The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'Metropolis' by Philip Kerr

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

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

'City of Heavenly Fire' by Cassandra Clare

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

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

'Stonemouth' by Iain Banks

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

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

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

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

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

'Cursed' by Benedict Jacka

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

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

'Midwinter' by John Buchan

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

'Akenfield' by Ronald Blythe

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

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

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Armageddon Rag' by George R.R. Martin

This book published in 1983 is probably the best I have read by Martin. It has some supernatural elements, but these are handled subtly and are in the background for much of the novel, to the extent that I would classify it as magic realism. The story is about novelist and former music journalist Sandy Blair (a man) who is asked by a magazine editor who he previously worked for, to dig into the murder of music promoter, Jamie Lynch. This soon leads Sandy to reconnect with old friends from the hippie era, across the USA and to track down the former members of rock band The Nazgûl which broke up following the assassination of their lead singer, Patrick Henry 'Hobbit' Hobbins during an open-air concert at West Mesa in 1971. One of the most fantastical elements is that any band would be permitted to use that name, the name of the Ringwraiths in 'The Lord of the Rings' (1954-55) given how assiduous Tolkien's estate is in taking legal action against anyone making use of his legacy, no matter in how minor a way. 'The Armageddon Rag' is a 21-minute long track filling the whole B side of their last album. 

Martin was born in 1948 so was 21 in 1969 at the peak of the hippie movement. In many ways this is a contemplation of that movement. While not explicitly set in the Reagan era, it does reference to business and societal culture of that time as a means of reflecting what 'went wrong' with the hippie movement - various characters express a range of views on this. Steadily Edan Morse begins to reassemble the band and introduces a lookalike to replace their dead lead singer. Morse may have been involved in radical direct action in the 1960s and it increasingly appears he is using supernatural means to get the band back together and to be a success with old and new fans alike, culminating in a performance at the West Mesa venue.

The book is in part a murder mystery, but is it also a paean to hippie culture. The discussion of the fictional band also reminded me of 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I read in April: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html While acclaimed at the time, it did not attract a wide readership and has clearly been re-released on the back of the dramatisation of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-2011) series and its prequels. However, I feel the drawing of the range of characters, the representation of the performances, the mystery and the very subtle but credible supernatural perspective is a good mix, perhaps could be seen these days alongside Stephen Leather's Jack Nightingale series. Anyway, it was an engaging read that I enjoyed more than I had anticipated.

'John Burnet of Barns' by John Buchan

This was the first novel that Buchan published, at the age of 23. It is a melodrama set in late 17th Century south-west Scotland and is particularly strong in making use of the geography of that region. You could trace the protagonist, Laird John Burnet, across many of the same landscape features today. Initially this is the story of a young scholarly man's life and his love for a neighbour, Majory Veitch. However, his path crosses with his bullish cousin, Gilbert Burnet. 

Returning to Scotland from the Netherlands, John finds Gilbert has laid false charges against him of being a Covenanter, during the Killing Time (1679-88) when government forces under Charles II and then James II/VII persecuted and executed the Covenanters who favoured presbyterianism over the enforcement of an episcopal church, i.e. one with bishops. There are various adventures with John trying to escape capture by moving around the uplands of the Borders while trying to keep in touch with Marjory. There are lots of dramatic scenes and John is only really saved by the overthrow of King James and his replacement with the Dutch King William III. 

The language is aimed to sound very 17th Century anyway even for being written in the 1890s. The greatest challenge comes from Nicol Plenderleith, a very energetic local who offers himself as man servant to John and accompanies on his adventures. His speech is full of Scots terms and is rendered almost phonetically. Having moved to North-East Scotland (rather than South-West) helped me comprehend what he was saying a little better. Overall, this is a romp very much of its time, but has a richness due to strong portrayals of characters and a real connection to the landscape in which it is set.

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' by Philip Kerr

This was the 13th and penultimate book in Kerr's Bernie Gunther series which was published in 2018 soon after his death. It breaks from many of the others as it does not run in two time periods. Instead, following on from 'Prussian Blue' (2017): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html it is now 1957 and Gunther is living in Munich and working as a mortuary attendant when he is blackmailed into helping foil a Stasi plan to undermine a new political party in West Germany. This then leads to him being recruited as a loss adjuster for an insurance company and in turn being sent to Greece to investigate the suspicious sinking of a private yacht on an archaeological voyage. Soon, when one of the men involved is murdered, Gunther is compelled by the Greek police to assist and he uncovers a plot to secure gold taken from Jews in Thessaloniki during the war and believed to be aboard a sunken ship offshore. There are a range of suspects each trying to shift the blame on to others and portrayal their role in Germany's occupation of Greece as a minor one.

This novel comes over effectively as a 1950s hard-boiled novel, building well on what Gunther has seen and done. Naturally it asks questions about individuals' complicity in wartime atrocities and the reinvention of West Germany and its people after the war. The plot is suitably twisty and gives a feel of Greece at the time. Unlike with previous novels because we do not see Gunther in the "now" the jeopardy is more genuine than when we know he must have escaped from whatever danger is shown as occurring in the past. His connection to an attractive young female Greek lawyer and her feelings towards him jar. Given his age he is old enough to be her father, if not grandfather. He could have been partnered with a contemporary, but in these latter books Kerr seems to have felt compelled to repeatedly show Gunther as alluring to younger women, when ironically women of his own age, including more than one wife, have left him. Overall, this is a solid crime thriller with a good feel for time and place.

'City of Lost Souls' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fifth book in her Mortal Instruments novels. It feels rather like an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' with the Lightwood siblings of Shadowhunters: Jace, Alec and Isabelle, notably Jace, who is the protagonist, Clary Fray's love interest; Simon the vampire and his housemate/mentor Jordan the werewolf and his returned love Maia, also a werewolf, as his Clary's soon-to-be stepfather Luke. After the drama at the top of the tower block in the last novel, 'City of Fallen Angels' (2011) Jace has disappeared taken away by Sebastian/Jonathan, Clary's evil brother. The book is basically the assorted "gang" working without the knowledge of the authorities to locate Jace and retrieve him, in various ways.

 Being an uber-YA book there is a lot of romance and kissing. Jace and Clary hold off from having sex, which is a good thing given it is not clear whether they remain underage. In the movie and TV series, they are appropriately portrayed as young adults. However, the stories of the other characters, especially Simon (who is having an on-off relationship with Isabelle). We see more of Sebastian and the scenes in which Clary infiltrates the teleporting flat which he and Jace are using to move around Europe, are interesting. After all the various relationship tensions (including between Alec and his co-habiting boyfriend, immortal warlock, Magnus) there is another big battle, this time in a remote part of Ireland. While the creation of an evil army is thwarted, Sebastian escapes.

These books are almost an archetype of YA fantasy. There is a lot of angst around relationships and parents, and breaking the rules. However, it does move along briskly and after five books, the characters are rounded out. The uncertainties when Jace is shifting back and forth between evil and good(ish) personalities is handled competently. It delivers the kind of action you expect. The portrayals of Venice, Paris and Prague are well done.

'Dead Air' by Iain Banks

I am beginning to wonder if I misjudged the quality of Banks's writing. This was another poor effort, from later in his career, published in 2002. It is set around Kenneth Nott, who is a DJ on a talk radio channel that sounds rather like LBC or the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2. The novel opens with the character at a party when they hear about the 11th September 2001 atrocity in the USA. Aside from setting the date, nothing is done with that. From then on it simply wanders. Much of it feels like a Martin Amis wish fulfillment novel as Nott who has an established girlfriend has sex with a range of women who generally go off him after a while. He lives on a boat on the Thames, drinks a lot and goes to night clubs and parties. He talks with his co-presenter and his two close friends and sometimes refers to his early life in Scotland, which does tend to make you feel he is an avatar for Banks, perhaps this is even semi-biographical. He starts having a relationship with Celia, wife of a gangster. There are moments of jeopardy, one where he is kidnapped as the result of a road rage incident, one where he hits a fellow guest on a TV programme and particularly when he crosses paths with the gangster. However, it is only when he is threatened by direct violence that he seems to take anything seriously. For the rest of the time he does not take measure of his behaviour or its consequences.

Reviews on the cover of the book suggest it was intended to be satirical. Given the time that has passed, even though I was living in London at the time and saw and heard the kind of programmes that are shown, I cannot see if it is satirising anyone in particular or a compilation of people. I guess there is enough to satirise in so-called 'shock jocks', but in many ways the book just ends up portraying their behaviour simply in a fictional form rather than based on real people and the situations they got into. For a reader today, the challenges of US President George W. Bush and of global conflicts appear almost as if they could come from the current news, only the names have changed. There is really no character development, so we have simply spent time as audience for this slice of the character's life. It is credible, but by the end you do wonder what the point was. Certainly it does not come close to the kind of book the cover reviews suggest, even taking into account their usual exaggerations.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's War Directives, 1939-1945' ed. by H.R. [Hugh] Trevor-Roper

This is a translated and commented on collection of a specific set of directives issued by Adolf Hitler throughout the Second World War. Naturally there is a shift in tone from 1943 to a similar but different sort of directive. The book does show what Hitler intended at each stage and some were never issued as events overtook the directive. As Trevor-Roper highlights, there is a mix of very high ambitions and then rather too detailed planning coming from a commander-in-chief. It does highlight some perhaps unexpected views of Hitler. He did seem to believe the British would surrender, but then that they would re-invade Norway when Germany invaded the USSR. He was obsessed with coastal landings throughout the war and gave many directions on protecting these, though ironically such preparations proved inadequate with the Normandy Invasion. He did fear an invasion of Denmark and ordered that as much effort be put into defending it as the Dutch, Belgian and French coastlines. An interesting book which despite its age - published in 1964 - is a useful reminder of things which it seems many mainstream commentators forget about Hitler's intentions when at war.

The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'Prussian Blue' by Philip Kerr

Like many of the Bernie Gunther stories, this one is set in two time periods, 1956 - following on directly from the events shown in 'The Other Side of Silence' which I read in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html and the spring of 1939. Gunther is chased out of the French Riviera by Stasi agents and the actions goes between him trying to reach West Germany and get clear of them and when he was sent to Hitler's complex near Berchtesgaden where an official has been shot dead by a sniper. There are reasons to connect the two time periods, but in fact it would have worked if simply the 1939 case had been shown. For this case Gunther is sent by Heydrich but is working to Martin Bormann. He encounters a variety of different forms of corruption not simply around the construction of Hitler's retreat at Obersalzberg but also a local brothel.

The brief coverage of the flight in 1956 only occasionally distracts from the fascinating portrayal of how extensively Obersalzberg was remodelled above and below ground, including evicting numerous local residents and demolishing houses. This provided the basis for motives among very many. This combined with the tradition of hunting in the region makes it a challenge for Gunther to identify the killer especially when dodging around internecine Nazi rivalry. The tightness of focus for the majority of the book on the neighbourhood in southern Bavaria, I feel makes this one of the more effective of the late Gunther books and it was a satisfying crime novel read, whether or not you are familiar with the details of the era.

'City of Fallen Angels' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fourth book in the Mortal Instruments Series series. I ended up with the final three books as well as the preceding three I read a few years back. As I noted having finished 'City of Glass' (2009): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/04/books-i-listened-toread-in-april.html that felt like the end of a trilogy. Thus, this one feels a little like an anti-climax. It occurs all in New York and the leads of the previous novels are generally living lives as young adults with exceptional powers. Simon the vampire features much more in this novel and gets into complicated situations dating both a shadowhunter and a werewolf and slowly a greater threat than the love lives of these teenagers comes to the fore. The latter parts of the novel work well on the basis of a fantasy novel and I am guessing the YA elements of much of the book did not overly appeal as I am certainly not part of that demographic. Saying that the book moves along steadily and despite the fantasy outlook and the particular preoccupations of the young people, the characters and what they do comes over as convincing. For example Simon fearing he might have killed a girl when losing control of his vampire hunger, is well handled.

'The Crow Road' by Iain Banks

After reading 'Espedair Street' (1987) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html in April and having seen the dramatization of this novel back in 1996 I was optimistic that this would be a good read. Unfortunately, this book is less than the sum of its parts. Banks ranges back and forth in time to feature various members of the McHoan family and their neighbours across the social classes, in south-west Scotland. There are well written scenes, but sometimes you have no idea what time period is featured in the particular slice of text before it jumps on to something else. Featuring many of the same characters at different stages from 1945 to 1990, makes this very difficult. Sometimes the jump from one chunk to the next is only a matter of a few months or years, at other times it can be decades.

The book also suffers from that pretentious approach, which I guess might have seemed exciting or innovative back in the 1980s, of featuring a book in it which has the same title as the novel itself. In fact two embryonic 'Crow Road' novels are featured in the story and one has some of the same text as the one we are reading. None of this helps with clarity. By the end I realised why Banks had adopted this approach and that was because if it had all been written out 'straight' then it simply would have been a family drama across the decades. While there was a legitimate mystery it would still be akin to many other unexceptional novels. Fragmenting it and jumbling up the pieces seems to be aiming to instill a greater sense of mystery and somehow to make it more sophisticated than a Julie Garwood novel.

The portrayal of various locations in Scotland, no matter in what era they are shown in, is handled very well and is a highlight of the book. In addition, the angst of a teenager/young man attracted to various women, is also written well, I imagine from the author's personal recollection.

I must say that unless I had relocated to Scotland in 2021, I would have really struggled to have understood some of the dialogue especially in the early chapters. If you are unfamiliar with mid- to late 20th Century Scottish version of English vernacular, this might prove a real challenge. Overall, though if interested in this story, I suggest you watch the BBC TV series instead.

'Surfeit of Suspects' by George Bellairs [Harold Blundell]

Published in 1964, this is the fortieth book in the Thomas Littlejohn series, by which time the protagonist is a Superintendent. It is set in the fictional Surrey town of Evingden where an explosion kills three directors of a failing joinery company. It soon transpires they were killed with dynamite and Littlejohn and his Inspector Cromwell are drawn into a complex fraud involving three shell companies. As is noted in the introductory essay by Martin Edwards who has this role for these British Library reprints, the outlook of the book even in 1964 was dated. Bellairs first book had been published in 1941 and you could certainly envisage this one being published a decade earlier. However, a lot of the motive for the multiple murders (and a suicide) are around the modernisation of the town including electric street lighting replacing gas lighting; the building of new shopping centres and housing estates leading to an increase in population. Thus, the very fact of the passing of an era forms the basis for the story and shows how the characters themselves are looking to engage with business in the 1960s boom.

The plot becomes increasingly complex and it is no surprise that Bellairs was a bank manager all his life. Perhaps a modern reader will be more familiar with shell companies and insider trading, but even so you have to pay attention, though the author takes you through the increasing layers steadily rather than in a rush. He does conjure up a feasible setting and his characters, none of whom are particularly likeable, come across as believable especially for that time and place. While if writing in 2024 Bellairs would probably be categorised as writing 'cosy' crime novels, the spite and selfishness, let alone their sense of entitlement, of these multiple suspects is well communicated. Even now, let alone when it was published, I feel sure readers can identify people very much like those portrayed.

Non-Fiction

'A History of British Trade Unionism' by Henry Pelling

This is a brisk and accessible account of trade unions in Britain (and indeed their connections to foreign unions) from the late 18th Century 'combinations' through to 1963 just ahead of the return to power of Labour and the final steps in the corporatism into which unions had been drawn during the Second World War. Despite the complexity of the numerous unions in British society, Pelling handles this well without simply focusing on the largest, to give a solid picture of developments at each stage. Both showing how extensive situations like the Taff Vale Judgement of 1901, the 1911 national strikes and the General Strike of 1926 developed and panned out but drawing on examples from across the country to show the range of experiences and indeed the frictions between unions.

I had my attention drawn to Margaret Bondfield, Chair of the TUC Council in 1923 and Minister of Labour, 1929-31, who I have to confess I was ignorant of and there may be others who played important roles in UK industrial relations that tend to have been forgotten. Perhaps most disheartening was recognising the challenges that many workers faced in the mid- to late 19th Century are those plaguing workers in the 2020s. Pelling charts the growth and steady success of trade unions but was oblivious to how much this was to be reversed in 20 years of his book being published.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Second Chance' by Jodi Taylor

This is the third book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's series (though with the additional 'between books' added in subsequently, it is now the fifth) about a British university unit which uses time machines. As noted with the previous ones, the tone of these books is uncertain. It opens with the heroine Max having been captured at the Fall of Troy waiting in a line of women who are being raped and then killed or shipped off to slavery. This harrowing scene, more of which appears later, contrasts with the jaunty, sometimes humorous tone of the book. 

The light-heartedness certainly jars when genuine grave decisions are called for and when tragedy hits. I have mentioned before that while Max is an adult, probably in her thirties, with a doctorate, her attitude is very much like a girl half her age. Taylor does take the stories off in unpredictable directions. While there are "rules" she is happy to break them and at the end of this story Max ends up in a parallel universe.

Despite this awkwardness, the stories move along briskly. The portrayal of the various scenes in history is well handled. Poor Sir Isaac Newton gets interfered with (as he did in a recent 'Doctor Who' episode) and it seems that without the input of time travellers he would never have achieved anything much except determine the date the world was created. Though grim, the scenes in Troy are done very well and provide an excellent historical interpretation of the various myths around the war. 

I have now got quite a lot of the books in this series second hand so while I have some uncertainties about them, I am liable to be reviewing more over the next couple of years.

'Doing Time' by Jodi Taylor

This is the first book in Taylor's Time Police series. It runs parallel to and sometime bisects with her St. Mary's books. They are all set in some undeclared near future though one where mid-20th Century technology seems still to be in use too. This one is set a couple of decades ahead of the St. Mary's stories and answers some of the glaring questions from those books, notably how come only a small British university unit are the only ones to have time machines. This book is set after the Time Wars in which different nations tried to rewrite history to favour them leading to chaos. The international Time Police have been set up, conveniently for a UK author, based in London and seeming to feature exclusively British staff.

This book is more clearly YA in tone, featuring three young people: Jane, Luke and Matthew who for various reasons have had difficult upbringings. Once we find out who Matthew is, it provides spoilers for the St. Mary's series so I suggest ready well beyond Book 3 in that series before being tempted over to this one. While Taylor's outlook fits well with YA protagonists there is still a jarring between the brutal and the chummy/light-hearted. The Time Police have the authority to execute anyone doing illegal time travel and a brutal murder is also at the heart of this novel. As typical of Taylor's work, the pace and attention to historical details - they go to see the assassination of Julius Caesar - rather carries you over the cracks.

'Espedair Street' by Iain Banks

On the surface, the premise of this novel, published in 1987, about an ageing 1970s rock star living in a converted church in Glasgow reminiscing, seemed unpromising. However, I think it is the best book by Banks that I have read so far. Dan Weir recounts his rise from his early days in Glasgow to being the bassist and lyricist with globally successful Frozen Gold. It alternates between the present when he hangs around with local oddballs and the history of the band. Readers often liken the band to Fleetwood Mac, though in music style more to Pink Floyd. Banks himself has said Dan is rather like Fish from Marillion. However, there are elements such as a tragic death on stage and enraging Christians in the USA that come from the pool of rock myths/legends so seem familiar from the stories of The Beatles and 'This is Spinal Tap'  (1984). There are probably references that I have missed.

I recognise that I have come to this book very late and 37 years ago when it was published it probably seemed fresh, even satirical. Yet, despite the tropes and the familiar situations, I really feel this is where Banks's skill shines through. At times you feel he is over-rated but in this case I could understand where admiration for him shines through. There is a real deftness in the writing of this book which carries you on briskly and makes you genuinely interested in the character.

'The Body in the Dumb River' by George Bellairs [Harold Blundell]

This is another of those forgotten mystery authors - he published fifty books in his life, this is the 35th in his Thomas Littlejohn series - that was featured in the British Library reprint collection. I picked up quite a few more at the weekend so there will be more coming up. This was published in 1961, but set in rural Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire, aside from the reference to council estates and the Second World War, it could easily have been published between the wars. The novel begins during heavy flooding when the body of a man identified locally as James Lane is found in a flooded embanked river. He is known as a man who runs a hoopla stall at travelling fairs across southern and eastern England. However, it is soon revealed that he is in fact James Teasdale a seller of arts supplies from a small town in Yorkshire close to Sheffield.

The book is a very good representation of social class in 20th Century English society. The dead man is entangled with a generally nasty wife and father-in-law who despite their decline in fortunes think very highly of themselves. Teasdale's alternate, somewhat freer life seems to be set in contrast to the more 'respectable' one he had lived, though he was having an adulterous relationship with a younger woman who also worked the fair. The mystery is soon resolved and it becomes more an issue of interlocking personalities. The strengths of the novel are less the mystery and more the portrayal of desultory decaying settings and a range of unpleasant people each with their own myths and drivers.

Non-Fiction

'Industrial Society: Social Sciences in Management' ed. by Denis Pym

It might seem strange to be reading a book published in 1968 about management practices. However, if you look back down the non-fiction books I have reviewed over the past few years you can see that I had an interest in the economic developments of the post-war period 1945-75. This book was published at a time when sociology and psychology and their application to industrial and economic practices was growing. There had been a couple of decades of research since the war, more applied than the theoretical work inter-war, which allowed analysis to be applied. This book takes on a whole host of topics and some seem very dated now, though the expectations of computerisation were prescient. Market research and ergonomics were also becoming commonplace. This such as concerns about restrictive practices and corporatism with trade unions, do feel very historic.

Perhaps the most interesting chapters for a modern reader are the early ones. The fuss about restrictive practices and why they occur is a good reminder from Alan Fox about how different the post-war workplace was. However, Dorothy Wedderburn on redundancy, the Belbins on retraining older workers and in later chapters, D.G. Clark on the industrial manager, P.J. Sadler on executive leadership and Peter B. Smith on training and developing executives, unfortunately have perceptive things to say, that seem to need to be repeated even some 56 years later. Perhaps the two most acute chapters are by the editor himself. Pym has a chapter on the misuse of professional manpower (one thing that dates the book is that all workers and managers are 'he' unless seamstresses or waitresses) and on individual growth and strategies of trust.

Much of what is recommended in this book written over half-a-century ago, would be what we would expect to see in the best functioning, inclusive companies today. The examples of poor management practice, the dismissing of the development of workers and hierarchical behaviours, unfortunately are all too prevalent even in the 2020s. One situation and set of approaches by managers leading to poor outcomes, shown by Pym, is identical to my workplace experience under such a manager, just last year.

I suppose what Pym and his colleagues did not foresee was the rise of the New Right in the mid-1970s and how the Thatcher governments were not simply going to eliminate what were identified here of difficulties with working with unions, but to reassert a very old fashioned, 'Victorian values' approach to the workplace that employers naturally felt liberated to adopt. The authors in this book could not accept that mass unemployment would ever be allowed again, let alone be engineered to return in order to 'discipline' the workforce in the way that was to follow within 12 years of this book being published.

It is interesting to look back to see what people analysing industry, thought. However, it is highly disheartening to realise that the things that they identified as making the British workplace dysfunctional and inefficient, indeed quite toxic to work in, have not just continued largely unchallenged but have been reasserted as the 'only right way' to run capitalist industry.

Books I Read/Listened To In October

 Fiction

'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This is the first part of Ruiz Zafón's renowned tetralogy. It is set in Barcelona, 1945-56. It is a little magic realism, with most elements quite realistic, if Gothic in tone. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books which the protagonist is taken to as a boy and is the home to books that would otherwise be lost has a fantastical element. However, other aspects such as the role of the secret police under the Francoist regime, established right across Spain in 1939, is realistic. Daniel is allowed to pick one book from the cemetery and selects 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax an unsuccessful published author from Barcelona who spent much of his life in the inter-war years in Paris. Daniel sets out to discover the story of Carax, especially his subsequent death in Barcelona, and those who knew him that remain. This involves a lot of investigating among deserted buildings of the city and avoiding various nasty characters including the man intent on burning all Carax's work. It is also a coming of age story and Daniel's challenges with the young women he falls for, in part mirror Carax's own.

This book has been immensely successful. It was published in 2001 and translated into English in 2004. I am not sure why I had not come across it before, though possibly as given my reading patterns I typically reach books some 15-20 years after they have been successful and they are common in charity shops. I was interested in the setting, having read quite a lot on the Spanish Civil War, but much less on the period afterwards. The Gothic atmosphere is well rendered. The investigation and the sense of jeopardy were handled effectively. I did feel that it went too far in trying to be twisty in its narrative and its revelations and that my patience with how many times it might loop around or parallels be drawn, was probably exhausted by the three-quarter mark, though I continued to the end. Perhaps the petty, and at times violent, nastiness of characters especially towards their children, becomes tiresome after a while.

I have the second book, in the sequence, 'The Angel's Game' (2008) which is a prequel to read. While it was a labour to finish the first book, I did admire the imagination of the author and his portrayal of the settings so will not abandon reading the second one in due course.

'A Question of Blood' by Ian Rankin

I actually listened to the audio book version of this back in August 2018: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html Interestingly, this time round, reading it, I felt that it was actually tighter than I felt back then listening to it. There is some travelling about, but compared to some of Rankin's books I have read in recent months, this felt to be necessary. The fact that Rebus and DS Clarke work together rather than separately for much of the book, may be one reason why aspects do not feel superfluous. The story does move on briskly and as I noted before, not being a standard murder mystery in that the killer is known from the outset, does not undermine the investigation and it is interesting that some of the 'red herrings' are put in intentionally by people working to their own agendas. Thus, overall, I was glad I came back to this book as I was much more satisfied with reading this particular entry in the series, the 14th, then I was listening to it five years ago.

'Breakfast in the Ruins' by Michael Moorcock

While I have read a lot of Michael Moorcock books down the years, this was one, published in 1971, that I had not come across before. It is a short novel (174 pages in my edition) which see the protagonist Karl Glogauer dropping into various versions of himself, usually as a boy in various locations from 1871 to 1990. He is projected into these roles, it appears, through having homosexual sex with an unnamed Nigerian man who he meets in the roof garden cafe of the Derry & Tom's department store, a location regularly turning up in many of Moorcock's books.

Aside from the mode of 'transport' and a vignette set in 1990, there is not much science fiction or fantasy, rather they are quick portrayals of different historical settings including Paris under the Commune, 19th Century Brunswick, Capetown, Havana at the time of the Spanish-American War, the east end of London,  (German) Alsace during the First World War, Kiev during the Russian Civil War (a popular context for Moorcock), New York at the time of Wall Street Crash, Shanghai during the 28th January Incident of 1932 (rather than the Japanese invasion of 1937), Berlin in 1935, Auschwitz in 1944, Tel Aviv in 1947 at the end of British mandate, Budapest in 1956, Kenya in 1959 during the Mau Mau Emergency, with US troops in Vietnam in 1968 and the west end of London (notably Ladbroke Grove another venue Moorcock likes to use) with a prediction of rioting and unemployment in the 1980s which was a reasonably accurate prediction. As you can tell all the settings are grim; often violent.

Also in common with his style, Moorcock mixes in excerpts from newspapers and non-fiction books of various periods. He also presents a moral dilemma at the end of each chapter. In many ways he was the precursor of a lot of what goes on in terms of social media these days. At the time the book must have appeared like a lot of his work, as a challenging text in terms of the incidents it focused on, its very format and the engagement with topics such as homosexuality and abuse. Now such are commonplace features on TV and in books thought non-linear, multi-perspective structures are unpopular with readers even if they do feature in movies and TV series. Consequently what a reader in 2023 is likely to pick up on is the quality of the descriptions of the contexts and in one case quite an engaging short story. Aside from that, it does feel at times as if Moorcock was showing off his ability to be non-traditional in his approach which would have jarred/challenged readers in 1971 much, much more than it does 52 years later.

'Walking on Glass' by Iain Banks

I believed that I had not read this book, though given I get through about 50 per year, perhaps it is to be expected that I forget some from a decade or two ago. This was published in 1985 so I would have had ample time to read it in the past 38 years. It was not as if I was entirely familiar with the book and I did not know the ending. It consists of three strands that we move between in turn. Two of them are about men living in London in 1983/84: Graham Park, an art student and Steven Grout, a man who maybe neuro-diverse or mentally disabled. For much of the novel we see them moving around on a particular day, one in which Graham is going to visit a woman called Sara who he is in love with but has been rather toying with his affections and Steven loses his job as a roadworker. I did not recall either of these stories. 

I did recall the third strand which features a man called Quiss and a woman called Ajayi who come from opposing sides of a war on a different planet or time. They are confined to a vast castle in a bleak landscape and have to play out almost impossible games such as one-dimensional chess, open-plan Go, spotless dominoes, Chinese Scrabble and Tunnel. Working out how to play and completing a game allows them one chance to answer the riddle and be released from the castle. In the depths of the castle are rooms in which other prisoners can insert themselves into the lives of others as a distraction from their imprisonment.

This was Banks's second 'contemporary' book and like 'The Wasp Factory' (1984) combines the mundane with the rather outré aspects. It also points to his other stream of writing as Iain M. Banks, as a science fiction author. Overall the book, rather like its predecessor, shows different personal Hells. It shows how we can construct or at least contribute to constructing contexts which distress us mentally and then fall victim to these; often unable to break out of them even if in (large) part we have built them up in the first place. This does say something about neuro-diversity and mental health, explored less sensitively in the 1980s than now. Unfortunately Banks's 'solution' seems to be simply to seek oblivion, whether that is through self-destruction, suffering a severe injury or simply abandoning even our best work. Added to that it makes a strong message that we should never hope and ultimately the nastiest people in our world will always come out best off.

While it might not be perceived this way, as with 'The Wasp Factory' this novel is effectively a low-key horror story and should be approached in that way. It is an unhelpful musing on the mental worlds we construct and its overall message is that anyone finding themselves in such situations should simply give up, whether on their efforts or indeed life itself. As you can imagine, I did not enjoy this book. It is engaging as it goes along but in all three strands ends up being utterly bleak.

Non-Fiction

'The Weimar Republic' by Eberhard Kolb

This was a good book to read after Wehler's 'The German Empire' (1985) which I read in August: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html Like Wehler, Kolb provides a brisk but focused analysis of the next period in German history, which eschews being dogmatic down any of the lines which became very ensconced in German history in the 1960s-80s. The first part of the book is an account, which really cuts through the confusion and draws attention to aspects which are overlooked. He makes the notable point that the state's democracy had died by 1930, almost three years before Hitler came to power. Kolb dismisses many of the 'easy' answers that have been put forward for the failure of the Weimar Republic and indeed misconceptions, perhaps even myths, that for so long persisted, regarding the rise of the Nazis. The second half of the book looks at research into different themes of the period as it was when this edition, the first in English was published in 1988. The bibliography was updated from the German first edition four years earlier; there is a 2004 edition in English available too. Thus, this book provides a valuable insight into a period of history which retains interest (e.g. 'Babylon Berlin' TV series, which began in 2017 is still running with a 5th season planned) and a good counter to many of the lazy answers that people continue to wheel out about how the republic fell.

Audio Books

'Prince' by Rory Clements; read by Peter Wickham

Set in 1593, this is the third in Clements's series of spy thrillers featuring John Shakespeare, brother to the more famous William. It is very well done with aspects of what you might expect from a modern spy thriller but clearly set in the late Elizabethan period with rich descriptions of all the sights, sounds and smells of the time. Shakespeare works for Robert Cecil, effectively spymaster for Elizabeth I in the last decade or so of her reign. While his father Cecil acted as her Secretary of State, 1590-96, Robert despite being disabled, carried out a growing part of his work before taking on the position 1596-1612.

John is initially set to investigate terrorist incidents using gunpowder against Dutch refugees from the Eighty Years War who have settled in London. There is much tension around these immigrants though it is soon apparent it is being exploited for a range of purposes. John is later sent to find out about the possibility of an unknown Catholic child of Mary, Queen of Scots who it is believed the Spanish fighting against the Dutch and hostile to Britain, are aiming to set on the Scottish and perhaps the English throne too. Between them John and his assistant Boltfoot Cooper investigate around London and especially into Essex for the conspirators.

Clements handles the story well. There is rivalry between John and his fellow agents which adds interesting points of tension and dynamics to the plot. Clements does not hold off from brutality of the times, with regular reference to tortures and violence even to

 John's loved ones. There are vain people and brutal people involved, so the jeopardy feels genuine and there are blind alleys which John goes down. He is capable but not all-seeing, which allows us to feel an affinity with him. Some of the conspirators are rather larger than life, but throughout Clements does ground them with genuine motives and behaviours appropriate for the late 16th Century. There is an epic climax which is built up to well and does not feel ahistorical.

Overall, there is a lot going on in this book, but it maintained my interest without losing me, right throughout. It runs to almost 13 hours on audio, unabridged. Wickham is called on to do a lot of voices from France, Spain, Scotland and the Netherlands, and most of these are handled well, including the female voices. The only gripe is one of his Dutchmen sounds more Polish, though that only brought home how many parallels there can be felt to be between xenophobia of the the Englands of both Queens Elizabeth. This is part of an 8-book series and I would certainly buy more that I come across whether printed or in audio format.

'End in Tears' by Ruth Rendell; read by Christopher Ravenscroft

I have never read any of Ruth Rendell's novels, though I have seen TV dramatisations of 'A Fatal Inversion' (1987; broadcast on TV 1992) and 'Gallowglass' (1990; broadcast 1992) novels she wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. This novel is the 20th in the Chief Inspector Wexford series and was published in 2005, so after the 48-episode 'The Ruth Rendell Mysteries' TV series (broadcast 1987-2000), which I never saw but was aware on.

The novel is a classic contemporary-set British police procedural novel set in Sussex. A killing of a woman by a lump of concrete being dropped on the car she was travelling in is soon followed by the murder with a brick of a young single mother. This brings Wexford into a complex investigation despite the small range of suspects and it is soon tied up with inheritance, surrogacy and the guardianship of children, with echoes in Wexford's own life. Aside from fewer people having internet access and a lingering discomfort over homosexuality, this book could be set now and Rendell does well in combining modern concerns with a classic crime genre with some tropes, notably the brothers, that would have fitted in earlier decades. It jogs along quite well and the conclusion comes across as believable though perhaps unexpected.

Ravenscroft does reasonably well with the voices, especially as there are a lot of women of differing ages to cover. His Wexford ironically is perhaps his weakest voice and I think this is because he was seeking to emulate the actor George Baker's portrayal of Wexford in the long-running TV series, but at times the deep West County accent wobbles. It would probably have been better for him to deliver his own take on the character's voice.

'Tomorrow Never Dies' by Raymond Benson; read by Simon Vane

As regular readers of this blog will know about five years ago I listened to all of the original Ian Fleming James Bond books in audio format. Since I read 'James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me' (1979) by Christopher Wood, when it came out, I have not read any of the novelisations of the movies until I came across this one. Apparently it is based on an unused version of the movie script. However, in common with what I understand is usual with these novelisations, coming to the book does add quite a lot to the movie. There are back stories to Elliot Carver, Paris, Mr. Stamper and so on which develop these characters. In particular through showing their flaws and their physical traits, the characters especially of Carver and Stamper that we see in the movie, make more sense. There is a whole extra character, a non-binary heir to the Chinese throne who does not even turn up in the movie.

Wai Lin gets more detail too and we see 'behind the scenes' before she encounters Bond. She is, however, portrayed as being 28 (which does seem young to be a Colonel in the Chinese Ministry of State Security) and petite whereas Michelle Yeoh who portrayed her in the movie was 35 at the time and 1.63m (5'4") but shot so she looks little shorter than Pierce Brosnan at 1.86m.

The action scenes are well handled, influenced by the movie, clearly, though in some cases much more practically portrayed and factors such as the need for decompression when coming up from the sunk ship are addressed rather than skipped over as in the movie. Bond also has to use more initiative when aboard the stealth ship than being fully kitted out as he is in the movie. Rather scary is a scene which does not feature in the movie in which Carver outlines the wars he intends to start in the coming years, including a vicious Arab-Israeli conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an American civil war. Benson, or whoever wrote the script back in 1997, had pretty decent insight into the likely conflicts of a quarter of a century into the future.

Simon Vane does well on the accents, just avoiding sounding too stereotypical with the German and Chinese ones. He is clearly influenced by the movie portrayals and captures Jonathan Pryce's Carver well and indeed even Judi Dench's M decently. I would certainly be interested to see other novelisations of the movies though this is rated to be one of the best. The two I have read/heard do add depth to what is shown in the movies; the background stories and the grittier elements do feel to bring them closer to the Fleming books than mainstream movies probably permit.

'A Murder of Quality' by John Le Carré [David Cornwell]; read by John Le Carré

I read the novel of this some time in the past but had forgotten the plot. It is a murder mystery set at a public school. Le Carré was educated at Sherbourne and taught at Eton. Like George Smiley, the protagonist of the novel, Le Carré had been a spy working for both MI5 and MI6 at different times before becoming a novelist. This novel is set in the 1950s with the overhang of the war not too distant. However, a lot of the attitudes and behaviour shown would be no different if you set it, as many authors do, in a British public school of the 21st Century. I suppose this makes it ironically more accessible to readers (even though only a small minority would ever attend such as school) than if it had been set in a grammar school or a secondary modern school of the time.

The wife of schoolmaster is beaten to death with a coaxial cable. Thus reminding us though the context of the public school is a supposedly genteel setting, in fact the brutality of the war and the cheapness of life continued to impact on the attitudes of many in the following years - you sometimes often spot this in Agatha Christie novels of the time and I instantly think of 'A Murder Is Announced' (1950). This novel has a similar element in that Smiley is drawn in after the victim has sent a message predicting her murder.

The novel is brisk but conjures up a range of characters in this constrained setting, which perhaps while they have become stereotypes in the years since, seem to be nuanced when portrayed by Le Carré. He is particularly adept at showing us characters and then completely undermining our perception of them. Some readers might be riled by this, but the author does remind us that even his protagonist's view of people may be far from perfect and especially coming fresh to the locus, largely judges them through what people say about them.

I can see why this novel has retained its appeal as it is almost an exemplar of writing a 20th Century English murder mystery and you feel that Le Carré did it to put himself into that context and show what he could do in that genre rather than spy fiction. It is not common to have the author read their book on audio. This is only the third book I have listened to where that has been the case. It does take Le Carré a little time to get into his performance, perhaps because it was not something he did habitually. However, he is soon well underway and coming from the class and background he is portraying he proves very capable of portraying characters of both genders from that context well. At just 2 hours 30 minutes in total, this is certainly one to listen to (or indeed read) if you have exhausted your collection of Christie, Marsh and Sayers, but want something clever set in a context they would recognise.

The Books I Listened To/Read In October

Fiction
'Tooth and Nail' by Ian Rankin
Before I review the book, I have to say how frustrating it is in the editions of these books I am reading, published in the 2000s to have Rankin's foreword outlining how he went about writing the books.  In contrast to all the strict 'rules' that authors are told they must to adhere to by agents, publishers or general commentators, he seems to have bumbled through writing his books and not making any particular effort to make them successful.  I guess if he had started publishing books today rather than thirty years ago he would be the recipient of tens of comments about how he was doing it all wrong. It is rather galling and makes me wish that I had tried harder to get my books out when it was clearly a lot easier and you were not being harangued by people at every turn telling you how wrong your writing was.

Unlike the other Inspector Rebus stories, this one sees him going to London to investigate a serial killer and it is clearly based on Rankin's own experiences of people struggling comprehending his accent in the capital, though the Edinburgh accent, in contrast to some other Scottish ones, is not too much of a challenge for people in southern England.  He makes much play of the friction between Rebus and the Metropolitan Police officers that he is working alongside who feel patronised by him being brought into assist.  However, the developing relationships with these officers and the psychologist who becomes associated with the case, are well handled.  We see from the perspective of the criminal as well as Rebus, something which seems common these days as with the Val McDermid story I listened to recently, but it makes the criminal credible, though as a reader you do feel rather misled at the end and I found the closing revelations rather bewildering as they seemed to jar with what had been uncovered up until then.  Aside from that sense of a jump near the end, I thought it was pretty well handled with a couple of reasonable twists and Rankin does well characterising the grottiness of London which will be familiar to anyone who has lived there.

'Transition' by Iain Banks
Having enjoyed 'The Algebraist' (2004) by Banks, under his science fiction tag, Iain M. Banks, I was drawn to this book.  While not designated as science fiction, with its story of alternate versions of Earth, to me, it seemed to fit into that kind of category.  It is a well worked theme.  Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter produced the 'Long' series based on the premise, so I was interested to see what Banks would do with it.  I must say that I was disappointed.  He has multiple characters, some of whom may be the same person simply at different times.  However, rather than develop them fully, he flits between them.  I like the concept of an organisation, the Concern, trying to police people jumping between alternatives; individuals having a range of powers associated with the different worlds and an internal battle between people with such powers.  Yet it is all fragmented into small pieces which often do not advance the story; one character spends almost all their time doing very little in a hospital.

Some of the longer sections, such as the assassination of one character's companion in Venice, are suitable as short stories in themselves, but the rest is too insubstantial.  The book reminded me of Michael Moorcock's Jerry Cornelius series with repeated characters flitting between various alternatives and with a lot of unnecessary sex.  Aside from 'The Final Programme' (1968), I found these tiresome, but they had the advantage of being short, usually around 150 pages.  Banks, in contrast in my edition goes on for 469 pages.  At times I wondered if he was trying an extended pastiche of one of Moorcock's books.  In summing up, there were some good ideas here and the basis of a good novel; there are some well executed scenes.  However, the books is very much less than the sum of its parts and all of these good attributes are wasted in what turns out to be a real mess.

Non-Fiction
'Medieval People' by Eileen Power
I was recommended this book over thirty years ago and finally got around to it.  I found it far better than most books I am recommended to read.  It was first published in 1924 and I was reading a 1939 edition.  Power was effectively making the case for the study of social history at a time when it attracted minimal attention in the UK.  She did this by focusing on a number of medieval people as the title suggests and showing to the readers how a range of sources can be used to explore the lives of such people.  In particular she looked at government and church records of the time, which were often neglected, especially outside local history research.  By focusing on a mix of well known people, Marco Polo in one chapter, the Prioress from Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales', Madam Eglentyne with the far lesser known such as Bodo, a French peasant; a Parisian house wife and two merchants in the wool and cloth trade, she highlights what can be revealed.  Of course, especially since the 1960s and 1970s, social history has become a legitimate focus of study, but this book is a key marker of the start of the discipline.

At times the book shows its age, Power speaks of the 'crafty Jew' and refers to the Mongols as 'Tartars'.  She is also unquestioning of whether Marco Polo actually reached China or just picked up stories from other travellers there, despite highlighting the glaring gaps in his account.  However, despite these flaws, she provides wonderfully crisp vignettes of the individuals which give a good insight into the time periods and what was going on, especially in terms of wool and cloth trade, part of the largest industry of the time.  She counteracts the patronising attitude of people towards the past in outlining how complex relationships of all kinds were and what motivated people.  There are interesting sections on the functioning of inspections of convents, the economics of marriage and the complexities of trading internationally with all the issues around currency exchange and quality control, which are faced today.  Overall, an engaging book, despite its age.

Audio Books - Fiction
'Dead Man's Footsteps' by Peter James; read by Neil Pearson
This is the fourth book in James's Roy Grace series; I read the previous three back in 2016.  Unlike many authors who seek to make it unclear when and where their novels are set, James goes right the other way, with specific settings in the 2000s and in very specific places in and around Brighton in southern England.  This story jumps between two time periods, events around the 11th September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and 2007 Brighton where a woman is being threatened and a skeleton had turned up.  Grace is struggling against a colleague being favoured by his boss who seems keen to dig up anything on Grace's missing wife.

I am never keen on stories featuring the 11th September attacks as I feel the incidents have been used very inappropriately and as a justification for attitude and actions that were not right.  Also being someone who grew up in a country plagued by terrorism throughout my life, the sense of many that terrorism somehow only appeared in the Western world in the 21st century.  However, I can see why James made use of it as it provided a great opportunity for people wanting to cover their tracks and much of this novel is about people not being who they seem to be and others exploiting that situation.  James typically had strands which seem unrelated but slowly come together.  In this novel, that seemed to take far too long compared to some of the others.  The theme of high-value stamps feels rather levered into the novel but I can understand why it interested James as they are a way of moving a lot of money around easily.   There are some good dramatic scenes and given that James is not afraid to kill or injure his principal characters, you have a real sense of jeopardy.

I found it rather unsettling to have Pearson reading the book as I have recently been listening to the Martin Beck series of plays in which he appears as recurring detective.  He is not too bad as the voice of this novel, but is too well known for you to detach from envisaging him rather than him acting all the characters as an audio book narrator needs to do effectively.  Overall, this book was not bad, but in some ways I did not feel it was the best of the series.

'Dead Tomorrow' by Peter James; read by William Gaminara
This is the fifth book in the series and follows on some months after the one reviewed above.  Fortunately the two most annoying characters in that book have moved on.  As is common with the series, James has apparently disconnected threads, including street children in Romania, a Brighton teenager needing a liver transplant and bodies found off the coast of Sussex.  Though at times pretty gruesome, I felt this story, which revolves around the trafficking of people for organ harvesting was much tighter than 'Dead Man's Footsteps'.  The story felt credible and less convoluted.  Again you feel, though, that the jeopardy is genuine and I am glad James does not let off characters who we might sympathise with, especially not in bending the law on compassionate grounds.  We find out more about Roy Grace's missing wife who popped up incongruously at the end of the previous book.  However, Grace not stumbling across evidence he needs at a crucial time in regard to her seemed terribly contorted.

Overall, this is a gritty novel with no easy answers to the moral dilemmas.  If you dislike sustained scenes of surgery then it is best avoided.  I much prefer Gaminara in reading these books to Pearson, maybe because I am not as familiar with his voice.  He does tend to make some of the younger police officers sound older than we know they are.

'Dead Like You' by Peter James; read by William Gaminara
This is the sixth in the series and again is set not long, though not immediately after the previous book.  Again it jumps between the present, i.e. 2009 and the past, 1997.  James's last three books have seemed to have a theme: stamps and organs, in this book it is shoe fetishes.  However, despite initially feeling this was a kind of 'McGuffin' especially as the stamps had been, in fact, James uses it much better.  As is common in his books we see through the eyes of the killer, but in this one there are three candidates, all shoe fetishists, and it is intriguing when seeing through their eyes to work out which is truly the killer, who is the rapist and who is trying to go straight but on the edge of the other two men's crimes.  This is a very gritty novel in the series, in part because we get the sordid nature of the men and their disgust at women coming from three sources rather than one.  The victims themselves do not simply lie down in the face of their attackers and the climactic battle between the final woman and the murderer is well handled.  As usual, James ties his stories to very specific times and places, you could walk around many of the locations for real.  I like the fact that he does not try to make them slightly timeless as authors are often encouraged to do.  It does make it possible for him to reflect on current developments and he seems hooked on connecting them to others over the decades too.

Gaminara is in his stride reading this book.  He does well in voicing sordid characters, but also being convincing as the women under threat.  In the moments of fear, he is good at communicating this, the energy and the reactions from both sides, so does very well as a reader of James's take on the police procedural.

'The Novice' by Trudi Canavan; read by Samantha Bond
This is another book with a different reader to the previous one in the series.  This is the sequel to 'The Magicians' Guild' which I heard last month, but read by Kellie Bright.  Bond is far better known not simply in the UK but globally.  She does very well in voicing the spectrum of characters and is in large part close to Bright's interpretation, though they do pronounce some of the names differently.  This book follows Sonea now that she is a student in the Guild and all the bullying she faces as a result of being brought up in the slums.  She also faces danger from what she knows of the High Lord the head of the Guild and the practices he undertakes.

I guess all books about magic colleges/universities end up sounding like British boarding school novels of the 1930s because of the set up and the old fashioned nature of magic users.  I also worry that the High Lord is becoming rather like Lord Voldemort in the Harry Potter books, though Canavan was writing these before he was fully revealed in published books.  What is different in these books is what is happening elsewhere in Canavan's world a character from the previous book, Lord Dannyl travels the world trying to uncover the background to the High Lord's powers and comes to understand his own homosexuality.  Canavan does go out of her way to try to subvert a lot of fantasy tropes.  At times it can feel that these, as with suppression of the lower classes in the first book, are rather plastered on, but I concede that might be because we do not see them often in fantasy books and I read far fewer these days than in my youth.  The arena scene at the end of the book is very well done and leads to a great climax.  I do hope that Sonea does not spend too long in the guild university and gets out into the wider world once again.

I must say I do like how Trudi Canavan handles magic in these stories.  It is a force that is a kind of mix of mental and physical power, with the magicians envisaging what they want to achieve in their minds, but it still draining them physically.  Little is said of the alchemy studies, but this is generally a magic system without magic potions or ingredients, not even magic words and somehow this makes it seem 'credible' even though it is something fantastical.

'The High Lord' by Trudi Canavan; read by Samantha Bond
Coming to the third book in the trilogy I was beginning to feel that each of the three had been written by a different author.  The character of Sonea seems to alter so much.  There is a complete flip around in this book and I know Canavan is trying to spring surprises on the reader, but these are so severe that it reduces confidence in the characters.  In this book we find that Sonea is now 20, even though it has been only three years since 'The Magicians' Guild' was set when she seemed to be a younger girl, probably no more than 15, if not younger.  The two readers have voiced her that way, so it is rather startling when she is suddenly naïve, despite growing up in the slums, but sexually active in this book. I am not convinced by her change in loyalties.  To draw a Rowling parallel this would be like Hermione Granger running off with Professor Snape, if not Lord Voldemort himself. The book has some good scenes.  In this series Canavan has always been strongest in writing about people charging through the city, so the battle to defend it, is as good as the first two-thirds of 'The Magicians' Guild' when Sonea is hiding in the city.  Her wandering around the wastelands is far less interesting.  In fact too many people wander around too many wastelands and the magicians in general turn out to be pretty pathetic.  The action scenes are good but not the bits in between.  The three love interests are not really resolved.  In many ways I admire what Canavan has done with the series, but it has been far too erratic in nature for me to enjoy.

Samantha Bond does the voices well, they are now established.  However, I feel she, like the reader has been caught out by Sonea suddenly leaping to being 3-5 years older than envisaged and so she still sound 14 even when she declares she is 20.

'First Contact' by J.M. Dillard; read by Gates McFadden
I saw the movie this novel was based on some years ago but had forgotten enough of the plot for this to be alright to listen to without me knowing what was going to happen next.  It is a 'Star Trek' story featuring Captain Jean-Luc Picard fighting against the Borg, a cyborg race that travel back in time in an attempt to stop the first test flight of a faster-than-light drive by humans which attracts the attention of the Vulcans and then the humans' integration into the Federation.  What is rather surprising is the development is made in the mid-21st century after the world has suffered a nuclear war, so there is an element of a survivalist story in here, probably the most unlikely context for the development of such technology especially given that the lead scientist is an alcoholic living in a tent in Montana.  There are parallel developments involving different members of the crew of the Enterprise, working on Earth and battling through the space ship in an attempt to dislodge the Borg from it.

I guess one extra element that you get from the book are the thoughts of Picard and other characters.  These are very important in the captain's case because as a former prisoner of the Borg he gets more than an inkling of what they are going to do and this helps him fight back.  Overall, it was rather a workerlike story rather than one with great moments of tension because those who are lost and assimilated by the Borg are not characters that have been developed beyond their names.  To enhance the drama the producers of the audio book have added in a lot of sound effects.  McFadden's voice is often moderated, beyond her acting the voices of the different characters.  There is music which is sometimes too loud to hear the text, laser blasts, explosions, engine sounds and worst of all squelchy sounds of surgery.  Overall, I feel these detract rather than add to the book.  McFadden, otherwise, does pretty well in capturing the full spectrum of characters.  I had not realised that she was the actress who played the character, Chief Medical Officer Commander Beverly Crusher in the Next Generation stories of  'Star Trek'.


'The Bourne Deception' by Eric Van Lustbader; read by Jeremy Davidson
I have seen the first three movies of the Jason Bourne series, but have read none of the original books by Robert Ludlum nor these successor ones by Eric Van Lustbader though I did read a martial arts adventure by him twenty years ago which I thought a friend of mine was giving me as a recommendation to read, but it turns out he disliked it and thought I was better placed to dispose of it!  Reading this book, I realised why the source of some gripes from readers of my own novels.  The majority of the readers who contact me are right-wing men from the USA.  It is clear now that they expect their books all to be written this way, especially if dealing with warfare.

The language is incessantly bombastic, but with the most contorted similes you could imagine.  Furthermore, it keeps stopping to give a highly technical read out of the weaponry being used.  When a man is seeking to shoot Bourne we get a whole slew of data about the gun and the telescopic sight he is using.  Later there is a description of the three calibres of the different ammunition on board a helicopter.  Thus, you have a breathless style which is interrupted by likening things at length to other things, often utterly unrelated and a manual on whatever machinery a character is using.  I could not write this way even if I wanted to and think it is a rather mind-numbing and certainly unsubtle approach, which actually reduces any genuine sense of jeopardy.

The sense of jeopardy is further reduced by the fact that Jason Bourne himself seems invincible, to the extent that this is even commented upon by characters.  In contrast others, especially the women, seem disposable.  I accept there has been some attempt to include women as agents and controllers, but at times they seem particularly vulnerable and too many carry sexy sounding guns in thigh holsters for it to seem feasible.  A further weakness is how twisted the plot is.  The attack on Iran seems contemporary as does featuring 'security' consultancies working for the US government but to their own agenda.  However, there are too many threads and especially too many people in prosthetic disguises to really get your head around.  It also distances Bourne from the action for much of the book and instead we see things largely through disposable characters.  I guess, however, this is how people expect action novels to be written these days and they are intolerant of anyone who tries anything marginally different.

Davidson does a good job with the voices of the different character of both genders.  He manages Russian and Egyptian accents pretty convincingly, but struggles with the Australian and New Zealand ones.  I have no idea why Van Lustbader has such an aversion to Munich; his description of the city is terribly misplaced and erroneous, he could have picked scores of other German cities that would have fitted better.

'Attention All Shipping' by Charlie Connelly; read by Alex Jennings
Though written by a Briton, this is very much in the Bill Bryson area of writing.  Feeling nostalgic for the daily radio shipping forecast, Connelly decided to travel to all of the zones mentioned in the broadcast, along the way visiting the locations of some interesting people and recounting to readers about how the structure of the forecast came about and developed.  The trouble is that many of the zones are simply chunks of sea and Connelly made no effort to even visit one oil or gas rig, though he did get to Sealand.  Many of the other zones cover bleak islands or soggy coastal regions, so a lot of what he articulates is about being depressed in a rundown place.  It is quite stunning how ill-prepared Connelly is for many of his journeys especially to the more remote places, so a lot of the time he comes across as a really pathetic character, a little xenophobic when he finds things are different to back home, both in the way Bryson did in some of his earlier books.  There are highlights, primarily when he is outlining his family history, the achievements of a particular individual from the town or about the story of some light houses.  Overall, there was insufficient of interest to make this journey worthwhile and so recounting it is naturally lacking in substance.

I now know Alex Jennings well as a reader of audio books.  This is one of those where the reader seems so close to the author, that you feel he is almost that man.  That helps a little, though it just emphasises how desultory the whole project was and largely how ill-prepared Connelly was for it.  Thus, there is little to admire, bar what he read up on about local heroes.

Books I Read In June

As regular readers will be aware, with my work on a number of e-books and being unemployed and facing losing my house for the third time in four years, I have rather been neglecting this blog.  When I am unemployed I also read a lot less than when in work.  However, this time, in contrast to the past, the way I was treated in my last job has left me so mentally and physically ill that I am now sleeping very badly.  Waking in the early hours I have an opportunity to read a bit more than would be typical.  Despite having four job interviews, it has been made clear to me that I am not wanted increasingly in brusque and unpleasant ways that show an anger in that somehow I tricked the employer into interviewing me.  That is my own industry so my attempts to move into some other sector have proven even harder.  Anyway, it seems this situation is unlikely to change for the foreseeable future.


Fiction
'The Perfect Murder' by H.R.F. Keating
This is the first Inspector Ghote story set in India in the 1960s, contemporary to when it was written.  I got it as part of a three-book anthology.  It is an interesting insight into Indian culture and as far as I know about that it appears genuine.  The book is incredibly frustrating because Ghote faces so many unpleasant people, not in the sense of being evil, but because of their arrogance and their wish to obstruct any investigation simply because of their own petty viewpoints and assumptions.  Ghote has to investigate the assault on a personal assistant, the Mr. Perfect of the title (when in the civil service in the UK I handled a case file of a Miss. Perfect and one of a Miss. Innocent).  He has to battle with the obstruction of the wealthy, the government and even his wife plus the ambivalent input of a visiting Swedish criminologist.  In many ways it reminded me of the work of two of my favourite crime authors Leonardo Sciscia and Josef Skvorecky, both of whom write detective stories in settings in which because of the society it is difficult to bring the miscreant to justice.  With Keating's book, I found my tolerance for obstruction was reached, but that may simply reflect me exhausting my reserves dealing with such pettiness and stupidity in my own workplace.  I will see how I feel when I come to the other stories in the anthology.  In terms of conjuring up a time and a place, plus believable if infuriating characters, Keating is a success.


'Alternate Generals II' ed. by Harry Turtledove
This is a better reasonable collection of 'what if?' stories with a more or less military focus. 'American Mandate' by James Fiscus, I have mentioned before.  It features a US mandate in Constantinople following a First World War in which the Ottoman Empire surrendered in September 1918 and the difficulties Pershing faces in dealing with Kemal Ataturk nationalist revolution.  It speaks to issues of American military involvement overseas especially in post-war situations and would be sufficient basis for a full-length novel.  'Southern Strategy' is pretty bizarre, being set in 1950s in southern USA which has been occupied by a peace-keeping force primarily made up of the victorious Central Powers of the First World War.  The force is to counter lynchings of black people and the guerrilla action in response by blacks.  The story is highly depressing especially the failure of Adlai Stevenson to sort out an American solution to the situation and hilariously it appears Richard Nixon is guerilla leader.  'Uncle Alf' by Turtledove himself sees Adolf Hitler in his genuine role as a counter-espionage agent for the German Army but operating in a Belgium which has been occupied by the Germans after they won the First World War.  It is shown in a series of letters to his niece who he was attracted to in our world leading to her suicide.


'Horizon' by Noreen Doyle is about different outcomes in the conflicts between the Ancient Egyptians and the Hittites, but unfortunately I know insufficient about what actually happened to see how different the outcomes in this story were.  'Devil's Bargain' by Judith Tarr is probably the first counter-factual story I have read about the Crusades.  It features King Richard I of England making a deal with the Assassins to win Jerusalem and again could easily bear being made into a full-length novel.  I enjoyed this one.  'George Patton Slept Here' sees a more effective Allied invasion of Sicily in 1943 leading to the capture of more German forces followed by the occupation of Sardinia and Corsica making the war in Italy shorter.  'Tarnished Glory' by Chris Bunch is more extremely counter-factual seeing General Armstrong Custer alive at the time of the Second World War in place of Patton leading to a different outcome to the Battle of the Bulge.  In 'Compadres' by S.M. Stirling and Richard Foss, the border of the USA has been set about 100 miles farther South so that the Mexican provinces of Sonora and Chihuahua have become part of the USA, presumably following the Mexican-American War of 1846-8 and as a consequence, Pancho Villa has fought alongside Theodore Roosevelt and is shown becoming his Vice-President in 1901.  It is an interesting what if? and I would have liked to see more about the outcomes beyond the very personal focus on Roosevelt and then Villa.


'And the Glory of Them' by Susan Shwartz sees a minor change in the capture of the citadel of Antioch in 1098 during the Crusades.  The change seems to be so small as to have minimal impact and the future changes are not really apparent, though it is the second to feature a change during the Crusades.  'Twelve Legions of Angels' by R.M. Meluch features Hugh Dowding deciding to retire and focus on raising a family rather than remaining in the RAF.  Consequently the British adopted a far more aggressive approach leading to defeat in the Battle of Britain and conquest by Nazi Germany.  It is interesting to see how a choice not to sacrifice a particular path to happiness can have vast consequences.  'In the Prison of His Days' by Joel Richards sees W.B. Yeats taking part in the Easter Uprising by Irish Nationalists in 1916 making minimal difference to anyone's life except his own.  'Labor Relations' by Esther M. Friesner is an utterly bizarre counter-factual about an elderly Korean woman ending the phantom pregnancy of Japanese Empress Jingu who was supposed to have lived to 100 years old and invaded Korea in the 3rd century CE; seems a pretty pointless story.  'Empire' by William Sanders, sees Napoleon having emigrated to America in his youth and rising to become Emperor of Lousiania which has expanded to absorb some of the southern states of our world's USA, facing an invasion by the British, presumably in 1815, following a failed attempt by Louisiana to recapture Canada from the British.


'The Wasp Factory' by Iain Banks
This novel which is told from the viewpoint of a murderous 16-year old boy living on a Scottish island, is far better than I had expected.  Whilst it sees the world from the disturbed perspective of the boy, it is not fragmented in the way 'The Tesseract' that I read last month was and shows that you can do weird without being incoherent.  Alex Garland could learn a lot from Banks.  While I could not say I enjoyed this book, it certainly is an engaging novel, which conjures up a place, time and characters though unpleasant are credible.