Fiction
'The Dark Mile' by D.K. Broster
This is the final book in The Jacobite Trilogy. It should not be confused with the 2017 movie of the same name. Here the name comes from a genuine stretch of the Highland countryside between Loch Arkaig and Loch Lochy which you can walk even today: https://www.komoot.com/highlight/4639016 This website mentions the genuine Cameron of Locheil laird who features in the first book in this trilogy.
While this novel ties up some aspects from the previous book, 'The Gleam in the North' (1927) which I read in July: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/07/books-i-read-in-july.html it has a lot less of a political focus and is much more a family drama set in the western Highlands. It is set in 1754/55, so a decade after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden, but still with an English occupying force in castles through the Highlands and numerous restrictions, e.g. no Highlander can wear tartan - causing challenge indentifying staff; own a weapon, even for shooting birds or a sword; and the lairds are no longer allowed to be called 'Lord', though Lady Cameron seems to be allowed to keep her title. While we see Ewen Cameron of Ardoy and he plays an important role the greater focus is on his cousin Captain Hector Grant, from the previous book, who has inherited an estate in the Highlands and sees an opportunity to propose marriage to Jacqueline Stewart, a distant relative of the Camerons.
The other prime protagonist is Ian Stewart, Jacqueline's brother. He inadvertently rescues Olivia Campbell, without knowing she is one of the Campbells of Cairns and her father was commander of the unit with shot Ian's elder brother, Alan, at the Battle of Culloden. While soon the Ian and Olivia are quickly besotted with each other, at a series of encounters, they realise they have to deny their affection for the peace of mind of their families. Ian works hard to try forget Olivia even her willingness to express her affection for him increases. Broster rather bottles it in the writing however. She will not have, despite what is clearly described as an intense passion, love conquer all and instead of the two perhaps bringing peace between the two clans as a result of a marriage, there is a rather contrived work around which I guess some readers, even Scots, might have felt at the time was a missed opportunity.
There is another main point of tension in the book spilling over from the experience of the 1745 uprising and its aftermath. The first is the question of who wrote the letter in the previous book which alerted the English authorities to where Dr. Archibald Cameron, the Jacobite treasurer in Scotland, was hiding out which led to his arrest and ultimate execution. We soon know it to be David Maitland who wanted to see the end to the trouble that Cameron being on the run was causing in terms of the oppression by the English forces, believing it would lead to prosecution rather than execution. However, this is not known to most people at the start of the story.
One who does come to know is Finlay MacPhair, the new and nasty laird of Glenshian. He was an English agent but left poor by the war, feels he has not received his proper recompense. Ultimately he tries to blackmail Maitland into saying it was he, the laird, who wrote the damning letter, but Maitland, already suicidal, startled at MacPhair's confession of collaboration gets away only to find that Hector has already confronted MacPhair believing himself that the laird was the author of Maitland's letter. MacPhair is a real antagonist. His schemes are to gain money. He fakes the abduction of two of his cattle by Ewen and insists he pay compensation for eighty cattle. He confines Hector in worsening conditions to try to force him to apologise for his accusation, even though ironically he wants Maitland to say it is true. These schemes, despite a dramatic rescue of the suffering Hector, rather fade as the novel progresses. Similarly though Hector has actually fought a duel with Ian, his romance with Jacqueline also drifts off rather unresolved.
This is not a bad book and does very well at conjuring up the times and the dramatic landscape. Broster does seem to get rather tied up in her crossplots, though maybe that was intentional to show how much power had been taken from the Highlanders that even a devious one was unable to win through if the English were not agreeable to what he was striving for. I found this the easiest of the three books to get through though I do not typically read romances and this is full-on in that aspect at times. However, do regret my nostalgia for the 1976 TV dramatisation of the first book, 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html which led me to buy the entire trilogy. I forgot two things: that the versions of stories for children are often shorn of the bleakness and cruelty of the adult versions and that you should never revisit childhood favourites as you will generally find them a disappointment.
Having suffered from it myself on coming to Scotland, I was glad to see though that orophobia especially in the face of Scottish uplands, was recognised as a legitimate condition in a novel, even one from a century ago.
'The Wings of the Sphinx' by Andrea Camilleri
This is a straight forward Montalbano story which starts with the discovery of a dead woman's body found in a dump. The distinguishing mark is a tattoo on her shoulder of a sphinx moth. This then takes Montalbano into the investigation of three other women also from Russia who have been tattooed in the same way. In turn this leads to a religious charity which seeks to get such immigrants out of prostitution or drug dealing into domestic service roles. What is interesting, perhaps clever, is that the quartet, despite coming from the same home town and having similar stories, in fact are different from each other in the paths they choose, with some being honest, others not; some being integrated, others remaining apart. In addition, perhaps unusually, the charity itself is not rotten right through and it finally transpires that only certain members are engaging in criminal activity, while others are innocent.
Identifying the four women, determining their different characters from more or less biased witnesses, finding who is dead and who is alive, and seeing how the criminality of one bisects with another murder, provides the mystery. Supporters of the charity put pressure for Montalbano to back off, though ultimately he does work out those who should be charged. As is typical for many detective stories set in Italy, there is often a distance between identifying perpetrators and having them arrested, let alone charged. In some ways this is a simple story with the usual 'business' of Montalbano eating various Sicilian dishes, rowing with his girlfriend and speculating on life, but the subtlety between what different individuals are up to is well handled rather than it being a 'blanket' approach of 'they are all bad in that group'.
'Noughts and Crosses' by Malorie Blackman
I was interested in this book because it is an alternate history. It is set on Earth in contemporary times but if Pangaea had never broken up. Historically rather than 'Europeans' colonising Africa, 'Africans' migrated from the south of the super-continent gathering technology such as paper and gunpowder which then allowed them to conquer and subjugate the white population of what appears to be the north-west coastal region. Not much detail is provided, though with a strong sense of parallelism black African inventors who we have in our world also existed in this alternative and are taught about in schools. Clearly Blackman wanted these names which are largely 'forgotten' in Western culture, to be remembered.
In this world black people are known as 'Crosses' (insulted as 'daggers') and white people as 'Noughts' (insulted as 'blankers'). There is strong racial discrimination and while it appears to be set in the 21st Century, the exclusion of white people from many opportunities and the inherent prejudice against them as ignorant, criminal and violent, seems primarily based on the US South in the 1950s and South Africa of the 1980s, though prejudicial treatment of whites by the police is of course like that currently seen by blacks in many countries. There is mention of mixed-race black/white people but not of any other races in this world. Blackman implies that the legal segregation would have persisted decades longer if black people had been in charge than if white people had been. Concessions are only being made due to pressure from the economic bloc that this 'British' portion of the continent is part of.
The novel itself is a romance between two teenagers Persephone 'Sephy' Hadley and Callum McGregor who is slightly older. Callum's mother, Meggie worked as a nanny then cleaner for Sephy's mother, Jasmine until she failed to back up an alibi of Jasmine's to cover her affair from her husband. While living close to the Hadleys, the McGregors are very poor like most noughts. Sephy's father is Home Secretary and they live in an expensive house close to the beach where the two lovers meet.
The politics, culture and the language appears to be very British (the swearword 'ruddy' is even used) though with US examples providing the racial system and even public executions. Callum is very intelligent and is one of the small number of noughts first allowed to attend Sephy's school, though this opens him up to more prejudice.
Various incidents lead Callum and his family to be involved with the Liberation Militia, a kind of cross between the IRA and the Black Panthers but for white people. They engage in terrorist activity and this means they face the full force of the law, all bar Meggie going on the run, with tragic circumstances. Throughout Callum tries to keep in contact with Sephy and it is clear as they mature that their love becomes deeper. There is no under-age sex in the book, but Callum does reappear when the two of them are old enough to legally have sex.
It is a very tragic book. It is clearly aimed not at adults but at children so the various messages are laid on very heavily. The point of view switches consistently between Sephy and Callum sometimes with incredibly short chapters. There are points of tension especially in the closing phase of the book, combined with what feels like a genuine romance across the races. However, I think most adult readers would feel the themes are laid on rather too thickly and the story hares along too fast to be an engaging book. I would not buy the other books in the series.
'Gun for Sale' by Graham Greene
This novel from 1936 continues to show how Greene was the 'king' of sleazy contexts. It shares many of the traits of the other novels by him I have read this year including a small set of characters and coincidences which rather stretch credibility.. It centres on an English assassin called Raven who kills the War Minister of Czechoslovakia and also murders his housekeeper at the same time. Returning to Britain Raven is paid off by a man he knows as Mr. Cholmondeley. Raven is paid £200 (worth about £50-80,000 today) in bank notes which prove to have been recently stolen and the serial numbers on them are known. Raven goes in pursuit of Cholmondeley who returns to his home town of Nottwich in the Midlands. Raven manages to elude police and get after his quarry.
To get out of the station without a ticket in Nottwich, using the silenced pistol he had retained contrary to orders, Raven threatens Anne Crowder, a chorus line singer to provide cover for him. This is where the peculiarities kick in. Crowder is the fiancée of Detective Sergeant Jimmy Mather of the Metropolitan Police who is sent to Nottwich after Raven and co-ordinates the hunt for him in the town. Though she is threatened by Raven, Crowder is soon collaborating with him, leading to grave suspicions of her later, even from Mather.
They hide out in a show home and then Crowder goes in search of Cholmondeley who, under the name of Davis, rather incredibly, happens to be a backer of the production that she is appearing in, in Nottwich. He also likes to have sex with the performers and takes her to dinner. He however, then tricks her in accompanying him to a bawdy house where rooms are rented by the hour. There he tries to rape her before confining her in the chimney breat. Using intuition Raven tracks her down and releases her. The two hide out in a railway shed with Crowder acting as a decoy so Raven can go after Cholmondeley's employer, a local industrialist who wanted the war minister dead because his policies were reducing armaments spending in Czechoslovakia. Raven is aided by a test-run of a gas attack on Nottwich allowing him to conceal his distinctive hare-lip behind a gas mask. This then leads to a showdown.
While the seediness of all the settings, the sense of not being able to turn anywhere for Raven, is well evoked, too much is rather 'convenient'. Crowder's behaviour in continuing to aid Raven certainly does not come across as realistic. While the gas attack practice reflected the sense of war approaching which is a feature throughout the book - in 1936 Germany remilitarised the Rhineland so breaking one of the precepts of the Treaty of Versailles - it and especially the behaviour of those involved in the test, feels far too much a plot device. Overall the book scores higher for atmosphere than feasibility.
'Castle Skull' by John Dickson Carr
It is clear that someone in my area likes Dickson Carr books as I have found three, including this one, in local charity shops in the past two months. Published in 1931, as can be guessed from the title, it has that 'Gothic' flavour which I noted when reviewing his 'It Walks By Night' (1930) back in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html though by the end you can see the kind of subtle shift beginning which would get him to his cosy English crime novels of the latter 1930s. Like 'It Walks By Night', this story features the Parisian detective Henri Bencolin and his American friend Jeff Marle who acts as narrator. This one also features a detective from Berlin, Baron von Arnheim. As Martin Edwards notes in the introduction the rivalry between Bencolin and von Arnheim is rather like that between Hercule Poirot and M. Giraud in 'The Murder on the Links' (1923) by Agatha Christie, though von Arnheim is reasonably respectful of Bencolin's skills, perhaps because they are both police detectives rather than one being an amateur. In fact they both bring parts of the solution to the complex case.
Schloss Schädel [Castle Skull] sits on the heights above the River Rhine near to Koblenz. Genuine castles such as Stolzenfels and Ehrenfels are mentioned but this fictional one, built to resemble a skull is particularly Gothic in nature. It has multiple secret passages and someone is chained up in a hidden cell, almost adding in every Gothic trope you might expect, naturally with thunderstorms. The actor Myron Alison lives across the Rhine opposite the castle which he inherited a half share of from his rival stage magician and fan of the occult Maleger who had died many years earlier mysteriously in the Rhine itself. Alison is seen on fire on the castle's battlements. The guests at his house are the suspects and Bencolin and von Arnheim have to disentangle what boats were used when and why there are multiple pairs of muddy boots in the house.
Thus, we do have elements of a standard investigation of the kind Dickson Carr would move on to, but with these Gothic aspects threaded through it constantly especially as more is discovered about the unique castle and then about enduring seeking of revenge. It is worthwhile paying attention to, though the direction Dickson Carr was moving in, does tend to jar with his Gothic emphasis, though he does draw an interesting range of characters and then assembles them for a grand dinner in the castle, including a cake with and icing image of gallows on it.
There is an additional short story ‘The Fourth Suspect’ (1927) for Bencolin and though short, this one is equally complex as the detective is called upon by the French war ministry to resolve a murder in which the wife of one of their spies is implicated, but has an alibi. This one does have the feel of a Sherlock Holmes story.
I currently have two more Dickson Carr novels to read, one from his more Gothic period and one from his later, cosy period. I am looking forward to them.
Non-Fiction
'The British Party System and Economic Policy, 1945-1983' by A.M. Gamble & S.A. Walkland
This book was published in 1984 and is an interesting look at the shifting, often largely ineffectual, economic policies of the post-war period. They were rather constrained by the fact that the book was in the Studies in Adversary Politics series, because as they show, aside from the rhetoric especially at election time, there has actually been a consistency in economic policies. It becomes apparent that despite all the talk of growth, prosperity and modernisation, in fact the overwhelming driver of British economic policy, no matter who was in power, was defence of the strength of the pound, even though this actually provoked many of the economic problems the UK faced.
Before going on with other decent points in the analysis, I must speak about the tone which Gamble & Walkland adopt. It is highly critical not simply of the governments but of others writing in economics and history. At times it is actually unprofessional. They seem to have no inhibitions in slagging off other writers in this field, feeling they have all proven inadequate, even incompetent. They are riled by the fact that such analysers were typically unwilling to put forward prescriptions for improving the British economy as if that was a compulsory duty for anyone writing on the topic. I understand the early 1980s were an incredibly febrile time but even so this book too often goes beyond the bounds of what is really acceptable in academic writing.
We could be critical of Gamble & Walkland themselves, especially in their view that there was a possiblity of the Liberal-SDP Alliance as it was in the 1983 election being of any significance in UK political scene, but many commentators of the time, not simply historians, fell for that delusion. They also downplay the divisions which would appear over Europe, though that would have been a challenge given the Conservatives and Labour, for large part, 'swapped sides' on the issue. Of all their proscriptions for the future, the possible path of a Conservative hegemony as enduring as the inter-war one and Labour being obliged to change nature to the new 'consensus' established by Thatcher in order to be permitted to re-enter the political scene was the most accurate.
The strengths of this book are in the detailed analysis of what the nature of the economic policies implemented were. As they show, despite the ever more intense rhetoric between the two main parties, what was done when they came into office often was the opposite of what had been said. Thus, reflation was done most under the Conservatives and deflation under Labour, contrary to what they had said and their rhetoric. They correctly identify that ironically Keynesianism was not needed in 1945-73 when it was the dominant economic theory, because the global boom sustained UK full employment anyway. Then when Keynesianism was needed in the 1970s it had been discredited by its apparent inability to smooth out economic challenges of the preceding two decades, for which it had not designed, notably protecting the strength of the pound.
The authors make a decent case that by 1983, the Conservatives were not actually pursuing a monetarist policy, despite saying they were. I think it is because they still believed that the Thatcher government was aiming to work in the interests of the UK as a whole rather than to the benefit of a slice of the wealthy and not necessarily located in Britain. They found it hard to believe that unemployment could not continue at such heights without civil unrest, though the Miners' Strike and the Poll Tax Riot, appear to be restrained compared to what they imagined would occur.
The book is also good at looking at the various bodies set up to stimulate and/or aid British industry and shows the in/effectiveness of each. They get frustrated when, because of the adversarial rhetoric, relatively success ones like the IRC and NEB were abolished, not due to them failing, but simply to fulfil what the incoming party had said.
While at times pointing to factors outside government which constrained and directed economic policy, the blame tends to fall heavily on the trade unions, then the civil service and least on businesses themselves, except in their obstruction to economic planning, something which has a chapter of its own. Corporatism, collaborating with business and unions is seen as really just a ritual with no genuine impact, though in part it was because no peak organisation really had significant control over their membership. Furthermore as they regularly demonstrate with both parties, plus the Treasury, unable to move from the focus on the pound, UK governments constantly reinforced the strength of those who play the money markets, rather than any large group within the British polity.
Overall, this is an interesting book with useful insights. However, you have to sift carefully as it flip-flops back and forth through the topics and breaks off to be rude to other historians. Added to that, despite showing that the adversarial politics had little impact on the economy, especially beyond the immediate installation of a new government, because of the series it was in, they feel obliged to come back to that topic repeatedly, often muddying the waters in terms of actual political and economic analysis.
'Who Saved Natal?' by Colin Bender
This is a very niche, local history book about the harbour of Durban. As the only feasible port on the south-east coast of Africa, sitting on the western side of Indian Ocean which can be incredibly turbulent, there was a long drive from the 1840s to the 1900s to establish a proper harbour and reduce the numerous shipwrecks along the coast. Unfortunately the nature of the currents meant sand was being constantly being deposited at the mouth of the lagoon on which Durban was built. Ships trying to cross the ever-shifting sand bar often run aground. The issue became greater as the size of shipping increased and Natal became even more important with the gold finds in the interior and the Anglo-Boer Wars.
Through letters, reports and charts from the time, the book shows the constant failure of schemes and the intense hostility between various port engineers and local government about removing the bar. For decads it was believed that by creating longer and longer sea walls the tide as it came out of the lagoon could be strengthened and so scour away the bar. This never worked despite the vast expense and creation of quarries and railways to help with the walls' construction. Eventually dredger technology improved to allow constant dredging even in the rough seas along the coast and this solved the problem finally, allowing Durban to become a major port, though really only effective more than sixty years after it was first needed.
This is a very niche book and is unlikely to be of interest unless you are particularly fascinated by harbour engineering of the past or in the local history of Durban and the rather nasty and foolish, dogmatic men who oversaw the continued failures to successfully provide a safe harbour there.
