The Books I Read In August

 Fiction

'The Stone Sky' by N.K. Jemisin

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

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

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

'Journey without Maps' by Graham Greene

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

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

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

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

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

'Deep Waters' ed. by Martin Edwards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Long and Short of It' by Jodi Taylor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'Miraculous Mysteries' ed. by Martin Edwards

While I do not have all the collections that Edwards put together for the British Library Crime Classics, I have been reading those which I do have in the order that they were published and unfortunately feel that, to some degree, it is an issue of diminishing returns. This one is focused on 'impossible' murders, often 'locked room' ones, thus they are more in the line of an episode of 'Jonathan Creek' (broadcast 1997-2016) resolving the trick, as much as they are of, say, a Sherlock Holmes or Poirot short story.

'The Thing Invisible' (1913) by William Hope Hodgson is very much a Creek-style mystery, combining the sense of something supernatural with a practical solution when in an old castle when a servant is struck dead by an apparently flying dagger. The investigator, Mr. Carnacki, a 'ghost finder', puts himself at personal risk to work out what mechanism is behind the killing.

Sapper [Herman McNeile] is better known for his Bulldog Drummond adventure stories, many of which I have read, rather than his crime ones. 'The Music Room' by is one of those technical Creek-akin stories in which someone is killed in a supposedly cursed room by a falling chandelier forty years in the past but looking to be a threat now, i.e. sometime in the 1920s. The amateur detective is Ronald Standish and set in a stately home it has the feel of a classic English crime novel rather than an adventure. It is an effective story and coming in this collection the reader will probably have the sense of the explanation but it is competently done.

'Death at 8.30' is another foretold murder which comes to pass despite all the efforts to prevent it. In this case it is the assassination of the Home Secretary by a professional assassin known as X.K. The author, Christopher St. John Sprigg was unlike the others collected here being a Marxist physicist and poet, as well as author of seven crime novels, killed at the age of 30 fighting in the Spanish Civil War. The fictional Home Secretary is Sir Richard Jauntley a style fitting those of the time. Sir John Samuel  and Sir John Gilmour held the post of Home Secretary, 1930-35, then John Simon but Sprigg was killed in 1937 about the time he was leaving the office. Samuel and Simon were (National) Liberals, Gilmour was a Conservative. X.K. announces his targets and then murders them, this time despite all the precautions, a very technical though about feasible method is used. A trio of police detectives: Hamerton, Higgins and Paule investigate.

E. [Evelyn] Charles Vivian [Charles Cannell] wrote extensively across many genres, including in pulp fiction. in 'Locked In' (1939), Superintendant Wadden and Inspector Head investigate a supposed case of suicide at a stately home where the victim's father had similarly taken his own life twenty years earlier. In this case, questions arise over his handedness, but this one has a technical solution rather than a sleight-of-hand one, which I guess is acceptable and perhaps to be expected quite often in a collection of this kind.

'The Lost Special' (1898) by Arthur Conan Doyle is one I had read before. Ironically the suggestion from the implied Sherlock Holmes intervention is misleading. I think a modern reader might resolve this one quickly given the evidence, though given the familiarity of readers of the time with the railways, maybe they did so too. It is crisply written and nice for being an outside mystery.

Like Sapper, Sax Rohmer [Arthus Sarsfield Ward] is better known for the Dr. Fu Manchu adventure stories of which I read quite a lot around 25 years ago. 'The Case of the Tragedies in the Greek Room' (1920) features a murder at a small London museum, effectively a locked and barred building mystery. The investigator is Moris Klaw one of Rohmer's far less well-known characters. With some of these stories you do feel the ghost of Sherlock Holmes hanging over the protagonists as authors sought to give them quite bizarre, distinctive names. Klaw was the 'dream detective' and to some degree his ability to see situations in his dreams could be interpreted as being clairvoyance or his sleeping mind working through the options. Careful attention to what doors open into where and who might be able to come from the residential part of the museum, enables to reader to have a good shot at what is going on. However, Rohmer proves successful in creating the set-up and the atmosphere, though Klaw as is typical of 'know-it-all' investigators can rile a little.

R. Austin Freeman, a doctor, featured Dr. Thorndyke as his investigator; counterbalancing the exotic name tendency! 'The Aluminium Dagger' (1909) is a locked room mystery in chambers on the second floor (third floor in the USA) where a rather nasty Alfred Hartridge has been stabbed with the epoynmous weapon with apparently no means of access or exit for the killer. Those who have read the Father Brown stories as I have done might have an idea of how it has been achieved especially given the nature of the weapon with aluminium being an unusual material for a dagger. 

G.K. Chesterton, the Father Brown authors, wrote the next story in the collection, 'The Miracle of Moon Crescent' (1924). This features not just a murder but the relocation of the corpse from the top of a block of businesses. Unlike the other stories in the collection, this one is set in the USA where such high buildings were already far more common at the time than they were in Britain. This context allows Chesterton to include commentary on US perspectives on issues like religion. The abduction/murder turns out to be simple if, I imagine physically challenging, but this story very much fits with Chesterton's approach and feels about credible. Perhaps its solution was less the purpose of the story than allowing the author commentary on the contemporary USA.

'The Invisible Weapon' (1928) by Nicholas Olde [Amian Lister Champneys] featured in Olde's only published book featuring cases by his investigator Rowland Hern. It has an interesting setting being in the Lincolnshire Fens in the middle of winter, something which ultimately aids the crime, but also allows it to have that local atmosphere which appears in the best stories set in (fictional) English villages of the kind that feature often in the British Library collection. It has a brutal murder in a locked room, one which a perceptive reader might detect, but works effectively.

Marten Cumberland [Syndey Cumberland] reasonably well-known for his French detective, Saturnin Dax stories. He also created a half-Irish, half-Argentinian investigator, Chico Brett, though these he published under a different pseudonym, Kevin O'Hara. 'The Diary of Death' (1928) features Loreto and Cleta Santos, Spanish-Argentinian siblings drawn as private citizens into investigating an upcoming murder. Loreto is an accomplished pianist and amateur criminologist. 

It is an interesting short story which is effectively a slice of one about a serial killer who is going round murdering in very accomplished ways those that the washed-up comedy singer Lilian Hope condemned in her diary. It brings in the theme of the obsessed fan with which we are much more familiar in our times. While unable to prevent the predicted, 'impossible' murder, Santos is able to resolve it proving how effectively it was achieved simply by sleight of hand in a way we have often come to see quite regularly in stories since.

'The Broadcast Murder' (1929) by Grenville Robbins was the first story ever to establish what has become a common trope in long-running detective series in which one murder is committed while seemingly the target is live on air and so effectively the studio becomes the 'locked room'. A modern reader having seen various manifestations of this will probably come to the conclusion quicker than people of 1929 for whom radio had burst on the scene as a novelty but one with widespread popularity; the BBC having been established in 1922. The story with a limited number of characters is deftly handled and for modern readers effectively conjures up broadcasting of the era.

'Too Clever By Half' (1939) by husband and wife team, G.D.H and Margaret Cole, at a time when married couples writing crime novels together was far less common than it has become from the 1970s onwards. This one features Dr. Benjamin Tancred, an academic recounting a murder at a country inn and taking a patronising though accurate perception of the killer as having tried to hard to shake suspicion off him by his contrived locked-room killing. In theory the Coles were left-wing academics themselves, but in this story which is satisfying in how it plays out, they rather reinforce British hierarchies and attitudes to social 'inferiors'; they were certainly not an early version of Sjöwall and Wahlöö. I suppose if they had been, their books would never have been published in their lifetimes.

'The Haunted Policeman' (1939) by Dorothy L. Sayers is set when Lord Peter Wimsey has married Harriet and indeed starts with the birth of their son. This leads a rather drunken Peter to get involved with a policeman who has been tricked. It features a 'disappearing' house in one of those unique urban streets that only appear in crime novels that enables the getting away of a murdered corpse. It has an interesting way in which this is achieved, I suppose putting it into the sleight of hand, with some technical input. It is rather whimsical, but if you have a taste for Sayers, then this is fine enough.

Michael Innes [John Mackintosh Stewart] wrote 'Death at the President's Lodging' (1936) which I have read but realised I subsequently mixed up with the similarly set 'Disgrace to the College' (1937) by G.D.H and Margaret Cole. Oxford colleges or their simulacra were popular settings for murder mysteries long before Colin Dexter - we might also mention 'Gaudy Night' (1935), of course. Anyway, 'The Sands of Thyme' (1959) is a very short story set near to an English beach in which murder quite simply but cleverly is made to look like suicide but police detective on secondment to a local air base, is drawn into investigate.

Edmund Crispin [Robert Montgomery] wrote 'The Moving Toyshop' (1946) which I have read. It is set in Oxford but not with a college as the scene of the murder, but the eponymous toyshop at the heart of the mystery. In 'Beware of the Trains' his usual detective Professor Gervase Fen investigates. A search for an escaped convict and the disappearance of a railway worker come together at the small station of Clough. The train with carriages that do not connect effectively is a series of locked rooms, but with a police cordon around the station searching for the escapee, that becomes one too. This is certainly not one of the locked room stories requiring a technical explanation and comes down to knowledge of train procedures and working in a closed system.

'The Villa Marie Celeste' (1960) by Margery Allingham, had other titles 'Family Affair' and 'Clue on the Washing Line' which perhaps more accurately reflect the flavour of what is another working class mystery like 'Too Clever By Half' and 'Beware of the Trains' in which an upper (middle) class detective intervenes to pull the scales from the eyes of rather flat-footed others who look to uncover the mystery. In this case it is Albert Campion, her usual detective still active after 31 years and by now a family man himself, indeed perhaps in his 60s, though his manner seems unchanged. In many ways this is a sleight of hand mystery. There are no locked rooms, but well-observed contexts which make it hard for a disappearance to have gone unnoticed. However, in that fact comes the motive. Overall this is a rather twee, 'People's Friend' kind of story, the conclusion of which makes it seem obvious.

'The Thin Place' by C.D. Major

This is a successful Gothic novel set in three time periods at a genuine Scottish manor house, Overtoun House located close to Dumbarton in Scotland. However, Major has entirely fictionalised the history of the place to serve as the context for a horror novel which combines both supernatural and human cruelty elements of the genre. It is a difficult book to write about due to spoilers, so please be cautious if intending to read the novel.

There are three timelines. Ava is a TV news/features reporter living in modern times - the book was published in 2021. Covering a story about dogs throwing themselves from the bridge in the grounds of the house (another genuine element), she visits the place and finds herself enthralled by it. Ava goes back repeatedly even though she has an advancing pregnancy and despite the harm it causes to her relationship with her husband and mother. 

Another timeline is Marion. This runs from the 1920s into the 1940s. Marion from Barnes in south London marries Hamish West the fictional owner of the house at the time and becomes a neglected wife in it. While Hamish is unfaithful he keeps getting Marion pregnant but she has a long string of miscarriages, the results of which she buries beneath the bridge. She is pretty much haunted by the place, though not really conscious of how her actions add to this.

The third timeline is that of Constance born at the house in the 1940s. It transpires she is the daughter of Marion. That is a bit of a spoiler, but I think given the timeframes most readers will work this out quickly. Constance is controlled by her mother who insists that she is ill and takes steps to ensure that she appears and feels this, being incredibly cruel in a way which fits the Gothic tone and comes close to the body horror aspect too.

The novel is very atmospheric and is suitably unsettling. I am not sure about the ethics of setting such a horrible story in a real place that the reader can visit. She could have put it in a fictional house. Anyway, you can see the real story of the place and the people housed there on Wikipedia. While owing a lot to classic Gothic stories, Major successfully brings it into the modern age, though I found it hard to believe that Marion's colleagues did not detect the later stages of her pregnancy without being told directly. I wondered if this was something Major had witnessed in real life.

'The Gleam in the North' by D.K. Broster

Me having brought the whole Jacobite Trilogy in one go, this is the second book in Broster's series. It is set about six to nine years (there are conflicting periods given in the text - it certainly ends in 1753) after the previous one, 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html It focuses primarily on Ewen Cameron of Ardoy, the surviving protagonist of the previous book. Though a Jacobite he has been permitted to return home from France and reoccupy his home, far more fortunate than those of his fellow rebels who were executed or have been attainted; many others have faced fines - a little like post-war Denazification in Germany.

It is an interesting reflection of how the English effectively dealt with what to a modern reader looks like a 'late colonial war' in Africa and Asia, lying in the future when Broster published this novel in 1927, though of course there had been vicious colonial wars in her own liftetime. Tartan is forbidden and anyone speaking Gaelic is seen as suspicious. Scots are not allowed to own swords or other weapons and there are harsh fines for associating with attainted people. There is also a substantial military occupation still in place. One thing I had not realised was how the Episcopalian Church was suppressed. This, as one of the characters highlights seemed bizarre given it was set up by James I/VI as the Scottish equivalent of the Church of England. However, the Jacobite cause, especially outside the Highlands attracted Episcopalians. This period gets far less attention than the lead-up to and climax of the 1745 Uprising so it was interesting to read.

The other protagonist initial is Lieutenant Hector Grant, of Le Régiment d'Albanie, which had been raised by Charles Stuart in 1747 in France but in reality had been assimilated into general Franco-Scottish units by 1748. Grant is the brother-in-law of Ewen and is a rather incompetent agent of the renascent Jacobite cause in the region. There is talk of abducting King George II in London with the help of English Jacobites and French agents, though this does not come to much. The bulk of the novel is about Ewen protecting his cousin Dr. Archibald Cameron who was effectively the treasurer for the Jacobite cause in Scotland, despite accusations of him embezzling the funds. Unlike Ewen, Archibald Cameron (1707–1753) was a real man, the last Jacobite to be executed and Broster notes she makes use of some of his actual words especially at his trial which fills the last part of the novel.

Before then, there is a lot of chasing around Scotland as Ewen tries to alert Archibald and then get him to safety. This allows Broster to show more of the landscape which she does very well and in a more positive light than is the case in the preceding book. At one stage he travels to the Western Isles where Episcopalians are trying to worship despite the local military presence. Ewen's path also crosses that with the rather reckless Grant and there are the escapes and close scrapes which characterised the first novel. Ewen also meets Viscount Aveling, the brother of Major Keith Windham, his antagonist/friend from the first novel and faces some of the moral dilemmas that were so common in that novel, though fortunately for a modern reader reduced in number in this one. He goes on to meet Keith's parents and indeed enlists his father, Lord Stowe in the attempt to get clemency for Archibald, though it is soon clear Lady Stowe has ulterior motives for wanting to meet with Ewen.

In some ways there is a flatness about this novel compared to the previous one, I guess because a prime driver is a man who was real and his fate known, so undermining some of the jeopardy. Broster also relies far too much on coincidence, such as the first encounter with Grant - who bumbles painfully throughout the novel - and later with Aveling and then Stowe. However, the attitudes of various people to the cause of Dr. Cameron are well handled. It is a reasonable adventure story though with the gloom of the post-rebellion situation overshadowing throughout which I imagine was the intention to show the English and their Scottish collaborators behaving as a suppressing colonial power in the Highlands.

As an aside there is a chapter called 'Lochaber No More'. I am not sure if that was the first use of the phrase but given it features so much in the song 'Letter From America' (1987) by The Proclaimers I was interested to see it here.

'August Heat' by Andrea Camilleri

This is the kind of Montalbano novel that Camilleri does best. There is a limited cast and it is a question of the detective working out the flaws in the various suspects' alibis to allow him to reach the correct one. The setting is that friend's of Montalbano's long-standing/suffering northern girlfriend Livia, need a place to rent on Sicilly for the summer. He arranges this but when the couple's mischievous 3-year old goes missing, it leads Montalbano to uncover that what appears to be a bungalow is in fact a first floor apartment with a ground floor apartment concealed beneath it. This is apparently quite common in Italy especially at a time when the Berlusconi regime quite regularly dished out amnesties for illegally built properties. The concealed apartment proves to have a chest in it holding the corpse of a local girl who disappeared six years earlier, Caterina Morreale. She had been sexually assaulted and wrapped up. While the man who commissioned the property and his disturbed son appear feasible suspects, it comes down to who was last in the place before it was sealed up.

Montalbano becomes involved with other crimes committed by the construction firm, including the death of an Arab worker on a site with inadequate safety rails, but this shows him that there is little he can do against the company's boss because he was friendly with both the Mafia families and the politicians in the region. The heat is a constant theme in the novel with Montalbano constantly changing his clothes and to some degree making bad decisions, the worst of which is to allow himself to be seduced by Caterina's twin sister, Adriana, who at 22 is 33 years younger than him. However, in addition to providing the climax, this is a further aspect of Montalbano's difficulties with ageing which has become a thread across the novels leading up to this one.

Overal, while readers may predict the ending, Camilleri gets to it quickly and overall this is a straighforward, workerlike story, with all the regional aspects, notably the food, and an effective portrayal of the heat of Sicily, perhaps easier to imagine nowadays, especially if you live in southern England, than it might have been when the novel was first published in 2006.

Non-Fiction

'Inside China's Grand Strategy' by Ye Zicheng; edited and translated by Steven I. Levine and Guoli Liu

When I got this book given to me I was a bit concerned, it having been published in 2011, that it was rather out of date. However, then I realised that it was only the version in English which dated from then and in fact the original book was older still, coming out in Chinese in 2003. Still I thought it might be an interesting read as a kind of history book, showing the perspective of a Chinese academic working in China at the time. However, the book turned out to be very poor. It is incredibly repetitive, making identical points again and again throughout. It reuses a restricted number of examples again and again to somehow 'prove' Ye's points. It flips by providing strings of statistics and then talking in very vague broad terms as one might expect from an ill-informed undergraduate rather than an academic. There is some interesting stuff about China's relations with Russia and with India, but, if the incessant repetition was avoided, there would be enough for a chapter in an edited collection rather than an entire book.

Some of the traits of what it asserts are what you would expect from Chinese output. Despite constantly citing the massive leaps in the Chinese economy from 1978 onwards it keeps on referring to China as a 'developing country'. Now I accept that this may come from subtleties of meaning being lost in translation but to an English-language reader the term means a country that would have been described as 'Third World' which China clearly is not, certainly with all the rankings Ye shows. He does show that China has moved on from when Deng Xiaoping portrayed the country at the end of the 1970s as actually Third World, but still holds to its representation of itself as generally a victim rather than any kind of instigator of hegemonic policies.

The emphasis on per capita income is highly misleading as is being currently shown by the USA because of the 21st Century tendency for an aggregation of greater and greater wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people (men) without reflecting with any accuracy the strength or weakness of the economy as a whole. Despite its economic strength that he highlights, Ye still portrays China as hard done by and not seeking any form of imperialism or hegemony, skipping over the economic penetration it was engaging in even in 2003 in Africa and Australia; its relations with Central Asian states are portrayed as simply being about anti-terrorism rather than expansion of the soft power that Ye felt China was weak in. Certainly since the era of Xi Jinping, China has been much more open about wanting to take the role as global leader.

As a result, there is all this stuff about China prospering by continuing to follow a path of peaceful co-operation, believing that the September 2001 terrorist attacks provided an important bridge for reducing tension between China and the USA, not seeing how short lived this would be. He is pretty dismissive of concerns of future wars though maybe it was no surprise he did not foresee the Russian occupation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine. While noting, again in very sweeping broad terms rather than with analysis, why the USA would keep intervening in the Middle East, he somehow did not realise Afghanistan would simply return to what it was before the US intervention ('invasion' in his words) there.

Ye lists innumerable definitions of what makes a world power and insists that China is not one and will not become one until the mid-21st Century. This seems completely contrary to the statistics shown. The strength of the Chinese military and its interests across East/South-East Asia are downplayed, whereas US intentions are portrayed as inherently aggressive. He clings to superficial markers as somehow both essential and all-encompassing. China apparently made huge sacrifices to become a member of WTO and yet that then proves that somehow it is a wonderful international partner in all things and other nations should take it at that. It is galling to read reference to the 'liberation' of Tibet despite all the criticism of US intervention in other countries. The Chinese invasion of Vietnam in 1979 is written off as an appropriate response to US aggression rather than the Chinese aggression it was after the Americans had lfet.

Similarly Ye keeps on perceiving Japan as being incapable of establishing itself on the world stage until it apologises for its historic invasions of East and South-East Asia, even though by 2003, those who were even young adults in that period were now elderly. Ironically the famines and executions that killed millions in China from 1950 onwards are excused as 'leftist errors', nothing more. He feels that Taiwan declaring independence would trigger a war, yet seems to be oblivious that the country has been de facto independent, if not de jure, for decades now. Ironically Ye feels China cannot become genuinely modern until reunification has taken place, but still baulks against outside demands for the independence of Tibet as utterly offensive. 

There is a self-righteousness throughout the book perhaps most when Ye speaks about US society. Though he did correctly foresee tensions over immigrants and the problem of gun violence but then says of the USA 'it is a desert spiritually, filled with violence, pornography and drugs' as if despite his mention of corruption, somehow China, so ancient and sophisticated is spared all of these challenges, even in its big cities. It reminds me of Russia claiming homosexuality was a disease that had come from the West, all false arrogant and not credible to the reader.

Ye does think China will become democratic but sensibly eschews the simplistic US view of the 1990s that China embracing capitalism would inevitably lead to it becoming democratic. Yet, then you realis what he envisages as 'democracy' is not really what the rest of the world would consider it. He begins to distinguish between types of democracy and like a good Communist somehow feels that the one led by the Communist Party with its structures is actually a truer form than that espoused in the name of democracy elsewhere. In addition, he sees human rights as being separate from democracy. He keeps emphasising that China's record is something that should not concern any other country and is simply a way for foreign powers to intervene in its domestic affairs. Thus, while the administration of Xi Jinping has not moved in the direction Ye envisaged, in fact it is not out of step with the views of the Chinese government, let alone in terms of rolling out these perspectives more widely across the world as an alternative to Western perceptions.

Ye envisaged that the greatests obstacles to China's advance would be domestic, though as with the glimmers of movement towards a liberal democracy in the late 1980s, these have been utterly snuffed out by the regime which has become more rather than less authoritarian. In addition for all Ye's vision of a harmonious society for China, racial suppression on the road to a potential genocide has been unleashed on the Uighur population, though like Ye, the current Chinese government feels this is no concern of any other nation or that it is simply another facet of its appropriate anti-terrorism policy.

Naturally Ye is obsessed with Taiwan and makes contradictory statements as he twists and turns to try to make it appear essential that it is taken over by China. Even though he acknowledges that China has advanced even when Taiwan has been occupied by other countries, somehow it plays a magical essential role without which China can never become a true world power. The explanations Ye gives for why China must hold Taiwan are ot different to the explanations for colonialism of the expanionist powers in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Furthermore, Ye completely miscomprehends the perspective of the people of Taiwan. He sees the GMD governments of being pro-unification not understanding that they wanted Taiwan to combine with a reunited China ruled by a conservative, authoritarian GMD government not a Communist one (they continued with GMD representatives representing all the mainland Chinese regions into the 1970s). Missing this he then thinks that pro-independence movements on Taiwan, as it became properly democratic at the start of the 21st Century, as driven by sinister outside forces rather than a realistic re-evaluation of what the government of Taiwan could achieve.

Only once is there a statement showing that the CCP, the rulers of China, might be the actual problem. Nowhere in this book does Ye mention that the People's Republic of China is a repressive, totalitarian state and that is a prime reason why people, notably the Taiwanese (and this now combines the distinct original population of Taiwan with the descendants of the 2 million mainland Chinese who fled there at the end of the Civil War) may have no desire to be under such a regime. In fact, in the years since this book was published, that fear has naturally grown and the reassurances towards the population of Hong Kong - very similar to those Ye makes towards Taiwan - have proven to be illusory and they have suffered immense repression which continues.

Overal, this book is only useful for showing how in the early 2000s the Chinese government wanted itself to be seen by the outside world. It very repetitively indulges in the very twisted logic of the regime to show that somehow it is a victim but has the potential to bring global peace through 'appropriate' forms of co-operation, which despite the extension of its power are somehow not hegemonic. Apparently China, unique among large and wealthy countries has only beneficient intentions for the world, especially its neighbours, despite it being a totalitarian state which suppresses any criticism and now intervenes directly in other countries' internal affairs as seen by the Chinese state police stations set up in Britain to monitor and suppress Chinese dissidents. This book is not an academic text, it is a work of propaganda and the University of Kentucky should be highly embarrassed in having been involved in its publication.

'The Lost Leaders: The Best Prime Ministers We Never Had' by Edward Pearce

As regular readers of this blog will know, I read quite a lot of British political history books. However, last month with 'The Prime Ministers from Robert Walpole to Margaret Thatcher'  (1980) by George Malcolm Thomson which I read last month, https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html there is clearly a sub-category of such books which are produced by journalists who write them in a really rambling raconteur style. At the start of this book Pearce said he also want to feature Herbert Morrison in this book too, but the length of the book had already far exceeded his target. It is clear to understand why. Pearce uses 10 words where 1 would suffice. His text is often terribly flowery and sometimes so convoluted as to be incoherent and I am saying this as someone who is experienced with the subject matter, not a general reader. He has untranslated French clauses and terms, and refers to bits of literature, plays and poetry assuming the reader knows them well, as if we were from the turn of the 20th Century rather than the 21st. He also goes off into asides notably connected to the political scene at the time he was writing the book, i.e. 1996/7 but before the Labour election victory in May was known. These are distracting, adding nothing to the book. With some serious editing this could have been a focused, engaging book, rather than one which seems to almost have gone out of its way to rebut many readers.

Pearce focuses on Richard "Rab" Butler, Denis Healey and Iain Macleod, all politicians of the second-third of the 20th Century, who has he shows despite the obfuscation of his writing, could have become British prime ministers. I certainly had not been aware how ardent an appeaser Butler was, even after the war had started. Unlike some other politicians of that ilk, however, he seems to have been largely forgiven. The best parts of the book is when he shows how productive each of the men was when running particularly ministries, something few politicians get credit for, but actually for a scholar of 20th Century British politics provides important breadth by showing aspects, e.g. Healey's reform of defence spending or Macleod handling the break-up of the Central African Federation, which stand in the background, but far from disconnected from the headline news about the economy or global political engagement. There are stretches of the book which cover such topics that are worthwhile reading, but you would have to go through carefully with a highlighter to pick them out.

No historian, no journalist is entirely neutral, but Pearce is almost the complete opposite. He is scathing in his utter contempt especially for Harold Macmillan, but also turns his bile on Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher and trade unions in general. Muting these attitudes would have made his analysis, e.g. when he compares Macmillan and Butler or Healey and Jenkins, more effective rather than tainted by what we know are his strong feelings, though saying that, he seems pretty pro-SDP, so though annoyed with Roy Jenkins and very dismissive of David Owen, he cannot condemn them like some of the others.

As I say this book is not useless. There are sections which do provide useful insight taking perspectives uncommon in typical political histories. There are naturally lots of potential seeding for alternate histories. However, for the most part too much of the book is taken up with Pearce doing a performance to show off something that in fact is of little or no interest to the reader.

The Books I Read In May

 Fiction

'The Patience of the Spider' by Andrea Camilleri

While having all the usual elements of a Montalbano novel, this one is among the better ones. It is much more taut than some and has none of the James Bond like adventuring that is occasionally seen in the books. Montalbano is just returning prematurely to service after having been shot and is being tended to by his long-suffering girlfriend Livia Burlando. A female student, Susanna Mistretta, from a poor family with a bed-ridden mother is kidnapped. Once it becomes clear that her mother was conned of family wealth by the mother's brother a motive becomes clearer. The various clues such as finding Susanna's scooter, motorcycle helmet, in various locations; the evidence of a blighted egg seller-cum-prostitute; the various calls to news media all confuse matters. The characters of the victim's boyfriend and a doctor who is a family friend are well drawn. Perhaps the reader can work out what is going on and at time Montalbano seems rather blessed with looking in the right place at the right time. However, it is effectively told and alongside the usual cast, the other characters are portrayed convincingly with all their different drives. This is the eighth book in the series and I have a number more to go through, though it is difficult to know what is going to be a stronger or a weaker story in the sequence. This is certainly one of the better ones.

'The Fifth Season' by N.K. Jemisin

I had read very good reviews of Jemisin's writing so when I saw this Broken Earth trilogy - 'The Obelisk Gate' (2016) and 'The Stone Sky' (2017), I snapped up all three books. Foolishly I had not read detailed reviews of each of the books. As the book reviewer active on BlueSky (@runalongwomble.bsky.social) pointed out, if I had done then I would not have had such an unpleasant experience reading this first book. The book opens with the discovery by a middle-aged mother that her 3-year old son has been murdered by his father who has run off with the boy's sister. A young girl, Damyana, with forbidden powers is handed over to authorities to be taken from her family for life and soon has her hand intentionally broken when studying how to master magic is bullied and has to become devious leading to the punishment of other students which we later discover can involve being intentionally paralysed and wired into a machine for life in order to counteract earth tremors. A young woman, Syenite, despite being trained in the magic is simply used to breed with an older, more powerful male magic-user.

So you can see this is a real grimdark book. The concepts behind it are fascinating. It is set on a world with largely one huge continent stretching between the poles which is troubled periodically down the centuries by environmental catastrophes. Certain people are born with the ability to work magic and as in 'The Ninth Rain' (2017) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html They are carted off to confinement and training in how to control their powers to benefit those who control them. Jemisin's Damaya does get treated a little better than Williams's Noon. The magic powers come from the very turbulent movements of the planet's surface and can be a source of devastating power or can be ameliorated by the magic users. There are also levitating obelisks which can similarly provide power or be destructive. This approach to magic was a refreshing one even though it also allows the perpetuation of horrors.

We see the story through what quickly becomes apparent are three timelines before and after the latest environmental catastrophe which is smashing up the societies of the continent despite all the laws to make people prepare adequately. It is not long before you realise that the women in the three timelines are actually a single individual at different ages of her life. To some degree that reduces some of the jeopardy of the earlier two as we know she lives to be the middle-aged Essun. However, it is clear Jemisin revels in suffering and though there are brief triumphs, pain and simply prejudiced violence run right through this novel. Given such pervasive nastiness, I am ambivalent about continuing with the trilogy despite having bought the other two books. As I have now been chided, it is advisable to check out a book thoroughly before buying it, let alone splashing out on an entire trilogy!

'It's a Battlefield' by Graham Greene

This novel from 1934 is one of Greene's lesser known ones. It follows a very similar pattern to 'Stamboul Train' (1932) which I read last month. There is a small set of characters who somehow are all interlinked and they interact through the novel in a way, which for all its seriousness, to the modern reader seems rather whimsical. I put this down to some extent to the style of language used 90+ years ago and perhaps Greene wanting the novel not to be too heavy. I am also learning that it was apparently acceptable in the 1930s to show characters with sexual orientations that we more usually associate with the later 20th Century and contemporary times. In this case there is Kay Rimmer who is unapologetically promiscuous seeking single night partners even though she seems to be ambivalently in love with one man, Jules who comes into money and goes off on a bizarre reckless car journey around the countryside outside London in the closing section of the novel.

The connecting issue is the imminent execution of Jim Drover, a bus driver and member of the Communist Party who killed a policeman threatening to beat-up his wife, Milly Drover (née Rimmer), Kay's sister, at a protest/riot in Hyde Park. Milly later goes to see the policeman's widow. Many of the characters are members of the Communist Party, though in Kay's case, more to pick up men rather than through any political convictions. Other characters are a wealthy Communist Mr. Surrogate (a very unconvincing name for a character!) who Kay sleeps with and attempts to work through an influential Communist fellow traveller Caroline Bury to get a commutation Jim's sentence from the police, largely in the form of the unnamed Assistant Commissioner. There is also Jim's brother, Conrad, who is a chief clerk and chafes over what he can do for his brother, becoming increasingly reckless too. There is Conder, a scuzzy journalist who monitors the local Communists and is seeking a human interest story. All these characters dance around each in seedy locations of London.

While it does lay out the various mental turmoils of the different characters you somehow feel there is no real depth. The book does come over, rather like 'Stamboul Train' like a script for a play rather than a novel. It does provide an interesting view into London of the time and actually how 'normal' if unpopular with slice of society, the Communist Party was at that time. Still, Greene does also show how ineffectual, how bound up in procedure it was, so unable to make any impact, let alone represent anything like the kind of threat that was attached to it through much of the 20th Century. The twist is reasonable, but by then despite it being short (202 pages in my edition), you are tired of the characters and are glad that it is all over. I do have many more Greene novels to read and I hope that the writing improved as his career progressed, or at least came closer to what I now realise are the expectations of readers of the late 20th/early 21st centuries.

'Continental Crimes' ed. by Martin Edwards

This is another of the British Library Classic Crime collections edited by Martin Edwards. As the title suggests (at least to British readers) this one features crime stories (not always detective stories) set in (western) continental Europe. The collection is not as good as 'Serpents in Eden' (2016) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html but it does have some decent stories.

As is usual the one by Arthur Conan Doyle, 'The New Catacomb' from 1898 again shows the quality of his writing. It is set in Italy and shows the rivalry of two archeaologists. While modern readers are liable to work out what is going to happen it is well written and paced. This is one of the stories in which rather than the detection of the crime, we see its execution. Arnold Bennett is known for his stories of Victorian society. 'A Bracelet in Bruges' is about the loss/robbery of said bracelet. It has a small set of characters, but is well worked through, with sufficient clues for the reader. It also describes Bruges very well and even visitors of today can match up its medieval features with those described by Bennett in 1905.

G.K. Chesterton is better known for writing crime novels, especially the Father Brown stories which have long been popular but have received a new burst of interest with the 13 seasons of the BBC TV series which has been running since 2013. 'The Secret Garden' from 1910, however, is set in France and features the head of the Paris police. I am not sure why all these stories always feature the head rather than an ordinary inspector. Anyway, at the head's house there is an impenetrable garden in which a corpse is found which has been beheaded. This is a locked garden mystery a littl of the style of 'Jonathan Creek' (1997-2016) stories and is satisfying for that, but also shows up how strong anti-clerical sentiments were in France of the time.

'The Secret of the Magnifique' published Edward Phillips Oppenheim in 1912, is one of the stories where we see the crime but no-one is brought to account for it. It follows John T. Laxworthy who with two friends sets out to involve himself in any dubious activity especially if it enriches him. He becomes mixed up in attempts to steal naval plans on the Côte d'Azur. His method for dealing with the spies seeking them is an uncommon, refreshing, ending. 'The Ten Franc Counter' (1912) by Henry de Vere Stacpoole is set in Monte Carlo, and while there is naturally reference to the casino - which apparently local residents were barred from - the story involves theft in an apartment block and, it turns out an imposter. It is deftly investigated by visiting police detective M. Henri, whose route to the solution comes from the eponymous clue. Not bad.

'Petit Jean' (1931) by Ian Hay is unusual in being set behind the frontlines of the Western Front in Belgium during the First World War. It manages to combine both investigation of a theft with a case of spying too. Hay who had fought on the Western Front, successfully conjures up the feel of the context back form the frontline, relations within the company, interacting with the local people and with the the genuine threat of death so close by. In this short story, Captain Crombie solves both situations. I suppose it seems rather facile to have murder mysteries when there was so much carnage, but this is an interesting contribution all the same.

 'The Lover of St. Lys' (1919) by F. [Fryniwid] Tennyson Jesse features a female private detective, Solange Fontaine, with a French father she travels with and a British mother. Solange's skill is being able to detect evil and this story is more like a Gothic drama about pressure being put on a young woman at a nearby large house in order to get control of her money though intervention by the antagonist's wife muddies the water. Solange and her friend Raymond intervene to help Monique escape from the bigamous marriage let alone being murdered, though as Solange points out philosophically if she had continued in it and yet escaped to South America as planned, she may have lived happily. Joseph Jefferson Farjeon was a playwright and crime novelist. I have a number of his crime novels in the British Library series to read next year. 'The Room in the Tower' set in a German castle on the Rhine is not even really a crime story, but even more a Gothic tale, perhaps unsurprising given the setting, but it features a spectral being who provides clues back to a crime.

'Popeau Intervenes' written by Marie Belloc Lowndes, who, like the fictional Solange, had a French father and British mother. Writing in the 1910s she created the French detective Hercules Popeau who features in this story. Not surprisingly Lowndes was not impressed by Agatha Christie's use of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot who first appeared in 1920 in 'The Mysterious Affair at Styles'. Knowing Poirot stories well, it is clear that he was nothing less than a rip-off of Popeau not simply in name but also in terms of mannerisms and approach, even down to not always having an arrest as a solution, but some other outcome. This story moves from Paris to a southern French hotel where Popeau's suspicions are aroused around the health of a guest especially when he encounters a dubious doctor he has met before when a police detective. Ironically this is a good non-Poirot, Poirot story and could certainly rank alongside any Christie short story.

There is an Agatha Christie short story but one featuring Parker Pyne rather than Poirot. 'Have You Got Everything You Want?' was published in 1933. Pyne is drawn into a jewellery robbery while on the Orient Express. The victim has had prior warning that something is going to befall her but believes it is more likely to be a personal attack. This combined with the layering of the story - blackmail lies behind the theft - means it works effectively. It also incorporates elements that Christie would use again, such as forewarning of a crime and of course featuring the Orient Express, 'Murder on the Orient Express' was published the following year.

Reggie Fortune, Henry Christopher Bailey's doctor who aids the police turned up in 'The Long Barrow' short story in 'Serpents in Eden'. In this story, 'The Long Dinner' from 1935 he goes between southern England and Brittany disentangling not just the disappearance of a man but also the murder of various children over the years. Though Bailey was criticised for dated language - exclamations by various characters seem very peculiar - and a prime clue is identifying what part of France would have dishes like those seen on a particular menu, it has layering and concerns which feel pretty modern. This layering means there is more than one crime to solve. Saying that often Fortune seems more a distraction, despite important connections he can make at times between pieces of information.

The impetuous for 'The Packet Boat Murder' (1951) by Josephine Bell is a young Frenchwoman seeking to elope with a British tourist who who is then murdered on or around a ship to England before it sets sail. Compared to some of the other stories it is a gritty case which might reflect when it was written and the impact of what was done during the war does play a part.

'The Perfect Murder' from 1926 by Stacy Aumonier, better known for contemporary fiction, is set in France and features two brothers seeking to ensure they inherit from a wealthy aunt. There is no detection, just the unfolding of the two brothers' plans and overall it feels like a Chauceresque morality tale. 

'Villa Almirante' was published in 1959 by Michael Gilbert. It is set in Italy and is told from the perspective of a carabineri lieutenant, Lucifero investigating a murder at a villa rented by a British lord and his various friends plus the servants. Maybe it is the age of this one, maybe the angle (maybe I have read too many Montalbano books) but I liked this approach to the typical English manor house set up by an outsider, who is perceptive but calm and unafraid to not only deduct but at times, simply to observe.

'And the Rest is History' by Jodi Taylor

I was rather foolish to read this book. I do not like giving away books that I have not read, but really after the previous, seventh, book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's 'Lies, Damned Lies and History' (2016) which I read in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html and finding it so nasty, I should have stayed away from this one. Despite Taylor's 'jolly hockeysticks' tone which makes a university institute for time travel have the characteristics of a private school in the 1950s (no-one in a university calls anyone 'Miss. Grey' or 'Mr. Dieter' and Taylor seems to have no idea what a University Chancellor actually does) they are actually stories of bitterness, loss and sorrow. I do not care about giving 'spoilers' here, because I do think these books should come with trigger warnings, something much more than a comment on the back saying simply '... Max and St Mary's find themselves engulfed in tragedies worse than they could ever imagine' though clearly Taylor can imagine them. 

The death rate exceeds that of the average thriller and going beyond this, Taylor uses time travel to inflict particular nastiness on her characters. In this one the protagonist Dr. Madeline Maxwell 'Max' is widowed for the second time in the series from her husband Chief Leon Farrell though he turns up 'after' his death from a previous time travel journey and Max can say nothing to him about his fate due to the ructions in time it would cause.. She has her recently born baby, Matthew Farrell abducted and only returned to her days later, but eight years older malnourished and illiterate, having been abused throughout that time as a chimney sweep in 19th Century. I know authors feel they should put in jeopardy for the main characters, but in these books which often have a comic turn, it really jars as the reader has to keep shifting gear from mildly amusing scenes (such as two amateur time travellers from the future arriving in a giant teapot and mistaking a period tea for arriving in the wrong time) to tragedy that would be horrendous but often impossible without the set-up. There is some protracted, uncertain redemption towards the end of the novel, but it does feel tacked on, perhaps the result of pressure from an editor or a publisher, rather than the ending that Taylor would have wanted to inflict on her characters.

The only really redeeming features of the books, especially as the series continues and the body/abuse count stacks up even faster than before is their descriptions of missions to the past. In this novel, teams follow the stages of Harold Godwinson through being shipwrecked in France and handed over to Duke William, having to swear the oath and then fighting the Battle of Hastings. There is also a good scene towards the end when Max accompanies a Time Police team to Constantinople in 1204 during the rapacious 4th 'Crusade'. I have often commented how Taylor always seems to have battled with getting the right approach to these books. Early in the series Max feels like a 15-year old with a PhD but this settles down as the novels continue. However, Taylor still seems obliged to keep going back to a light, supposedly humorous tone, despite writing horror after horror that really puts these novels into the grimdark category. Be warned.

Non-Fiction

I have been very fortunate this month to have picked two very good history books to read.

'Democratic Socialism and Economic Policy: The Attlee Years 1945–1951' by Jim Tomlinson

It is now 31 years since I met Tomlinson. Back then he impressed me with both his energy and his insight. He was (I imagine he still is as he has not died) a polite man but an incisive one, making effective use of the historical record to challenge lazy or politically-motivated interpretations that seek to twist the history to a particular purpose. In this book, he occasionally sets himself up against his bête noire, Corelli Barnett, but does not allow that disagreement to distort the clear cases he is making.

This was a sensible book to read after 'New Jerusalems' (1985) by Elizabeth Durbin which I read in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html  Durbin looked at all the intellectual and policy debates which went on among liberal and Labour circles in the 1920s and 1930s on handling the economy. Tomlinson then explores how these were put into action when people like Dalton and Cripps that Durbin discussed, became policy shapers/makers in the post-war Labour governments.

Economic history is a complex field, but what makes this book particularly accessible to the general reader is how Tomlinson has broken it into thematic sections and then sub-divided these into particular issues to explore. Thus, there is a sub-section on the challenges of 1947 and one exploring whether the Welfare State was unaffordable. Thus, while Tomlinson tells a familiar story of great ambitions being hampered by the disrupted post-war global economy, forceful resistance from bigwigs in industry, banking and finance, demands for a world role and to rearm, he brings a great deal of insight. He also shows how too often those who sought to baulk against trends such as maintaining the empire or developing the industrial economy, get overlooked. As they did not succeed this does not mean that the governments should not be dismissed as not engaging at all with these topics as so often appears to be the case in general histories of the period. Topics such as the nature of the working class, the attitude to women especially in the workforce, technical education and the balances in use of steel and concrete are well told and good reminders to the reader.

While the sub-section approach could appear to lead to repetition, for the large part Tomlinson avoids that signposting backwards and forwards through the book. This means it is very usable by scholars or students who wish to engage with a particular aspect rather than wading through lots of text to find it as can be the case with the more narrative, less analytical approach used in many books embracing these topics in that period. Thus, overall, I do recommend this book even 31 years on, for anyone interested in looking at the critical period of British socio-economic history that established so much of what has persisted and what has proven unattainable in the decades since. The debates of 1945-51 remain very much alive in the current political scene. Hopefully, with the Thatcherite spin which was forced on too much commentary on this period at least a little faded, a more acute perspective can be taken on the roots of so much in contemporary UK.

'Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition and Racism in Everyday Life' by Detlev J.K. Peukert; translated by Richard Deveson

While regular readers of this blog will know that due to my degree studies I have read quite a lot on Nazi Germany, this book that I have had for many years does stand out. It provided insights into German society during the regime that I have never seen mentioned before, for example, the combing out of working class districts by the authorities in the early months of 1933. Its analysis is very crisp and asks sensible questions throughout showing how complicated the compliance and resistance to Nazism was within individuals, rather than most people simply being 'for' or 'against', and how public compliance might conceal private opposition. 

Another interesting aspect is how, while pushing against the concept of a German Sonderweg ['special way'] he does highlight how the Nazis were able to build on attitudes which had been commonplace in the 19th and earlier 20th centuries and in addition, how these then fed into so much that happened in the German societies after 1945. Peukert died aged only 39 and I have a sense if he had lived he would have produced an excellent book on those continuities which would have put Dahrendorf with his contorted, directive opinions back in his place.

Peukert was a particular specialist on the Nazi impact on youth and this is naturally a strong element of the book. However, he also does very well when looking at other sub-groups within German society, e.g. women, the working classes, gypsies/Roma and indeed the different tiers of the middle classes who provided so much 'fuel' not simply in terms of votes, but also assumptions, that went into the Nazi outlook and behaviour.

Overall, even if you have read lots of books on Nazi Germany, I heartily recommend this one. I feel few will not find something new in terms of its perspectives and even if you do not, the well-focused, brisk writing, backed up by effective use of personal accounts and official reports both from the regime and its opponents, make this a very engaging, fascinating book.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'Rounding the Mark' by Andrea Camilleri

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

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

'Circumpolar!' by Richard A. Lupoff

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

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

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

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

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

'Stamboul Train' by Graham Greene

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

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

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

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

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

'Serpents in Eden' ed. by Martin Edwards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Austin Freeman apparently wrote stories 1907-42, featuring what we would term these days a forensic scientist, Dr. John Thorndyke. 'The Naturalist at Law' sees Thorndyke, through analysis of the flora and forna of two English streams, prove that a civil servant did not drown himself in a Buckinghamshire stream but died at one in Essex. This combined with other clues leads him to the murderers. The focus is on the piece-by-piece analysis of water samples and other physical clues. Thorndyke, initially working for the man's insurers does not follow through the case to trial as he has done his part. I think we tend to think of things like 'Silent Witness' (1996- ) and 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' (2001-2015) and its spin-offs, as being modern phenomenon rather than something with a long history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Ninth Rain' by Jen Williams

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

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

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

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

'Flashman on the March' by George MacDonald Fraser

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

'Cruel Crossing' by Edward Stourton

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

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

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

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

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