Books I Read/Listened To In September

 Fiction

'Resurrection Men' by Ian Rankin

This is the thirteenth book in the Rebus series and was prize winning. Unlike some of the recent preceding ones, this novel has energy. Rebus is sent back to a training college but is working undercover to find out about corrupt police officers. There is an air of uncertainty especially as the case the retrainees are given to work on is one Rebus knows and her does not know if he is as much under suspicion as the men they are working with. In parallel then overlapping, is the case handled by DS Siobhan Clarke. While not named on the covers in many of these stories she is as much a protagonist as Rebus himself. Rebus is still in his relationship with a curator, though a night-time encounter with her seems rather too convenient to be believable. There is quite a lot of tracking back and forth between the college and Edinburgh and Glasgow. Crime boss Big Ger Cafferty appears yet again though some of the focus is on one of his lieutenants. It gets a bit tiresome that he keeps on turning up. However, this novel is decent in terms of the doubts and self-reflection of Rebus and Clarke and how the different threads of the various stories come together.

'Fool's Errand' by Robin Hobb

This is the first of the Tawny Man Trilogy set in the same world as Hobb's Farseer Trilogy, the first book of which I read some while back: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/11/books-i-read-in-november.html Indeed its protagonist is the man who was known as Fitz in that series, but 15 years later when, having renamed himself Tom after all the dramatic adventures of the previous books, is now living a bucolic life with his adopted son and the wolf he is bound to. Hobb's world has two kinds of magic that are genetic inheritances but can be accentuated through training. The Wit allows someone to bind with an animal and communicate with them telepathically. If not handled properly the person can lose themselves in the animal's identity. At the time of this book, the Witted are being persecuted and horribly executed. The other is the Skill which is another form of telepathy allowing sight, i.e. being able to "farsee" and communicate over distances. Tom probably has both abilities. There are also hedge witches with the ability to make charms to achieve low-level magic which actually works.

The first third of the book seems to be going nowhere. We see Tom's quite life while he is visited by various people from his past who know more or less about his history. Most important is the Fool of the title, who had that role at court, but has now reinvented himself as Lord Golden (many nobles names are characteristics such as King Shrewd and Prince Dutiful). He is a kind of alien with unknown abilities but probably a recurring role as a prophet who needs a catalyst in the form of Tom. This section of the novel is effectively a huge recap of the entire Farseer Trilogy which might be a bit tiresome if you have read it, but does mean if you are new from Hobb's work you can get up to (leisurely) speed with her world. Then the rest of the book is a mission into the depths of the country to track down the heir apparent Prince Dutiful who is Witted and has been lured away by a hunting cat.

Hobb has real skill in her writing. Whereas there are some familiar tropes, she has a deftness in turning in ways you do not expect, especially in extracting her protagonists from danger in credible ways. The relationships between the main characters, including Nighteyes the wolf, are handled very well when they are faced with a range of unusual and mundane challenges. In addition to the adventuring with questing and battles, and various bits of magic, it is these relationships which really bare you on in the story. There are no absolutes and even the 'good' characters are grumpy and flawed. I know some readers do not like protagonists who make mistakes, but I feel it means that you can feel you are alongside the characters even though they are existing in a very different world to our own. In addition, despite the fantastical setting there are parallels to our world, notably in suspicion and hostility to those who are seen as 'other' and in turn the negative integration which can make the oppressed become almost fanatical in their defence.

I do not have any more books by Hobb at the present, but if you are looking for well-written fantasy which is credible but not as bleak as grimdark, I can recommend this series.

'Mr. Commitment' by Mike Gayle

This is the second novel by Gayle. I read his first, 'My Legendary Girlfriend' (1998) back in 2016: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/05/the-books-i-read-in-may.html Gayle was trumpeted as the male version of Helen Fielding in featuring in a reasonably light way novels looking at relationships in contemporary Britain (largely London). This one features Ben Duffy, known to his friends as 'Duffy' who is an unsuccessful stand-up comedian who aged 28 has been in a relationship with successful advertising executive, Mel for four years. They live at different ends of London and she asks him to move in with her and get married. Duffy spirals into lots of concerns about marriage, not really about commitment but about the trappings that come with marriage, such as consumerism and children. The novel is then a 'will they/won't they' back and forth with other options for both Duffy and Mel appearing. It is very much of the ilk of 'Four Weddings and a Funeral' (1994), though with a lot less humour.

Some reviewers feel Gayle has portrayed the male characters as stereotypically useless men. I would disagree as in fact this is one of the challenges, most of the other men in the book, seem to be fully in control of their lives and doing pretty successfully. Many of these kinds of books have a sort of 'soft' social class portrayal of a kind of middle class and people around the fringes, actually doing better than would be the case given costs and low salaries in London. Duffy flat sharing is a reasonable portrayal. Marriage itself comes over as a middle class activity and it is tightly associated with dinner parties and especially in this book visits to Ikea. This seems to be an inescapable context. Even 'Starstruck' (2021-2023) strays into this territory though it is a lot funnier. I guess this was the focus back in the 1990s and is coming around again after different portrayals like 'The Royle Family' (1998-2012) 'Gavin and Stacey' (2007-2019), and 'Two Doors Down' (2013-2023). I know I am comparing a novel to TV series but it does show how few relationship novels I read.

This was not a bad book though what it features was hardly unexpected. It would have been good to have included more humour. Possibly the best thing is it might make young men - though they are unlikely to read it - actually think beyond their immediate needs to their longer term and see that relationships can be achieved without having to buy into the whole 'kit' of middle class consumerism.

'The Montmartre Investigation' by Claude Izner [Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre]

This is the third book in the Victor Legris series. Legris is a book seller living in Paris in the late 19th Century who is also an amateur detective seeking to solve local crimes before the police do. The two authors, sisters who are both Parisian booksellers, are very knowledgeable about France in the period. The book is lovingly detailed in describing all the different districts, their buildings and the residents. Though set in 1891, the fringes of the French capital do open quickly into farmland and an urban goatherd is an important character. The case starts with the murder of a schoolgirl from a boarding school close to Legris's shop which he co-runs with his aged mentor and step-father, Kenji Mori and their assistant, Joseph, an aspiring crime novelist.

A number of people are murdered through the book and Legris and Joseph, often working alone, wheedle their way into various locations to get to the bottom of these and indeed to see if there is a connection between them and what it might be. The first killing might even be a case of mistaken identity and as a result Mori's goddaughter comes to stay at the bookshop. There is a lot of following people around the streets of Paris. There is also a lot of visiting the nightclubs, notably 'Le Moulin Rouge' and 'Le Chat Noir', where the protagonists happen to run into every famous Parisian artist, writer and composer of the time, which does feel rather artificial. Legris's lover is a painter, Tasha and it is nice to see an amateur detective who is not celibate, even if his relationship is complicated. 

There is a lot of interest in this novel. The details of the settings and the people are fascinating. The murder mystery is pretty clever and not that easily to predict, but avoids deus ex machina being needed to resolve it. The prime drawbacks are that there is a lot of tramping around and the tone seems off. This may be due to it being in translation from French. Despite a series of brutal murders, starting off with a stabbed girl, the tone is persistently light. This is fuelled by quirky customers at the bookshop, Legris having women throwing themselves at him, Joseph's mother' Legris on-off relationship and Tasha's disapproval of his investigating and so on. It may have greater gravity in the original French, but in English, despite points of interest it comes off uncomfortably jarring.

'Half A King' by Joe Abercrombie

This novel is set in a different world from, 'The Blade Itself' (2006) which I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html This one has a more Nordic flavour and focuses on states around the so-called Sundered Sea, a roughly circular sea with rather bleak moors, forests and fens around it and various cities on its shores. It focuses on Yarkvi, the second son of the King of Gettland who was born with a withered arm with only a thumb and one finger on his hand. With his father and elder brother dead, he is called back from training as a Minister - a celibate kind of combined herbalist, diplomat, advisor, order to be king. On a revenge mission to a neighbouring state his uncle attempts to kill him and takes the throne. Yarvi survives but ends up as a galley slave, then later escapes with others from the galley to make the arduous journey back to Gettland to recover his birthright.

Though Abercrombie aimed for this to be a young adult book; a little less 'grimdark', and it is a bit shorter than 'The Blade Itself' and much shorter than later books in that series, it is still pretty much a gritty read, with lots of death and suffering along the way. The book is not high fantasy and at times if someone told you it was set in genuine Nordic history you could almost believe it, including when a One God is put in place over the 409 gods worshipped before. With uncles and a widowed mother in a Nordic realm, there are heavy overtones of 'Hamlet' (1601). The portrayals of this bleak context are well done and the action moves along briskly. The portrayal of the characters is handled well and as Abercrombie notes in an interview at the end of the edition I have the focus on one point of view throughout and a small set of characters at any one time means the character development is rich. Some might foresee the twists at the end, but I found they were well handled.

If I see more books in the series I would certainly pick them up.

Non-Fiction

'What is History?' by E.H. Carr

This is a series of four lectures that Carr gave in 1961. Despite its age it has really stood the test of time (though it does refer to all historians as 'he' and talks about the USSR) in terms of its exploration of perspectives on history. It is a short book (159 pages in my edition) however covers a whole range of issues that still need to be thought about. Examples include whether anything in history is 'inevitable' and how historians are impacted by their attitudes of their own time when looking at attitudes of the past and whether we can ever be really objective. In some ways the book comes to a proto-Post Modernist approach which was to develop in the next thirty years, emphasising the looking at context rather than insisting that our perspective is somehow greater than others without checking this. He also points out how Western-centric so much of history is in the West and how this neglects histories that in the life of humanity have had huge impacts.

Despite its age, this book is very deft and putting questions that historians especially in the period of so much dubious 'history' appearing online, need to keep asking themselves and using to check their work. If you are interested in the study of history, I feel this book remains relevant especially in what it asks.

Audio Book

'The Collectors' by David Baldacci; read by Steven Pacey

This is the second book in Baldacci's Camel Club series. I listened to the third book back in 2020: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html It is typical of many of the CD audio books that seem to turn up in charity shops. The 'Camel Club' is a collection of misfit middle-aged and elderly men with various backgrounds largely in intelligence or the military who get wrapped up in conspiracies and solving crimes, led by Oliver Stone a former CIA assassin who now lives and tends a cemetery. In this one the gang investigate the killing of a librarian at the Library of Congress where one of them works and the assassination of the Speaker of the House of Representatives. There is a parallel story about a con artist and her gang ripping off an Atlantic City gangster, which overlaps with the main story as she was the former wife of the librarian.

There is a lot of chasing around Washington DC but the solution of what is going on is reasonably well handled.  Some of the technology, especially used in the con, seems dated, even for 2006 when the book came out. Unlike 'Stone Cold' (2007) which I listened to back in 2020, the language is a bit less tough-guy throughout and it is more a gang of quirky sort-of amateurs solving what is going on which turns out to be spying and treason.

Pacey does well with a range of distinctive American voices and is not bad with the few female voices that appear. This is not the sort of book that I would have gone out and bought but it is fine enough for listening to while commuting.

Books I Read In November

 Fiction

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

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

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

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

'A Scandalous Man' by Gavin Esler

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

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

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

'The Witch Hunter' by Bernard Knight

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

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

Non-fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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