anti-EU attitude prevalent in the party of the 2020s, him being a link in British European policy between Churchill's attitude into Heath's and a period when collaboration with other capitalist neighbours seemed to be something almost inherently Conservative, can make him seem a 'traitor' not just to the party but even to the country as a whole.

As a consequence, there is now rather an ellipse in how the Conservatives see themselves as if the period probably 1956-1975 has been edited out. It does mean that strands of what would have once been seen as mainstream Conservatism, with actually a modern perspective, is absent from current thinking. Anything that comes even marginally close to anything Macmillan might have pursued is deemed to be 'weak', even 'unpatriotic'. Given how much the party has turned the clock back to attitudes Macmillan would have seen in his youth (he was born in 1894 and fought in the First World War) I imagine if alive today he would have felt even more detached from his party than he did in the 1980s.

Writing in 1967, Sampson measures Macmillan against standards that are far higher than any which we could expect to be applied in the 21st Century. The failures in terms of establishing a superpower summit, difficulties with the EEC and with moving African states to independence would be seen as just everyday foreign policy challenges. The so-called 'Night of the Long Knives', a strong Cabinet reshuffle and even the Profumo Scandal, rather than being isolated incidents analysed to a great extent are often occurrences that can happen in a single week in UK politics today. Given the books towards the end of his life, I am sure he had detected the qualitative deterioration in British political life. Thus, while the tone of Sampson's book is one of disappointment, as much for Macmillan himself in not achieving his goals, the record set against say, the last three Conservative prime ministers actually seems quite decent.

The Conservatives have a lot to be grateful for from Macmillan. In particular Sampson shows how, despite his age or maybe because of it - he was 62 when he first became prime minister, he was able to deftly heal the rifts which had developed over the Suez fiasco which had threatened to rend the party apart. He was then able to get it through two elections so as to cap 13 years in office. Macmillan was also alert to the requirements of modern politics and the uses to which snappy slogans, television and aircraft could aid him not simply in speaking to the electorate but also showing the UK prime minister as still someone notable in the world.

Sampson provides good detail without drowning out the story. I was particularly interested in Macmillan's approach to economics and his engagement with planning which stretched across the political spectrum in the 1930s and 1940s and ironically was an attitude that brought him closer to the French approach of the post-war period than the British one. He did lay the groundwork for Harold Wilson's engagement with planning. It is important to establish this context, to fill in the ellipse not just simply in terms of Conservative policy, but also the wider course of British economic policy which in just over a decade saw a move from boosting Keynesianism via corporatism and planning, to, even under a Labour government, under Callaghan, the winning out of monetarist approaches that then caused so much of the pain of the 1980s and beyond for large chunks of the British (and indeed American) population.

Overall, this was a book of its time in terms of its basis for judgements. It is a useful reminder of a neglected, pretty important component in both Conservative and British history in general. It is also a reminder of the kind of standards politicians were expected to work to, that now, especially in the past 3 years, seem utterly forgotten and even somehow portrayed as not 'truly Conservative'. That sense of responsibility not just to one's personal benefit but to the wider community is utterly absent now in a way which was not the case when Macmillan was in charge.

Books I Read In May

 Fiction

'The Noble Outlaw' by Bernard Knight

This is the 11th book in the series, though the sequence has only reached December 1195. In truth this novel covers two different crimes that are actually less connected than it appears. One connection is the protagonist's - Sir John De Wolfe, coroner of South Devon - enduring antagonist, Richard de Revelle, former Sheriff of Devon and his brother-in-law. De Revelle is involved in a scheme to follow the new trend of opening schools in Exeter. A desiccated corpse of a man killed by having a nail hammered into the top of his spine is found in the loft of a property being developed for this school. There also seems to be a connection to the 'noble outlaw', the former crusader, Nicholas de Arundell, who had his lands seized in part by De Revelle while away on crusade. An altercation led to a killing and De Arundell fleeing into Dartmoor where he has become a brigand raiding neighbouring farms. The two threads are quite distinct and De Wolfe has to effectively deal with a devious serial killer. The interaction with De Arundell is different. De Revelle and his co-conspirator go after the brigands and there is action as they battle. However, De Wolfe's role is more diplomatic trying to establish a connection to the man, even though under law he should kill him on sight, and seeking to get a pardon. There is further action when De Arundell takes part in a legal battle against the two men who took his land.

In general this is an interesting novel. We see more of De Wolfe's ongoing life and as always learn more about the society, law and politics of 12th Century South-West England. Separately each of the cases is interesting and well explored. However, they do not really mesh together effectively, though I suppose that reflects a detective's typical case book quite accurately. I do think Knight over-uses De Revelle and in the books from 'Figure of Hate' (2005), the 9th book, onwards it feels like he is being levered into the plot, when the development of other antagonists would have perhaps been fresher. However, I accept that the relationships between De Wolfe, his wife, his in-laws, his mistress and his assistants are important to Knight as much as the various mysteries. I have the 12th book on my shelf to read. There were 3 subsequent books in the series, published 2009-12 that I do not have, one of which is a prequel. I would certainly search them out to finish off my reading of the Crowner John series. While perhaps lacking something of the sparkle of the Brother Cadfael novels, this series is a medieval police procedural, which is richly written and draws us very much into the world it is portraying.

'The Poison Garden' by Sarah Singleton

Like most books I acquire these days, this one came from a charity shop. As it was in the adult SF/Fantasy section, rather than with the children's books it was not until later that I realised it is in fact a children's book. Saying that a lot of fantasy no matter the target audience, especially if it is written by women, gets dumped into children's fiction categories. Furthermore, I had read and enjoyed all the Harry Potter books so was not apprehensive about engaging with this one. Singleton has created a rich fantasy in our world, rather like Rowling did. It took me some time to realise that actually it is set in some unspecified late Victorian period rather than in modern day; I have subsequently discovered it is supposed to be the 1850s, whereas I had felt it was 10-40 years later than that.

Thomas is 10 years old at the start of the novel, though most of it takes place when he is 14 and an apprentice to a London pharmacist. On the death of his grandmother, who was very much into plants and herbalism, he becomes aware of a magical garden which appears and disappears. In this garden he meets and old friend of his grandmother's and witnesses a fatal assault on him. He is left a circular magical box and is directed at 14 to become a pharmacist's apprentice. On moving to London he discovers that his grandmother was part of the small Guild of Medical Herbalists (not Magical as some reviews have it). Though some portray them as sorcerers or witches, they see themselves as scientific practitioners. Each of the members has a garden that comes from one of these boxes and allows them to enter it as if shifting to another plane. In these gardens they can cultivate plants lost to the world and breed others for particular beneficial or nefarious uses. Thomas is drawn into investigating who is slowly killing off the few members of the Guild and along with another young heiress to the Guild's secrets, Maud, defeating the unexpected killer.

Some complain that the book is too short at 288 pages, though aimed at children, perhaps making it longer would have been of no benefit. While the latter Harry Potter books became large, the early ones were of this kind of length. The story does move along briskly while doing more than enough to conjure up a kind of magic that is distinct from that of other fantasy stories. Regularly Singleton eschews what might be expected, possibly right down to the end, depending on where you might see it going. Despite the pace of the book, the characters and indeed the Victorian settings, let alone the various gardens, are evocatively drawn. I found it a satisfying, refreshing read and welcomed it tending to avoid tropes. There are only very distant echoes of things like 'Tom's Midnight Garden' (1958) and even a little, 'The Secret Garden' (1910/11) and really you have to be of my generation or older to think of those; certainly not a child in the 21st Century or indeed their parents. While I will not hunt out Singleton's books, if I come across another in a charity shop, then I would certainly be likely to buy it.

P.P. 29/11/2023

I have only just become aware that one of the elements in Singleton's story in featuring the Guild of Funerary Violinists also references another book, 'An Incomplete History of the Art of the Funerary Violin' (2006) by Rohan Kriwaczek:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Incomplete_History_of_the_Art_of_Funerary_Violin which is a spoof history text on said guild and its members practices. Singleton has taken that fiction and added it as an element in her own book, very effectively, I feel.

Non-Fiction

'Napoleon' by Vincent Cronin

Cronin sets out to write a book very much focused on Napoleon Bonaparte, the man. There are references to battles and the political steps, but only when he was directly involved, rather than the events that happened in the context of his expansion of the French Empire. We also get a lot about his early life and his exiles on Elbe and St. Helena that you would typically see in a book about this period of French history in general. There is also a lot about his family and his wives, much of which I had been unaware of. The book was published in 1971 and at times its tone jars for a modern reader. We do not need to know the size of Napoleon's genitals and certainly the statement that Napoleon's sisters were unfortunate in not finding husbands to 'master them' would be struck through vigorously by any editor of the 21st Century.

Cronin is a fan of Napoleon that is clear and there are sections especially on policy around law and religion that clearly aim to show the benefits that Napoleon brought to France and indeed neighbouring states. Cronin does not present these with blind enthusiasm but there is an attitude that these were good things that tended to be undermined by others. Interestingly Klemens von Metternich, the Foreign Minister of the Austrian Empire, in the diplomatic field and Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord in domestic French politics are really shown as men who set out to wreck Napoleon's plans especially in the period 1813-15. Without their vigorous intervention, Cronin makes clear, the outcome for Napoleon and indeed for France as a whole would have been very different.

While dated, you do come away with a greater sense of knowing the man rather than a kind of factor in European politics. You see his weaknesses for example his loyalty to his wives even when they were unfaithful and how much of a family man he was. He also shows loyalty to friends, again even when they plotted or acted against him. A more cynical, less loyal man might have survived better. I have found this book useful in rounding out my understanding of the period, not simply in terms of Napoleon himself but the reflection of other leading individuals in Europe at the time, through their interaction with or steps against him.

Books I Read In March

 Fiction

'Dangerous Women Part I' edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

This is the first of a trilogy of short story collections. I do not know about the other two volumes, they may improve. This one is largely a disappointment. The largest section is taken up by a 35,000-word story written by Martin set in his world of the Seven Kingdoms, many years before the A Song of Fire and Ice series. 'The Princess and the Queen' is about two women rivalling for the Iron Throne and the war this triggers. The trouble is, Martin approaches the story in the same way as he does with the longer series, i.e. with long lists of titles and locations of individuals. In his huge books there is space for this but in a novella you feel at times you are reading a civil service list. There are some dramatic battles between riders on dragons, but his still really burdens this shorter piece and is there so much any character development is a long way down the list.

Perhaps the best story is 'Raisa Stepanova' by Carrie Vaughn about a Soviet female fighter pilot in the Second World War and not simply the risks to her from aerial combat but from her brother going missing in action as the Soviet regime under Stalin assumed anyone missing had deserted. 'Second Arabesque, Slowly' by Nancy Kress is a not a bad but typical post-apocalyptic story in a New York where when most women have become infertile, tribes have developed scavenging among the ruins and a couple, overseen by the narrator, a nurse, wanting to take up ballet after seeing old footage of it. I read something similar but involving a concert piano, in a short story  'A Song Before Sunset' by David Grigg (1976) which I read back in June: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/06/books-i-listened-toread-in-june.html 

'I Know How to Pick 'Em' by Lawrence Black is on in which the woman is a catalyst rather than protagonist. It is contemporary film noir kind of set up about a woman recruiting men to do a murder for her, but is less clever than it feels itself to be. In this collection it also seems wrong to include a woman whose agency is far less than she tries to make it. 'Wrestling Jesus' by Joe R. Lansdale, is similar. It actually features only the story of a woman until the end and it is more about an old wrestler and a young male victim of bullying he is training. To get in this collection is a real contrivance.

'My Heart is Either Broken' by Megan Abbott about an abducted girl and a mother whose story is not believed has that noir feel, but fits better in this book with a female protagonist yet one facing up to the debilitating effects of official disbelief. 'Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell' by Brandon Sanderson is what I had expected from this book. It is a science fiction/fantasy in that it is set in a world colonised by humans but with and old technology, creatures and a whole set of rules as if from a fantasy novel. It works well, both in highlighting the dangers of this world and how the two female protagonists deal with it as well as having that 'otherly' sense.

Overall, then this was rather a disappointment. If Martin had stepped back and simply edited, it would have been better. There are some gems in here, but the criteria for inclusion of stories seems very loose and as such what is in here too often seems wide of the mark.

'Flashman and the Pillar of Light' by George MacDonald Fraser

In the late 1980s, having enjoyed the movie 'Royal Flash' (1975) combining a kind of 'The Prisoner of Zenda' with genuine bits of German history, I read all the Flashman novels which, at the time, had reached 'Flashman and the Dragon' (1985). Subsequently, with this novel in 1990 and three others up to 2005, he added to the canon. MacDonald Fraser had started the series in 1969, expanding the life of a minor character from 'Tom Brown's School Days' (1857) by Thomas Hughes to be a skilled linguist, a cowardly and promiscuous soldier who managed to get involved in many of the great incidents of the 1840s-90s, both in the British Empire and elsewhere in the world. The mix of lots of historical research (there are pages of historical notes), cheeky humour, sex, battles and always a torture scene, made the books winning for over 20 years. I do think though, they are probably not well received now. The books are written in the first person of Harry Flashman who is upper middle class, but pretty crude and certainly imbued with misogynistic and racist attitudes. These fit the character, but I imagine few young people today would wish to read a book which so often features the word 'nigger' and a whole host of derogatory terms towards women and Asian people as this book jams in.

With that caveat, this book fits with the preceding eight. It features Flashman working as a diplomat-cum-agent in the Punjab in the lead up to and during the First Anglo-Sikh War 1845-46 at a time when British India was controlled by the British East India Company. The war in itself was bizarre and MacDonald Fraser, though at times bewildering the reader, does reasonably well in showing how the female regent Jind Kaur for her son Duleep Singh who was to be the last Maharajah of Punjab. Jind Kaur's brother, the preceding Maharajah had been murdered by the Sikh Army which had grown to 80,000 men. Jind Kaur sought to weaken the army in Punjab politics by giving it what it wanted - an invasion of British India, but in a way which would mean its defeat and the clipping of its power. Even this brief summary indicates the complexity of the situation. MacDonald Fraser does well in weaving Flashman into this story, making him the cause of some of the incidents, including ultimately the securing to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, the 'mountain of light' to the British crown jewels. The fact that Jind Kaur was a promiscuous drunkard allows him to include a lot of sex too.

The story moves at a reasonable pace, though not aided by the genuine complexity of what was going on in the region at the time. Added to that, not only does he make extensive use of epithets of the time, but Flashman and others use numerous Punjabi and Hindi terms, sometimes distorted by English usage, which requires a running glossary, though further highlighting the extent of the author's research. Overall, it was not a bad novel, but for the reasons given above it lacked some of the pace of the previous ones in the series. MacDonald Fraser is good a shining a light on parts of history that often get overlooked these days. I was fascinated to see how close the British came to being ejected from the Indian subcontinent at a relatively early stage. However, I would suggest to many modern readers, especially those liable to take offence at any use of colonial era language and attitudes to stay well clear of the book.

'The Elixir of Death' by Bernard Knight

This is the tenth book in the Crowner John series which brings the series up to covering 12 months as the first was set in November 1195 and we are now at November 1196. It is a bit of an oddity and as I have commented before might have benefitted from tightening up the narrative without so much riding back and forth across Devon. There are a series of apparently unconnected murders, from sailors on board a ship from France - including the husband of one of Sir John's mistresses - to a mutilation of a local lord whose head ends up being dumped in Exeter Cathedral. There is also a sub-plot around alchemy in an attempt to create gold for Prince John to fund a renewed uprising against his brother, King Richard. Bits of the story feel rather contrived, especially the involvement of Richard de Revelle, John's brother-in-law and disgraced sheriff; John's wife and one of his mistresses. 

The inclusion of Assassins from Syria, does not seem impossible, but all of these factors together seem like Knight taking it a bit too far in terms of coincidence and leaving out some of his usual cast might have benefited the story. As always the portrayal of medieval Exeter and Devon and references to the Second Crusade, do add a richness which I think aided the popularity of the books. At times I feel Knight tries rather too hard. Maybe he was driven on by an agent or publishers to include things that readers would expect, especially in the period following the success of  'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) and other books by Dan Brown that referenced medieval mysteries. I would rather that he had been guided by the approach of Ellis Peters.

'Against A Dark Background' by Iain M. Banks

I much prefer those of Iain M. Banks's novels which do not feature his galaxy spanning all-powerful Culture. Thus, this one featuring the survivors of a mentally-linked combat team, heading off in a single solar system to recover various rare artefacts, felt to be of the right scope. Indeed there was a lot in this book I enjoyed. The main character, Sharrow, is the female leader of the team, but also an aristocrat in the civilization's hierarchical structure. Due to actions by her parents, she is seen as an obstacle to the coming of the messiah of a particular cult who have just received permission to try for a year and a day to assassinate her. In the meantime, Sharrow seeks to bargain the release of her half-sister Breyguhn from the grim fortress prison of another cult. The team of five, reduced from eight in previous wars head across planets trying to get on the trail first of the book of  'Universal Principles' and with this then follow clues within it to the eighth and final Lazy Gun, a super-powerful weapon, perhaps concealed by Sharrow's father.

Banks presents an incredibly rich culture, with exotic cities built of ships or under and within a vast tree; immense fortresses and a wide variety of landscapes. The societies are diverse and richly described. There are odd, seemingly anachronistic elements such as people writing letters or even cheques and a pillbox hat and so on. You wonder if that was intentional among all the very advanced vehicles and weaponry. The main challenge is that there is so much imaginative stuff. There are so many different organisations, authorities, religions and creatures that it is hard to keep track. Yes the plot twists and twists again, which is great, but it becomes tiresome to follow who is tricking whom. Added to that Banks drops in flashbacks with minimal indication. As many of these involve members of her team as they are in the 'now' you can easily be reading something thinking it is about the current timeline when it is from years in the past. It is a little easier in the scenes with Breyguhn and their male cousin Geis, but not always especially when they feature in the 'now' too. 

It is interesting to see why certain things happen and there are important clues in the 'past' to understand actions in the present. However, sometimes you do wonder do we need to see when the group were last at a bar which is now a book shop. I have commented in the past how Banks's science fiction books often seem under-edited and the good qualities of this book would have been really highlighted if the jumping around in time had been handled far better even if with a tag, e.g. 'Above Nachtel's Ghost, five years ago' or something.

Another challenge is the tone. At times the book seems light-hearted, certainly when the team are trying to steal the the 'Universal Principles' which it turns out the King of Pharpech sits on at his coronation. Pharpech is a low tech society with quaint rituals and at times you feel is created for humour. Sharply different in tone are scenes in the Sea House, the grim prison where Breyguhn is held and certainly the long section where the team struggle against increasing odds along the shore of a fjord to reach the location of the Lazy Gun and suffer more and more at the hands of a competing team of mercenaries. The characters we have come to know well through numerous interactions and their thrilling and entertaining scrapes and now in a bleak existential crisis something like journey of Captain Robert Scott at the Antarctic. The reader is warned of the bleakness from the comments on the book, but they sit uneasily alongside the jokey almost spoof-like section in Pharpech. Added to that, not to spoil it too much but Banks bottles out and a machina ex machina means he steps away from what at times would seem the inevitable outcome, not just once but again and again.

This could have been a brilliant book. There is a rich imagination at work in the book which fascinates you. The story and the twists are engaging. The trouble is, as happens too often, Banks rattles through it unfettered; perhaps uncontrolled, thus you are left scrabbling after him across rapids, uncertain of what he is actually showing you as you hurtle past it. As a result, you cannot really appreciate the details or the plot as much as you should be able to do.

Non-Fiction

'Europe of the Dictators' by Elizabeth Wiskemann

This book, published in 1966, was often recommended to me. I have carried around a very battered copy for about 35 years and finally got around to reading it. Yes, it is dated. Writing such a book today I do not think a historian would speak about regions of Europe as being 'backward' or note every politician she mentions who happens to be Jewish. However, as a general survey of European history 1919-45, it remains incredibly astute. A lot of writers could learn how in a book of 287 pages in my edition she manages to actually get in far more detail than many larger survey books of the period. 

Just minor examples, she outlines the three Austrian banks that collapsed in 1931, outlining the connections between them, whereas most accounts only speak of one. She does not forget to describe what happened to both Slovakia and Ruthenia when Bohemia-Moravia was occupied by the Germans in 1939 and so on. That might seem not major issues, but having read numerous books on this period down the years, I learnt elements of value from this one. She does look at Europe, seeking to include what was happening in countries that are typically neglected, such as down to Luxembourg, let alone the Baltic States, the Nordic states, and so as well as the Powers of the era.

The other strength of this book is the style. It is brisk, almost energetic, and yet never loses that clarity. Even complex situations are explained very crisply. This is one of those history books that you can almost read like a novel. Yet, it is not pure narrative; the analysis built on the foundations of those details is there. Thus, I certainly regret not having come to this book sooner and would say, that despite its age, it remains one of the best survey history books on the developments in Europe at this time that I have read.

Books I Read In January

 Fiction

'Blood Work' by Michael Connelly

This was the first non-Harry Bosch book I had read by Connelly. It has many of the same traits, being set in California and having a grittiness about it, that is reminiscent of 'hard boiled' crime novels of the mid-20th Century. However, he has tried to adopt a slightly different approach in having a former FBI investigator being asked by the sister of the dead woman who provided his heart transplant to investigate her murder. While the character Terry McCaleb lives on a boat, like Sonny Crockett in 'Miami Vice' (1984-90) though this one is rather a worn down one which belonged to his father, he has no legal standing and has to rely on favours especially from an old friend in the sheriff's office. As might be expected the killing during a hold-up proves to be more than it first appears and connected to a number of other killings.

The motivation for the killing does seem rather contorted and the signposts, retrospectively seem very blatant. However, the difficulty of trying to investigate without even the powers a US private investigator has and a man who is far from healthy, is an interesting approach; for much of the book he has to be driven around by his neighbour who keeps pushing his nose into the investigation. There are some interesting scenes when he is trying to get information illicitly and is running up against opposition from the police and those connected to the victims. It is pretty good on the impact of an apparently random killing on the people left behind. Overall, not a bad attempt. As I say, some of it seems rather far-fetched after the link between the crimes is revealed, but the story telling is otherwise reasonable.

I had not realised it was made into a movie in 2002, starring Clint Eastwood; I have never come across it.

'Dragonflight' by Anne McCaffrey

This is the first in a series of fantasy books that were very popular when I was a teenager. The edition I have, published in 1992 was the 19th reprint of the book first published in 1969. However, like 'The Lord of the Rings' (1954-55) trilogy and 'The Mists of Avalon' (1983), I felt it was too too much of a rather naff, overused fantasy trope. They say do not judge books by their covers, but with this one, from those covers I assumed the whole series was rather a wishy-washy fairy story sequence about princesses and dragons. I went off and read Michael Moorcock books instead. However, finding a slim copy in a charity shop - and you can tell the age because it is a fantasy novel coming in at 255 pages, rather than 855 - I thought I would give it a go. In fact it turned out as being far closer to anything by Moorcock than Tolkien or Zimmer Bradley.

For a start, it is effectively, science fiction as it is set on Pern, a world settled by humans, somewhere in the galaxy some millennia earlier. However, distant from Earth technology has reverted to being medieval. The dragons are very much those we know from Western mythology though they have to eat a rocky fuel in order to breathe flame. They have been trained to fly with human riders to intercept 'threads' which fall from another planet which is on an elliptical path and passes close to Pern every 200 years or so. The dragons can teleport and it subsequently proves, travel through time, too. However, seen the last passing, the dragon riders even the hatching of dragons, has declined and they are contested as being necessary for Pern's safety by the various local rulers.

Some of the elements of the novel follow classic fantasy tropes, so Lessa is a young noblewoman whose family were usurped from ruling a Hold, and she has to disguise herself and work in the kitchens until identified as a possible dragon rider and not only does she become one, but she is partnered with the current queen gold dragon. Much of the novel covers how the dragon riders, latterly led by F'lar the rider of the leading male bronze dragon, and Lessa work to restore the standing of the dragon riders in Pern society and ready for the imminent approach of the other planet. They face opposition to various steps from among the dragonriders and wider society, especially among leaders.

What is interesting about the book, is that on the surface this looks like a hundred other fantasy novels. However, undercut with a very strong feminist perspective McCaffrey dodges away from what you might expect. Lessa and F'lar have sex but they are not really lovers. They often have completely different opinions. The piecing together of the history of what happened, how the various Weyrs - strongholds of the dragon riders, have now fallen to just one, is interestingly done. Added to that it soon proves that some of the schemes go badly wrong. The use of apostrophed names probably did fit the trope and some are too alike to make it easy occasionally to decide who is being spoken about.

Overall though, I found the approach refreshing and meant I was uncertain what might happen next rather than going through the motions of a very similar story. I think this rather highlights what has been lost from fantasy writing which was apparent in the late 1960s/early 1970s when people were willing to experiment much more than they are these days. While there is greater representation in fantasy now, an author coming clearly along a feminist line seems less common.

I can see why these books were so popular, though knowing some of the people I know who read them, I do wonder how they got on with the more challenging aspects given the other books they read. Maybe they missed the feminism and simply looked to the dragons in action. Anyway, I do wonder who else like me, in contrast, was put off by the covers, so turned away from books that would have been of interest at the time.

'Eaters of the Dead' by Michael Crichton

This book probably deserves an award for the most misleading title. This book is not a zombie novel but the source of the movie 'The Thirteenth Warrior' (1999). It features a real man, Arab ambassador, Ahmad Ibn Fadlan (879-960 CE) who was sent in 922 CE from Baghdad to travel to Bulgaria but never got there and went off on other unrecorded adventures. The first three chapters are a translation of his actual account of travelling through the Middle East to southern Europe and are terribly simplistic and repetitive. Then Crichton brings in the fiction and has Ibn Fadlan travel through Russia to various parts of Scandinavia with a small band of Nordic warriors charged with ridding a particular region of the eponymous eaters of the dead. Most of the rest of the book is about the action against these people, who we are led to believe are Neanderthal survivors living on in remote parts of northern Europe. Crichton wrote the book in 1976 but the edition I have had was came out in 1992 and had a supplementary essay at the end about how his portrayal of different species of humans living on alongside Cro Magnon people has been reinforced. Of course, with the discovery of  Denisovans and Homo luzonensis, now among 20 species of humans identified, subsequently have strengthened his idea even further.

This is not a bad book, but while moderately diverting, it is not engaging. I think at the time Crichton expected us to be more excited by a story about Vikings and Neanderthals, but both are very well known in fiction now. He had no need to include the historical sections of the book and adopting the approaches seen in the movie would have worked much better. In general I would say, do not bother with the book, simply watch the movie, it is a much more satisfying experience especially for audiences today.

'Figure of Hate' by Bernard Knight

This is the ninth book in the novels about Sir John De Wolfe, coroner of southern Devon and as with the previous ones it follows on closely from the one before. The series has now reached October 1195 and there has been a bit of a re-set. The Bush tavern in which De Wolfe has an interest and is run by his mistress has been rebuilt and his brother-in-law has been removed from being Sheriff of Devon on grounds of corruption. Though compelled to retire to his estates he still makes trouble for De Wolfe in this novel. De Wolfe's clerk, Thomas de Peyne has been cleared of the charges against him and can re-enter the church and acquires an apprentice in his work for the coroner.

The novel opens with a fair imminent in Exeter. Perhaps because I have quite often worked as a market trader, I do enjoy stories set against the background of a medieval fair, such as 'Saint Peter's Fair' (1981) by Ellis Peters in the Cadfael series. However, this book does encompass a number of what appear to be distinct crimes, from the murder of a silversmith to the killing of a manor lord fifteen miles outside Exeter. Another element is the inclusion of jousts which were already developing as a kind of professional sporting circuit. The manor lord, Hugh Peverel and his his brother are leading lights in this field, though falling on harder times.

The novel is interesting for these aspects of medieval life. As noted before Knight liked to include different ones and their associated laws in each book. The bringing together of the different crimes is handled quite well, though there is a bit too much riding back and forth to the manor of Barton Peverell. Furthermore arrogant members of the gentry telling De Wolfe repeatedly that he has no jurisdiction and is wasting time is overdone and become very tedious. The level of poverty of serfs especially on a poorly run manor is, however, deftly highlighted. This then, is a solid entry in the series that could have been tauter with some editing of repeated encounters.

Non-Fiction

'American Scoundrel' by Thomas Keneally

Keneally is best known for 'Schindler's Ark' (1982). This book is less a novel than that book, but Keneally seems unable to keep it purely as a work of non-fiction. It focuses on US Congressman and diplomat Major General Daniel Sickles (1819-1914). He was a politician from New York city in the mid-19th Century. He was very involved in corrupt practices right from the start. He was highly disreputable, having a string of mistresses and taking a brothel madam as his companion to meet Queen Victoria when serving in the US diplomatic service in London. He made friends relatively easy and also created hangers-on via the corrupt allocation of posts at city and national level. He got to such a level that he was friendly with President James Buchanan, who when ambassador to Britain he served under and the wife of President Abraham Lincoln. Though supportive of the slave states' rights, he did a volte face at the outbreak of the civil war, infuriated by the secessionists' attacks on federal property. Raising army units in New York, he eventually rose to be a Major General in command of the Union's Third Corps and was at the Battle of Gettysburg where he lost a leg.

Though Keneally gives immense detail, at times very tedious about, Sickles, his main focus is on his acquittal for murdering Philip Key, the District Attorney for Washington D.C., close to the White House. He shot the man repeatedly with two pistols and there was no doubt he had murdered him. Key had been having an ill-concealed relationship with Sickles's wife, Teresa, eighteen years his junior. Sickles was acquitted on the grounds of temporary insanity provoked by the flagrant affair that Key had had with his wife. This was the first time temporary insanity had been used as a defence in the USA. Teresa and his daughter were compelled to retire from public life in shame and were neglected by Sickles for the rest of his life; his daughter Laura died in poverty aged 38. Sickles repeated the same behaviour with his second wife, the Spaniard Carmina Creagh who he met while US ambassador to Spain and with whom he had two children.

One might comprehend that this book highlights the double standards of the day and indeed that have persist into modern times. A man can be corrupt, have a string of lovers and cheat on his wife repeatedly, but one affair by her is condemned so severely that it is seen as permissible for her to have her lover murdered with impunity and for her to be shunned by society as the guilty party. Keneally largely neglects this perspective. His attitude towards Sickles is highly ambivalent and you keep feeling that he cannot help himself admire the man. At times, especially when Teresa was almost a recluse in New York, he throws in these weird speculations about how there could have been a reconciliation to her by her husband and how she could have played roles like other politicians' and generals' wives. These bits are odd in a book which in theory is a history book, because they have no basis beyond Keneally's imagination. They also neglect Sickles's supreme arrogance that despite his sustained promiscuous behaviour and even after having murdered her lover, it seems with malice aforethought if not cold blood, he was so offended as never to forgive her.

There are interesting background elements about US society in the mid- to late 19th Century. It is no surprise to see that corruption and violent crime even by 'respectable' members of US society were as rife then as they are now. The carrying of guns in Washington and their use seems very contemporary to us. The prime problem is that Keneally cannot shake off his admiration for Daniel Sickles and so throughout you feel that he is complicit with the corruption, the double standards and the arrogance. As a reader of today, that is a slant that is very hard to swallow. There are further problems at least with the version of the book I was given, published by Vintage in 2002. The type is tiny and to make it worse the opening lines of each chapter are in pale grey rather than black.

Overall unless you are a really arrogant misogynist who wants to look for some kind of role model, I would completely avoid this book. For a modern audience, even more than 20 years ago, the author's ambivalence to inappropriate behaviour really sticks in your throat.

Books I Read In November

 Fiction

'Assassin's Apprentice' by Robin Hobb [Margaret Astrid Lindholm Ogden]

I am not sure why I have not come across Hobb before. She is quite a prolific fantasy author and while I was reading a 2014 reissue this book, the first in the Farseer Trilogy, it had come out in 1995 when I was living in London. I do not know if this book counts as a Young Adult novel. I know a lot of fantasy written by women gets dumped in that category by default even if not written intentionally for that audience. Also in my day there were simply children's books and then books read by adults, rather than this division and sub-division. I do not see what is gained by these categories - New Adult, i.e. 18-30s, is one of the latest and why they cannot simply read books for adults I do not know. A lot of this, I am sure stems from algorithms wanting to push certain books to individual customers. However, I think it can put up barriers to readers seeking new things to read because they are not in the 'right' category. I started reading books both by Terry Pratchett and Michael Moorcock when I was 12 when Moorcock's work in particular might have been seen as too 'old' for me, but was still reading them 40 years later, in part because they produced so many. By then Pratchett books could be seen as far too 'young' for me.

Anyway, with that off my chest, I think this book may feel a bit like a YA story as it follows a character from about age 6 to 16. Fitz (he is allocated various names) is the bastard son of the crown prince in the fantasy realm of the Kingdom of the Six Duchies. The novel follows his training as a tender of dogs (which he can reach out to telepathically), as a courtier and as an assassin. He is also poorly trained in how to use the Skill, telepathic communication between selected people. A lot of it is a coming of age story though with some horribly cruel elements in it that almost made me abandon the book at the time. The Kingdom is facing attack by pirates who strip hostages of their humanity and turn them loose in their old towns to wreak havoc and there is a lot of court intrigue plus politics of marriage and assassination with a neighbouring kingdom as the assault of the pirates seems unstoppable.

Though there are some elements which seem typical of fantasy writing, a kind of default Western or at least (North-West) European medieval setting, I can see why the book was popular at the time because the 'magic' is largely mental and above all, there is a well-developed political system, which actually is often a good foundation for successful fantasy and science fiction series. One thing Hobb does well is have believable characters. Some are so flawed or nasty to almost be intolerable. However, you have faith that they could be real people despite the fantasy setting and yet their behaviour meshes well the society and culture they are shown in. Thus, overall, despite wanting to abandon the book at times due to the cruelty portrayed, I think this is a well written fantasy novel and if I saw any more in this series or the others Hobb produced, I would pick them up.

'A Scandalous Man' by Gavin Esler

I was interested to compare this book to 'Head of State' (2014) by Andrew Marr, another British politics TV presented which I read back in 2018: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/11/books-i-listened-toread-in-november.html  I must say that this book, published in 2008, is far better written than that one. It features a fictional Conservative Minister from the Thatcher days who fell from grace after an affair, some that was quite common in the 1980s, though these days even the prime minister can ride out such behaviour when it comes to light. Burnett is largely well drawn. He becomes entangled with the CIA and is involved in supplying chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The novel jumps between his political activities of the past and 2005 when his estranged son, Harry, is trying to find out why his father attempted to commit suicide and also what he had really got up to in the 1980s; there is also a narrative around the family coming back together.

Some bits are levered in stretching credulity. Harry happens to be studying Arabic in a class with a MI5 officer and two men who will be involved in the 7th July 2005 terrorist outrages and happens to meet a Turkish woman who becomes the love of his life, just as his father had a relationship with an Iraqi-American broadcaster. The ending also seems rather contorted though still in some ways authentic. In contrast, Robin Burnett's guilt at what he has done in office seems forced, indeed false. I am unaware of any of Thatcher's ministers who regretted their behaviour during their time in office and who went to work for a refugee charity rather than taking up a high-paid job for some company, typically with ongoing dubious connections.

The one thing that saves the book is Esler's writing. Reviewing the book when it came out in 2008, Melissa Benn, hardly a fan of Conservatism, noted this deftness: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/jun/07/fiction3  Esler succeeds in even making people like Benn and myself feel engaged with Robin Burnett, let alone his son, people we would probably go a long way to avoid in real life. You are swept on by the lightness of touch and it carries you over the bits that in another book, like one written by Marr would have you drawing up short and complaining. It is a shame that Esler has not written more books because he has a skill in writing that means he stands out from among those TV presenters who have turned to fiction, notably in the thriller genre. Despite some flaws which you feel with some more experience, Esler could have corrected, I was surprised to zip through this book. While I might not have liked most of the characters, I was certainly interested in what was going to happen to them.

'The Witch Hunter' by Bernard Knight

While this is the eighth book in the Crowner John series set in late 12th Century Exeter, it is different to the preceding ones. There are murders but these are carried out through mob violence. There is no mystery as at each stage it is known, at least to the reader, who is driving on the killings and who carried them out. What the book is more about are concerns which have often featured in the series, primarily the power of influential individuals to have the law run in their favour. A widow feeling that her husband who died of a heart attack, was murdered by witchcraft is able to use connections with the church to produce a literal witch hunt and the rapid execution or murder of a number of 'cunning' women, effectively 'barefoot' doctors working in Exeter or the neighbouring villages. Sir John De Wolfe's antagonist, his brother-in-law, the Sheriff of Devon, Sir Richard de Revelle tries to turn the campaign against John's mistress and her inn, in which John had invested, is burnt to the ground. However, finally after seven books De Revelle - a real man who served as sheriff - perhaps has gone too far in his greed and his arrogance. This book feels like a turning point in the series with the fate of the sheriff in the balance and even John's clerk Thomas de Peyne looking to have a reprieve in being barred from the clergy.

Knight does well in bringing a fresh approach to the series. While the story eschews the mystery element it remains well engaging as John seeks to quell mob violence and make safe his friend and his lover. The fact that even though you know the killers, you are uncertain how everything will unfold and who will prevail, continues to make the novel engaging even without a mystery to it.

Non-fiction

'The Occupation of the Rhineland, 1918-1929' by Brigadier General Sir James E. Edmonds

This book was one of the British government's official histories of what became known as the First World War. Almost all the volumes bar this one and the one on British action in Persia were published 1922-49. Though work on this volume began in 1930 it was only due to persistence by Edmonds that it was completed in 1944, after substantial revisions. Only a couple of hundred copies were produced and kept within the government. It was only published to the public in 1987. It is a dry and at times very technical account of the British forces and administration that took not just part in the occupation of the Rhineland but was also involved in providing security to the plebiscites in East Prussia and Silesia. Some of the detail will only appeal to military history fans who like to know precisely where specific battalions were at particular times. For those with a more general interest, it does provide an interesting perspective on the enforcement of the armistice and then the Treaty of Versailles, largely from the British angle, but naturally bringing in elements of their co-occupiers, especially the French, but also the Belgians, Italians and Americans.

Edmonds had to be driven to reduce some of the negative commentary on the Germans in revisions of the books, especially in the inter-war, post-Locarno Pact era. However, even the clinical accounts of what went on show how much the German military and authorities evaded the requirements placed on them almost from the moment that the armistice was signed. The mistreatment and then abandonment of Entente prisoners-of-war is not an aspect which gets mentioned. The German evasions such as in provision of resources and complaints about the terms of the armistice and the following treaty; the lying about how many trained, armed men there were, seem incessant and done in a very arrogant way. It is clear that almost everyone the British had to deal with subscribed to the myth of the 'stab in the back' and so blamed revolutionaries and the politicians rather than perceiving Germany as having been truly defeated.

The book does provide a useful counter-balance to the GCSE-level view that the Treaty of Versailles was too 'harsh', through showing how much of it was evaded, both in financial and military terms. It shows how the Germans exploited willingness by the British to make adjustments, e.g. with the Locarno Pact, to press for more and more as if this is what they deserved. The British, in contrast to the French, played right into the hands of German nationalists, largely because of the constant desire to reduce the cost of the occupation. Time after time, British forces were shaved and shaved again to save money until the time when their presence was effectively cosmetic. While standard histories point to Hitler reintroducing conscription in 1935, it is clear from this book that the German military in all the preceding years since the armistice had been working hard to maintain a 'shadow' army of trained and indeed armed men in a string of disguises. This helps explain how the Nazis were so quickly able to mobilise, because the 100,000-strong army of the Weimar years had been a myth.

One can certainly understand from this account why in 1943-45 there was an insistence on going right to Berlin and showing the Germans that they had truly been defeated. However, the lesson of the extent of the cost of occupation for the British had been lost and history largely repeated itself with the formation of Bizonia in just over two years after the end of the Second World War, as again, exhausted just as in 1918, Britain had to scale down and then abandon a thorough occupation. Of course, truly committing to a genuine occupation in 1919 and enforcing it throughout, may have at least hampered the rapid German return to being a threat post-1933. Given how extensively the Germans complained about even the benign British occupation, it would have been no worse if they had enforced it thoroughly. The abandonment of German passive resistance to the French and Belgian occupation of the Ruhr in 1923-25 shows that while they complained, practically they could do little when the Allies reacted for real. Neglecting enforcement out of some misguided acceptance of German propaganda simply made it easier for the Second World War to occur in Europe. In this context, appeasement can be seen as simply the continuation of a policy adopted right in 1918, at least by the British.

Overall, while a rather dry book, it does bring useful perspectives on the relationship between Britain and Germany in the inter-war period and how the British, desperate to save money above all else, bent so far in pandering to the Germans, a policy which continued even once the nationalist coalitions had been replaced by the Nazi dictatorship.

Books I Read In October

 Fiction

'Fear in the Forest' by Bernard Knight

This is the seventh Crowner John novel and like the fifth, 'The Tinner's Corpse' (2001), Knight takes the opportunity to look at another specific aspect of English law in the late 12th Century. In this novel it is how the 'forests' were regulated. While the legal forests did contain woodland they also encompassed heathland and other landscapes. As the novel shows there was stringent but sometimes unrelated regulation of the forests which were deemed to belong to the King. Taking wood, let alone killing wildlife in them could lead to stringent penalties. This novel is really one about corruption by those who policed the forests and them working with criminals to enforce protection rackets and promote their businesses, e.g. in brewing or woodworking over those of locals. Coroner Sir John De Wolfe's antagonist through the novels, the Sheriff of Devon, his brother-in-law, also seems involved. De Wolfe's mistress, Nesta the landlady is pregnant and his wife goes off to a nunnery.

Overall, because there are a series of crimes, including murder, but also extortion and corruption, this is quite a messy novel. Even De Wolfe's relationship with the two women in his life seems scrappy. I guess clear motives should not be expected from people in such a situation, especially for women without societal agency to do all that they might want to. However, the novel does highlight the complexity of the legal situation that Knight wished to highlight and shows very well the difficulties even for nobles of navigating around laws which largely were about making money for the monarch rather than providing a rational legal system for day-to-day life. There are points of action and these come to a climax of violent action, a little as in some of the previous novels, notably 'Crowner's Quest' (1999) and 'The Awful Secret' (2000), melodramatically. However, I guess that it brings it to conclusion after all the various strands he has sent up during the novel and the inability of De Wolfe to challenge corruption in the church, which reminds me of books by Michael Dibdin and Leonardo Sciascia set in contemporary Italy.

'Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City' by K.J. Parker [Tom Holt]

A novel focused on the siege of a city seems a refreshing way to go in a fantasy context. The location is a Roman/Byzantine city and at times the almost explicit references to Roman culture jar in this fantasy context, even though the main race of the city are blue-skinned. The arena, the colours for different factions in the city, the names, the bronze chain at the harbour, even the use of engineering units, that the protagonist Orhan commands, seem to be lifted without much modification from the Roman setting. Parker does seem obsessed with engineers in his fantasy writing. I guess it makes a change from knights or sorcerers especially in this set-up of him defending a city, 'The City' from foreign invaders who have proven to be very clever strategically and well equipped.

It is an interesting book, as much about dealing with various types of people in society as about the technical issues of feed and arming people; of operation siege weapons, etc. The greatest problem I had was the 'cheeky chappy' style of the language for much of the book. It is written in the first person and quickly the kind of 'Cockney barrow boy' language becomes tiring. The book improves towards the end as this declines. The characters, aside from Orhan, are quite believable. The coincidences, especially who is leading the opponents are a further weakness. The ending is very poor, a complete anti-climax and it seems as if after all the hard work Parker put into the different developments and characters he simply ran out of steam and had no idea how to bring it properly to an end. Consequently the rushed conclusion undermines what had gone before. It is not a bad book and as I said at the start it has some refreshing elements. It certainly would have benefited from a map of the world it features as so much is dependent on people marching through particular terrain or not being able to get through a certain straits; a map of the city would also have helped as Orhan hares around different parts and where he and his helpers are and when is important for the story, but never really being clear about them makes it harder to enjoy.

'Burning Bright' by Tracy Chevalier

This is a 'slice of life' novel. It is set in 1792 and is about the family of a chair maker from an area of Dorset I know reasonably well relocating to south London. The family become connected to a circus located in Lambeth. The children in particular also interact with the neighbours, one of whom includes William Blake, the poet, songwriter, painter, engraver and printer. The family become embroiled in scandals at the circus and the attacks on Blake as a result of his support for the French Revolution. The novel simply documents what they see and do in London and the travails of the family. Women getting pregnant, which happens to three of the characters, one of them a major one, seems to be an important focus for Chevalier. You do wonder at the behaviour of some characters, though I think one point is that motherhood, despite its high risks, was seen as a path that many young women could not avoid and might even welcome. At the end of the novel, the family return to their village in Dorset and that is it. Nothing astounding happens, but I guess that is Chevalier's way.

One does have to admire the research Chevalier did and to get the location and the ordinary people of Georgian London so well observed. Much of the pleasure of the book is simply seeing it through the eyes of her protagonists. Even then, it is not perfect. She refers to 'Queen Elizabeth I', at a time when she would only have been 'Queen Elizabeth' the way that Queen Victoria and Queen Anne remain to us today. Given the suffix 'the First' would suggest the characters could see into the future and know that a second would come. The other thing is she refers to mauve some 65 years before it was famously invented as a colour; 'violet' would have done perfectly well instead.

'Angels Flight' by Michael Connelly

This is the sixth book in the Harry Bosch series by Connelly and is set a year after the previous one, 'Trunk Music' (1997). Bosch's precipitate marriage to Eleanor Wish at the end of that novel has already unravelled. Themes about racial tension in Los Angeles which have come in around the edges throughout the series are ramped up in this novel. It sees the murder of a leading black lawyer who has specialised in prosecuting police misconduct cases, on the Angels Flight funicular railway. This again allows Connelly to bring in the tensions he clearly felt writing at the time and to include more parts of the city in his writing. 

As is common with the Bosch novels, the first possible solutions turn out to not necessarily be false but certainly flawed. Working against the context of rioting adds to the dynamism of the story. We are also very much in that time. Cell phones have appeared as the novels have progressed and in this one we see the internet featuring, including, already, a paedophile dark website.

The story combines a nicely twisty case which highlights how people are judged differently both in terms of race but also wealth and influence. On that basis it works well as a mystery. What works less well is how Bosch relates to female characters, especially those closest to him. The best are those at a distance such as the public lawyer set to make sure when the police are investigating there are no conflicts of interest, but as the characters are closer to Bosch, his commanding lieutenant and a member of his team, they are handled less well. 

Eleanor Wish herself feels very much like a device that is dropped in and pulled out in now three of the novels, without really developing her as a full character. His previous 'love interests', Sylvia Moore and Jasmine Corian in 'The Black Ice' (1993), 'The Concrete Blonde' (1994) and 'The Last Coyote' (1995) were similarly under-developed and similarly whisked out of the story. 

I know Connelly was trying to produce a modern version of the 'hard-boiled' crime novel, but as his engagement with racial and technological issues shows, he has been compelled to recognise the changed times and yet the women close to Bosch are portrayed/treated in a way which may have been acceptable to readers in the 1940s but jarred even in the 1990s, let alone now. Eleanor Wish functioned very well as a de-facto femme fatale in 'The Black Echo' (1992) but when cast into a different role, Connelly seems to be at a loss with what to do with her.

This is the last of the Harry Bosch books I own. However, I have a couple more books from two of Connelly's other two series to read.

Non-Fiction

'War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620' by J.R. Hale

Perhaps reflecting its theme, this book lacks the sprightly tone of Hale's 'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' that I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  It also takes a different chronological view of the Renaissance and as Hale makes clear is in fact concerned with the period between the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453 and the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, both conflicts which really defined the nature of warfare, at least in Western Europe. It is important to note that there is this geographical limit and despite some passing references to the Balkans, the focus is no farther East than 'Germany' and 'Italy' as they existed at the time.

Hale is keen as with the other book, however, to adopt a different approach to viewing the history than the ones which were prevalent when the book was published in 1985. He shows how accounts of various campaigns or focused on arms and armour effectively lift warfare out of the context in which it sat. There might be passing references to the politics that provoked, prolonged or ended the wars, but minimal in such histories about the connection to the societies either supplying the soldiers or suffering the consequences of the war, certainly in the pre-20th Century eras. Thus, Hale makes effective use of various examples across the period rather than progressing chronologically. It allows him to view who became soldiers of different kinds and why. It looks at the society of soldiers as being separate but also inter-connected with civilian society. He also looks at the economic and social impact not just of the war but the industries associated with war, especially as gunpowder and artillery played an increasing role through the period the book covers.

While it does lack the particularly engaging tone of the previous book of Hale's I read, it was no less interesting. It is analytical without being dry. The thematic sections are sensible and while covering the same period throughout, avoid repetition. I feel that this book is a very useful one to have alongside any you might read on campaigns and wars of the period to give them depth. It is also, as the other book was, a great resource for authors wanting to set stories in this period. There is a lot of detail here and even stories of different experiences of soldiers and civilians that people can draw from easily if seeking to write something set during the period, even if not explicitly focused on war.

Books I Listened To/Read In August

 Fiction

'The Grim Reaper' by Bernard Knight

This is the sixth Crowner John book in the series. As with the others, the action picks up soon after the previous book ended. However, Knight does recap a great deal, so even if you have not read any of the other books you can pick up the story very easily. Indeed this might be a good one if you want to read as a stand-alone volume. Knight certainly communicates the nature of society and the law in late 12th Century England very well without it seeming to be a lecture.

This book is focused on Exeter and is actually a serial killer investigation. On those grounds it is probably one of the best of the series. John also gets back with Nesta his Welsh mistress and inn keeper, one of the favourite characters of the books. The suspects are limited by the fact that though the murders are diverse in nature, the corpses are accompanied by written extracts from the Bible.

Given the low level of literacy, even among clergymen, this restricts the likely killer to certain priests in the city. We are shown each of the various men and rather different to the previous books, the reader is effectively encouraged to decide between them. However, the investigation is not straightforward. John's own secretary, Thomas De Peyne is even arrested as a suspect, given his knowledge. As is common there is a lot of friction between John and his brother-in-law the Sheriff of Devon, but there is additional issues with the arrival of the judges of the periodic courts in Exeter. Knight balances the politics of the time very well and this adds an extra dimension to the investigations.

Overall, I enjoyed the book and felt it was one of the strongest so far. However, as you can see from my reviews of the previous ones, you can never tell the quality of the next book in the series. Despite, that I am persisting with working my way through them.

'The Twilight Man' by Michael Moorcock

I bought this book at the same time as 'The Rituals of Infinity' (1971) which I read in July: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/05/books-i-listened-toread-in-may.html Like that book it had started life as an episodic story in 'New Worlds' and this combined, revised version was published in 1966. I have read a review which suggests 'The Twilight Man' is atypical of Moorcock's work. However, in contrast I see a lot of seeds of novels and stories which followed. For example a decadent world in which the population had technology to do what they wish and a very 1960s attitude to sex, seems very characteristic of the Dancers at the End of Time novels. The Faustian pact with a flawed, powerful person which has a high cost to the one making the deal, runs right through the Elric books. Even the rotation of Earth having ceased and the Moon or some equivalent welded to the planet, appears again in Moorcock's writing. Thus, I see this novel as laying out many of the themes Moorcock would return over the following two decades and beyond.

As a novel in itself, it is crisp and tight, perhaps unsurprising for something originally produce for a magazine. Moorcock manages to produce a range of different characters quickly but effectively. This enables to see a range of approaches to humanity dealing with the end of the ability to reproduce its species. At times, in this regard, it reminds me a little of  'On the Beach' (1957) by Nevil Shute. However, Moorcock wraps it in his characteristic baroque styling which combines science fiction with fantasy in his unique way. As with the best science fiction, while there is action, the reader is provoked into considering how they would react and behave themselves in this context. Overall if you are looking for a deft, brisk piece of science fiction which delivers a lot for being slender, and, despite the dated sexual politics, asks relevant questions in an age when we have powerful billionaires, our environment is damaged and many societies are facing declining birth rates, then I recommend this book. It is also refreshing to have something that can be read in one sitting, rather than the 800+ page books which are so dominant in science fiction and especially fantasy.

'Altar of Bones' by Philip Carter

Bizarrely 'Philip Carter' (now has added an 'L.' in the middle presumably to avoid confusion with the dietician; cycling and IQ test authors of the same name), it is stated openly, is a pseudonym for an internationally acclaimed author. Who this is in reality I have not been able to find out. A rather ambivalent review quoted on the cover of the edition I read, suggests it might be Harlan Coben and goes on to say, though, that it is better than his other novels, despite their success. I did wonder if it was produced by a female author in the way that J.K. Rowling published books as Robert Galbraith when she moved into producing thrillers; knowing that male readers, especially of action books, too often baulk if they see a female name on the cover. Certainly there are strong female characters in this novel, though ultimately the outcomes for the heroine Zoe Dmitroff ends up with a painfully conventional conclusion; one that I felt was included to please mainstream US readers. At times I do wonder if it was written by the couple, especially given how many characters turn up and the two story threads orbiting the same protagonists.

Whoever wrote this book, published in 2011, it looks as if they were aiming to produce their equivalent of 'The Da Vinci Code' (2003; movie 2006). The sense of a special bloodline passed through women; visits to art galleries and chases around Paris and consulting eccentric specialists certainly parallel incidents in that book. It also had minor parallels with 'Labyrinth' (2005) by Kate Mosse. People are seeking a shrine, the eponymous Altar of Bones, located in Siberia, that while not granting immortality can cure incurable diseases and slow up the ageing process. If that is not enough, there is a spy story about KGB operatives in the USA both assassinating President Kennedy (with a film to prove it) and Marilyn Monroe. The fact that one of the antagonists seeking the film effectively exits the novel shows the extent to which the author had bitten off more than they could chew.

The book is fast moving and if you enjoy Dan Brown's books this will go down well. It is rather bewildering at the start when we are introduced to a string of characters in quite a bit of detail and then they are bumped off; though one reappears alive later. Zoe's mother being a Russian mafia boss does seem to jar with the novel and at least one of the assassins seems like the Terminator and able to cause a string of shootings without provoking any genuine official resistance, no matter which country she is in. The book is not a bad thriller and probably would work for you if seeking an action-mystery book with fewer religious overtones. However, you have to accept stretching of credibility and, conversely, some very conventional outcomes, especially for female characters.

Non-Fiction

'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' ed. by Boris Ford

This is the 1988 edition of the 1983 revision of this volume, though some chapters look to have had minimal updating since 1960. I was given it as a gift when I finished a job in the civil service in 1991, largely on the basis that I read a lot of books by Aldous Huxley. While the book covers the period when he was active, he barely gets a mention. After two introductory chapters on Britain at the time and on its literary scene, the book is a series of essays predominantly about one author or a set of authors and on occasion, a theme. The time frame is rather vague but sort of covers the 1890s to the 1950s, though some chapters, especially the one on Irish writing, stretches far beyond that. The writing is at times intense with critiques, especially of poetry, going down to considering individual words used in specific poems.

Despite the use of 23 writers, predominantly literature academics, there is a connecting theme and that is how negatively they view their subjects. D.H. Lawrence is permitted a couple of books deemed worthy but a lot of his stuff is dismissed as too fantastical. Virginia Woolf is entirely condemned as being 'minor'; Bernard Shaw, Graham Greene, C.P. Snow and W.H. Auden are seen as writing, respectively, nothing of quality and/or nothing substantial. I do not know if this was agreed by the various contributors, but in chapter after chapter they seem to be comparing their subject to some unrevealed 'golden' example that all these authors and poets fall short in meeting. Who the authors or the time period that they are thinking of, is not clear.

There is reference to French and Russian writing which generally seems to come off better than anything they read from those writing in English. You can tell the age of many of the essays, presumably brought over from the Pelican Guide version as even complex French text is not translated; it assumed that the reader is highly fluent in the language so can comprehend the very specialised points being made by those quotations.

There are some interesting points made, such as the role of sailors and the sea in Joseph Conrad's work and Ezra Pound effectively contrasting different versions of himself in his work. The chapters on the rural tradition, First World War writing and Irish English-language literature are interesting. I was introduced to the work of Edward Thomas and L.H. Myers with which I was not familiar. However, fitting with the consistent tone of this book, both are presented as, at best, mediocre; hardly encouraging me to read them. The poet Hugh MacDiarmid was also unfamiliar to me but given his extensive use of Scottish dialect which requires a multitude of footnotes to explain, I would hardly count him as being an English-language poet.

Some of the chapters, notably on the 'language of thought', and criticism and the reading public are so wrapped up in themselves and so dismissive that they are a waste of time; in the latter case, it seems the essayist seems to think that since the death of his journal, no effective criticism has been produced. These are irritating expoundings on topics of minimal interest and are more about the essayists wanting to get irritated about something rather than contribute to scholarship.

I can certainly see why this book gets bad reviews online. If you are to be a student on 20th Century English Literature then this book can be guaranteed to quell and interest, let alone passion, you might have in the authors of that time. This book recommends none of them and portrays them instead as failing and rather pathetic inadequate people not in control of their writing and unable to attain, in most cases any baseline standards; the best only achieve it once or twice, no matter how long their careers.

I came away from this book really questioning why it had been produced and continued to be put out in multiple editions. Yes, it might help with being critical of writing of these times, but in most cases a student writing this way, shackled to personal hobbyhorses and dismissing what many would feel were 'major' if not 'great' authors and poets, would be unlikely to score highly for their essay.

Books I Listened To/Read in May

 Fiction

'The Rituals of Infinity' by Michael Moorcock

This was a Moorcock novel that I had not encountered before. It was first serialised in the 'New Worlds' magazine, 1965-6 before being released as a novel in 1971. I do miss the days of the slim science fiction novels. My edition of this book is only 192 pages long. There is something crisp and to the point of this kind of novel which seems absent these days. The central concept of the novel is that the hero Professor Faustaff is part of a team travelling between a number of alternative Earths that have been created and discovered but are being rather erratically destroyed. Yet another Earth appears and people from other versions are drawn there to re-enact various scenes from Earth's history, the rituals of the title. Fighting back against the demolitions mutates the planets further. For a short novel it covers the idea quickly and yet manages to get in ambivalent characters and complex twists before the true antagonists are revealed. Faustaff is a robust character, unlike many of those Moorcock subsequently wrote. The 1960s background is apparent in that sex is never far from anyone's minds and a young woman simply drops into having sex with Faustaff and waits around while he adventures so they can have more. Though very much of its time, it does show the inventiveness of Moorcock at a time before some of his writing became so esoteric as to easily lose readers.

'Rome. The Emperor's Spy' by M.C. [Manda] Scott

Manda Scott is a very accessible author and she wrote a nice email in response to one I sent her via her website. I was particularly interested in the short story which is included at the end of this novel, 'The Roman in Britain' which is a 'what if?' story about Boudica being victorious and driving the Romans out of Britain, a topic which featured in my chapter, 'From these Shores' in my 'what if?' anthology 'Route Diverted: What If? Stories of the British' (2015). It was great to see someone who has written a lot on the Roman period tackle this topic.

This is the first book in the second tetralogy from Scott, bringing over characters from her successful Boudica tetralogy, 2003-2006. She has also written spy fiction and this book combines the two genres. It is around a team of chariot racers and their support staff in the reign of Emperor Nero leading up to the Great Fire of Rome in 64. This provides the context for seeking out a prophesy which says that if Rome and Jerusalem are burnt then there will be the Second Coming. A heavily scarred and crippled spy, Sebastos Pantera accompanies the team from their starting point near what is modern-day Cherbourg in northern France to a training camp in Alexandria, Egypt and on to Rome itself. This is a novel which is unafraid to feature a number of LGB characters, in line with the cultures of the time.

One challenge of the book is the multiple viewpoints as Scott has brought in Math, a male prostitute and trainee charioteer, son of a British warrior, 'Ajax' the prime charioteer of the team concealing a past in the Middle East and his sometime lover, healer, Hannah alert not just to the Sibylline Oracles but also the factions forming early Christianity. This can make it complex for the reader and there are some scenes such as a fire at the town in France and later during the torture by the prime antagonist when Scott goes through what is happening a number of times from different perspectives. The fragmentation between the three sites, though adding background interest, also complicates and lengthens the novel, reducing some of its dynamism.

I did find the discussion of just two of the different factions that followed in the wake of Jesus (or indeed Judas as he may have been named) interesting. It seems ironic this was the third book in two months I had read/listened to which looked at how people did not believe Jesus was divine until much later, centuries after his death. The portrayal by modern-day Christians of the Bible being written during or immediately after Jesus's lifetime and that there is a simple path from the early churches to the modern one, is mistaken. In an essay at the end, Scott highlights that there were perhaps 30 factions that might have become the Christian Church and the one led by St. Peter easily might not have won out.

The conspiracy, the spying elements, the races and fighting against the final fire, are the highlights of the book and where Scott shows her ability with the tension and action. She certainly grounds her novel in detailed research but sensibly uses that as rich colouring while saving the historical debate to the essay at the end. Overall this is not a bad book. If the multiple viewpoints on particular incidents is reduced in subsequent books then I would be happy to read more in the series. I certainly welcome that someone has brought the spy novel to a very different era to the Cold War.

'The Tinner's Corpse' by Bernard Knight

I welcomed the fact that this novel eschewed the action-adventure stuff of the previous two. Instead it focuses on one and then a second quite mundane murders among the tin panning industry of Dartmoor. Knight has done a lot of research and shows how the industry at the time outstripped that of Cornwall and was the second most profitable export from England. Consequently, tinners were permitted their own kind of parliament and bar for crimes of physical harm, had their own laws and prison. Knight also moves on with his protagonist, Sir John De Wolfe's life. A second coroner is appointed to North Devon and De Wolfe's relationship with his tavern landlady mistress comes to an end. There is a lot of trekking around Dartmoor but this is handled without it being tedious and giving a real feel for the locales which differ so much from Exeter where De Wolfe is based and its surrounding countryside.

The book lines up a number of suspects and has the classic situation of a contested will with various precepts. However, just as you feel you are building to a satisfying conclusion, the book stops. I have always been supportive of crime stories in which the criminal is not brought to justice and it is to be expected with stories set in the 12th Century when power and status meant much more than actual guilt and torture was habitually used in investigations. However, it seems in this case that Knight reached a certain page (330 in my edition) and was told to stop. There are no arrests, no resolution, not even De Wolfe being certain who the guilty individual(s) was/were. It just crashes to an end. I do not know if Knight finishes off the story in a subsequent novel or we simply have to put up with this. After his need for action to round off the previous two novels, it seems he was at a loss as to how to end this one. However, whatever the cause, whether he had no idea how to end it or publishers told him to cease, this makes it probably the most disappointing of the series. As I have a number of the subsequent books, I can only hope he handled them better or I will have to abandon reading them.

Non-Fiction

'A History of Latin America' by George Pendle

This book was first published in 1963 but was updated to 1976, the year before Pendle's death. It continued to be reprinted and my edition is from 1987. Thus, you should not expect to find any recent history of the countries covered. However, this is a good introduction to the region and Pendle is excellent in showing how long-term factors such as the geography, the various ethnicities, the relationship with Europe, the beliefs and the economic factors have shaped the diverse countries in the region throughout the centuries right into the 20th Century. He manages to summarise events from the civilisations in place before Europeans arrived, the conquistadors, the break away from the colonial countries, the various wars and revolutions then caudillo regimes very well. This is a quick way to get an engaging description of the various countries set in context, perhaps as a basis for reading newer works. I found it easy to read and full of details of which I had been ignorant before, despite having even studied Latin American history for a period in the 1980s when I bought this book.

Audio Books - Fiction

'The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes I' by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle; read by David Timson

This is one of the Naxos audio book versions of the stories. This volume contains 'The Speckled Band', 'The Adventure of the Copper Beeches', 'The Stock-Broker’s Clerk' and 'The Red-Headed League'. These stories effectively break into two pairs with the first two about young women put under pressure by nefarious men and the second two about honest urban workers tricked for the purposes of a crime. Hearing them in this collection really highlighted to me what Conan Doyle did well in detailing late Victorian society. Here we see women mixed up in legal and inheritance situations as the result of deaths and remarriage. The step-family is far from being a late 20th Century invention too many people pretend.

In addition, there is a sense of vulnerability, that many in an age without social welfare were at the mercy of relatives and employers. Conan Doyle does seem to chide, in turn the stock-broker's clerk and the pawn broker, for not being more suspicious of overly well-paid positions they are offered; double pay for a job is a trait in a number of the Holmes stories. However, he also shows that at a time without even labour exchanges, let alone Jobseeker's Allowance, how people had to accept what was offered, no matter how dubious, or face penury. Thus, though I was familiar with the stories, having them this way, I found something more in them. Timson is excellent with the range of voices covered, both male and female, but especially Holmes and really brings to life the details of the text. Particularly memorable was a line from 'The Red-Headed League': 'He is as brave as bulldog and as tenacious as a lobster'!

Books I Listened To/Read In April

Non-Fiction

'The Awful Secret' by Bernard Knight

This is the fourth book in the Crowner John series set a few months after the melodramatic trial by tournament that ended 'Crowner's Quest' (1999). Sir John De Wolfe has largely recovered from the broken leg he received at the tournament and is back investigating. There are two main stories, one about the murder of a man washed up on the northern shore of Devon and then him being pressured to help a former Templar he knew in Palestine, who himself is murdered. One might expect that whenever Templars are mentioned these days there will also be something about the Holy Grail and the descendants of Jesus Christ. 

Though this book was published in 2000, ahead of 'The Da Vinci Code' (2003) it shows people holding the same views on Jesus's bloodline as in that book. However, unlike in most books of this kind, De Wolfe being a good Catholic of the late 12th Century sees the entire idea as blasphemous. This brings in interesting tensions as to how far a man will go to aid old army comrades, ones he did not know particularly well. While he assists the first former templar, even concealing him at his family's home, he feels obliged to aid the second, despite ultimately despising the line that he preaches. In many ways, De Wolfe is tricked and this makes him seem that much more human than all the laboured philandering which fill so much of these books. There is tension as he tries to help the second templar get away from Dorset.

There is an additional sub-plot with an invasion of the island of Lundy held by pirates though promised to the Templars and in subduing another village on the mainland coast indulging in piracy. These provide action scenes that Knight seems to have felt were necessary now in each of these books. Some modern commentators feel the secret is 'dull' though I think that is because some twenty years on these speculations about Jesus are very well known and not as surprising as was the case even back in 2000. I feel, though, that despite some flaws, this is a good book. De Wolfe does blunder and holds to attitudes which are appropriate for his time and background, rather than being a sudden convert to some radical new belief. I still have quite a few of these books to read. I hope Knight kept to the more realistic approach rather than making his protagonist an action hero and also toning down the unnecessarily high number of sexual encounters.

'City of Glass' by Cassandra Clare

While there are further two books after this one in Clare's Mortal Instruments series, this one does feel like the closing of a trilogy. It comes to a big climax with the antagonist, Valentine and a lot seems to resolved. Starting in New York like the previous two books, this one soon moves to the fantastical world of Idris (capital Alicante, but not the Alicante of our world) which has a kind of Victorian bucolic setting as if envisaged by William Morris. All the main characters from the previous books end up there. Given this context it does feel, even more than the previous two books, as a branching-off from the Harry Potter series. The various debates among the shadowhunters of Idris are reminiscent of the conflicting  views around dealing with Lord Voldemort. Again it is teenagers who settle the situation and also work to bring an alliance between the shadowhunters and the 'downworlders', i.e. vampires, werewolves and fairies. There is the same kind of mixture of political debates and teenage relationship crises.

I have commented how unsettling the underage sex (the main character is 14, rather than 18 as shown in the television series) and the incestuous thoughts between a brother and sister, which though, fortunately, is revealed to untrue. I do not know why Clare felt a need to include these elements. The incest in this book is part of a very well done subterfuge by one character, but it was unnecessary and I wonder why the publishers accepted it for a book aimed at the 'young adult' audience. There is some decent writing in this book and aspects which stand above the rather derivative ones. However, it is not a book I can like due to what I feel are inappropriate foci for it. Ironically I feel curious to see where Clare went with the remaining two books since she killed the incest and effectively had the prime antagonist vanquished.

'The Concrete Blonde' by Michael Connelly

This book was published in 1994 and is the third in Connelly's Harry Bosch series. I think it is the best of those that I have read so far which seems to confirm what for me seems to be increasingly true: that you need to give a crime novelist at least 3 books for them to get into their stride with a character. The book with video cassettes, pagers and US Vietnam veterans in early middle age, feels very of its time. What is galling, though, is the highlighting of black suspects being choked to death and unarmed suspects being shot dead by police feels like elements taken from the current US news, even 27 years later. Some things never seem to change in the USA.

Unlike the previous book, 'The Black Ice' (1993), this one is very taut. In part this is because much of the action takes place in the courtroom. Harry Bosch is facing a civil case brought by the widow of an unarmed serial killer known as The Dollmaker that he shot and killed four years earlier when the man was reaching for a toupee rather than a gun. This means Bosch is kept on quite a leash at times having to rush back to court. To confuse matters it comes to light that either he killed the wrong man or there is a copycat killer who has been active at the same time. The jeopardy that Bosch faces in investigating whether he did make a mistake with his suspicions or not adds another layer to the story. There are some decent twists and it is good to see the detective as being as flawed as anyone else. There is also the extra elements of his antagonisms with both the prosecuting attorney and his own rather ineffectual lawyer. We also see the complexities that his position makes in terms of his developing relationship with Sylvia Moore, the widow of a colleague whose murder he investigated in the previous book.

Overall, the novel manages to balance having twists and various layers without losing the reader. It gives what feels like a decent picture of Los Angeles, both the upmarket and seedy sides of it and in showing how dangerous it is for citizens at risk for their lives both from criminals and the police. Unfortunately in almost three decades, that situation has not changed. However, it does mean that Connelly's book has a currency rather than beginning to feel entirely like a historical crime novel.

Non-Fiction

'My Favourite People and Me, 1978-1988' by Alan Davies

I saw the documentary programme, 'Alan Davies' Teenage Rebellion' (2010) in which Davies went back to where he grew up in Essex and met with people he had known in his youth as well as celebrities he had followed, notably Paul Weller. I imagine a lot of that is based on this book published the previous year. It is a kind of free-flowing autobiography in sections concerning a single year in this period, but with chapters using people that Davies was interested in as the hook. Often, though, he does not really come to the individual until the end of the relevant chapter. 

Davies is less than two years older than me. He went to a private school, his mother died when he was young, he was abused by his father (the focus of his most recent biography but there are shadows of that in this book) who remarried a neighbour and they were much richer than my family, e.g. having fly-drive 3-week holidays in the USA; he was bought both a motor scooter and a car as soon as he could have them; I did not have a car until I was in my mid-30s. Davies was far more successful with women than me and far more into sport, especially football, but also tennis and motorbike racing, so those celebrities mean little to me. However, pop stars, the people in the news and what he thought about them, campaigns of the time, such as around nuclear weapons and animal rights, are things I know about. He tells his involvement in these things and what he thought about these people I can understand them. Though we were poorer than his family, we still felt ourselves in the middle class milieu and I knew people like him.

As you would expect from his TV performances, Davies recounts the topics he focuses on with wry humour than made me laugh out loud occasionally.  If you are interested in him as a person this is a good read and is very accessible. It would particularly appeal if you remember the era yourself or if you are interested in how (relatively well off) young people survived in an era before smart phones and social media and what issues concerned many of them, some of which now seem pretty forgotten. It would be nice to see more autobiographies using this approach which I find very refreshing and engaging.

'The Spanish Civil War' by Hugh Thomas

I was advised that as the years progressed from the first publication of this book in 1961, that Thomas revised it to move increasingly towards sympathy to the Nationalist side in the civil war. The edition I read was published in 1965 and though he had corrected some errors from the previous two, it did seem that his sympathies while supportive of the Republican government side are actually pretty balanced. He does not hold back from criticism of the Republicans' multifarious divisions that so weakened them and the vacillating attitude of the Moscow-backing Communists. 

Thomas really benefited from the fact that he was writing when many of those who had been involved in the war from both sides, let alone eye-witnesses, were still alive. He is very good at balancing up the different perspectives, especially when it is difficult to know the truth and giving the reader a fair impression of what happened.

This is a comprehensive book, my edition was 911 pages long. Thomas gives background going back into the 19th Century and making it clear that the violence of the 1930s was part of a long history of such occurrences in Spanish history. He also shows how the fact that Spain had not been involved in the First World War had left many in the country ill-informed of the nature of war. Coming at the end of the 1930s, it was to experience all the horrors of the latest military technology, especially in terms of the aerial bombing of civilians. Before discussing the war itself, Thomas goes through the different political groupings. While the divisions on the Republican side are well known, he shows those among the Nationalists too, given the range of groups which joined what had been primarily a military uprising.

The book is good on the social and economic aspects of the war, yet also provides detailed accounts of the various battles, aided by dome simple but informative line-drawn maps. It makes clear that those who somehow pretend that General Franco, progressed slowly to avoid damaging so much of Spain are mistaken. He stated this but it is clear that even with massive support from Italy and Germany, his soldiers were often struggling to make advances but when they entered towns they carried out massacres which Spain had long become accustomed to. I had not realised how close the Nationalists came to grinding to a halt. Even in 1938 if the supply of German war materiel had dried up then, the war most likely would have come to a stalemate.

Thomas is good on all the various individuals who were involved and highlights things such as Irishmen fighting on both sides and the black American soldiers and commanders who fought in the Republican International Brigades, fighting alongside white comrades when the US Army was still segregated. Someone needs to make a movie about ex-Corporal Oliver Law, the black commander of the Washington Battalion. The age of the book is shown up by how Thomas feels to seem physical details such as how fat someone was or whether they had a lot of sex, are important for ascertaining their character.

The British come out of the story very poorly. I know some wanted the Nationalists to win, on the basis that while democracy was fine for Britain other countries were better under dictators. However, a lot of the British policy, blocking the elected government from buying arms and yet introducing a non-intervention policy so poor that tens of thousands of Italian troops fought for the Nationalists, just seems to be incompetence. It is only in the light of Neville Chamberlain's utter failings as prime minister that his predecessor Stanley Baldwin could seem even mildly competent. In many ways Britain's actions ensured that the Nationalists won, especially in the context of how close the fight was throughout, contrary to what now tends to be the popular view of it.

Overall, despite its age, this is a very good book if you want to really get into seeing what happened in the Spanish Civil War in detail. It remains a good counter-balance to rather lazy assumptions about the war which have slipped into popular history portrayals. It certainly shows that there are many more stories to the story of the war than is commonly recognised. Americans in particular seem to be missing out on the role which their nationals played in the conflict, at a time when, in other historical aspects, the role played by black people is being highlighted.

Audio Books - Fiction

'The Da Vinci Code' by Dan Brown; read by Jeff Harding

It is ironic that I ended up listening to this at some of the same time as I was reading 'The Awful Secret' (2000) as they feature the same theory about Jesus Christ being married and having children. When this novel came out in 2003, I was irritated at the efforts that people went to prove how 'wrong' Brown was, down to minute details about where a particular stone is in a corridor at the Louvre gallery in Paris as this somehow 'proved' he was something - lazy, misguided, trying to trick people - I am not sure. They seemed to forget that he had written a work of fiction and if they had dug into the details in a Jack Reacher novel, let alone a James Bond one, they would have found much the same. Listening to the book - having seen the 2006 movie years ago, in part, I realised why they felt compelled to set up such 'uncovering' of the book.

While there is chasing around Paris, London and parts of Scotland, the book is less an adventure and more a lecture. There are huge sections of exposition by one or more of the main characters to others. Fortunately, at least it is not all mansplaining as Sophie Neveu, police cryptoanalyst, is knowledgeable in her field and about Paris. However, what tends to happen is the characters go to a location, decipher what they find there and then talk at length about how the story of Jesus's wife, Mary Magdalene was suppressed, especially after the Council of Nicea which decided that Jesus had been a son of God and not entirely mortal. Added to that, down the centuries, the Christian churches, in this case primarily the Catholic Church saw benefit in underplaying or even dismissing the role of women in early Christianity so ensuring an entirely male Christian priesthood until recent changes in some Protestant churches.

There are some reasonable set pieces of action, escaping from the authorities. The role of Opus Dei looms large with a monk-assassin, Silas, aided in hunting down the protagonists and an Opus Dei member, Captain Fache, leading the French police investigation and granted great powers in doing it. There are a couple of twists with people not being who they seem which are fine. However, I would not say that the book gripped me. The exposition is interesting enough but in the years since the book was published, it has become common knowledge so it probably a lot less surprising than it might have been back then. I had always thought it a surprise that Jesus, as a 34-year old Jewish workman of the 1st Century CE, had not married. I did wonder if he was a widower, so the fact that he had a wife at some stage or another was never really a surprise to me. The fact that he was supposed to have come from a Jewish royal family as Brown states, seems more surprising as, surely, then he would not have spent his life working as a Nazarene carpenter. Anyway, overall the book is not bad, it is more that it is an adventure story used as a basis for delivering a series of lectures.

Jeff Harding is an American and has that rather breathless narration that seems so common with US audio book readers. His French accents do rather sound as if they are from the comedy series, ''Allo, 'Allo', but maybe that is what a lot of listeners expect. He does the female voices surprisingly well.