The Books I Read In October

Fiction

'The Guns of Navarone' by Alistair Maclean

Along with 'Where Eagles Dare' (1968 from MacLean's 1967 novel), 'The Guns of Navarone' (1961, based on this 1957 novel) is the war movie that I rewatch. I guess in part it is because these are action movies which, though in the context of the Second World War have very much a fictional setting rather than one close to actual history. I wrote a pastiche of this story, 'Blanketed' in my anthology, 'Another World’s War: What If? Stories of the Second World War' (2015) featuring an attack on Battery Mirus - more on that emplacement in a bit.

I sometimes come across the novels in charity shops and I read the one for 'Where Eagles Dare' back in 2019: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html  I got into a discussion of the differences between the novel and movie for this one over on BlueSky and so when I saw the novel locally, thought it a good idea to pick it up to compare.

The basic plot is the same. A small group of Allied soldiers/SOE operatives, travels to the fictional island of Navarone, which lies close to the coast of Turkey. The pair of large naval guns installed as a shore battery are preventing the evacuation of Allied troops from an island farther north, back to Egypt and a German invasion of the island is imminent. I may be wrong but I had the sense that MacLean had been influenced by the German Battery Mirus, a collection of four Russian 13cm battleship guns set up on occupied Guernsey. They had a range of 51Km (32 miles) so protected a wide zone around that side of the Contentin Peninsula. However, I now read that the more likely inspiration were the eleven Italian 15.2cm guns on the Greek island of Leros, taken over by the Germans when Italy changed sides in 1943.

The team consists of five men but includes the astounding mountaineer New Zealander Captain Keith Mallory and the Greek resistance fighter, Lieutenant Colonel Andrea Stavrou, plus an American, Corporal Dusty Miller who is the explosives expert. This is where the novel and movie begin to diverge as in the latter, it is an Englishman James Miller (we see his name briefly on a file near the start of the movie, though online he is called 'John'), played by David Niven. The other characters in the book are Scotsman Petty Officer Telegraphist Casey Brown, an engineer and (naval) Lieutnant Andrew Stevens very like Mallory in being fluent in Greek and a skilled mountaineer. However, in the novel we have much more reflection on what the men are thinking as they go about their missions and Stevens keeps condemning himself as a coward.

Two other characters from the movie, Major Roy Franklin, who breaks his leg in the initial climb and Greek Resistance fighter, Spyros Pappadimos, are absent. In the novel Stevens is the one who breaks his leg and rather than ending up in a hospital, effectively feeding the German soldiers misleading information he is abandoned on a mountainside to die. Brown in the movie is said to be a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and while such men were recruited into the early days of SOE they were then generally avoided on suspicion of being politically unreliable. Brown is killed fighting a German soldier to secure a boat in the movie, but in the book survives to the end.

The other large difference in the novel, is that the Greek Resisters on the island that the team connect with are both men, Louki and Panayis who does not speak English, who guide the team across Navarone. In the movie these two are replaced by two women, Maria Pappadimos, Spyros's mother and a young woman, who has been traumatised speechless, Anna. There is treachery as in the movie though it is Miller who proves executioner whereas facing the same situation in the movie, he cannot bring himself to do it and instead Maria does feeling utterly betrayed by the woman she has been supporting. In both the book and the movie, the wounds of the traitors, notably to their ankles, prove to be false and they both wreck Miller's equipment.

Much the rest of the story turns out the same. There are some of the most dramatic scenes which feature in the movie such as fleeing through the trees and escaping down a (convenient) tunnel through the rock Stavrou distracting techniques when they are questioned by the Germans. However, things like the team going into the village centre and singing with the locals, does not feature, perhaps as it is rather sentimental and I imagine it was in part the film-makers wanting to show a good side of the local population. Certainly the killing of the traitor lacks the emotional impact that the movie version does. Towards the end when the team are traipsing around not achieving a great deal, it loses momentum compared to the movie, where the tension is heightened by Spyros and other locals attacking the Germans and Brown's fight. 

I sometimes face criticism of my own stories, especially ones set in wartime, because they feature women and having women speaking. I always found this a very peculiar criticism that to me seemed illogical. However, as I have aged and read more of these 'classic' action novels and indeed similar ones published this century, I realise that many of the books do not feature a single woman, not even in passing. That is the case with this novel. We do not even see a woman in a village or in the fields or anywhere, let alone as part of the Resistance as they were. Overall, while we see the thoughts of the characters and the fact that they are not bold heroes, is interesting, but in the end I found this novel unsatisfying; uncertain how to proceed. I would recommend watching the movie over reading the book, any time.

'The Track of Sand' by Andrea Camilleri

This is the twelth Montalbano novel and has the crime committed right outside the inspector's house when a horse is beaten to death on the beach there. This leads him being drawn into both charity and illegal horse-racing in parts of Sicily. It is muddied by the fact that the horse was taken from the stables of the very wealthy Saverio Lo Duca along with one of his own horses. It is not clear if Lo Duca or the owner of the apparent dead horse, a jockey, Rachele, is the target of this attack/attempt at intimidation. On that basis, it is an interesting story showing the inspector, alongside his usual gourmet meals, mixing with the upper classes. However, there is some weakness in terms of the plot. First neither Montalbano or his colleague notice the horse's corpse being transported away when they are a very short distance away in the house. Then Montalbano who has a vital clue in a pocket, which he does not notice until the end. These things seem rather contrived. Alongside the usual rows over the telephone with his girlfriend, yet again Montalbano cheats on her, this time with Rachele who is a very demanding woman. Overall, it is alright. It starts of interestingly, but due to the flaws is not the best of the series.

'Ark' by Stephen Baxter

As I see copies of this book around on its own, I had not realised that it is actually the follows 'Flood' (2008). Given how much is unresolved by the end of the novel, I have the sense that a concluding book in the trilogy was intended but never written. I am not overly a fan of hard science fiction whereas Baxter is a chartered engineer and fellow of the British Interplanetary Society. Thus, his science is sound, though at times, as with this book, still difficult to find feasible. I really should have learnt my lesson from how poor I felt his Long Earth (2012-16) pentalogy with Terry Pratchett was.

As you might expect given that context, this novel is about an 'ark' that carries humans to another planet, or in fact two of them. It covers the period from the 2010-2080s. The humans have to leave because in addition to rising sea levels due to global warming, for some reason vast stores of underground water start coming to the surface so that by the 2050s even the highest mountains on Earth are covered with water.

It is very much an American story but with a smattering of other nationalities, but we do not see whether China or the European Union do anything similar. About half of the novel is taken up with the raising of the select children/young people who are going to go on the ark, as the waters close in steadily on their bases in the Rockies, with millions of refugees preceding them, leading to an increasingly dystopian society before they are drowned. The rivalry and the tensions between the prospective crew and candidates who come in or are removed from the final list, really do seem to sum up US attitudes in the 21st Century. There is an elitist and pro-natalist undercurrent.

Though we see through multiple points of view, there is really no character we can feel any affinity for or really any sympathy for. The plans go awry so ultimately the carefully planned mix is disrupted by bullish gatecrashers. Even then it is clear that the voyage is going to turn into 'The Lord of the Flies' (1954). The ship flies to Jupiter where it is reshaped to enable to go at faster-than-light speed in a bubble that appears to be driven to a kind of connection to a bubble universe.

The whole mission is plagued both by bad luck but also the selfishness of individuals and indeed insanity. The psychologist was dropped at the last moment in order to buy the favours of military commanders protecting the bases. Towards the end a gang lord, raping girls is overthrown but has to be kept alive due to his technical knowledge. A group of the youngest crew (children are born on the voyage, which for some lasts a further thirty years beyond the original plan) literally break out of the ship, believing they are in nothing more than a simulation and they die bloodily as they find they are actually in space. The surviving crew reach the intended planet only to find it is heavily tilted on its axis and any inhabitants would have to scurry about its narrow stretches of land to cope with the strange seasons. 

One small group goes to this 'Earth II' but we never hear their fate. We see those who travel another thirty years to 'Earth III' round a dimmer M class sun, a planet which is tidal locked so always has one side facing its sun. The third group actually return to Earth and are taken in by the Ark 2 settlement on the bottom of the ocean over what was Yellowstone Park.

Overall the book is a mess. It covers such long periods that it has to be episodic. It then splits into three narratives of which we see only two. The characters, unlikable at the start, become intolerable by the end. I suppose Baxter was simply trying to point out all the stories about space arks would never be feasible. You certainly feel by the end 'what was the point?' and as a result, why it might have been logical, likely, you feel the same about the book. I regret having bought it.

I should really re-read my own reviews before buying books. Looking back to my review of 'The Long Cosmos' https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/11/books-i-readlistened-to-in-november.html I see I wrote "I have stopped reading work by Pratchett and certainly will steer clear of anything by Baxter. This was really an expensive disappointment." I should have followed my own advice!

'Brighton Rock' by Graham Greene

This is another book that I saw the movie (the 1948 one, not the 2011 one) of before coming to the novel. This was published in 1938 and at the start of the movie they make it clear it showed the criminals of pre-war Brighton perhaps to avoid dissuading people from returning there now the war was over. The story features a man called Pinkie, aged 17 and in fact referred to as 'The Boy' in much of the narrative who, following the murder of the previous gang leader in London, Kite, has taken over a small gang of villains who make money by running a protection racket on bookmakers at the race course. It is not clear really why - apparently it was an article about Kite controlling slot machines in Brighton, though that is not overly clear in the novel - but they want the death of Charles 'Fred' Hale. 

Hale unfortunately has been sent by the newspaper he works for as one of the common summer promotions for people to find tickets he distributes in order to win a prize or if they recognise him and say a certain phrase they can win £10 (worth about £1-2000 these days). He knows he is being hunted and so tries to get a woman to stay with him as protection. While unsuccessful he is noted by drunken busybody Ida Arnold who effectively becomes the detective of the novel, digging into what went on, haranguing witnesses and members of Pinkie's gang.

Hale is murdered though it appears he died of natural causes. Pinkie, however, tries to make sure that evidence of where Hale was, when, is covered up and this means he encounters Rose, a waitress from the cafe where Hale ate who saw not only useful information but has noted Pinkie covering up evidence. At a time when a wife could not testify against her husband, Pinkie hooks up with her and steadily presses her to marry him, which ironically she sees as an escape from the dreary, very poor life she has come from. Things are fallng apart for Pinkie even before the novel starts are deteriorate as it progresses. He has to murder one of his own gang and is effectively driven out of business by wealthy, successful Jewish gangster Colleoni.

The novel has all of those traits that are shot through Greene's fiction. It has a very seedy setting. It has women who are pressured into collaborating with dubious men. Pinkie, Rose and Pinkie's gang are Catholics so there is a lot of self-questioning and Rose in particular feels damned which actually makes her more reckless and willing to go down with Pinkie. He comes across as a tough man and is willing to use violence, notably slashing rivals with cuthroat razors, but he is very much like young men of the present-day manosphere, with real hang-ups about sex and actually a virulent misogyny. Only the risk that Rose will testify against him moderates his behaviour. He is a teetotaller but comes to drink as the novel progresses, so it does seem to be rather the story of a man already falling, going the last final steps, at least from a Catholic perpsective. I did wonder if the record recording of Pinkie's voice was a gimmick of the movie, but it does feature in the novel too, but in the novel it holds an even more bleak outcome come than the slight ray of relief the movie provides at the end.

Overall, much of what you would expect from Greene. One thing that marks it out from the seedy novels of his I have read recently, is its portayal of Brighton. It makes constant use of real places, shops, hotels, etc. around the town and to me this gave it a grounding that is not present when Greene uses a fictional setting.

Non-Fiction

'Modern British Politics: parties and pressure groups in the collectivist age' by Samuel H. Beer

This book as the full title suggests takes a very interesting perspective on the British political scene of the last 200 years. You might take 'pressure group' to be something very specific as we have known it since the 1960s. However, Beer uses it in the broadest sense and shows how it encompassed vested interests of all kinds such as aristocratic and wealthy families, landed interests, particular sectors of business and industry, before the trades unions and then single-issue campaign groups.

While he delineates phases in the development of the political scene, from the Old Tory through to the Collectivist era, actually he repeatedly notes commonalities, not simply between the Conservatives and Liberals but then between the Conservatives and Labour too. Indeed due to Liberal individualism in terms of the pressures wielded within the parties, the more corporatist parties of the mid- to late 20th Century are closer to each other. The largest distinction being that Labour's conference and National Executive Council wield far more power over policy than anything equivalent in the Conservative Party where there is factionalism but in part little different to what a politician of the early 19th Century would recognise.

Though I have the 1982 edition and it even shows a reference to the SDP on the front cover, in fact the changes from the 1969 edition are minimal and the narrative and analysis peter out in the late 1960s when analysis of the various pressures facing the governments of the 1970s, the rule of a minority government and the final harm trade unions did to Labour, would have really benefited from his analysis.

While points of tension over policy - Gaitskell's leadership gets much attention - feature, this book gives a refreshing perspective on policy-making and how while the parliamentary party is the public face of the party much goes on below that level, especially in the Labour Party, not necessarily apparent to the bulk of the electorate. Beer's analysis is generally sound, though being an American, despite what he has described, he does seem at times to forget that British political parties are always confederations much more than US ones are and for the most part can live with such diversity of perspectives within their ranks. The lesser influence of the party on policy does rather conceal the divisions within the Conservative Party, very apparent during decolonisation and then again with the advent of supposedly monetarist policy.

The prime gain from this book is its approach and I would be interested to see a book which applied this to the last three decades of the 20th Century and indeed beyond.

'The Creation of The Principality of Antioch, 1098-1130' by Thomas Ashridge

This book came out in 2000 but I have been dipping into it since around 2014 and so thought it was about time I read it cover-to-cover. I realise that I was moving in some of the same circles as Ashridge at the time he was writing and publishing it, but as far as I recall our paths never crossed. Anyway, it might seem an obscure topic, but for some reason I have long been fascinated by the Crusader States, four realms created between what is now Syria and southern Israel at the end of the 11th Century and declined until being snuffed out entirely at the end of the 13th. Though based on crusading, they actually proved to be crossroads of cultures, not just Western European (largely Norman and French, plus Italian merchants) but Byzantine, Arab, Turkic and later Mongol. States which were rooted in feudalism evolved in innovative ways bringing ideas from the West and adapting local structures.

Antioch - now Antakya in southern Türkiye had been founded in 300 BCE by one of Alexander the Great's generals. It was where St. Peter became first patriarch so effectively establishing what came to be the Catholic and Orthodox churches before moving on to Rome and it was associated with various other saints. It had been part of the Byzantine Empire until 1084 when conquered by the Seljuks the dominant part of the Turkic population expanding from central Asia into western Asia, at the time. After an epic siege it was taken by the First Crusade in 1098 but rather than being returned to the Byzantine Empire, the second of the crusader states, the Principality of Antioch was established, enduing until falling to the Mamluk Sultanate in 1268.

While Jerusalem, which became the capital of the third crusader state, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, had its outstanding sites and importance for three religions, Antioch, was incredibly impressive. A city that was over 700 years old already at the time of the establishment of the principality, it encompassed two mountains within walls that boasted more than 400 towers. It had a cathedral in a cave and from the heights, a river passed through a special gate to fall as a waterfall into the city.

This book feels very much like a doctoral thesis which has been turned into a monologue and there is absolutely no problem with that as I feel it stops the author becoming complacent, perhaps even arrogant in his writing. He proceeds with real academic rigour which I would recommend as a model to anyone writing an academic history book. He draws on sources from all the perspectives that are available and at each step alerts us where he might see bias or unreliable accounts. He is honest when he does not or cannot know certain facts. Where there are different possibilites, he lays them out for the reader and leaves it to them to decide between them, or indeed, simply acknowledge that we cannot know the actual answer.

Despite this caution, this measured analysis, the book is crisp in the writing. It has clarity even when dealing with the complexities of the succession to the principality; who was regent to whom; who had control of Antioch and indeed its neighbour the County of Edessa and the motives for how the various rulers and commanders behaved, both the secular and the religious. It shows very well the hybrid government structure that evolved in the principality in particular blending Norman and Byzantine approaches. He also names everyone he can find and sketches out their careers.

Overall, while biased myself, I feel this gives a great insight into a corner of medieval history which is often rushed past in broader foci, even covering the crusades. However, I also feel the book while accessible to a general reader is a good model of how to produce a successful academic analysis of a time and place.

The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'The Dark Mile' by D.K. Broster

This is the final book in The Jacobite Trilogy. It should not be confused with the 2017 movie of the same name. Here the name comes from a genuine stretch of the Highland countryside between Loch Arkaig and Loch Lochy which you can walk even today: https://www.komoot.com/highlight/4639016  This website mentions the genuine Cameron of Locheil laird who features in the first book in this trilogy.

While this novel ties up some aspects from the previous book, 'The Gleam in the North' (1927) which I read in July: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/07/books-i-read-in-july.html it has a lot less of a political focus and is much more a family drama set in the western Highlands. It is set in 1754/55, so a decade after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, but still with an English occupying force in castles through the Highlands and numerous restrictions, e.g. no Highlander can wear tartan - causing challenge indentifying staff; own a weapon, even for shooting birds or a sword; and the lairds are no longer allowed to be called 'Lord', though Lady Cameron seems to be allowed to keep her title. While we see Ewen Cameron of Ardoy and he plays an important role the greater focus is on his cousin Captain Hector Grant, from the previous book, who has inherited an estate in the Highlands and sees an opportunity to propose marriage to Jacqueline Stewart, a distant relative of the Camerons. 

The other prime protagonist is Ian Stewart, Jacqueline's brother. He inadvertently rescues Olivia Campbell, without knowing she is one of the Campbells of Cairns and her father was commander of the unit with shot Ian's elder brother, Alan, at the Battle of Culloden. While soon the Ian and Olivia are quickly besotted with each other, at a series of encounters, they realise they have to deny their affection for the peace of mind of their families. Ian works hard to try forget Olivia even her willingness to express her affection for him increases. Broster rather bottles it in the writing however. She will not have, despite what is clearly described as an intense passion, love conquer all and instead of the two perhaps bringing peace between the two clans as a result of a marriage, there is a rather contrived work around which I guess some readers, even Scots, might have felt at the time was a missed opportunity.

There is another main point of tension in the book spilling over from the experience of the 1745 uprising and its aftermath. The first is the question of who wrote the letter in the previous book which alerted the English authorities to where Dr. Archibald Cameron, the Jacobite treasurer in Scotland, was hiding out which led to his arrest and ultimate execution. We soon know it to be David Maitland who wanted to see the end to the trouble that Cameron being on the run was causing in terms of the oppression by the English forces, believing it would lead to prosecution rather than execution. However, this is not known to most people at the start of the story. 

One who does come to know is Finlay MacPhair, the new and nasty laird of Glenshian. He was an English agent but left poor by the war, feels he has not received his proper recompense. Ultimately he tries to blackmail Maitland into saying it was he, the laird, who wrote the damning letter, but Maitland, already suicidal, startled at MacPhair's confession of collaboration gets away only to find that Hector has already confronted MacPhair believing himself that the laird was the author of Maitland's letter. MacPhair is a real antagonist. His schemes are to gain money. He fakes the abduction of two of his cattle by Ewen and insists he pay compensation for eighty cattle. He confines Hector in worsening conditions to try to force him to apologise for his accusation, even though ironically he wants Maitland to say it is true. These schemes, despite a dramatic rescue of the suffering Hector, rather fade as the novel progresses. Similarly though Hector has actually fought a duel with Ian, his romance with Jacqueline also drifts off rather unresolved.

This is not a bad book and does very well at conjuring up the times and the dramatic landscape. Broster does seem to get rather tied up in her crossplots, though maybe that was intentional to show how much power had been taken from the Highlanders that even a devious one was unable to win through if the English were not agreeable to what he was striving for. I found this the easiest of the three books to get through though I do not typically read romances and this is full-on in that aspect at times. However, do regret my nostalgia for the 1976 TV dramatisation of the first book, 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html which led me to buy the entire trilogy. I forgot two things: that the versions of stories for children are often shorn of the bleakness and cruelty of the adult versions and that you should never revisit childhood favourites as you will generally find them a disappointment.

Having suffered from it myself on coming to Scotland, I was glad to see though that orophobia especially in the face of Scottish uplands, was recognised as a legitimate condition in a novel, even one from a century ago.

'The Wings of the Sphinx' by Andrea Camilleri

This is a straight forward Montalbano story which starts with the discovery of a dead woman's body found in a dump. The distinguishing mark is a tattoo on her shoulder of a sphinx moth. This then takes Montalbano into the investigation of three other women also from Russia who have been tattooed in the same way. In turn this leads to a religious charity which seeks to get such immigrants out of prostitution or drug dealing into domestic service roles. What is interesting, perhaps clever, is that the quartet, despite coming from the same home town and having similar stories, in fact are different from each other in the paths they choose, with some being honest, others not; some being integrated, others remaining apart. In addition, perhaps unusually, the charity itself is not rotten right through and it finally transpires that only certain members are engaging in criminal activity, while others are innocent.

 Identifying the four women, determining their different characters from more or less biased witnesses, finding who is dead and who is alive, and seeing how the criminality of one bisects with another murder, provides the mystery. Supporters of the charity put pressure for Montalbano to back off, though ultimately he does work out those who should be charged. As is typical for many detective stories set in Italy, there is often a distance between identifying perpetrators and having them arrested, let alone charged. In some ways this is a simple story with the usual 'business' of Montalbano eating various Sicilian dishes, rowing with his girlfriend and speculating on life, but the subtlety between what different individuals are up to is well handled rather than it being a 'blanket' approach of 'they are all bad in that group'.

'Noughts and Crosses' by Malorie Blackman

I was interested in this book because it is an alternate history. It is set on Earth in contemporary times but if Pangaea had never broken up. Historically rather than 'Europeans' colonising Africa, 'Africans' migrated from the south of the super-continent gathering technology such as paper and gunpowder which then allowed them to conquer and subjugate the white population of what appears to be the north-west coastal region. Not much detail is provided, though with a strong sense of parallelism black African inventors who we have in our world also existed in this alternative and are taught about in schools. Clearly Blackman wanted these names which are largely 'forgotten' in Western culture, to be remembered. 

In this world black people are known as 'Crosses' (insulted as 'daggers') and white people as 'Noughts' (insulted as 'blankers'). There is strong racial discrimination and while it appears to be set in the 21st Century, the exclusion of white people from many opportunities and the inherent prejudice against them as ignorant, criminal and violent, seems primarily based on the US South in the 1950s and South Africa of the 1980s, though prejudicial treatment of whites by the police is of course like that currently seen by blacks in many countries. There is mention of mixed-race black/white people but not of any other races in this world. Blackman implies that the legal segregation would have persisted decades longer if black people had been in charge than if white people had been. Concessions are only being made due to pressure from the economic bloc that this 'British' portion of the continent is part of.

The novel itself is a romance between two teenagers Persephone 'Sephy' Hadley and Callum McGregor who is slightly older. Callum's mother, Meggie worked as a nanny then cleaner for Sephy's mother, Jasmine until she failed to back up an alibi of Jasmine's to cover her affair from her husband. While living close to the Hadleys, the McGregors are very poor like most noughts. Sephy's father is Home Secretary and they live in an expensive house close to the beach where the two lovers meet. 

The politics, culture and the language appears to be very British (the swearword 'ruddy' is even used) though with US examples providing the racial system and even public executions. Callum is very intelligent and is one of the small number of noughts first allowed to attend Sephy's school, though this opens him up to more prejudice.

Various incidents lead Callum and his family to be involved with the Liberation Militia, a kind of cross between the IRA and the Black Panthers but for white people. They engage in terrorist activity and this means they face the full force of the law, all bar Meggie going on the run, with tragic circumstances. Throughout Callum tries to keep in contact with Sephy and it is clear as they mature that their love becomes deeper. There is no under-age sex in the book, but Callum does reappear when the two of them are old enough to legally have sex.

It is a very tragic book. It is clearly aimed not at adults but at children so the various messages are laid on very heavily. The point of view switches consistently between Sephy and Callum sometimes with incredibly short chapters. There are points of tension especially in the closing phase of the book, combined with what feels like a genuine romance across the races. However, I think most adult readers would feel the themes are laid on rather too thickly and the story hares along too fast to be an engaging book. I would not buy the other books in the series.

'A Gun for Sale' by Graham Greene

This novel from 1936 continues to show how Greene was the 'king' of sleazy contexts. It shares many of the traits of the other novels by him I have read this year including a small set of characters and coincidences which rather stretch credibility.. It centres on an English assassin called Raven who kills the War Minister of Czechoslovakia and also murders his housekeeper at the same time. Returning to Britain Raven is paid off by a man he knows as Mr. Cholmondeley. Raven is paid £200 (worth about £50-80,000 today) in bank notes which prove to have been recently stolen and the serial numbers on them are known. Raven goes in pursuit of Cholmondeley who returns to his home town of Nottwich in the Midlands. Raven manages to elude police and get after his quarry.

To get out of the station without a ticket in Nottwich, using the silenced pistol he had retained contrary to orders, Raven threatens Anne Crowder, a chorus line singer to provide cover for him. This is where the peculiarities kick in. Crowder is the fiancée of Detective Sergeant Jimmy Mather of the Metropolitan Police who is sent to Nottwich after Raven and co-ordinates the hunt for him in the town. Though she is threatened by Raven, Crowder is soon collaborating with him, leading to grave suspicions of her later, even from Mather. 

They hide out in a show home and then Crowder goes in search of Cholmondeley who, under the name of Davis, rather incredibly, happens to be a backer of the production that she is appearing in, in Nottwich. He also likes to have sex with the performers and takes her to dinner. He however, then tricks her in accompanying him to a bawdy house where rooms are rented by the hour. There he tries to rape her before confining her in the chimney breat. Using intuition Raven tracks her down and releases her. The two hide out in a railway shed with Crowder acting as a decoy so Raven can go after Cholmondeley's employer, a local industrialist who wanted the war minister dead because his policies were reducing armaments spending in Czechoslovakia. Raven is aided by a test-run of a gas attack on Nottwich allowing him to conceal his distinctive hare-lip behind a gas mask. This then leads to a showdown.

While the seediness of all the settings, the sense of not being able to turn anywhere for Raven, is well evoked, too much is rather 'convenient'. Crowder's behaviour in continuing to aid Raven certainly does not come across as realistic. While the gas attack practice reflected the sense of war approaching which is a feature throughout the book - in 1936 Germany remilitarised the Rhineland so breaking one of the precepts of the Treaty of Versailles - it and especially the behaviour of those involved in the test, feels far too much a plot device. Overall the book scores higher for atmosphere than feasibility.

'Castle Skull' by John Dickson Carr

It is clear that someone in my area likes Dickson Carr books as I have found three, including this one, in local charity shops in the past two months. Published in 1931, as can be guessed from the title, it has that 'Gothic' flavour which I noted when reviewing his 'It Walks By Night' (1930) back in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html though by the end you can see the kind of subtle shift beginning which would get him to his cosy English crime novels of the latter 1930s. Like 'It Walks By Night', this story features the Parisian detective Henri Bencolin and his American friend Jeff Marle who acts as narrator. This one also features a detective from Berlin, Baron von Arnheim. As Martin Edwards notes in the introduction the rivalry between Bencolin and von Arnheim is rather like that between Hercule Poirot and M. Giraud in 'The Murder on the Links' (1923) by Agatha Christie, though von Arnheim is reasonably respectful of Bencolin's skills, perhaps because they are both police detectives rather than one being an amateur. In fact they both bring parts of the solution to the complex case.

Schloss Schädel [Castle Skull] sits on the heights above the River Rhine near to Koblenz. Genuine castles such as Stolzenfels and Ehrenfels are mentioned but this fictional one, built to resemble a skull is particularly Gothic in nature. It has multiple secret passages and someone is chained up in a hidden cell, almost adding in every Gothic trope you might expect, naturally with thunderstorms. The actor Myron Alison lives across the Rhine opposite the castle which he inherited a half share of from his rival stage magician and fan of the occult Maleger who had died many years earlier mysteriously in the Rhine itself. Alison is seen on fire on the castle's battlements. The guests at his house are the suspects and Bencolin and von Arnheim have to disentangle what boats were used when and why there are multiple pairs of muddy boots in the house.

Thus, we do have elements of a standard investigation of the kind Dickson Carr would move on to, but with these Gothic aspects threaded through it constantly especially as more is discovered about the unique castle and then about enduring seeking of revenge. It is worthwhile paying attention to, though the direction Dickson Carr was moving in, does tend to jar with his Gothic emphasis, though he does draw an interesting range of characters and then assembles them for a grand dinner in the castle, including a cake with and icing image of gallows on it.

There is an additional short story ‘The Fourth Suspect’ (1927) for Bencolin and though short, this one is equally complex as the detective is called upon by the French war ministry to resolve a murder in which the wife of one of their spies is implicated, but has an alibi. This one does have the feel of a Sherlock Holmes story.

I currently have two more Dickson Carr novels to read, one from his more Gothic period and one from his later, cosy period. I am looking forward to them.

'Long Story Short' by Jodi Taylor

This is the second (so far) of Taylor's anthologies. Almost all come from the Chronicles of St. Mary's/Time Police 'universe' though there is one from her Frogmorton Farm series too. I have only read 'And the Rest Is History' (2017) which is the eighth book in the St. Mary's series and if only counting the full-length novels there are now six others and one due more due in August 2027. Some of the stories which feature in this collection feature from further on in the sequence than I have read. However, finding out that not only Leon, one of the prime protagonists is still crippled from the stories I have read, his wife the main protagonist throughout is now hospitalised too and their child though ten is still illiterate and socially dysfunctional due to what he was put through as a child put into Victorian times, I am quite pleased to have bailed out before I got any further. Tim Peterson has also had another girlfriend killed. Taylor seems addicted to inflicting the most sadistic approach to characters she creates. That would be acceptable if this was a horror sequence or even thriller novels, but throughout she has this cosy almost jolly tone which clashes terribly with what she portrays.

This collection is not as good as 'The Long and Short of It' (2019) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html and some are tiny fragments such as 'Dessicated Water' and 'Markham and the Anal Probing'. However, we do get to see through the eyes of some of the other recurring characters. 'When Did You Last See Your Father' is told from the perspective of Max's husband, Leon Farrell and outlines his sad life in some future period before coming back to 'now', itself in the 2030s and meeting Max who he had encountered briefly in the Cretaceous period. Bolted on the end of this is him sabotaging, with colleagues a visit by Max's abusive father to St. Mary's in an attempt to have Leon and Maxwell's time-anomalous son seized. Leon goes at it with real vindictiveness which I guess we should expect from Taylor, though he does not kill the man though he comes close to it.

'The Steam Pump Jump' was perhaps the story I enjoyed the most. Taylor's writing is always at its best when she is showing historical events and these are why I endured with the books for as long as I did. This one is seen through the eyes of the Head of Security Mr. Markham, primarily because Maxwell is incapacitated. He oversees a visit back to 1641 to see the first demonstration of Thomas Savery's steam-powered water pump. I had never heard of this real incident, though obviously using steam power at this early stage could be a branching point for a lot of alternate history stories, though, naturally, occurring in England it was overshadowed by the English elements of the War of the Three Kingdoms, 1639-53. There is the usual chaos and an attempt to get two of the St. Mary's employees together romantically, but is well handled.

The 'Battersea Barricades' story though seen through Max's eyes focuses on the history of three of the women staff of St. Mary's: Theresa Mack - Head of Catering, Elizabeth Shaw - Personal Assistant to the Director of St. Mary's  and Mavis Enderby - Head of Wardrobe for time-travellers. It outlines the anti-Fascist unrest which occurred in Britain in earlier decades, culminating in the eponymous barricade of Battersea Bridge. All three women were involved in the frontline. It is ironic in the time since Taylor wrote this in 2018, it has possibly become more rather than less likely as is her portrayal of the USA fallen into utter chaos. This is a basic narrative of the trio explaining what they did and how they ended up in central London and does feel like those dystopian dramas which featured often on children's television in the 1970s and indeed a bit like scenes from season 1 of the BBC dramatisation of 'His Dark Materials' (broadcast 2019). Of course, being Taylor, it has tragedy, but is otherwise interesting.

'Christmas Past' fits more neatly with the usual style of the St. Mary's stories. Taylor produces a lot of them around Christmas time. This one sees Max in control and taking her son Matthew back to Victorian London where he was dumped by the prime antagonist Clive Ronan to live as a 'climbing boy', i.e. those children sent up inside chimnies to clean them under a very cruel mistress, Mrs. Scrope, leading him to fear women including his mother. Matthew is keen to take presents to the two other boys he worked with. Max builds a gift package largely of foods and blankets to take to the boys. She also confronts Mrs. Scrope and then at Matthew's pleading goes forward a year to see the outcome of her actions. This naturally has a kind of 'A Christmas Carol' feel, but the historical elements are well done.

The final story is 'Little Donkey' unsurprisingly featuring a rescue donkey from Frogmorton Farm, a contemporary setting though like St. Mary's on the edge of the North Yorkshire Moors. It feels rather like an episode of 'Emmerdale' and is rather overloaded with Christimas tropes, including two births at a nativity play. It is alright if you like this kind of thing. A spectral golden horse that has helped the protagonist Jenny through years of abuse, also turns up briefly. Taylor does seem fixated on largely showing characters who have been through sustained and repeated trauma. I have no idea whether this reflects her own life, but it seems a trait in all her writing that she cannot escape.

Non-Fiction

'The British Party System and Economic Policy, 1945-1983' by A.M. Gamble & S.A. Walkland

This book was published in 1984 and is an interesting look at the shifting, often largely ineffectual, economic policies of the post-war period. They were rather constrained by the fact that the book was in the Studies in Adversary Politics series, because as they show, aside from the rhetoric especially at election time, there has actually been a consistency in economic policies. It becomes apparent that despite all the talk of growth, prosperity and modernisation, in fact the overwhelming driver of British economic policy, no matter who was in power, was defence of the strength of the pound, even though this actually provoked many of the economic problems the UK faced.

Before going on with other decent points in the analysis, I must speak about the tone which Gamble & Walkland adopt. It is highly critical not simply of the governments but of others writing in economics and history. At times it is actually unprofessional. They seem to have no inhibitions in slagging off other writers in this field, feeling they have all proven inadequate, even incompetent. They are riled by the fact that such analysers were typically unwilling to put forward prescriptions for improving the British economy as if that was a compulsory duty for anyone writing on the topic. I understand the early 1980s were an incredibly febrile time but even so this book too often goes beyond the bounds of what is really acceptable in academic writing. 

We could be critical of Gamble & Walkland themselves, especially in their view that there was a possiblity of the Liberal-SDP Alliance as it was in the 1983 election being of any significance in UK political scene, but many commentators of the time, not simply historians, fell for that delusion. They also downplay the divisions which would appear over Europe, though that would have been a challenge given the Conservatives and Labour, for large part, 'swapped sides' on the issue. Of all their proscriptions for the future, the possible path of a Conservative hegemony as enduring as the inter-war one and Labour being obliged to change nature to the new 'consensus' established by Thatcher in order to be permitted to re-enter the political scene was the most accurate.

The strengths of this book are in the detailed analysis of what the nature of the economic policies implemented were. As they show, despite the ever more intense rhetoric between the two main parties, what was done when they came into office often was the opposite of what had been said. Thus, reflation was done most under the Conservatives and deflation under Labour, contrary to what they had said and their rhetoric. They correctly identify that ironically Keynesianism was not needed in 1945-73 when it was the dominant economic theory, because the global boom sustained UK full employment anyway. Then when Keynesianism was needed in the 1970s it had been discredited by its apparent inability to smooth out economic challenges of the preceding two decades, for which it had not designed, notably protecting the strength of the pound.

The authors make a decent case that by 1983, the Conservatives were not actually pursuing a monetarist policy, despite saying they were. I think it is because they still believed that the Thatcher government was aiming to work in the interests of the UK as a whole rather than to the benefit of a slice of the wealthy and not necessarily located in Britain. They found it hard to believe that unemployment could not continue at such heights without civil unrest, though the Miners' Strike and the Poll Tax Riot, appear to be restrained compared to what they imagined would occur.

The book is also good at looking at the various bodies set up to stimulate and/or aid British industry and shows the in/effectiveness of each. They get frustrated when, because of the adversarial rhetoric, relatively success ones like the IRC and NEB were abolished, not due to them failing, but simply to fulfil what the incoming party had said.

While at times pointing to factors outside government which constrained and directed economic policy, the blame tends to fall heavily on the trade unions, then the civil service and least on businesses themselves, except in their obstruction to economic planning, something which has a chapter of its own. Corporatism, collaborating with business and unions is seen as really just a ritual with no genuine impact, though in part it was because no peak organisation really had significant control over their membership. Furthermore as they regularly demonstrate with both parties, plus the Treasury, unable to move from the focus on the pound, UK governments constantly reinforced the strength of those who play the money markets, rather than any large group within the British polity.

Overall, this is an interesting book with useful insights. However, you have to sift carefully as it flip-flops back and forth through the topics and breaks off to be rude to other historians. Added to that, despite showing that the adversarial politics had little impact on the economy, especially beyond the immediate installation of a new government, because of the series it was in, they feel obliged to come back to that topic repeatedly, often muddying the waters in terms of actual political and economic analysis.

'Who Saved Natal?' by Colin Bender

This is a very niche, local history book about the harbour of Durban. As the only feasible port on the south-east coast of Africa, sitting on the western side of Indian Ocean which can be incredibly turbulent, there was a long drive from the 1840s to the 1900s to establish a proper harbour and reduce the numerous shipwrecks along the coast. Unfortunately the nature of the currents meant sand was being constantly being deposited at the mouth of the lagoon on which Durban was built. Ships trying to cross the ever-shifting sand bar often run aground. The issue became greater as the size of shipping increased and Natal became even more important with the gold finds in the interior and the Anglo-Boer Wars.

Through letters, reports and charts from the time, the book shows the constant failure of schemes and the intense hostility between various port engineers and local government about removing the bar. For decads it was believed that by creating longer and longer sea walls the tide as it came out of the lagoon could be strengthened and so scour away the bar. This never worked despite the vast expense and creation of quarries and railways to help with the walls' construction. Eventually dredger technology improved to allow constant dredging even in the rough seas along the coast and this solved the problem finally, allowing Durban to become a major port, though really only effective more than sixty years after it was first needed.

This is a very niche book and is unlikely to be of interest unless you are particularly fascinated by harbour engineering of the past or in the local history of Durban and the rather nasty and foolish, dogmatic men who oversaw the continued failures to successfully provide a safe harbour there. 

The Books I Read In August

 Fiction

'The Stone Sky' by N.K. Jemisin

I still see many people wildly praising the Broken Earth trilogy of which this was the final book. However, while not perhaps as nasty as the first in the series, 'The Fifth Season' (2015). The stories of Essun and her daughter Nassun very distant from each other continues. We do also get insight into the lives of those who had been created in history to develop the various obelisks and to control them, leading on to the disaster which sent the Moon spiralling away and led to the various horrendous seasons the planet (probably Earth) has suffered. These seem to be the start of the stone eaters the mysterious, sometimes vicious statue-like beings who live for millennia. As before, there is so much pain and suffering it is a battle to get through. 

Yes, I accept that post-apocalyptic novels are going to be grim and this world suffers a whole series of such incidents. However, so often there is even greater pain. Jemisin seems to create new characters simply to have them suffer. The story moves to a climax in a futuristic city reached by travelling through the Earth's core and this is where Essun and Nassun are finally reunited, only to continue to suffer pain and death; Essun has one consolation, her lover, ripped from her as they travel through the planet; Jemisin is bent on snuffing out even meagre flickers of hope. Even Nassun who survives - you need this spoiler to give you an iota of hope when reading the book - has her hand turned to stone and the mentor Schaffa, a reformed Guardian, is tortured by what is implanted in him before suffering a lingering death, traumatic for Nassun who is probably not even 10 years old yet. Drama, jeopardy, are fine, but by the end of the trilogy I found the writing nothing short of sadistic. 

On top of all this you get passages of text which address the reader directly and really patronise you about your blithe life and lack of awareness. Jemisin outlines how she wrote the book while her own mother was dying. In addition you can imagine as a black woman author in science fiction she has gone through the mill to get to the success she has done. However, this spills almost raw on to the page. I tend to not read autobiographies for a reason and while this is clearly not one, the painful emotion is so immediate to the writing that it rips repeatedly into the characters like someone slashing a portrait of people they know to make some point. If I wanted to experience this I would go to the palliative ward of a hospital or to a hospice. As you can imagine, despite all the acclaim, I will never go near an N.K. Jemisin novel ever again.

'Journey without Maps' by Graham Greene

This is Greene's post-war account of the walk he and his cousin Barbara Greene (her gender is never mentioned) made through parts of Sierra Leone and French Guinea and then through Liberia, at the time (1935) on the verge of becoming the last African country not owned by a colonial power. The journey took 4 weeks and covered 350 miles (560Km) over land which was largely unmapped at the time. The book first published in 1936 was withdrawn when it was challenged as being libellous in the portrayal of one of the people the Greenes met. It was republished in 1946 with additional elements added by Greene as a result of his service in Africa during the Second World War. Barbara Greene published her own account 'Land Benighted' (1938) later titled 'Too Late to Turn Back' (1981) which apparently differs significantly from Graham's account. I guess this was because they knew they could not specifically name names and also because for much of the time they were separate while travelling and anyway, of course, the impressions they formed would differ.

The whole journey was moronic. While the Greenes set off with far too much equipment in many ways they were also ill-equipped. They hired up to 25 porters each to carry 50lbs (23Kg), paid in silver shillings. Though some were reliable others were not and in particular kept protesting that the next destination was too far away for them to reach. They were dependent on turning up in various villages and being welcomed by the local chief, the character of each one varied considerably. Sometimes they stopped at missions or Liberian government stations. The poverty is mind boggling, but as my brother who travelled west to east across northern-central Africa in the 1990s, revealed in many places things are little different from when the Greenes passed through sixty years earlier.

There was not really much to see just jungle, rivers and various villages so a lot of the book is about the people that they met and the differences between the settlements. There is distinction in particular between the French-controlled areas and the Liberian ones. There is a fascination for the 'devils' i.e. men who effectively acted as priests of indigenous religions with very strick rules and elaborate demonstrations. Greene does not moralise on these the way missionaries might but as with the different characters, because there is little of variety to report from one night's stopover village to the next, he goes into detail on the different devils he sees and hears about.

The fact that a white man could simply travel this way and indeed his cousin was largely carried the bulk of the way in a hammock, does sum up the kind of colonial viewpoint at a time when it was coming to its apex and was soon about to crumble into neo-colonial behaviour. In many ways Liberia as not having a colonising government running it, was the shape of things to come as effectively as Greene shows towards the end it was large corporations that happily asserted themselves in the controlling role but lacking even the meagre concern for the populations.

Overall not a particularly exciting or engaging book. Greene possibly picked one of the most tedious journeys he could have done with little visible history or striking natural scenes or unforlding drama - bar the upcoming election which seemed a foregone conclusion anyway. It shows that while he might have believed differently Greene was not a travel writer and would have been better having written a drama unfolding in a single village which could have allowed him to show the context of Liberia at the time rather than us feeling we have traipsed along unchanging roads with him for many hours.

'Deep Waters' ed. by Martin Edwards

This is the last of the four anthologies in the British Library Classic Crime collection that I have. However, even when it was published in 2019 there were already nine others, so it seems I will have a lot of book hunting to do in the years ahead. The British Library books do not turn up second hand as much these days as I guess they are so prized but I will keep my eyes open even though being unemployed and struggling to pay my rent I no longer have the money to go out looking for them in my own town let alone further afield.

Anyway, despite the sub-title of this collection 'Mysteries on the Waves' in fact this anthology covers murders in all sorts of bodies of water from a swimming pools through rivers and canals up to the sea. A number of them are what Edwards terms 'reverse mysteries' in that we see the crime and then it is a question of how whoever is doing the detection works out what has happened. Another theme that turns up in a number of them is an apparently lost sailor reappearing to disrupt the life of someone who once knew them, whether to their detriment or that of the returning seafarer. 

Edwards does have some authors he likes to return to, Arthur Conan Doyle is one of them, but rather than 'The Adventure of the Abbey Grange' (1905) which does include a returning sailor, instead in this volume he features 'The Adventure of the "Gloria Scott"' (1893) which has some similarities. This is recounted directly from Sherlock Holmes to Dr. Watson and effectively details his first case. The father of one of Holmes's few friends, Victor Trevor, based in Norfolk, is distressed by the presence of a servant Hudson who then disappears. A letter arrives from Hampshire that seems not to make much sense but leads to Victor's father dying of a stroke. Holmes cracks the code and as a result, finds it is a warning about Hudson. The story of the father's criminal and indeed murderous past aboard a transportation ship then comes to light. There is not a real mystery despite the fact that a man was able to effectively conceal his past and become wealthy and successful as a result of what he did.

There is a similar narrative in 'The Echo of Mutiny'  (1912) written by R. [Richard] Austin Freeman. As with the story included in 'Serpents in Eden' (2016) which I read back in April:  https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html this one features Dr. John Thorndyke, a doctor effectively working as a forensic scientist uncovering crimes which the reader has often already witnessed as here. Thorndyke is never in at the arrest but always seems assured that the evidence he provides will lead to a conviction. If you are interested in Freeman's writing, there are freely-accessible online copies of his collection 'The Singing Bone' (1912) in which this story features along with others. This story is set on the Thames Estuary and features the disappearance of a relief lighthouseman. We know who the killer is, but what attracted readers was the thoroughness of his analysis to identify the person. I must also say I was really struck by Freeman's descriptions of the setting, the weather, etc., aspects which he does with a real richness and other authors in the collection tended to forget to cover; maybe inhibited by the parameters of a short story.

Another of the stories with rich description is 'Four Friends and Death' (1935). It was written by Christopher St. John Sprigg. Another of his featured in 'Miraculous Mysteries'  (2017) that I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/07/books-i-read-in-july.html He was an aeronautical writer as well crime author and was killed in 1937 in the Spanish Civil War. This story is set in Vigo harbour when among four friends on a yacht one suddenly dies from poisoning. The surviving three have to work out who among them was the culprit. You feel both that this was would make a great short play and it is also reminiscent, perhaps intentionally of 'The Pardoner's Tale' in 'Canterbury Tales' (1400) in which three friends set out to kill Death. It is deftly handled and the ending may surprise readers. As Edwards notes, Sprigg's early death in his 30th year, denied readers of more stories. Still, as a committed Marxist, he probably felt he was doing the right thing to fight to defend the Spanish Republic from Fascist forces.

Perhaps the story I enjoyed most was one again with great description, which really conjures up the Embankment area of London in the immediate post-war era. It is 'A Question of Timing' (1946) by Phyllis Bentley. It is written in the first person and actually details the prevention of a murder when an astute author, Robert Beringer, lightly disabled as a result of wartime naval service, is alert to stranger happenings on his usual walking route. Some might find it pat, but I enjoyed the different angle of this and realities of British society at that specific time. Maybe the romantic ending will irritate some, but seemed realistic. I have not come across any of the stories featuring Miss. Marian Phipps as a the detective, but would certainly be interested in reading them if I saw them.

'The Thimble River Mystery' (1950) by Josephine Bell [Doris Bell Collier] is set on a fictional river (probably influenced by the River Hamble) close to Southampton. Of all the stories in this collection, it has the greatest technical detail associated with boats. Knowledge of these, plus the challenges of mooring a boat on a tidal stretch of a river are at the heart of the solution, in part combined with a dose of social class snobbery, which I imagine you would encounter in such contexts even now over 75 years on. Amateur David Wintringham fortunately has knowledge of such things and is able as a result to work out how and when the murder of Mr. Harcourt a resident of one of the boats. Wintringham is called in when a friend of his, another boat owner in the area, John Chudley is seen as a prime suspect. At times the technical language can rather bewilder the reader without such knowledge, but Bell is very successful in conjuring up a very specific setting and milieu which gives a feeling of authenticity, though modern readers might shudder at Wintringham being so firmly convinced of the apparently socially 'inappropriate' ambitions of the murderer.

Another story which succeeds in painting a vivid portrait of its setting, this time in Cornwall, is 'The Queer Fish' (1955) by Kem [Kemys] Bennet. Though he had this story made into a movie 'Doublecross' (1956) featuring William Hartnell and Robert Shaw, is certainly, as Edwards observes, unknown today. Shown from the perspective of a fisherman and docker, Albert Pascoe, as he is engaged to transport two dubious characters across the sea to France. He is eager to catch salmon but it is too early in the season and he faces a heavy fine if he does. The descriptions of his home port and the journey, the people in the village are well done. Modern readers might work out the twist at the end in advance, but overall it is a satisfying story. 

'The Eight-Mile Lock' by L.T. Meade [Elizabeth Meade Smith] and Robert Eustace [Robert Barton] is, as the title suggests,  based on a canal. Published in 1897, it follows a case of theft of an expensive bracelet from a boat on which John Bell, their 'ghost investigator' detective a little like William Hope Hodgson's Mr. Carnacki that I discussed last month. Bell rowing along the canal where the boat was moored and one that he has often travelled along is asked to help out a lock-keeper who has been troubled by spectral voices calling out to him to open the lock in the middle of the night. Bell stays with him and this case actually proves to be connected to the jewellery theft, perhaps unsurprising given a precious metal bracelet concealed in water will not corrode, though the explanation of the ghostly voice turns up to be more a technological one that modern readers might not accept in the way ones from the 1890s might have done.

Another story again featuring technology that modern readers might question is 'The Pool of Secrets' (1935) by Gwyn Evans. He was one of a number of authors of Sexton Blake and pulp stories. This may explain why this story has rather outré elements to it. The detective, Quentin Drex (initials 'Q.E.D.) with the mark of the Scarlet Skull branded on his forehead has a robot butler with a built-in answerphone and travels to the murder site, Cheriton Hall in Hertfordshire opening as a country club, in his personal 'gyroplane'. There is a rumour of a ghost called 'the Silver Bride' haunting the swimming pool; later it becomes the 'Shimmering Death'. Not only does the victim die when going into the swimming pool, their body is immediately stripped down to the bone. Modern readers with a greater familiarity with water life around the world than readers of 1935, might find this rather less of a mystery. There seems to lots of pottering around in hedges and the narrative rather lacks drive, I suppose in part dependent on the exotic methods of killing. Alongside the other stories this does come over as a peculiarity.

Another one set in a swimming pool, unsurprisingly, is 'The Swimming Pool' (1936) by H.C. [Henry Christopher] Bailey. It features his usual amateur detective, Reggie Fortune, a story of which featured in 'Serpents in Eden' and was better than this one. Edwards, as I have noted before, explains how post-war Bailey's style of writing fell from favour. However, even here especially what he has Fortune say comes over as pretty peculiar, especially his 'expletives' like 'my hat' and 'my last aunt' let alone the repeated plaintive, 'Why police?' This does make him seem not simply eccentric but actually mentally challenged and this really reduces the reader's confidence in his abilities. 

Perhaps as might be expected, like 'The Pool of Secrets', the swimming pool is at a large house, in this case Heath Hall on the outskirts of London. There are suspicions over the previous death of the owner Joseph Colborn and later he is exhumed to discover he was poisoned. His nurse seems to be a likely culprit but as disappeared only for a headless corpse which at least seems likely to be hers turns up in the swimming pool. Forensic evidence shows the woman was killed somewhere. 

There are some decent twists, especially when the severed head of the victim is found among luggage. Fortune does push the story on, but you feel it could have been so much better with a less bumbling detective. Despite Bailey's enduring inter-war popularity you can see why he is not now remembered. There is something jarring about this main character pontificating among grim details, something that Christie with Poirot and Sayers with Wimsey, managed far better thann Bailey does. He does not seem in control of his protagonist and the story suffers gravely as a result.

'The Gift of the Emperor' by E.W. [Ernest William] Hornung from 1898 is a well-known short story which rounded off 'The Amateur Cracksman' (1899) collection featuring the gentleman burglar, A.J. Raffles. Hornung was brother-in-law of Conan Doyle and a capable writer in his own right. We naturally see this crime from the view of comrade of the criminal himself. It would have been nice to have seen more of the execution of gaining access to the gemstone, but that is passed over quite quickly and instead we see how the crime is detected. It is deftly written with not just a practical element but also a psychological element which we tend to forget when thinking about Raffles's coups.

I mentioned Hope Hodgson earlier and in this collection he provides 'Bullion!' a locked room mystery but on a ship. Told in the first person the investigator as such is the ship's second mate. Strange noises and crates of gold which seem to disappear and reappear is deftly handled, though luck as much as detection solves the crime. It is a reasonable story though.

C.S. [Cecil Scott] Forester is best known for his historical naval novels, the Hornblower series. This short story published in 1936 is another in which we know who the killer is. The challenge is a technical one for him to dispose of the body, something he feels he has cracked. Overall this comes over like one of the 'Tales of the Unexpected' from Roald Dahl, rather than a standard murder mystery or even one of the reversed ones in this collection. It is reasonably well executed, but I imagine many readers will foresee the conclusion.

Edmund Crispin [Robert Montgomery] is another of the authors that Edwards has featured before; one of his stories is in 'Miraculous Mysteries'. His story in this collection is 'Man Overboard' (1954). It is very brief and involves Gervase Fen disentangling a story recounted to him in a very Holmesian manner. Though the sea is involved it is more a couple of particularities of US culture which resolve what happened. Another very short story, again with 'Tales of the Unexpected' tone and the coming home to roost sins of the past is 'Seasprite' renamed by Edwards not to give away the motive. It was published in 1963, written by Andrew Garve (Paul Winterton) who apparently often featured boating in his stories. There is not much to get into here, but a scheme for insurance fraud involving boats quickly descends into murder.

James Pattinson was known for his maritime novels. This story, 'The Man Who Was Drowned' (1958)  is what I might call a 'sleight of hand' story and in fact reminded me of Crispin's  'Beware of the Trains' from that earlier Edwards collection. The author proves adept and mileading the reader into believing they know what has happened, even when the prime witness makes a mistake. The story is dextrously handled, simple but satisfying and shows Pattinson's skill compared to some of the others included in the collection.

'Death by Water' (1975) is the final story in the collection. It was written by Michael Innes [John Innes Mackintosh Stewart] who also had a story in 'Miraculous Mysteries'. His detective by now Sir John Appleby becomes involved in the disappearance of an old friend Charles Vandervell from his large house close to the north Cornish coast. For a story written in 1975 it does have a feel of a much older one, with the usual suspects from an inter-war crime story with a nephew to inherit, a loyal retainer and an energetic middle-aged woman looking to reinvigorate Vandervell. The body turns up naked and Appleby now feeling it was a murder looks to uncover from the small number of suspects who wanted and could kill Vandervell in that way. Once more, as with 'The Pool of Secrets', pond weed proves vital!

'The Long and Short of It' by Jodi Taylor

As regular readers will know having bought a whole pile of books in Taylor's The Chronicles of St. Mary's series, I increasingly went off them as she piled on the suffering for her characters and I felt, began to take this to unnecessarily great lengths. I have subsequently discovered that under another name she writes horror, so me feeling at times she was straying into torture porn was not misplaced. I did, however, really enjoy what had brought me to the novels in the first place, which was her portrayal of the different times and places that her time travellers visit. Taylor has an excellent attention to detail, real care in her research and also provides logical deductions for what happened that are far stronger than what you tend to see in online discussion. I still think of her portrayal of Troy following the Greek victory and what the 'Trojan Horse' actually was.

I am still loath to give away books until I have read them so soldiered on. I did pick up this one which like 'Long Story Short' (2019) is an anthology of the short stories she produced as e-books to sit, in terms of narrative chronology, between the other books she had produed, the '.5' editions and such like. There is an origins story in here and the last story comes after 'And the Rest is History' (2019), the eighth in the series, which I read in May: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html and some of the climactic loss and suffering is still apparent. However, in general this book provides what I would have liked to have seen from the entire series. 

Taylor seems addicted to making things go wrong for her characters. At the start this was alright and seemed to fit with the light, wry tone of the books, very much in a vein of some British humour. Its kind of old school setting (despite actually being set in our future) and almost public school culture, makes me refer to the 'jolly hockeysticks' feel. The fact she refers to characters regularly by their titles 'Miss. X', 'Mr. Y', etc. in a way now workplace, even an academic one has done for perhaps 50 years, adds to this sense.

As the suffering increased this light tone began to (and continues to) jar with the personal tragedies that were being shown. Anyway, that is about the novels and I am focused here on the short stories. There are references to tragedy - a suicide features - but this is not so much of a dominant part of the stories as in the novels. Instead, the time travel, the rich portrayal of past societies comes to the fore in these stories.

A number of the stories were written for Christmas time. Unsurprisingly the first 'A Child is Born' is one of these. It sees a team head to see the coronation of King William I the Conqueror in December 1066. However, they get drawn off track to help an ordinary family. The balance of trying to focus on their particular mission and deciding how much and how little they should intervene is handled well. It also has a positive outcome, even if an unexpected one.

'Roman Holiday' takes them to Rome at the time Cleopatra VII was coming to Julius Caesar's house. They encounter Caesar's spurned wife, Calpurnia, and get great insight into the way people were received in politicians' houses, something that features a lot in Robert Harris's excellent Cicero trilogy. Again while there are errors, it ends upbeat as they see off an 'attack' and effectively keep history on track. As with so many time travel stories there is the question of whether history actually required the intervention of time travellers in order to lead to the history we know. What I also liked was that Taylor punctured the lazy popular history view of Caesar and Cleopatra, fostered by their portrayal by handsome actors, rather than, as Taylor does, referencing more accurate portrayals.

'Christmas Present' naturally is one from that time of the year. Slightly referencing 'A Christmas Carol' (1843), it does touch on tragedy in that Kleio the Muse of History who also happens to work as a PA, Mrs. Partridge, to St. Mary's Director comes to warn the usual protagonist, Dr. Madeleine 'Max' Maxwell that the head of security, Major Ian Guthrie is on the verge of suicide following the abduction of a woman he loved, Elspeth Grey along with a colleague, ten years earlier. They were supposed to be going to 12th Century Jerusalem but it turns out St. Mary's prime antagonist Clive Ronan dumped them instead in 60 CE Colchester about to be ravaged by Boudicca's forces leaving few of the town's population alive. The Roman city is very well portrayed though at times you feel the struggle to get clear verges on the slapstick, but it is adventurous with a positive outcome, even though bringing up another challenge of time travel that Elspeth has been away in her experience for some hours, but for Ian it has been a decade.

'Ships and Strings and Wedding Rings' takes Max and helpers back to Ancient Egypt somewhere that Taylor likes to feature. This is an interesting take and effectively takes the previous story further. From the novels we know that Grey finds it difficult after her abduction to fit back into the work of St. Mary's even though Max (foolishly) pressures her to get back to normal. On a mission she not only illegally takes a modern gun into the past but then loses it. This is a serious crime which could compound her problems by having her arrested by the Time Police. Max feels an obligation to recover the gun and so ends up lingering around an Egyptian ship yard that the original team were observing. This allows Taylor to provide a rich historical picture before a harum-scarum chase after the gun and then Max having to give up her wedding ring - having married Chief Leon Farrell - to buy it back. While Grey's mental health is a downbeat element, matters are resolved. This shows the impact of time travel on people without having to go into torturous territory. There is a further resolution which I will not spoil.

'The Very First Damned Thing' is an origins story showing Dr. Bairstow, perhaps it is suggested, from the future, working with British government agencies to establish St. Mary's. He persuades them of its value by taking the committee to witness the closing stages of the Battle of Waterloo, running into some of his future staff. With funding secured, he begins to build his team, very much in the vibe of 'The Magnificent Seven' (1960), counting off people as he recruits them. This is apparently easy as he already knows them from their futures. It does again raise the issue of cause and effect and which order these have to come in, something often cropping up in time travel stories.

We also get to see more of this future Britain which has been wracked by civil unrest with a popular uprising against Fascist forces notably in London and Cardiff, climaxing in the so-called Battersea Barricades which many future St. Mary's staff were involved with. At the start of the novels, it was not clear really what the time period was and, in fact, dated references seemed to suggest it was before our current time, especially in terms of technology and social attitudes. This story shows how, in fact it was some time in the mid-21st Century and, while it is not clear, a Fascist regime appears to have managed to turn social behaviour back to what it was a century earlier.

I think 'The Great St. Mary's Day Out' is my favourite story of the anthology. As a treat more of the staff than usual go on a trip to watch the first performance of 'Hamlet' (1601) by William Shakespeare. As usual various members get tangled up in events, largely outside The Globe theatre than within it. Taylor is great at conjuring up the experience and also drawing out in fact how little had changed between the 14th and early 17th centuries in that area of South London. Again we have the question of whether the time travellers were required to be there in order to ensure Shakespeare did not suffer serious injury or die 15 years earlier than we know from out history.

'My Name is Markham' is written from the perspective of the deputy head of security at St. Mary's and one of the characters most prone to disaster. St. Mary's is having a Christmas party for local children, which again feels more 1950s than 2050s, but there you go. In the middle of preparations, Max, Markham and Peterson, another of this history staff are sent back to 878 CE to see whether King Alfred, while in hiding on the Isle of Athelney, following his defeat at the Battle of Chippenham actually burned the cakes as the legend says. Taylor once more provides a great picture of a late Anglo-Saxon village and its practices. While things go wrong and there is the need to use modern technology, the time-travellers scrape through to get back for the party. The treatment of Markham by his Director, as is sometimes commented on, is not nice and in reality would be inappropriate for a manager. St. Mary's is not unionised and its personnel practices seem very dated. It is clear that this is an aspect that the British Fascists of the 21st Century have also reversed. Given the current political climate maybe this is not such an unlikely thing as it might have appeared a decade ago.

'A Perfect Storm' is the final story in this anthology and unfortunately does not involve any time travel. Instead St. Mary's is trying to secure a contract with a movie maker to provide historical information and costumes for a series of movies, bringing in very useful income for the institution. Having had a friend who in the 1990s was a historical advisor on movies, I feel Taylor has nailed the film makers feel that they needed to have such advice, but then that they entirely ignored it. It is a satire, with exploding rocks, but it is also accurate concerning this tension. My friend listed all the anachronisms that had been included which ran exactly contrary to what he had advised. While the money was welcome he did not feel he had achieved anything. I imagine now with 'policing' of TV dramas and movies by viewers with a very firm, but inaccurate perception of history, notably on the presence of black people in the UK before 1948 and in the Ancient Greek world, this is only just going to get worse.

Thus, overall, this book combines the best bits of Taylor's writing in portraying the past and raising questions, but also connecting with many of the questions that time travel fiction throws up, but subtly. Consequently I will read 'Long Story Short' in hope of more of this kind of writing, though apprehensive that as those stories will be set later in the St. Mary's narrative they will be wallowing in misery the way the novels have gone.

Non-Fiction

'A Contest for Supremacy: China, America, and the Struggle for Mastery in Asia' by Aaron L. Friedberg

This book was published in 2012 so preceded the coming of Xi Jinping to control China. It is far better than ''Inside China's Grand Strategy' (2010) by Ye Zicheng. This book actually had quite sober analysis. It broke it down into relatively small sections and worked through the history of the relationship between the two countries in the Cold War era and beyond, portraying the balance that successive US governments have tried to strike between trying to work with China especially as a counterbalance to the USSR and then as a trading partner, but also to restrain its growing power. China has had a more consistent policy, seeking to expand, at least after 1979, its soft power throughout the central, southern, south-eastern and eastern regions of Asia. 

It has learned to appear to be compliant with international expectations as Ye kept on harping on about, but in reality has always given the least it can get away with. It favours a multi-lateral world as it feels it can be stronger than in a bipolar one. Of course, this was the situation before Xi came to power and has gone full out in terms of Chinese assertion, believing the world should come not to accept China's view on matters but his personal view. While Xi is a capitalist and Mao was a Communist, in fact their views on what the world 'must' have are very similar. Even so, as yet Xi has not done as much harm to China as Mao did. Friedberg, though not explicitly, shows that without Mao's hare-brained schemes China would have advanced to where it is now decades earlier. It has been fortunate for the West that Mao was such an aggressive yet poor, misguided leader.

Friedberg carries a lot of military details about the USA's and China's positions in the Pacific and Asian regions which is not usual in many academic books which also address the economic side, but does show well how this contest is on a variety of fronts. While Friedberg rightly bemoans the US shibboleth of the 1990s that capitalism must lead to democracy, despite this being disproven in China in 1989, he does have that US belief that the American form of capitalism of itself contains some miraculous power to change societies. He does not emphasise this as much as some of his contemporaries will or certainly did back in the 20th Century, but it is clear he cannot shake this form of capitalism as his starting point.

Friedberg does retain some optimism and lays out a range of scenarios for the future. He does think that there is a chance of political and social reform in China. However, in fact, 14 years on it has turned out that the country has gone down the path of almost his extreme 'hard' scenario. There has not yet been a war to seize Taiwan, but certainly the racial oppression especially in Xinjiang, that he cautioned about has become a reality. Of course, he really had no hope of foreseeing how unpredictable US foreign policy was going to become under Trump. While he has been keen on restricting China especially economically but also militarily, the favouring of North Korea over South Korea and the unwavering support for Russia in a dragging on land war, that might have seemed unlikely in 2012, has turned the basis for Friedberg's analysis on its head.

This is a largely balance book making use of as many Chinese sources as possible. Friedberg's outlook is a little constrained by the society in which he lived. However, he makes no reckless judgements and this is a sound book if you want to explore the shifting relations between the two countries, especially in the already almost forgotten period between Deng and Xi.

The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'The Flight of the Heron' by D.K. [Dorothy Kathleen] Broster

The last few weeks of reading have taught me a couple of things. One is not to buy an entire trilogy until I am really familiar with the nature of the books in it. The other is that it is a mistake to return to stories you liked in your childhood. With this book I made both of these errors. Back in 1976 as a 9-year old, watching the BBC dramatisation of this book, published in 1925, I thoroughly enjoyed the story. I read what I thought was the book back in 1991, but now realise it was the 1963 Puffin version (or a reprint of it) and that version of the story had been bowdlerised for children/young adults. The original version was a great deal nastier.

The story about two men, Captain (later Major) Keith Windham of the His Majesty's Royal Regiment of Foot and Ewen Cameron, laird of the fictional Ardoy, liegeman to Donald Cameron of Lochiel (1695-1748) the genuine head of the Cameron clan. A local seer, foster-father to Ewen, foretells that the men will meet five times, the first and last time by water. The heron acts as an omen and a plot device for the story. 

The background is the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 when Prince Charles Stuart, son of the Stuart pretender to the thrones of England and Scotland landed in Scotland. Most of his support came from Highland clans. While Catholic, Charles did receive support from some Protestant clans, the Camerons were Episcopalian, a form of Anglicanism introduced to Scotland by Charles's great-great grandfather, James I/VI. Though the Jacobites were able to advance as far as Derby anticipated wider support was not forthcoming and they were driven back into Scotland, defeated and then suffered a ferocious hunt to bring a scorched earth retribution to them and their families.

Broster acknowledged that she was heavily influenced by 'Flemington' (1911) by Violet Jacob which similarly featured two men on the two sides of the conflict. I do not know if that book is as bleak as this one is. Broster's narrative if fixed on the two men and how they fall in turn into each other's control. It skips over the big events such as the battles of Fontenoy and of Culloden, though we do hear of the outcomes. It features primarily skirmishes between the two sides, but also does not baulk from the atrocities committed by the government forces against the Jacobites in the aftermath of Culloden, including torture and summary execution, the seizing of livestock and the burning of farms and houses. Those rebels actually bought to trial faced being partially hanged, drawn and quartered, the punishment for treason.

Being an Englishman who migrated to Scotland, this was the first time I had read of someone suffering from orophobia (fear of mountains) as I did. Broster counters Cameron's love of the lochside where he lives, hemmed in with mountains, well with Windham's unease, perhaps even fear of these sinister mountains and that was an aspect which spoke to me. Broster does an excellent job in portraying the terrain of the different places the two men go to and conjuring up Edinburgh of the time. She is also decent at making distinctions between the different peoples. She does restrict the Gaelic to particular words or phrases so the Lowlanders speaking in full-on Common Scots can be tricky for an English reader to follow.

Aside from the horrors shown, another thing that jars for a modern reader - well, for me - is the obsessive observation by Windham of a sense of chivalry. Despite all the violence and cruelty, he constantly chafes over what he said to whom and of Cameron's perception of him and his actions. This leads him to largely wreck his career and to put himself at risk of imprisonment. Both men save each other's lives at various stages. Cameron spends a lot of the latter part of the book wounded and imprisoned, threatened with execution and torture that Windham is able to ameliorate/prevent even at risk to himself.

There are references to readers perceiving a homosexual connection between the two men. Cameron marries Alison during the novel, but Windham is unmarried. The fact that he is willing to go to physical and reputational danger sometimes simply so that Cameron thinks well of him, suggests an infatuation with the man, if not an obsession. While Cameron at times seems to feel obliged, even obligated, to Windham, there is much less of that passion, indeed he focuses far more on his duties to his clan chief. Of course, when Broster was writing, homosexuality was illegal even in England and it would remain so even longer in Scotland, so she could not really even drop heavy hints in this direction. However, modern readers are likely to perceive the connection as this rather than the stuff around chivalric behaviour which at times seems laboured, perhaps even artificial.

Overall, despite some admirable traits I did not enjoy this book. It has utterly destroyed the pleasure I had watching the TV series. The ending is different to the versions I had seen and read, which simply made it appear that much crueller. Unfortunately I bought the following two books, 'The Gleam in the North' (1927) and 'The Dark Mile' (1929) at the same time. However, I am now minded to send them to a charity shop. As with N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy, I really need to read a wider range of reviews of books before I buy them, especially if I encounter lots of positive views that may/do not mention the really unpleasant aspects of these books, certainly before I indulge in buying a trilogy in one go.

'The Paper Moon' by Andrea Camilleri

This is a straight forward murder mystery, lower key than some of the other Montalbano novels, of which it is the 9th, with a limited cast of characters. Montalbano has to entangle what led to a man, Angelo Pardo, a sales representative for medication companies being shot in the face in a private terrace room at his apartment and left with his penis hanging out. The two who seem most involved are his sister his doting sister Michela Pardo and his latest lover, a married woman, Elena Sclafani, though other lovers turn up as the investigation unfolds. It seems quickly apparent that Angelo was involved in corrupt practices in supplying medications to doctors and pharmacies, that have enabled him to earn a substantial corrupt income to spend on expensive gifts for Elena. As the investigation continues, it seems latterly he was also involved with the supply of cocaine which has led to the death of a number of notable men. The main task in this novel is for Montalbano to disentangle which aspects both at the apartment and missing from it, provide the explanation for the killing. He is enchanted by both of the women even though Michela is dowdy and it seems had incestuous feelings for her brother even if these were not consummated. Elena is in part very open about her lifestyle but also deceptive. Thus, this is quite an intricate plot especially in the different interviews by the inspector of the two women as more information comes to light. Overall quite a simple but satisfying plot.

'The Obelisk Gate' by N.L. Jemisin

After my experiences reading the first book in the trilogy, 'The Fifth Season' (2015) last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html I was hesitant with continuing. However, I realised that my autistic outlook was not going to let myself pay for a trilogy only to throw two-thirds of it away. This books is a bit better. We are still seeing a post-apocalyptic world with people struggling to survive and facing all kinds of prejudice, but as is often common with a second book in a trilogy you feel that this book is marking time until the climax in the final book. This one jumps around in time but not as much as the previous one. It shows Essun's progress but also that of her daughter Nassun, who she was separated from just before the apocalypse and endowed with the same magic abilities connected to the Earth, faces similar suffering as she and her father who wants her 'cured' head southwards on the single large continent. We get more of a sense that this planet, though not resembling ours in layout is Earth, but a lot of its problems have stemmed from the lost of the Moon though thrown into an elliptical orbit it is scheduled to return to the planet's vicinity.

The prime problem for me is that Jemisin seems addicted to pain and cruelty. I do not know about her own life but she seems incapable of writing more than a few pages before she has to include intense cruelty or someone suffering pain, often children. I understand she probably wanted to baulk against 'cosy' fantasy novels, but she seems unable to move through the story in any other way except by showing another incident. If she cannot engineer it in the current time then a character remembers something horrendous they suffered or inflicted in the past, and then another and another. It is unremitting and after a while it becomes tiresome and blunts the reader. There is a man, Alabaster turning to stone and being eaten alive, more mutilated each time he appears for pages, but apparently this is not enough for Jemisin and we have to see both Nassun and Essun suffering more, Nassun's mentor, Schaffa remembering all the pain and deaths he dealt out as he himself is tortured by what was implanted in him. There is a lot of mutilation in this book especially with hands and arms cut off, though some are able to be reattached.

You also feel as if you have somehow missed a book in the series as if there was a Volume 1.5. There is so much backstory about Essun when she was still Syenite and had a relationship and a child with Alabaster. That child and another of Alabaster's died tragically, but we only get irregular references back to this, triggered occasionally during interactions between Essun and Alabaster as he dies. At the end Jemisin comments on how she battled writing a trilogy and you have a sense that in fact it was a tetralogy and you have gone from Book 1 to Book 3 in a single bound. The climatic battle to save the underground settlement where Essun is living is rushed but tense and rather wakes you up from the jogging along nature of the rest of the book. The book is not terrible, but I certainly cannot understand why it received rave reviews. It has a lot of strong female characters of a variety of races and it has an interesting form of magic connected to rock and tectonics. However, beyond this the writing is not of an outstanding level and as Jemisin seems to acknowledge herself, she is not always in control of the story she has to tell, something which is common in epic fantasy series as Martin has clearly shown.

'England Made Me' by Graham Greene

This book from 1935 is the third I have read by Greene and I am getting a feel for his style. Like 'Stamboul Train' (1932) and 'It's a Battlefield' (1934) it comes across rather like a play. Greene sets up a handful of characters with various quirks and focuses on the interactions between them. Often the setting is seedy and he seems to insist on having young women who want to have lots of sex, perhaps contrary to what we might expect from a 1930s novel, especially as generally while they have troubles they are not punished for their promiscuity, in this case Lucia 'Loo' who Anthony falls for. There are hints that one character, Ferdinand 'Minty' Minty is homosexual but it is not brought out even as clearly as the lesbianism/bisexualism in 'Stamboul Train'. The story also hints at incest, but never goes as far of this, just highlighting the difficulties of relations between twins when they are so much of each other's lives, especially as children, but are now adults. There are also references to Catholic perspectives which became a theme through much of Greene's work but are only touched on lightly in this book. 

Anthony Farrant is a compulsive liar and feckless wastrel who keeps getting sacked from jobs, so ends up drifting from place to place including India, Singapore and Aden. Back in London, his twin sister Kate offers him a position with her lover/employer, the Swedish magnate, Erik Krogh, who having worked up from humble beginnings now runs companies across the world. However, trying to launch an American company, he begins to commit fraud that both Kate and Anthony, employed as a rather negligent bodyguard, become aware of. Minty is a British journalist working in Stockholm, always looking to get information about Krogh, due to how wealthy he is and how many he employs. Anthony has an ambivalent relationship but even when seeking revenge on Krogh does not tell the journalist everything.

Anthony does get Krogh to lighten up and enjoy himself a bit, something the magnate welcomes, even though he remains anxious about how the newspapers will view it. However, the Englishman draws a line when it becomes clear Krogh set up a union leader so he would be sacked and will not even talk to the man's son, also one of this employees. Krogh in fact does not need Anthony because his success has meant there are a ring of sycophants around him, willing to countenance anything to protect Krogh's good name, especially Fred Hall who comes from Amsterdam to Stockholm for the climax.

The novel has strong characters as you would expect, though Greene does seem to fall back on a range of types which is more obvious when reading a number of the novels. It is an interesting analysis of how the very wealthy become detached from reality and judge everything through what benefits them most easily dismissing any concern with the impact on others.

Non-Fiction

'The Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Margaret Thatcher' by George Malcolm Thomson

This book was published in 1980 by Scottish journalist George Malcolm Thomson (1899-1996). It is a series of 'pen portraits' of the British prime ministers up to Thatcher. The style is rather peculiar. I guess this comes from Thomson being a journalist rather than a historian or aiming at the popular history market. Certainly, especially as the book moves through the 20th Century, he allows his strong opinions to increasingly distort what he writes. 

I suppose it is no surprise that he was a hardline Conservative but he did have some odd ideas, for example, in terms of the power of trade unions and the anticipated longevity of the French Fifth Republic, though it was already 22 years old at the time he was writing. He has a grave hostility to what he vaguely terms of 'collective security' in international affairs and this feeds him into being scathing of the United Nations. He also perceives anything more liberal than the Conservative Party of the late 1970s as 'Left' or 'Socialist' which means the Liberals of the inter-war period get labelled 'Left' when few would agree with that. He constantly complains about the threats to Britain from 'Marxists' and wrongly portrays the mainstream of the Labour Party in those terms, even when dealing with party leaders like Callaghan who in fact was really a monetarist and supporter of police authority.

Perhaps the most distorted element is when he is covering the prime ministers of the late 1930s. He keeps hammering on about the need for rearmanent and an armed response to the remilitarisation of the Rhineland. He completely overestimates the strength of the German military from 1935 and utterly overlooks how poorly equipped it was, even by 1939-40 when victory came more from how Poland being ill-prepared Poland and how defeatist French commanders were - even though their tanks were far superior to the German ones. Thus, in this phase there is a constant jarring with what the public and politicians wanted and indeed, the actual situation of German strength, even when he was writing at a time when this had become well known. I guess he cannot conceal that as a man in his 30s he was bitter about the policies adopted and even 40+ years later cannot moderate that when writing history.

I certainly do not recommend the sections of the book which cover the period when Thomson was an adult. What was eye-opening to me, having really only studied British politics in detail from the 1860s onward are his portraits of the prime ministers of the 18th Century and early 19th Century. He shows, though often with repetition, how they were often very inter-related noblemen, often in office simply on the whim of the King. Many did not want the job and/or were ineffective in it. It becomes clear why Walpole, Pitts - father and son, Peel and, to some degree, Wellington, are far better known than Shelburne, Portland, Grenville, Addington, Canning or Goderich. Even then too often Thomson's tone is flippant when it could have been far much more analytical. His obsessions with their wives and how many children they had or when they received 'the Garter' are of not much use.

Aside from widening my knowledge on this earlier period, there are some curiosities (though not all unsurprising) that he highlights. Of all the prime ministers he covers 18 attended Eton, 11 not only attended the University of Oxford, but Christ Church college there, 39 prime ministers in total went to either the University of Oxford or the University of Cambridge. Aside from a couple of 19th Century examples, it was only in the 20th Century that a middle class, rather than aristocratic background was the norm. All but 4 were married. Most bizarrely, 16 of them, from the Duke of Grafton (Prime Minister, 1768-70) to Winston Churchill (1940-45; 1951-55), Sir Anthony Eden (1955-57) and Sir Alec Douglas-Home (1963-64) were all related to Sir George Villiers of Brooksby, the Sheriff of Leicester under Queen Elizabeth I and father of George, 1st Duke of Buckingham. While not constantly an oligarchy, it is clear for much of British history prime ministers have come from narrow millieux.

Overall, this is an annoying book that is very much in the latter third overshadowed by the author proving incapable of toning down his strong (and often ill-informed) opinions in order to write a history book. It is of some use if you want a quick summary of more obscure prime ministers of the past, but these days you can probably get better on Wikipedia.