The Books I Read In August

Fiction
'The Poison Chocolates Case' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkely Cox]
Like his 'Murder in the Basement' (1932) which I read back in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html this one from 1929, in many ways fits the writing of the 'golden age' of British detective novels, but also does well in subverting the genre. This one also features author Roger Sheringham and to a lesser extent Chief Inspector Moresby. In real life Cox established a club of detective authors and provides a fictional version of such a club in this novel. The members look into a 'cold case' in which Graham Bendix was given a box of poisoned liqueurs that had been received by an acquaintance of his, the disreputable Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had in turn been sent them at their gentlemen's club. Taking them home, Graham's wife, Joan eats many more of them and dies. In turn the six members of the club provide what sounds like a feasible explanation for the crime, who the intended victim actually was and the motives behind it. While they all bring in additional information, each of the explanations are effectively dismissed by other members of the club. In addition, in 1979 Christinna Brand and then in 2016 the introducer of this edition, Martin Edwards, provided their own chapters with two further explanations.


This novel might frustrate many readers because we never actually find out the 'truth'. In large part this was Cox's intention and it was pointing out to the fans of crime fiction of the era how easily they could be directed, even manipulated, into accepting an explanation which in fact might be no more feasible than any other. In that way it works as a kind of meta-fiction and would be useful for those who are interested in the 'mechanics' of classic crime fiction. The various characters are well drawn and there is a good insight into English middle/upper class society of the time. Cox avoids being smug in showing 'behind the scenes' and does really leave it to the reader, and whilst giving his message does not patronise us with his cleverness.


Some might find the novel repetitive and maybe it should be approached as a well-crafted exercise more than a standard detective story. However, apparently it was enjoyed by Agatha Christie. She had produced the short story 'The Clue of the Chocolate Box' for The Sketch in May 1923; it later appeared in 'Poirot's Early Cases' (1974), but while Cox uses a similar approach and mix-up, he does not seem to be critiquing Christie's story, unless one sees him having a go at detective fiction of the time in general.



'Tuf Voyaging' by George R.R. Martin
This is a collection of 8 short stories published mainly published in Analog magazine (one in Andromeda), 1976-85. They are science fiction and feature an obese, vegetarian, cat loving man called Haviland Tuf. He acquires a derelict 'seed ship', a 30Km long spaceship built to inflict biological warfare on enemies. The opening story is like the movie 'Alien' (1979) raised to a higher power as a group of looters are transported to the ship, 'The Ark' and face a range of horrendous diseases and creatures unleashed by the vessel in its own defence. While the stories were written out of sequence, the order in which they are organised here, works well and if you did not know otherwise you would imagine this had been created as a 'fix-up' book, i.e. a sequence of stories providing an overall novel, from the outset.


Tuf travels around between planets colonised by humans using the power of his ship's facilities to push the different colonies in directions that he prefers. One plagued by over-population needs repeated visits. Others are addicted to arena fights between ferocious animals, one is facing the rapid evolution of super-predators and a further one is suffering from a religious zealot trying to turn the clock back in terms of technology. Tuf is not a likeable character. He is snide in his behaviour and very picky in his language, constantly (sometimes very annoyingly) showing up the lack of logic in people's speech. He is self-righteous, though sometimes you would agree with the approaches he takes. While the smugness of the main character can jar, overall, the book even though it was put together, comes over as well constructed. There are rich portrayals of different colonies, their leaders and their challenges which do seem feasible. The opening story is gory, but it does settle down in the following seven.



'Prester John' by John Buchan
As 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html clearly showed Buchan's engagement with the south Scottish countryside which would feature in later novels, this one published in 1910, brings out his personal connection and interest in South Africa. It features another young Scot, this time David Crawfurd, who is offered employment at a trading post in northern South Africa, following the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). While there he re-encounters a black African church minister, John Laputa, he had run into back in Scotland in his youth and suspected, despite his preaching at kirks, that he was into black magic. It soon becomes apparent that Laputa is seeking to bring together various tribes and rise up against British rule, both drawing on the legend of 'Prester John' the mythical 'lost' king in central Africa and authority granted by wearing The Great Snake, a priceless ruby necklace that supposedly belonged to Prester John.


Clearly the book is pro-colonial and as you might expect the characters have a paternalistic, racialist approach not simply to the Africans but also the Portuguese, who at the time ruled neighbouring Mozambique. However, so that Crawfurd does face a real challenge, the rebels are not shown as fools and Crawfurd has a very challenging time trying to defeat Laputa and aid the defeat of the uprising. As is typical for Buchan there is a lot of rushing around the countryside. His portrayal of the landscape and its climate is always a strength of his writing. In addition, in part because of misreading the introductory essay, I had assumed Crawfurd would not survive the novel and the jeopardy, especially the exhaustion and scrambling across the rocky landscape seemed genuine. While very much of its time, you can see why Buchan's books have well outlasted the other 'empire adventures' written at the time.




Non-Fiction
'Fontana British Battlefields: The North' by Philip Warner
This is a 1970s book that appears to have been written in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey, certainly it gives details of which of their maps relate to the battlefield sites and how to reach them. This was the second book in a series covering different regions of Britain. By 'the North' it means England from Nottingham to the Scottish border. It gives crisp summaries of battles from Stamford Bridge in 1066 to Preston in 1648. It is adept at contextualising these in the broader contexts such as the Wars of the Roses and the War of Three Kingdoms and would be useful if visiting these areas. Whether the directions would remain accurate some 50 years on, I do not know. However, as part of the popular local history movement of that era it provides a useful and engaging brisk survey of the various battlefields ably putting them into both the local and wider contexts. I bought this book second hand some 40 years ago and while I see you can buy them second hand online and indeed there was a re-release in the 2010s, I have never myself stumbled across another since.


'Encyclopedia of the Third Reich' by Louis L. Snyder
Though I read it cover-to-cover, as the name indicates, this is an alphabetised reference book on an array of individuals, organisations and other aspects of the Nazi Regime. In fact, it goes back long before 1933 to look at the racialist and anti-Semitic writing and philosophies and the people that produced them, which fed into Nazi ideology. The edition of the book I had was published in 1998 but it is quickly apparent it was not revised from its original 1976 edition, so continues to show a lot of people still alive who were dead by the date of this edition's publication. There are consequently some gaps which would surprise the modern reader such as the fate of Martin Bormann and Josef Mengele. There is nothing more than speculation on the perpetrator of the Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in November 1939, whereas we know it was carried out by Georg Elser, a woodworker and clock maker, who was arrested trying to escape across the Swiss border; imprisoned and later executed in April 1945.


Being an American publication, there tend to be lengthy quotations from American journalists and commentators of the time, that are longer than the topic really warrants, for example, on the signing of the armistice between France and Germany at Compiègne in June 1940. Another oddity is that it goes into some detail on particular aircraft or tanks, but does not do this generally. It is most useful if you want to find out about the history and the role of particular individuals in the regime, especially those of the second and third rank and how they interrelated to more senior members and each other. It is also useful for connecting between acronyms and German terms for things such as various organisations and their English translations.


What was most alarming was just how much of the Nazi and nationalist/racialist language which is quoted in this book sounds as if it comes straight from so many speeches and social media of today. It is really chilling when the same terms, the same blaming and excuses are right there.

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

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

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

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

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

'John Burnet of Barns' by John Buchan

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

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

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

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' by Philip Kerr

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

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

'City of Lost Souls' by Cassandra Clare

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

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

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

'Dead Air' by Iain Banks

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

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

Non-Fiction

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

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

The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'Prussian Blue' by Philip Kerr

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

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

'City of Fallen Angels' by Cassandra Clare

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

'The Crow Road' by Iain Banks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

'A History of British Trade Unionism' by Henry Pelling

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

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

The Books I Read In May

This month travelling (by car, train is too expensive) and reading the Goldhagen book (634 pages) meant I only finished two books.

Fiction

'Pompeii' by Robert Harris

Harris is adept at writing historical novels, e.g. ''Imperium' (2006) and Munich' (2017) in which we know the actual historical outcome (though some reviewers believe he writes just counter-factual outcomes) but he manages to maintain the tension all the same. As he shows in 'Imperium' https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2020/06/books-i-read-in-june.html and 'Lustrum' (2009) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html, Harris has a love of and sound knowledge of Roman history. I had expected that this book, published in 2003, would be pretty much like a disaster movie. I was naturally reminded of 'Dante's Peak' (1997) and 'Volcano' (1997), though very sensibly, as in those movies, Harris makes his protagonist a technician.

In this case, it is aquarius Marcus Attilius Primus, responsible for the aqueduct which provided nine towns, including Pompeii, around the Bay of Naples. The book covers a matter of days in which Attilius uncovers problems in the local water supply that eventually signal the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, but also how greed and local corruption in the 'good time' town of Pompeii has led to problems already. Harris's approach really shows you the wonders of water civil engineering in 1st Century Roman lands without providing you with a lecture on it. There are excerpts from various volcanology  books at the start of each chapter, but he deftly communicates the scientific and indeed social and economic aspects well through the flow of the story.

There is a little of the hero being in the right place at the right time to see what is happening without being subsumed by it. However, this does not come over as unrealistic. Tensions between him and the staff he has come to manage, as well as local business community and crossing paths with Pliny the Elder, admiral of the fleet in the region and a genuine victim of the eruption. However, overall the artifice when it appears does not intrude greatly and instead you have a book which is really engaging even when featuring the intricacies of pre-industrial water management and fish farming.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's Willing Executioners' by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen

This book is about persecution of the Jews under the Nazi regime. It says very important things, for example noting how every piece of anti-Semitic legislation was itself cruel, rendering the Jews 'socially dead' even before moving on to the horrors of the extermination camps. He portrays very acutely how the Jews were seen as inherently evil and so rather than simply be exploited in the way 'subhumans' such as Poles and Russians were, they had to suffer all the way to their deaths. This comes out particularly strongly in the sections on the "work" camps which Goldhagen highlights did not produce anything of value, but instead were about making the Jews do painful, useless work as a punishment for their supposed evil. Similarly the death marches, which along with the police battalions, are an aspect he particularly investigates, were simply about inflicting pain before death on the Jews who were marched around. The in-depth analysis of the ideology of German (he eschews the adjective Nazi) anti-Semitism, the "work" camps, the police battalions and the death marches provide valuable insight not always picked up by other historians, even now some 28 years after this book was publisged.

Especially at the beginning this book is more about psychology than history with Goldhagen seeking an explanation for how such vast numbers of Germans felt that Jews were effectively like a bacillus that needed to be eliminated, but also that they were demonic so needed as much punishment before death as possible. While he does take steps to deny he is saying that Germans have always been so cruel, in fact his evidence is very much to the opposite, especially as he sees the Germans as being unique in their hatred, even though he does mention in passing other nations who have carried out genocides. He shows how anti-Semitism morphed from religion to biological, but this happened in numerous countries. He seems to feel that once the war was over, this hatred ebbed from the German population and yet he gives examples from the post-1945 period himself of people still adhering to such vile views. There are occasions in this book in which Goldhagen insists on points that the evidence he provides himself contradict them.

While the book draws needed attention to the extent of the anti-Semitism in Germany and where its power stretched and how particularly virulent and cruel it was, there are grave weaknesses in it. Despite having extensive references, Goldhagen is dismissive of almost everyone who has researched and written in this area (bar his father). He portrays himself as having unique insight. He is also entirely dismissive of research into other aspects of the Nazi regime aside from anti-Semitism, portraying these as easy to explain, even 'transparent'. My reading over the last few years would oppose that portrayal.

The prime difficulty, as often happens with books written on grave subjects or by well-established academics is the lack of editing. Goldhagen repeats the same point again and again even within a single section, let alone across the book. He keeps hammering home his points with italics as if the reader cannot comprehend the importance of what is being said without it being jabbed repeatedly in their faces. No-one is likely to come to this book ignorant of the Holocaust and while he adds to that knowledge, in contrast to his personal view, he is not operating with a blank slate. 

This book could have been cut by 200 pages and he would have made his arguments, even aired his personal gripes with other historians, far more effectively. Instead, the reader is numbed by incessant repetition and being treated as if they are moronic. For all his insistence, his approach gravely weakens the effectiveness of what he aims to communicate and loses the important details in repeated rhetoric. He does savage reviewers as at best misguided, at worst apologists, but I hope that he is too busy to seek me out to attack my view on his book which has good elements but could have been a lot better.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Second Chance' by Jodi Taylor

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

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

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

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

'Doing Time' by Jodi Taylor

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

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

'Espedair Street' by Iain Banks

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

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Books I Read In March

Fiction

'The Murder in the Basement' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkeley Cox] 

I have been given quite a lot of the classic crime novels that the British Library has found great success in re-releasing over the past decade. Most are from the 1920s and 1930s (some earlier, some later) and were often good sellers at the time but have been forgotten by subsequent generations. This was the first of those books I had (not by date of publication but by surname of the author) that I have. Berkeley is not well known these days but was actually a founder of the Detection Club which counted renowned crime authors in its membership.

This novel is a classic of the genre, revolving around a corpse found in the basement of a semi-detached London house that a married couple have just moved into which after the body is finally identified, proves to be linked to a small fee-paying preparatory school just north of London. The private school setting is one that turns up often in books of the time, this one was published in 1932; even Hercule Poirot has a case at one. 

Berkeley has two protagonists that he had used in a previous novel Chief Inspector Moresby and author Roger Sheringham who has a connection to the school. The novel is effectively divided into three parts.The first focuses on identifying the corpse. Then the middle part is actually a novel in the novel that Sheringham has written detailing the tensions between various members of staff as a basis for Moresby's further investigation. The third part is tackling the issue of the prime suspect and whether it can be proven that they did and even if they should be the prime suspect.

The first part of the novel can rather lead you to think this is a going-through-the-motions novel. It is very police procedural in identifying the corpse with what was available at the time. However, Berkeley lifts the novel through the conceit of the novel in the novel and then in the third part, disentangling issues around the prime suspect. You come away feeling that it is greater than the sum of its parts.

'The State of the Art' by Iain M. Banks

This is a collection of science fiction short stories by Banks. The fact that at the end of the month in which I read it, I struggle to recall all of the stories, says something as I was not overly impressed. This may be because it was published in 1991 and as a result the 'unfailing inventiveness' which the review from 'The Guardian' states now may seem well established tropes and indeed rather pretentious. There is a sentient plant in 'Odd Attachment' plucking a human apart. 'Descendant' is about the relationship between a crashed spaceship pilot and his intelligent space suit, that actually felt like a story from the 1950s or 1960s as is 'Cleaning Up' about alien technology appearing all over the Earth at random. The concepts they explore are well known now. Perhaps the strongest stories come from Banks's Culture setting. 'The State of the Art' about Culture explorers coming to Earth and getting too involved, while quite commonplace is reasonably well handled as is 'A Gift from the Culture' about a super-powered weapon to be used for an assassination.

In many ways this book shows that Banks was grounded in the science fiction of the preceding decades. He even explores a Moorcockian set-up with fragmented text in 'Scratch'. Thus, if you are new to science fiction this book will be a good introduction that is quickly consumed and highlights many themes that 20th Century science fiction concerned itself with. For me, though, I had been expecting more and so reading it was rather mundane.

'The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard' by Arthur Conan Doyle

This is a collection of 8 short stories featuring a French hussar during the Napoleonic Wars. Many have likened him to Harry Flashman in (1969-2005), Gerard is not as intelligent as Flashman, but certainly has that self-belief. He thinks that he is very successful with the ladies, but in fact we never have anything more than his word for it, probably due to these stories being published in literary magazines at the end of the 19th Century. While they are brisk, Conan Doyle does really show his skill with the short stories, which in fact most of the Sherlock Holmes adventures were as well. There is a good attention to detail as Gerard finds himself in different parts of the war, from what would now be Poland across to Portugal. Conan Doyle brings out the different arms of the forces and nationalities too and these form a sound basis for witty stories. My edition was only 188 pages long so you could get through it in a single sitting. I do recommend it, if this sounds like your kind of thing.

'The Other Side of Silence' by Philip Kerr

This is the 11th Bernie Gunther book and features him working as a hotel concierge on the French Riviera. In contrast to the previous novels, despite for some brief asides to 1937 and 1944/45, most of this one is set in 1956. Set at the height of the Cold War and during the Suez Crisis it is much more of a spy novel than a crime novel. As is typical, Gunther crosses paths with someone from his past, in this case an SS captain, Harald Hennig that he knew in Berlin before the war and then in Königsberg [Kaliningrad] near the end of the war. The story features real people particularly the British author, Somerset Maugham and his nephew both of who lived on the Riviera at the time. Maugham is being blackmailed and is encouraged to use Gunther as a go-between with the blackmailer. It soon is revealed, however, that the scheme is more about getting to the British intelligence agencies as Maugham previously worked for them. Following the defection of Donald Maclean and Guy Burgess, there appears to the East Germans and the Soviets a way to embarrass the British especially with their allies the Americans who are increasingly dubious of them.

Compared to the previous novels, this one has little action and much more dialogue, so feels more like a John Le Carré novel. It is a slow burn in terms of determining what is going on with the various blackmailing. The settings in rich houses and hotels on the Riviera in the 1950s is very well portrayed.  The scene which needs to be noted is how Gunther adeptly manages to turn what is being done to set him up, against his antagonists. Given what we know of the character, we know he has the skills, but Kerr renders the scene admirably. Gunther again gets to sleep with a woman young enough to be his daughter, though in contrast to The Woman from Zagreb' (2015), the previous novel in the series where this happens, this one has a more feasible explanation.

Overall, this is different to the other Gunther novels and may appeal more to those looking for a kind of classic spy novel rather than a detective one.

Non-Fiction

'The Pelican Guide to English Literature 1: The Age of Chaucer' ed. by Boris Ford

I read the 7th volume in the revised version of this series, 'The New Pelican Guide to English Literature 7. From James to Eliot' edited by Boris Ford back in August 2021: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html  The various writers who contributed to that volume were very dismissive of the authors they were asked to comment, without exception judging them as far less competent than authors and poets of previous centuries. In Volume 1, fortunately, the attitude is much more positive. I imagine that is because the contributors were eager to promote medieval literature including the work of Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland but also far less well known authors. The only one who really suffers disapproval is Edmund Spenser who while recognising he was an author in a transitional period, Derek Traversi feels was not as good as he could have been and was too derivative of outdated approaches something he puts down to Spenser's disappointing career in public service.

As Ford notes a lot of these texts are not easily available to the general reader, so entire texts are included in the second part of the book after the critiques of the first part. Thus there is an interesting range of stories and plays, particularly allegorical ones. As there is reference to work from different parts of England and indeed Scotland, you can see the regional variations in English of the time. Especially in 'Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knight' (still attracting attention as the 2021 movie showed) we see specifically north-western English with words that seem drawn from Swedish, Dutch, German and French. A lot of the stories have religious themes which is unsurprising given as contributors note, the importance of miracle plays in culture of the time. In addition, what is shown in this book is simply what has survived and it is certain there were many other works that are now lost.

Thus, this is an interesting book for people who enjoyed Chaucer or Langland or who are interested in having an insight into what concerned medieval people (and what made them laugh) and what they would watch or have read to them. The thing is, while there are numerous footnotes outlining what various words mean and after reading a lot of it, you get a feel for some of the commonly used words, for the most part you are rather wading through Middle English texts and this needs a lot of attention and patience. I think the effort is worth it for what is revealed. However, this is far from being an easy book to read and will take you a lot of time and effort. Ironically the easiest chapter is the incongruous one on medieval architecture, which I am not sure why it was included.

'The Goebbels Diaries, 1939-1941' translated and edited by Fred Taylor

Fuller collections of Goebbels diaries have come to light since this edition was published in 1983. However, this one does provide a slice of them from which we can learn a lot. Josef Goebbels was both the Nazi Minister of Propaganda and Gauleiter of Berlin. As these diaries make clear he was very close to Hitler and indeed murdered his children and wife and committed suicide with Hitler in the bunker at the end of the Second World War when other leading Nazis had fled.

The diaries provide interesting insights into facets of the Nazi regime but reading them at this time, constantly made me hear echoes of populist attitudes and rhetoric which has become so common again in the 2020s. Throughout Goebbels is painfully smug. Any speech he, let alone Hitler gives, as well as their writing is assumed to be the most important thing in not just Germany's but the world's media. Goebbels even believed that this propaganda effectively killed former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain in November 1940 when actually he died of bowel cancer.

Any Nazi event is seen by Goebbels as the biggest and best that has ever been hosted. Goebbels bitterly complains that all claims, especially those by the British are lies that must be vigorously contested and they, especially Churchill, will pay the price for this in the future. Yet, he also outlines all the lies he is pumping into other countries whether neutral or the enemy. This double standard is apparent incessantly and for someone living in 2024 seems very familiar.

Goebbels's attitudes do lead him to make mistake. All through 1940 he keeps expecting the British to surrender. Every bombing raid he insists is lowering the British morale to a point that it is unsustainable for the country to continue fighting and that the Americans are losing faith in the British. In contrast he dismisses the air raids on Germany as almost minimal and insists that German morale will not be harmed by them. You slowly see a change and by 1941 even Goebbels recognises that if the German public can persist under such attacks that there is nothing to say that the British and Soviet publics can too and that imminent surrender is far from likely. However, this initial attitude applied not just to Britain and the USSR but to Yugoslavia and Greece, does remind us that the Germans went into these battles with strong assumptions of quick and easy victories. Goebbels's access to Hitler and his ability to interfere in aspects far outside his assigned portfolios adds to this fact.

The preparations for the invasion of the USSR, Yugoslavia and Greece are interesting. The internecine battles with Nazi officials and other departments become tiresome but do show how chaotic the Nazi regime was. The Foreign Office in particular seems despised by all sides of the regime but retained power and influence. It is hard to swallow Goebbels wittering on about his beloved children, his numerous houses and the art works he is buying. These statements do nothing to humanise the man and it is clear that he finds it difficult to comprehend anything outside his own desires.

I found this book useful to contextualise the ones I have been reading in recent years about the Nazi regime and to show some of the reasons by what often seemed to be irrational policies and behaviour by its staff.

Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'The Lady from Zagreb' by Philip Kerr

I have lined up the last few novels by Kerr (who died in 2018) featuring his German detective of the 1930s-50s, Bernie Gunther. This is the tenth in the series and like many of the others, jumps between wartime and post-war happenings. While it is common for us to know that in almost all detective novels, the detective will live beyond the end of the book, this approach does mean that even when they are facing serious jeopardy, as Gunther does in Switzerland in this novel, we know they have survived the incident largely unharmed.

Living in southern France in 1956, Gunther sees a movie featuring a (fictional) actress, Dalia Dresner, of Croatian extraction, with whom he had a sexual relationship in 1942-43. At first we seeing him dealing with an assignment to investigate the use of a house in Berlin by the SS for the daughter of the man it was taken from. That first case has a real hard boiled feel to it, but tapers off. Still it does provide information and contacts useful for the second case when he is tasked by Dr. Josef Goebbels controller of movie making under the Nazis with finding the actress's father who is in the collaborationist state of Croatia. The action in this novel is broken by Gunther going off to investigate the Katyn Massacre which featured in the previous novel in the series, 'A Man without Breath' (2013) which I read when last going through Gunther novels back in 2016: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2016/02/the-books-i-read-in-february.html

Despite this fragmented nature and the fact that a beautiful actress would fall in love with a grizzled police officer almost twice her age, the story is interesting. Travelling to Croatia and Switzerland allows Kerr to show us different countries' experiences during the war and the inter-play between different nations police forces. His portrayal of the landscape of these two countries, complements that of the luxurious houses in Berlin which feature when he is in Germany. The manipulation of Gunther whether directly or indirectly, is well handled and credible. I was successfully misled in that regard, though other readers may spot this sooner. While at times credibility can be stretched, for the main this is an engaging mystery story, as always with Kerr, effectively grounded in the times and places he is showing.

'The Second Sleep' by Robert Harris

It is certainly challenging to guess what Harris will write next. While he has produced a number of historical novels set during the last days of Republican Rome and before and during the Second World War, he has largely adhered to straight historical fiction. His most famous book, 'Fatherland' (1992) which was an alternate history book featuring a Nazi victory, was really his only one which diverged from historical fiction. In contrast 'The Second Sleep' is a post-apocalyptic novel, set in the 2800s. Society has returned to the industrial level of the mid-18th Century, with water-powered factories being the highest level of sophistication.

We are not told what the apocalypse was but Harris shows concerns about how much knowledge depends on the maintenance of electricity and internet access, very timely given we lost internet access across our district this week and thus could not even contact people to report it. There are also indications of climate change. The novel takes place in Devon in South-West England but parakeets and even birds-of-paradise live wild in the countryside and the county produces bountiful red wine.

A Christian church is largely in control of English society (Scotland is once more a separate state). It has some elements of Catholicism such as clerical celibacy and the use of Latin, but also of the Church of England, i.e. it uses the King James Bible and the head of state is the head of the church rather than this residing with a Pope. Investigation and discussion of the remains of the pre-apocalyptic society are treated as heresy and this is at the heart of the book. Christopher Fairfax is sent to a small Devon village following the death of the local priest and discovers that the dead man had an enduring interest in the preceding society and what might be a refuge of the last of those seeking to maintain an industrial England.

Obviously there are lots of parallels to 'A Canticle for Leibowitz ' (1959) by Walter M. Miller Jr., though, unlike that book which covers many centuries, Harris's is on a much smaller scale, confined to a small village and its neighbouring market town. This helps in him drawing the characters richly and the inter-play between Fairfax, Lady Durston and Captain Hancock, a local industrialist, is well handled. Harris was looking to draw on the work of Thomas Hardy (even naming the post-apocalyptic county, Wessex) and there is also the flavour of Jane Austen novels too. In that he succeeds. However, the book falls down at the last. I have often noted that Harris struggles with endings. This is also notable in 'Fatherland' and 'Enigma' (1995) and in fact the screenplays of these two (1994; 2001 respectively) handle the conclusions better than the novels did. The same happens here, it is almost as if Harris runs out of steam. There is a great revelation and then it just halts where another author would have given something more satisfactory or at least more conclusive.

'Dinner for Two' by Mike Gayle

This is quite an insubstantial novel. It seems in part autobiographical featuring a music journalist then agony uncle (a role Gayle has held), Dave Harding, who like Gayle is black. He lives in London in the early 2000s. Not a great deal happens. His wife Izzy has a miscarriage and Harding is contacted by a 13-year old girl, Nicola, who claims to be his biological daughter as a result of a one-night stand while Harding and her mother were on holiday in Greece. Much of the book is taken up with Harding angsting over whether it is right for a man to want to be a father the way some women yearn to be mothers. Then there is thinking about revealing Nicola to Izzy and being in touch Nicola's mother. Caitlin. It is padded out with mildly witty articles that Dave writes for various publications and his comments to women about what men are thinking. I was surprised Dave does not get more into difficulty as a result of meeting a 13-year old girl, on occasion playing truant from school, for a number of meals and drives in his car. Izzy and Caitlin also seem much too easily accepting of the situation. I have a sense that Gayle has written a book on how he wishes people would behave when 'patchwork' families develop than is actually the case in UK society. In addition all the characters come over as very privileged and not facing any real challenges which makes it all seem like a 'feel good' fantasy. Maybe I should have expected that from Gayle's writing.