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 June

 Fiction

'Wastelands. Stories of the Apocalypse' edited by John Joseph Adams

This is an anthology of short stories written by US science fiction authors, 1973-2008 covering post-apocalyptic settings, it seems just set in the current borders of the USA. The quality varies considerably. 'Salvage' by Orson Scott Card is a dull piece of Mormon propaganda. Better ones include 'The End of the Whole Mess' by Stephen King, one of a number of stories which looks at ways to reduce violence by humans but that go wrong triggering an apocalypse. In contrast, 'Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers' by John Langan is better than the title suggests and is far more action-filled than King's story. Others with that kind of drive include  'How We Got into Town and Out Again' by Jonathan Lethem which is a well realised post-apocalyptic setting of the standard kind but with a nice cyberpunk element added. Neal Barrett Jr.'s 'Ginny Sweethips' Flying Circus' has a similar vibe, but works well and shows how when so many characters are focused on the big themes of apocalypse, personal revenge remains. Among stories which seek to have that effect, 'The Last of the O Forms' by James Van Pelt is actually chilling, because the apocalypse is biological rather than say, a nuclear war. It also hooks back into traditional US behaviour in seeing a freak show of mutants travelling around the country and unlike a number of the short stories in this collection, rather than peter out, it has a sensible conclusion.

'Artie's Angels' by Catherine Wells, has a dieselpunk feel to it, though emphasises the use of bicycles. It works well as a story of how people could work post-apocalypse without entirely descending into a neo-feudal society. 'A Song Before Sunset' by David Grigg is a traditional one of someone seeking to sustain or revive culture when society has crumbled. It does not really say anything new, but back in 1976 when it was published it was probably fresh enough.

'Killers' by Carol Emshwiller could almost be contemporary rather than post-apocalyptic. It sees US fighting in the Middle East having an impact in terms of terrorism, but also returning veterans, and could have been about a man returning from Vietnam as much as from any future war. For all that, though, it works reasonably well. 'Inertia' by Nancy Kress is less disrupted society, focused on a ghetto for people with a particular disfiguring disease, though it is the violent society outside which seems to face the greater challenge. This is well handled. Similar is 'Speech Sounds' by Octavia E. Butler, about the loss of various human abilities such as speech, as a result of some biological catastrophe and people picking their way through while concealing the abilities they have retained as these are no longer the norm. It reminds me of a short story, I think by Ursula Le Guin in which most people are deaf and they see a boy who can hear as having unnatural abilities that need to be ceased. 

'Also-rans' include 'Never Despair' by Jack McDevitt which goes nowhere and seems to expect us to be excited by the appearance of a hologram of Winston Churchill. Maybe that excites US readers more than British ones. 'When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth' by Cory Doctorow is as thrilling as the title suggests. Americans seem to love stories of clerical staff somehow battling tirelessly to prop up the capitalist status quo and this one reminded me very much of accounts of those men dealing with the Wall Street Crash with about the same level of success. 'Mute' by Gene Wolfe and 'Bread and Bombs' by M. Rickert, are almost like fables and have a mid-20th Century feel that could be associated with the Second World War rather than the future.

I was disappointed that in 'The People of Sand and Slag', Paolo Bacigalupi did not range further in his location, but at least he got off mainland USA; his is a more standard science fiction story. 'Dark, Dark were the Tunnels' by George R.R. Martin now better known for fantasy is also in this kind of category and reminded me of  'When the New Zealander Comes' (2011). Another more straight science fiction story, though with typical American obsession with the spiritual is 'Judgment [sic] Passed' by Jerry Oliton in which people returning from a space mission find everyone else on Earth has been taken off to the afterlife. Fortunately it deals more with how these remainers cope in the deserted world.

'And the Deep Blue Sea' by Elizabeth Bear starts off as a decent story of a courier in a post-apocalyptic California/Nevada, but is spoilt when it introduces the Devil who can teleport the protagonist to a range of times and places. I get the idea that there have been a lot of local apocalypses, but it wrecks the dynamic of the story about dealing with a specific one and whether the heroine can actually win through. 'The End of the World as We Know It' is a rather weak satire on the whole post-apocalyptic genre. It is interesting enough but would have been better as an essay than attempting to be a story.

Overall I came away from this book feeling rather riled given the inability of some many of the authors to look beyond very narrow assumptions. Some I expected better from. I know to steer clear of Card's work. However, a number of the authors who produced good stuff, despite its restrictions, are ones I would now pick up if I see them, which I would not have done if I had not read this collection. I do think Americans would find this collection far more palatable than English-language readers from other countries.

'Let the Old Dreams Die' by John Ajvide Lindqvist

I often see people asking on social media whether anyone buys short stories these days. Then ironically I find that in a single month I am reading two short story collections simply edited/written by men named 'John', so I do think that short stories have a place and are doing pretty well in these times. While I had seen the Swedish version of 'Låt den rätte komma in' (2008; from the 2004 novel of the same name) ['Let the Right One In'] though not the 2010 English language remake, I had not realised Lindqvist was primarily about horror, so had come to this collection as I might to one by Julian Barnes, expecting a range of quirky, contemporary-set stories. 

There is some Swedish normality in the stories, such a urban blocks of flats and summer holiday homes by the water, and they are magic realism rather than full-on 'horror'.  Various creatures turn up, that are not really traditional ones. The type of vampires seen in  'Låt den rätte komma in' reappear, but there is tentacled monster penetrating the sewers; another that lures people to their death by showing them what they desire; an irate zombie; otherworldly people who sort of fill in the gaps in our world; the embodiment of death by drowning and the creatures of the movie 'Gräns' (2018) ['Border'] which features in the short story of the same name in this collection. The longest story, 'The Final Processing' about a young couple dealing with people who have been re-lifed could easily be a movie.

What is interesting though is the responses of the characters to their unnatural threats is down-to-Earth, almost mundane rather than high-powered action. There is a quietness in them that I guess helps the reader feel a greater affinity with them than they might with action heroes. In addition, the approach works well in making you think what you or people you know would do in such a situation. Even if you do not live in a Swedish context, there is sufficient overlap with other examples of Western society to allow such consideration without difficulty. Not all of the characters are able to cope and some end up with horrendous fates, so this affinity means those outcomes hit home harder. While this was certainly not the book I had expected when I bought it, I would not say I enjoyed it, but I certainly felt interested by it and engaged with it.

'The Last Coyote' by Michael Connelly

This is the fourth book in the Harry Bosch sequence and for the entirety of it, Bosch is suspended from the police for assaulting his boss. He decides to investigate the murder of his mother, a prostitute, in 1961, some 34 years before the novel is set. The novel reminded me very much of the movie 'Slam Dance' (1987) not simply for the Hollywood setting but because of the bisection between 'call girls' and influential people, and though I did not realise it to the end, genuine affection creeping into sexual transactions. Bosch's hard boiled manner at times can get tiring, but genuinely this flows along pretty well, with the protagonist compelled to scam his way into getting the information he needs and struggling to oppose men who while old remain powerful. There is a lot of introspection not simply because of Bosch's personal connection to the case and his reassessment of his mother's life and motives but because of the counselling he is receiving for his violence towards his superior. However, when Bosch's actions result in the death of people, I did not feel convinced by his guilt over his actions. Perhaps his world weariness sustained across the novels, makes that hard to now sell to the readers. Overall, this works well as a standalone novel. The gathering together of the various elements of evidence not just in Los Angeles but also Florida and Nevada works well. The twist at the end might now seem almost a hackneyed one but works in the context and probably when this was written 26 years ago seemed fresher. However, the abrupt departure of Bosch's girlfriend of the previous two books before this one begins and the appearance so quickly of a replacement, though she is very important to the plot, do feel like that, i.e. plot devices, rather than genuine developments.

Non-Fiction

'Chronicles of Dissent' by Noam Chomsky and David Barsamian

This is a collection of interviews of US linguist and political commentator Noam Chomsky conducted by David Barsamian, 1984-91. He speaks a lot about US politics and especially foreign policy. His commentary on control of the media and how atrocities committed by the USA's friends are passed over while nationalist behaviour by those deemed as 'other' are portrayed as horrific. He shows how attitudes, e.g. to the Hussein regime in Iraq and the Noriega regime in Panama can change in a matter of days and countries that were receiving military aid are abruptly attacked. Much of his commentary on these things feels as if it could have been written during the Trump administration, especially in terms of US use of Israel and the portrayal of existential threats, rather than 30 years earlier, which highlights how little things have changed in the USA. While Chomsky nails these aspects he keeps on saying the same things again and again. Presented this way with the transcripts of interviews, you soon get tired. Yes, he highlights important things such as how the USA effectively primarily attacked the people of South Vietnam in US-Vietnam War and the lack of attention that has been paid to massacres in East Timor by Indonesia. However, when you read these things for the third or fourth time, you begin to get riled.

Chomsky is very US focused. He says nothing about China and little about Russia. His views of Europe are scant, Britain and France only get touched on at the time of the First Gulf War. He also seems to subscribe to the view that all terrorism is state-directed. He gives good examples of this, but he is dismissive of 'retail' terrorism which the USA had not experienced at the time, so neglects the terrorism of the IRA, ETA, RAF, Red Brigades, etc. as if it never existed. It does seem common even among US commentators who are that bit more alert to developments in the world to think terrorism was not really 'discovered' until the September 2001 attacks in the USA and unfortunately Chomsky falls into this trap.

Overall Chomsky says interesting things about US behaviour in the world and the problems it causes. His views remain relevant today as the methods he outlines have been applied again and again and reached a height during the Trump years. However, the nature of this book makes it really repetitive and once you have read the first few interviews, you have largely got his message and those that follow just say it again and again.

Audio Books - Fiction

'Dissolution' by C.J. Sansom; radio play

I was so annoyed by Sansom's novel, Dominion (2012): http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-books-i-read-in-september.html that I had stayed away from all of his books until I came across both audio books and radio plays on CD of his Shardlake books, detective stories set in the reign of King Henry VIII. These are much better than his alternate history. This is the first in the series, though the character Matthew Shardlake, a commissioner for Thomas Cromwell and his assistant come fully formed with back stories which are revealed as the tale continues. Most of the story takes place at the fictional Scarnsea Abbey on the southern coast of England which is on the verge of being dissolved along with all monasteries across the country, when a King's commissioner is murdered there. Shardlake is sent to investigate. There are more than a few parallels to 'The Name of the Rose' (1980) not least with the range of eccentric monks and their various moral failings. However, it is well handled and provides good details on the developments in the country at the time without providing a series of history lectures. He really communicates how Henrician rule at this time was like being under a one-party state of the 20th Century.  Some readers complain about the absence of female characters, but it is a monastery and Sansom actually works to bring more women in to the story than some might have done. There are some unexpected twists most notably with the fate of Shardlake's assistant.

With the very busy Jason Watkins as Shardlake in the lead and a string of familiar voices, this production is of the high quality you would expect from a BBC radio drama with all the various sound effects to give a real feel to the time and place. I thoroughly enjoyed it and have another lined up to listen to.

'Octopussy and The Living Daylights (and Other Stories)' by Ian Fleming; read by Tom Hiddleston and Lucy Fleming

This is the final James Bond book by Ian Fleming, well, in fact an anthology of various short stories. In many ways as seen with 'For Your Eyes Only' (1960), Fleming is better at short stories than sometimes the longer novels. This collection holds four. 'Octopussy' is seen from the perspective of a retired British army major who looted Nazi gold bars at the end of the Second World War and is now living in Jamaica. It allows Fleming to indulge in his knowledge of Jamaica, sea life and central Europe during and just after the Second World War. Bond only appears as the man sent to arrest the protagonist and carry out personal revenge. 'The Living Daylights' is also well handled. It is set at a very precise time and place, i.e. Berlin in 1960 before the Berlin Wall went up the following year. A British agent has to get from the Soviet Zone of the city into the British Zone and Bond is sent to take out the assassin who has been assigned to kill the escaping man. Again, though a very different setting, Fleming is great at the context not just of this frontier area but West Berlin at the time and the people in it. 'Property of a Lady' is a simple short story about using auctioning of a Faberge egg to trace a KGB operative, but it is interesting to see the workings of an auction house in the early 1960s. The final story, read by Lucy Fleming, Ian Fleming's niece, '007 in New York' only references the actual story at the end. Instead it is a usual list of complaints about all the failings in the USA at the time, a country Fleming clearly disapproved of in so many ways.

Hiddleston and Fleming both do the voices pretty well for the various characters and communicate the intensity which can be found in what are generally straight forward stories. Aside from '007 in New York' they show Ian Fleming's writing at its best. Given the cultural impact of the James Bond stories, even today, I am glad I have now listened to them all, and aside perhaps from 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' (1963) which the movie kept very close to, to see how much more jaded and at times bitter the writing is. Bond is often far from being a superhero and his decay across the novels makes them somehow more human and closer to the spy novels of Len Deighton than is popularly recognised. It is also clear that the movies thoroughly reduced the roles of important female characters from the novels, probably most, Gala Brand from 'Moonraker' (1955) to accessories for so long. Bond might be a man of his time in terms of misogyny but Fleming seems to diverge from that character in how he portrays the women.

The Books I Read in September

Fiction
'Dominion' by C.J. Sansom
I thoroughly enjoy 'what if?' novels so was really looking forward to 'Dominion', It is set in 1952 in a Britain that signed a peace treaty with Nazi Germany in 1940.  It starts with the popular but lazy assumption that if Lord Halifax had become Prime Minister instead of Winston Churchill, Britain would have signed a peace treaty with Germany in the summer of 1940.  In the book, while only the Isle of Wight is occupied, Britain has become a collaborator of Nazi Germany and the SS police forces are penetrating the country.  Rather than a immediate move to dictatorship this has been established through the 1940s so that by 1952 Lord Beaverbrook, the Canadian newspaper magnate has become Prime Minister.  Sir Oswald Mosley is Home Secretary and Enoch Powell, India Secretary.  There is a political police force, the Auxiliary Police who intern and torture people.  Britain has retained its empire, but is highly restricted in its ability to trade with the European continent and what armed forces it can raise by the treaty it signed with Germany.  It is battling to hold on to India.  There is generally free movement of British with some having gone to the dominions and colonies and relative free trade with the USA which has been under Joseph Kennedy and is now moving under a more liberal government of Adlai Stevenson.

The book is not bad, but could have been a lot better.  There is always a challenge with 'what if?' history books in getting across to the reader what is different from real history.  This can even be a challenge when the real history is well known.  However, the writer has to trust the reader much more than Sansom does.  The first sections of the book are really a data dump about the society and the main characters' lives.  It would have been far better if these were 'discovered' more gradually as the book progressed.  My edition was 718 pages long, including an essay at the end, so there was more than enough room for the author to weave together the revelations rather than have the reader have it all laid on them so quickly.

The story features members of the Resistance to the collaborationist regime.  They are generally drawn from a middle class, civil service background, though they encounter foreigners and a few others from other parts of British society.  We also see the perspective of a German Gestapo agent and the British men he works with.  There is a McGuffin of a mentally disturbed man who has been told secrets about the US scientific developments by his brother on a visit from America.  This makes him a target for the Resistance, the Americans, the Germans and the collaborationist regime  However, ultimately, this aspect is rather wasted and proves not to be really well thought through.  After the data dump, the book settles down into being a thriller in which the Resistance have to secure the man and get him out of Britain before the Germans can take him.  The book is strongest in analysing how the protagonists become caught up with the Resistance and particularly how innocent people are sucked into the plot and the price they pay.

Throughout the book looks like it needed more re-drafting and editing.  Some of the developments seem illogical and Sansom or others for him needed to step back and look at the feasibility of what he reveals.  This undermines the strength he has in developing the tension of the pursuit making use of the smog of 1952 as a marker of the time and useful for racking up the jeopardy.  A weakness is the resolution of the book.  The regime change in Germany seems feasible, but the changes in the UK are less well thought through.  Most infuriating is that we do not find out the fate of  the key protagonists, minor characters are given more details of them.  There is a love triangle but we do not discover what happens to any of the three people we have followed closely in the travails which fill most of the book.  This jars when we know what happens to many of the less important characters instead.  I do not know if Sansom intends a sequel involving these people but it left the book unfinished.

Another challenge with 'what if?' history is not to let your own views about what is the 'right' outcome, not in the history, but nowadays, come out.  Sansom cannot rein in his hatred of the Scottish National Party (SNP).  He hates them in the present day but projects this hatred too much into the 1952 he portrays.  The novel features only one Scottish character and two brothers who attended a public school which happened to be in Scotland but isolated from its society could have been anywhere.  Thus, the bile which comes out about the SNP sticks out in the story and is too clearly the voice of the author.  This is worsened by the political essay he includes at the end of the book which has no relation to the novel.  It shows a lack of restraint on the part of the author and so weakens the book as a whole.

Sansom has put a lot of effort into his research and properly cites his sources.  Many things are handled well but the book is riddled with minor errors.  This do not mean the novel is useless but they do sap your belief in it when it should be creating a credible world.  I did not spot all of them; one journalist pointed out that the University of Oxford gives D.Phils and not Ph.Ds. Winston Churchill would not have been made Minister of Defence in 1940 because that ministry did not exist until 1964; he would have been War Minister.  It was only Churchill himself who created the title of Minister of Defence for the minister in the War Office and it seems unlikely Halifax would have invented exactly the same term.  These are pretty much 'train spotter' errors.  A greater one is showing people in 1952 shopping on a Sunday.  Even in my youth, twenty years later than the book is set, the only shopping you could do in Britain on a Sunday was at a newsagent until 12.30 and at petrol stations.  Yet in Sansom's book people are shopping in London as if it was 2014.

I am not clear why Sansom moved the German Embassy from its real location in Prussia House, i.e. 9 Carlton House Terrace in the St. James's district of London to Senate House, the headquarters of the University of London in Bloomsbury.  I can only think this is because that building is used to portray Nazi or Soviet or dictatorial or secret buildings in a number of productions such as the movie 'Richard III' (1995), the television series,  'Mosley' (1998) and the fourth series of 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' (2004) amongst many others.  Aside from Norwich Town Hall, it is one of the only examples of 'Fascist-style' architecture in Britain.  It still as a Room 101 and is known to have been the basis for the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' (1948); Orwell worked for the Ministry of Information which was based in the building during the Second World War.  It is clear Sansom has never been to the building as his portrayal of a panoramic view from the windows is misplaced even if all the neighbouring buildings, including the British Museum had been bombed flat.  The views are restricted by old buildings no matter which direction you look.

The greatest mistake and one which impacts on the novel more broadly, is the belief that the Germans had no easy access to uranium.  In the novel they are shown as getting it from Belgian Congo which they take over.  In reality they had free access to it from the moment they took over Bohemia-Moravia, what had been western Czechoslovakia, in March 1939.  Albert Einstein criticised the Americans for not getting as much uranium out of the region before the Germans gained control of it.  By 1944, though the Germans had not built a full-scale atomic bomb, they did at least two tests of what we now call 'dirty bombs', i.e. highly radioactive bombs but with far less explosive power than a full atomic bomb; the radiation from one test remains apparent in Germany nowadays.  The Germans are shown as not having progressed with their bomb in another eight years, despite having agents in the USA.  In our world even the USSR which had lacked the range of scientists and focus on an atomic bomb had detonated one by 1949.

This could have been an excellent book, but it needed a lot of re-working.  It needed to be shorter.  It needed the revelation of the details of the society portrayed revealed in a more measured manner.  It needed the feasibility of plot developments tested more thoroughly.  It needed Sansom to keep his politics to a blog or an article or to have written a story set in Scotland rather than the Midlands and southern England; it is not clear why he did not do that, except to make use of the smog.  It needed the story to be completed properly especially in terms of the three main protagonists.

'The Potter's Field' by Ellis Peters
This is the 18th book in the Cadfael sequence and as I have noted previously with 'The Confession of Brother Haluin' and 'The Heretic's Apprentice', by this stage of the sequence Peters was clearly looking to move beyond the restraints of Shrewsbury and its abbey.  This story is more like 'CSI: Medieval Shrewsbury' because the case is around a skeleton found in a field that has been transferred to the abbey's ownership.  Brother Cadfael and Hugh Beringar try to analyse who was involved in the murder and the cause primarily from the remains and where they are situated.  Various suspects arise and are dismissed and in itself this causes further suspicions.  At times, even though the bulk of her characters are male, you can feel Peters making a case for the women and how they are treated in this world.  There is an interesting tension in this book because Brother Ruald, the potter who owned the field, walked away from his wife to become a monk.  Because he was still alive she was still considered married and was not permitted to marry anyone else.  Ruald's step is portrayed in the male-dominated world as a holy one.  However, the fate of the blighted woman still in her thirties and who had an active sex life with her husband, is also shown.  Peters does not make judgements which would be anachronistic for the times, but in this story she shows how men finding their vocation could really muck up the lives of the women around them.  Almost as a balance she has a novitiate leave the order and become interested in a young woman from a neighbouring estate.  The book is brisk and a fresh departure in approach for Peters.  She will not contaminate the medieval view of how things should be, but she does lay the evidence from a woman's perspective out before the reader for them to decide whether to censure the very male-focused behaviour going on.