Fiction
'The Sussex Downs Murder' John Bude [Ernest Elmore]
Published in 1936, this was the third crime novel by John Bude. It is focused on Superintendent Meredith who was promoted at the end of 'The Lake District Murder' (1935) which I read in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html For some reason he has relocated from Cumberland to East Sussex, being based at Lewes. Conversation with an imprisoned criminal suggests Meredith had been stationed in that region in the 1920s but the reason for his returning there if that was the case, is not explored. The car of a man John Rother is found abandoned on the Downs close to the genuine location of Chanctonbury Ring and not far from the lime-producing business that he and his brother ran. This did take me back to the 1980s when with a friend's family we would be taken to the seaside at Angmering which is mentioned and on the way back the parents would stop at 'The Limeburners' pub which is still at Billingshurst, indicating that industry in the area.
While Rother is believed to have been murdered and that his brother and sister-in-law are suspected at various stages. As in the preceding two books, in a realistic way, a number of theories are put forward only to be dismissed. Matters are complicated by reports of sightings of Rother and a man in a cloak, as well as human bones turning up in the sacks of lime which the Rother company has sold in the region. As with the previous two books there is quite a lot of going back and forth around the area, though this does give Bude an opportunity for his descriptions of what like the other two locations he has featured, are beautiful parts of England. Bude manages to have an 'open' environment for his novel but restricts the suspects in a convincing way. The police procedural work with numerous dead ends is characteristic of his novels and works effectively. Working out which is the true path among them adds to the mystery and the resolution while unexpected is a feasible one. I have a couple more Bude novels to read and look forward to them.
'Feersum Endjinn' by Iain M. Banks
I always prefer Iain M. Banks's books which do not feature the Culture and this is one of them. Instead it is set in the vast spaces of a decaying space elevator - the Fastness - and in the kind of internet, the cryptosphere into which individuals minds can be uploaded when alive but especially when they are dead. Thus the novel is often like 'The Matrix' (1999) as if it started from outside the matrix and went in. This can cause confusion especially as extraordinary machines and creatures exist in the real world as well as the virtual one. There are four characters and we jump between them in turn. Count Alandre Sessine VII is a member of the ruling elite who is killed multiple times - individuals can have eight physical lives and then eight more in the cryptosphere. Sessine has to find out who keeps trying to kill him. Hortis Gadfium III is the leading scientist of the elites but is conspiring to overthrow the regime due to the inadequacies in the rulers response to the approach of an interstellar molecular cloud - a forge for stars - which threatens Earth. Bascule the Teller has an innate ability to go into the cryptosphere to find dead relatives for people. In this novel most of his time is spent trying to locate an intelligent talking ant which has been abducted into the cryptosphere. Asura is a function of the cryptosphere who is 'born' as a woman but without memories and she proves to be a kind of tool for resolving the problems once she can navigate her way around snooty families and people who want to eliminate. The four characters do finally come together to provide a resolution.
I agree with other reviewers who feel this novel is a mess. Banks had been publishing since 1984 and in science fiction since 1987. Though this came in 1994, it does seem like an early novel. It has the flavour of something a teenaged author keen to leverage in every 'cool' idea they can think of to the detriment of the writing. Part of the challenge with this book is that it is difficult to know when the characters are inside or outside the cryptosphere because the Fastness with rooms kilometres across and with exotic vehicles feels as peculiar as any context the cryptosphere throws up. Having four characters does allow Banks to get in so many political and technical aspects, but these are in a very disjointed way. Perhaps this is why in many of his science fiction books, Banks does an info dump. Here, the approach of showing not telling might be commended but makes it very hard work for the reader. On top of this Bascule's experiences are written in phonetic language (as with the novel's title which means 'Fearsome Engine), seeming to mimic how a kind of Artful Dodger character from East London would speak. This further slows up the book as you wrestle with some words that in themselves are esoteric because of the science fiction context.
Overall Banks was probably in the worst of both worlds with this novel. He was still clinging to the conceits that a teenage author would insist on having in their book, but because of his success by 1994, no editor was going to press him hard to make the book flow more effectively or drown the reader in the mass of 'brilliant' ideas he felt compelled to include.
'The Birds and Other Stories' by Daphne Du Maurier
Spoilers do feature in this review.
This is a collection of six short stories published in 1952. They can be characterised as being in a genre like Someone Like You' (1953) and 'Kiss Kiss' (1960) by Roald Dahl, better known summed up by the later anthology title, 'Roald Dahl's Tales of the Unexpected ' (1979).
Unsurprisingly, the title story, 'The Birds' is nothing like the 1963 movie of the same name. Instead it is a dystopian story set in south-west England where climatic changes lead to all birds becoming suicidally aggressive smashing their way into people's houses and killing people out in the open. The story focuses on a farm labourer and his family and their attempts to survive in the early days of the attacks. It reminds me quite a bit of 'The Day of the Triffids' (1951) by John Wyndham, but Du Maurier manages to get that dystopian context without having to use genetically modified monsters and in so doing reminds us how nature even as we know it can be dangerous. The issue of climate impact also makes it speak to what we see today.
Four of the stories, 'Monte Verità', 'The Apple Tree', 'The Little Photographer' and 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger', show how evil really comes out selfishness, that obsession of the individual for their own interests with no recognition of their impact on others.
In 'Monte Verità' women disappear into a secretive community on a European mountain top. A man loses his wife to this community and his friend eventually goes to seek her out. The ending is very confused as the place once he finally penetrates seems to have no form of subsisting over the years and not to offer any great reason for the women to remain, though maybe Du Maurier is suggesting departure from the world of men is a reward itself. The women seem immortal but suffer horrifically from disease. I suppose the reader is rather riled that it is neither somewhere otherworldly or an Earthly paradise or at least feasible as a community in the absence of something beyond this world.
'The Apple Tree' is about a very desultory marriage but is very unsettling in that after her death through a sickly apple tree the wife continues to harass the widower as much as she make his life miserable when alive. The device of using the tree as a way to haunt the man is well done. Like a lot of horror, the inability to escape from what has apparently been destined by the malevolent force, adds to how unsettling the story is.
'The Little Photographer' is about a wealthy woman staying on holiday in southern France who begins an affair with a local disabled photographer but tires of him and casts him over before murdering him. She is then blackmailed by his mother. The settings are well portrayed. However, none of the characters are likeable and the three main ones are each out for themselves. I suppose what we see is a battle between the three for dominance and the two women, I suppose, end up with a compromise solution, but which in both cases is unappealing.
Like the other stories, Du Maurier does place them well in their time and place with details of how people went about their lives in the early 1950s and preceding decades. 'Kiss Me Again, Stranger' is about a young man picking up a cinema usherette who while amenable to his advances is unsettling and subsequently turns out to be a serial killer targeting airmen whom she blames for bombing her house during the Second World War.
'The Old Man' is a story of the observation of animosity in a family which leads to a killing. However, the twist in the nature of the family being portrayed. Du Maurier generally plays fair with the reader, though making sure to not give away the final twist.
Overall, while not the kind of stories I enjoy, I could see skill in them and a clear demonstration that horror can come from the relatively mundane as the director Alfred Hitchcock recognised when he used one of Du Marurier's ideas to trigger a very different movie but similarly bringing the unsettling out from what might be deemed everyday.
Non-Fiction
'Crisis, Absolutism, Revolution: Europe: 1648-1789/91' by Raymond Birn
This book was published in 1977 and it is interesting to see how much more engaging it is than 'The Seventeenth Century' (1929/1947) by G.N. Clark which I read in January: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/01/the-books-i-read-in-january.html The tone is much lighter and engaging and it does not assume that readers in English will automatically know French and Latin too. While it does come to the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment its prime focus is much more practical and it tends to show the changes in ideas in how they were applied to behaviour, business and industry. It establishes a good basis in terms of the economy and society and works well to distinguish the regional differences across Europe, so Eastern Europe and Scandinavia get less neglected than they can tend to do in survey essay books. Perhaps the most frustrating thing is that the two 'highlights' of the period, i.e. the Thirty Years' War and the French Revolution, are explicitly not covered. However, while this can irritate a little it does mean that this is a useful book for seeing the outcome of the former and the precursors of the latter. As the title suggests it shows how the blend of absolutist rule with various crises, came together to impact on society and economies, to lead to the following quarter-century of warfare across the continent. In that regard it is a useful 'bridging' text that through keeping to its bounds allows appropriate analysis of this 'in-between' period.