The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'Rounding the Mark' by Andrea Camilleri

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

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

'Circumpolar!' by Richard A. Lupoff

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

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

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

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

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

'Stamboul Train' by Graham Greene

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

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

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

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

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

'Serpents in Eden' ed. by Martin Edwards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Richard Austin Freeman apparently wrote stories1907-42.featuring what we would term these days a forensic scientist, Dr. John Thorndyke. 'The Naturalist at Law' sees Thorndyke, through analysis of the flora and forna of two English streams, prove that a civil servant did not drown himself in a Buckinghamshire stream but died at one in Essex. This combined with other clues leads him to the murderers. The focus is on the piece-by-piece analysis of water samples and other physical clues. Thorndyke, initially working for the man's insurers does not follow through the case to trial as he has done his part. I think we tend to think of things like 'Silent Witness' (1996- ) and 'CSI: Crime Scene Investigation' (2001-2015) and its spin-offs, as being modern phenomenon rather than something with a long history.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Ninth Rain' by Jen Williams

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

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

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

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

'Flashman on the March' by George MacDonald Fraser

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

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

'Cruel Crossing' by Edward Stourton

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

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

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

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

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

The Books I Read In March

 Fiction

'Judgment [sic] on Deltchev' by Eric Ambler

Ambler is suitably admired for his ability to produce thrillers that while fictional almost sound if they are true. He brings in current affairs and provides both engaging and exciting novels. This one, published in 1951 is set in a fictional country in the Balkans. It has a feel of Yugoslavia of the time, but with elements of Romania and Bulgaria too. There is no mention of a Communist Party, instead the People's Party of the novel clearly is a Stalinesque party. As in many Eastern Bloc countries there are vestigial other parties, in this case the Agrarian Socialists, of which the eponymous Yordan Deltchev, is a leading member and has been part of the coalition government before the recent coup by the People's Party. He is a diabetic and as one myself, the withholding of his medication was especially chilling, one I could almost feel the effects of as I read.

Apparently this was based on the 1947 show trial in Bulgaria of Nikola Petkov (1893-1947 executed) a leader of the  Bulgarian Agrarian National Union and former Communist. However, it also reminded me of the 1952 trial of Otto Katz, that I read about last month:  https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-books-i-read-in-february.html Though Katz was a spy rather than a politician it brings home how current such trials were when Ambler was writing. Deltchev is being tried for apparently taking part in a plot to assassinate the People's Party leader and stage a counter-coup. He is seen as suspicious because at the end of the Second World War he favoured negotiating with the Americans rather than the Soviets, to invade the country to expel the Germans. As the novel proceeds it is revealed that the plot was not as imaginary as is first assumed.

As is typical in Ambler's novels there is a protagonist from outside. In this case it is an American playwright, Foster (we never know his first name) who is sent to cover the trial for US and perhaps British newspapers. His interactions with the authorities, how tight parameters are set on his actions, the smarmy 'helper' he assigned, the compromised foreigners working for the regime, are all conjured up well and must have seemed very chilling at the time though now from spy novels of the 20th Century and even now, are familiar to readers.

As Foster comes in contact with members of Deltchev's family and various members of the secret police, it is clear that behind the trial there are internecine battles between various elements of the regime, one set of which try to kill Foster. His escape from two armed men closing in on him in the nighttime streets is well handled. Ambler's protagonists tend not to be men of violence themselves, but them getting out of jeopardy is portrayed realistically and naturally has an appeal to the reader who is liable to be similarly ill-equipped for such situations despite all the modern-day social media claims about being able to wrestle a bear.

The ending does go in a direction which is unexpected, but make sense in the context of the regime featured. It is not a spoiler to say that like Petkov and Katz, Deltchev is sentenced and executed. Ambler packs a lot into what these days is a short book (192 pages in my edition) so there is a good pace, but not rushed. His descriptions of not just people but also the places are well handled and engaging. While at times quite a bleak read, I will certainly pick up any more Ambler books which cross my path.

'The Santa Klaus [sic] Murder' by Mavis Doriel Hay

This was the third and final crime novel written by Doriel Hay and published in 1936. It is set in the country house of Sir Osmond Melbury, where his family assemble each Christmas. This year he has decided for assorted children that there will be a Santa Klaus (he insists very much on this name) to distribute presents to the assorted children. However, once this is over, he retires to his study, perhaps to receive a telephone call and then is found shot through the head by a single bullet and a window open. In some ways the novel reminded me of 'Hercule Poirot's Christmas' (1938) by Agatha Christie. However, while Melbury interferes in his children's lives, in particular over who they can marry, he is curmudgeonly rather than outright cruel as Simeon Lee is in Christie's book.

You might wonder why we do not see Doriel Hay's books dramatised with the frequency that Christie's are. Perhaps the stakes are not as high as in the Christie equivalent. In addition, Doriel Hay does not have a strong central detective. Much of the story is told by Colonel Halstock, the Chief Constable of Haulmshire (a fictional county), a friend of the family, though the typical detection work is done by Inspector Rousdon, who is not overly competent. The actor Kenneth Stour, another friend of the family, is involved as the amateur detective allowing a point of view which would otherwise be missed. Christie naturally has Hercule Poirot doing the main activities, but in the conclusion to the story he discusses the case with Colonel Johnson, the local Chief Constable. It was typical in the early 20th Century to appoint former army officers to these roles heading county or city police forces. Before the Second World War, along historic lines, a county might have a number of different police forces, sometimes associated with a single town or part of a county.

As mentioned with the character of Stour, perhaps a reason why playwrights and screenwriters have not adapted Doriel Hay's books is because of the question of points of view. As I noted with 'Murder Underground' (1935) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-books-i-read-in-february.html Doriel Hay worked hard to provide a different perspective to the 'standard' approach of crime novels of the time. In that one the detective did not turn up until late in the book and Doriel Hay was more interest in the theories, the obfuscations and the amateur efforts of the murdered woman's fellow residents, than she was working through a clue-based or police procedural approach. 

The first five chapters of the book are written from the perspective of a different family member or guest. We learn later that this is the 'homework' assigned by Stour to get a feel for what was happening in the days before the murder, before Halstock takes over the narrative. Stour does get to contribute later, but only covering a brief period. These accounts reminded me of Alan Bennett's 'Talking Heads' (1982/88-2020) soliloquies and they show Doriel Hay's skill in characterisation. She does let rip in showing all the attitudes of the British Lower Upper Class and their associates. Unfortunately, ultimately, the novel rather vindicates such attitudes, but I guess we see that too in Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, etc. and it is perhaps too much to expect Doriel Hay to diverge from this despite it undermining the mystery.

To a greater degree than we see in Christie's books, Doriel Hay shows how not big lies, but various misportrayals and suppression of certain facts, really hamper the investigation. There is a bit too much 'coming and going' around the Santa Klaus performance, subsequent pulling of crackers and a locked 'hidden' door which is just fed into by the various characters, not out of real malice, but due to discomfort or embarrassment, seed small lies through what they say. In part while it is no critique of this social class and the Upper Middle Class in which some of the characters are from, it does show the sense of entitlement of these people and how their small embarrassments are felt to trump even a murder case. Overall, I found this an engaging book and especially the 'talking heads' section and the persistent 'white lies' of many characters were refreshing. Yet, you can see why, especially the first section would make dramatisation a challenge especially give the established format we tend to have these days with 'country house' murders on television.

'Clockwork Prince' by Cassandra Clare

This is the second in the Infernal Devices series. I read the first one, 'Clockwork Angel' (2010) back in 2019: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/11/the-books-i-read-in-november.html?m=0  This continues the adventures of Tessa Gray, the young American woman with the ability to shapeshift to look like other people who has come to London in 1878 and is drawn into the world of the Shadowhunters, the half-angel people fighting against dark forces housed in the London (and York) Institute, Clare features them in this trilogy and her Mortal Instruments series (2007-14). 

The book has the same basic set up, with a young woman from outside the context, unfamiliar with her special abilities coming into the Shadowhunter community and dealing with werewolves, vampires, warlocks, etc. The warlock Magnus Bane, who is probably immortal, turns up in this book as he does in the Mortal Instruments even though they are set over 130 years later. Following the standard Clare formula there are a pair of Byronic young heroes, Will and Jem, for Tessa to fall in love with and be torn between. There is also family complications both for Tessa who confronts her evil brother working with Mortmain, the one building the clockwork robots and seeking to destroy all Shadowhunters. Meanwhile his partisans are seeking to take control of the London Institute from within and Tessa is involved in the effort to keep the friendly Charlotte in charge.

Early in the book I worried it would be a tedious rehash of the Mortal Instruments story, but in fact it steps up a gear and becomes more engaging as the young people to chase after the antagonists across London, using their various abilities. The scene where Tessa disguised as an Institute member who has betrayed the Shadowhunters and encounters her own brother is well handled. The battle against the giant robot in the East End warehouse is also well done.

At times the novel is rather trope-heavy and occasionally dips into a Hollywood perception of Victorian London, e.g. the "opium" den. Some Americanisms slip in inappropriately such as the numbering of floors which is done differently in the UK to the USA. However, generally these flaws are avoided. It is also good to see an appreciation of the class system rather than all the servants being characterless machines themselves, especially Sophie the Institute maid, who despite her lowly status falls for a couple of the Shadowhunters despite such relationships being forbidden. There is also an oblique reference to syphilis which haunts so much Gothic literature of the era through "demon pox" being an important element in the story. I recognise this book is not aimed at readers like me, but once it gets going it was a pretty enjoyable romp.

'Flashman and the Tiger' by George MacDonald Fraser

As with the Sharpe books of Bernard Cornwell, I religiously read through all the Flashman books which were available in the mid-1990s only for MacDonald Fraser to have what he perhaps might have termed an "Indian Summer" when he wrote a few more that I am only now coming to. This one published in 1999 is actually a collection of three short(ish) stories set at different times though largely when the protagonist, Harry Flashman is in his sixties or older.

The first is 'The Road to Charing Cross'. It has a rather convoluted lead in across a number of decades, with Otto von Bismarck who in the 1860s set Flashman up in a kind of Prisoner of Zenda role and who seeks revenge. Flashman ends up in Vienna, having been on the inaugural journey of the Orient Express, trying to prevent the assassination of Emperor Franz Joseph by Hungarian nationalists. It is quite clever how it is not clear who are the people he can rely on and also the limits of his physical abilities at his age. There is a scene where he is beaten around an abandoned Austrian salt mine but the usual torture scene in Flashman novels is absent. There are longueurs especially around his interactions with two women who might be German or Hungarian agents and how one of them toys with him at the end. It added little to the story. The bit at the end of Flashman being at Charing Cross Station and dragooned into accompanying General Gordon (who he knew from China) to fight the Mahdi in Sudan seems like a set-up for another novel. Thus, overall, though the middle part is adventurous, the story is rather made up of parts not perfectly fitted together and at times, overly long.

The second is 'The Subtleties of Baccarat' which involves Flashman and his wife, Elspeth, who shows a vicious streak beneath her rather simple pretty exterior in a genuine court case around cheating at baccarat. It became renowned as it involved the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII. Flashman is staying at the house, Tranby Croft, where, in 1890, the games took place and Elspeth is at the table on the second night. Flashman is eager for a scandal to develop and Elspeth has her own motives which only are revealed at the end.  By a number of witnesses, Lieutenant Colonel Sir William Gordon-Cumming of the Scots Guards was accused of adding to his bets after the winners had been announced. The case actually came to court and Godron-Cumming lost. He was expelled from the Army and retired from public life, fortunately having a rich wife and an estate in Scotland where he could hide. To present day readers the whole case seems rather ridiculous, but Wikipedia has really extensive coverage of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_baccarat_scandal The story is crisp and succeeds both in bringing out a larger role for Elspeth, who rather often is a 'her indoors' character in the novels as well as bisecting fictional Flashman with historical events of the time.

'Flashman and the Tiger' is probably the best story of the three. Not only does it feature Flashman escaping the Isandlwana massacre of 1879 in a thrilling well written section but has him meeting the fictional Colonel Sebastian "Tiger" Moran better known as the antagonist of the Sherlock Holmes story 'The Adventure of the Empty House' (1903). Flashman subsequently actually gets involved of the climactic scene of that story, hiding close to where Holmes and Watson apprehend Moran. Moran is threatening both Flashman's granddaughter Selina and her fiancé. However, as with the previous story with Elspeth, Selina is revealed to be less of the 'model Victorian lady' than might be expected. Fortunately Holmes's arrest of Moran solves Flashman's immediate problem.

Overall, while with some highlights and all the standard sexual references and Victorian lingo that you would seek from a Flashman novel, this collection is good in parts but at times rather weaker.

Non-Fiction

'The Peloponnesian War' by Donald Kagan

I came to this book having played the computer game, 'Assassin's Creed: Odyssey' (2018) which is set in Greece in the 420s and features many actual people active there at the time. Saying that while I think people would be happy with the portrayal of Socrates, lawyers for Alcibiades, politician, general and turncoat, might have had something to say about how effete he is shown. While the game proved very useful in familiarising me with the geography of Greece in this era, especially as the war raged through so many regions and seas, it only featured a slice of the 27-year (Second) Peloponnesian War. Kagan wrote a 4-volume history of the war, published 1969-87. This book published in 2003 is a 511-page concise history of the conflict.

As reviewers noted Kagan had that skill that makes popular histories like this work. This conflict was immensely complicated. The basis is the repeated battles between Sparta, a monarchical militaristic state with a regional dominance and Athens, a restricted democracy, with a strong navy and a growing empire across the eastern and central Mediterranean. The strengths of each being so different made it hard for either to strike a 'knock-out blow' against the other. You can also understand how people have likened it to the Cold War. In addition, both these states were at the centre of shifting alliance blocs and there were numerous other city-states with their own armies and navies and their own territorial and trade objectives. In addition, many saw political upheaval moving between oligarchic and democratic systems of government, periodically supported by Sparta for the former and Athens for the latter. We must also not forget the Persian Empire, at the time controlling what is now Türkiye with both sides seeking to gain its support.

Having read this book I went on to play the 'Wrath of Sparta' (2014) scenario on 'Rome II Total War' (2013) and it really shows up the challenges of trying to sustain any control, especially over islands that opponents can land on at any time. I am not going to rehearse all the various details of the war here, it would take ages. However, as we have so many records from it Kagan is not only able to outline the actual battles, but also the politics that went on behind them. This led to prevarication of all sides. There are numerous cases in which military blundering, especially in terms of logistics, led to defeat, notably in the Athenian invasion of eastern Sicily. 

As noted above, Kagan moves through briskly, but very importantly with clarity, having sub-sections so that the reader is not lost amongst the narrative. Also beneficial are the numerous maps throughout the book which are really helpful not simply if you are unfamiliar with all the ancient towns and regions, but also show the specific challenges from holding particular towns or forts. The other welcome thing is that throughout Kagan stops the narrative to ask a series of rhetorical questions. Some of these are challenges to previous historians who have made lazy or biased interpretations of what was happening. Many, though, you feel that Kagan has been asked down the years by his university students. This is great for the reader for whom such questions might have also arisen.

Overall this is an engaging book which does a very difficult job very well. It is worthwhile reading to learn more about this conflict which does have so many parallels from the 5th Century BCE to the 20th Century CE. I now feel confident if anyone speaks about Pericles or Lysander, even Cyrus or Nicias. It might not help me win any computer games, though saying that, I do now know why it is essential that Corinth needs to control Naupatkos or as Sparta, Pylos.

'New Jerusalems: The Labour Party and the Economics of Democratic Socialism' by Elizabeth Durbin

Checking details of this book before writing this post, I have found that hardback editions like I possess are selling for £124-£140 on Amazon. So, if anyone wants one, please contact me here and I will sell it to you for £70 and will cover the postage cost.

Anyway, this book was published by Elizabeth Durbin (1937-99) in 1985. As well as an economic historian in her own right, lecturing mainly in the USA, she was the daughter of Evan Durbin (1906-48 drowned) who had been a leading Labour politician and provided much of the development of the party's economic thinking in the 1930s. That is what this book focus on, looking at the discussions among those in the party from its foundation up to the Second World War who explored how a Socialist economy could work, especially in the face of the Great Depression of the 1930s in particular the mass unemployment that hit Labour supporters and trade unionists so hard. She brings out the various groups that were established in the party to work on these ideas and in particular focuses on the men (and occasional woman like Barbara Wootton) such as Hugh Dalton, Hugh Gaitskell, G.D.H. Cole and John Maynard Keynes. 

It does start with a concise but very good articulation of how economics as a discipline in Britain (with particular input from Austria) was evolving from the end of the 19th Century through the first half of the 20th Century. This is very useful and shows the contrary views such as those by Von Hayek which the more Socialist economists were pressing against. The book also shows how the development of liberal economic perspectives notably of Beveridge and Keynes also impacted and at times bisected with a more 'Socialist' path. Of course, by 1948 even the Labour Government had abandoned Socialist economics in favour of the Keynesian approach which remained in place until the advent of New Right thinking driving the move to monetarism from 1976 onwards. 

At times, though Durbin is right to note that the Liberals were economically more radical than Labour. The inability to break free of the classical perception of economics from the 19th Century was a challenge throughout and one that Labour really never achieved, though picking up on some new methodologies such as marginal cost pricing. It is interesting to see the work that went into discussing the shape of a future British Socialist economy especially the New Fabian Research Bureau and the numerous pamphlets, some of which are now lost forever. There were extensive debates about whether joint stock banks and land should be nationalised and just how a Socialist economy could demonstrate consumer choice if prices were controlled and the economy planned.

The ins and outs of various policies, is handled well by Durbin and importantly it gives Dalton, the Chancellor of Exchequer 1945-47 a greater status, showing him to be a thoughtful economist rather than the blundering fogey he can rather appear in histories of the Labour governments. However, overall, though well told especially for a non-economist reader, you do wonder at how much effort was expended to so little end. Labour did gain more MPs at the 1935 election but was a long way from a majority. Labour MPs were welcomed into Churchill's wartime coalition but largely because they had abandoned much of the policies which had been discussed pre-war. Even when Labour attained power in 1945, really the only Socialist economic policy put in place was nationalisation of a number of industries. The welfare state policies were largely taken from the Liberal, Beveridge and after three years any Socialist planning was abandoned in favour of the policies of Keynes, another Liberal. I found it an intellectually stimulating book, but ultimately a discouraging one as it showed how little UK economic policies can be considered that stray even a short way from the orthodox 'rules' that are so in favour of the wealthy rather than wider UK society.

The Books I Read In February

Fiction

'Murder Underground' by Mavis Doriel Hay

Doriel Hay mainly wrote on rural handicrafts but she did produce three crime novels, I have two of them. This one was published in 1934 and is very much set in the Belsize Park district of North London and neighbouring areas, in particular Hampstead Heath. While the characters in 'Hickory Dickory Dock' (1955) are younger, and it is set post-war (though the dramatization for 'Poirot' (broadcast 1995) took it back to the 1930s) has the same feel with extensive discussions between residents of a single hostel/hotel. This novel mainly features the residents of the Frampton private residential hotel. 

An elderly resident of the hotel, Miss. Euphemia Pongleton is found strangled with the leash of her dog on the steps going down to the platforms at Belsize Park underground station. Her nephew, Basil and his cousin, Beryl have been fluctuating heirs to Aunt 'Phemia but the initial suspect is a worker at the underground station, Bob, who is 'stepping out' with a maid at the hotel and often walks Miss. Pongleton's dog. Another major character, Basil's love interest is called Betty throughout, rather than her full name, so it was clear Doriel Hay was thumbing her nose at the precept for authors against having more than one character with a name starting with the same letter. It is very easy at times to mix up Betty and Beryl as they are very similar in nature.

I think some readers, perhaps me included, will feel rather disgruntled by the approach adopted in this novel. It is certainly different to that typical of most detective novels. Especially in the early phases of the novel, there is simply discussion between various sets of characters and long stretches of dialogue. In fact the police detective, while spoken about is not seen by the reader until very late on in the book.

 Three other characters effectively advance the investigation. They are a resident, Mr. Blend with his convenient archive of newspaper cuttings of various peculiar crimes, prompts Mrs. Daymer, another resident who is bohemian in style and a crime novelist, and Gerry Plasher - Beryl's fiancé - to travel to Coventry to chase up on a similar old crime. This particularly is seen by the police to make Plasher suspicious. Contrary to the advances the trio make, Basil, who was actually in the station where the body was found finds it difficult to keep his story straight, so pulls in numerous others to try to avert suspicion from him. However, trying to conceal a pearl necklace of his aunt's he had pawned just makes it more complex.

Doriel Hay does write a  largely credible crime story though one largely based on dialogue. Aside from Basil, a very Bertie Wooster character, she manages pretty much to avoid stereotypes though slips at time into it as with Mrs. Daymer's clothes and with the hotel's maid, Nellie. It can be frustrating when things twist around so much but I suppose it is a sound portrayal of how the people around the edges of a murder behave and they are often the people left out of crime novels, something the author clearly wanted to redress here.

'Fevre Dream' by George R.R. Martin

Having read 'The Armageddon Rag' (1983) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html and 'Tuf Voyaging' (1986) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html?m=0 back in 2024, I got into conversation with the novelist and prolific book reviewer Dr. Laura Tisdall: https://drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/ While she enjoyed 'Tuf Voyaging' she did suggest I turn to this other non-Game of Thrones novel by Martin. While the ending is far too protracted, throughout this novel is well written. Louisiana vampires might now be commonplace but what Martin did with this one, published in 1982, was instead come from the focus of a steamship captain, Abner Marsh, working the upper tributaries of the Mississippi in the late 1850s. The Fevre is an actual river running from Wisconsin to Illinois and feeding into the wider Mississippi network. Even by the end of the novel in 1870, the river has been renamed the River Galena after the town it passes through just before joining the Mississippi.

Having lost four steamships to the previous year's ice flows, Marsh is approached by Joshua York who we steadily find out is a European vampire who relocated to the USA. He pays for Marsh to commission the largest, most opulent, and importantly, fastest, side-wheeled paddle steamer, the eponynmous 'Fevre Dream'. This he does and the two go into business, steadily working southwards until operating on the Lower Mississippi including into New Orleans. York is hunting other vampires operating in the regions they pass through in an attempt to convert them from killing humans to using his concoction instead, a kind of mid-Victorian version of TrueBlood. However, York's mission is not straight forward and once he encounters the old, powerful, cruel 'bloodmaster' Damon Julian and his vicious entourage things deteriorate. Marsh stays loyal and brings the novel, finally to a conclusion.

The whole concept even in the realm of vampire stories, is very refreshing, especially if we see how long ago the novel was written. However, what lifts it higher is Martin's attention to detail. Without having a lecture, along the way you learn so much about the riverboats - they ran on wood (and occasionally lard) in the 1850s, the people who operated them, the landscape and various locations up and down the rivers. The descriptions are really rich and I am sure even for US readers were really engaging. There are very good points of tension and indeed sometimes a sense of hopelessness in the face of power, but as some of the reviews have noted, that is actually what readers once expected from vampire stories rather than the approaches of the 21st Century. I wish Martin had ended the novel more sharply. There was no need to drag it on into the post-American Civil War period, even if he was insistent on the drawn-out climax. If you have the patience then this is a good read, especially in the first five-sixths of the novel.

'Munich Wolf' by Rory Clements

As someone who has written four detective novels set in Munich in the early 1920s I was fascinated to read this one set in that city but in 1935 when the Nazi regime had been established firmly in Germany. A young British woman, Rosie Palmer, one of many rich young Britons, is murdered while in Munich for the summer, learning German, partying and in many cases thoroughly engaging with the Nazi regime. Unity Mitford, genuinely a good friend of Hitler features heavily in the novel, alongside many other people who were part of the regime in and around Munich and Nuremberg, at the time. 

Inspector Sebastian Wolf is assigned to investigate the case. He benefits from the fact that his uncle is a very wealthy local politician. There is demand for a speedy resolution so as not to upset the negotiations around the Anglo-German Naval Treaty. Wolf is quickly handed a convenient suspect in the form of a Jew, Karl Friedlander who had had a relationship with Rosie in Britain that they continued in Germany, much to the disgust of Rosie's family and the racist Britons around them. Friedlander is executed but of course, he was never the murderer and the marks on Rosie's body, despite the disappearance of the photographs, were actually runic rather than Hebrew. To stop that coming to light, a homosexual linguistic's professor, a friend of Wolf, Caius Klammer is also murdered.

Given the context, Wolf faces a lot of obstacles and indeed physical attacks on him as he tries to resolve the case. On paper this sounds like a decent plot. Having read all of the Bernie Gunther (1989-2019) series of books by Philip Kerr which often involve investigations in Nazi Germany, I expected it to be of a similar quality. There are some aspects which are handled well. Clements portrays different parts of Munich effectively. He is also decent in the characterisations of the Britons and some of the Germans. Wolf's relationship with his girlfriend Hexie, his mother and his son, are done pretty well. However, other bits are two-dimensional. 

Wolf is a Murder Commission inspector investigating a high profile murder, but lacks a sergeant until one is transferred from the Political Police division (at the time run by Heinrich Himmler and not yet part of the Prussian Gestapo which was run by Hermann Göring). He seems to have no other detectives that he can command. In addition, he lacks senior officers, there are no superintendents, he simply reports to the deputy president of the Bavarian police. Yes, this man would be involved, but all the layers between him an Wolf, indeed a wider detective force, seems entirely absent.

There is a heavy-handedness. Yes, under the Nazi regime Jews and homosexuals would be blamed when guiltless, but the casual murders on the streets which are so prevalent in this novel, had come to an end with the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. It is improbable at this stage that a police inspector would be sent to the Dachau concentration camp by a lower ranking officer for not showing sufficient respect for Hitler. Wolf seems, despite his rank and standing, appears to have no authority of his own and is simply a catspaw for his uncle. The conversion of his assigned sergeant, Hans Winter, as a result of Wolf blackmailing seems far too abrupt. He starts as almost a comic nasty Nazi and then in an instant is a supportive collaborator with Wolf. Clements could have had similar points of tension made more subtly, more effectively, but really takes a sledgehammer to these aspects which quickly riles on the reader.

Overall, this story could have worked well. Clements shows he can write well, but here only when on the topics which particularly interest him. As he outlines in an essay at the end the whole milieu of rich Britons in Munich at this time, was the thing he was really interested in and as a result, the other aspects, necessary for an actual crime novel are just like theatre sets, not more substantial. At times, they are painful. There was no need to reference at the beginning, a zither player in the cafe or the men in Lederhosen. It seems Clements does not feel he can draw the reader in unless he piles on the Germanic tropes, scraped from 'The Third Man' (1949), 'Cabaret' (1972) and 'The Lady Vanishes' (1979 version). I still have not forgiven Kerr for featuring the Drittemann movie company in 'A German Requiem' (1991). The reader, who will often know and spot these conceits, feels that the illusion is broken. Anyway, I will certainly not be looking out for any more of the promised Sebastian Wolf novels.

'The Scent of the Night' by Andrea Camilleri

This is probably the most straight forward of the Montalbano mysteries. It has a lot of the usual characteristics such as the intermittent relationship with his long-distance girlfriend, the inspector eating high cuisine fish or shellfish dishes every day, deserted houses in the backwaters of Sicily and the - in theory - comic police phone operator. However, this is a neat and tidy story around the disappearance of Emanuele Gargano who was running a Ponzi scheme fraud. Naturally there are a lot of people who have lost money to the scheme would profess to want to kill the man. His middle-aged, besotted secretary waits for his return but then it transpires that Gargano's assistant has also disappeared after trying to lay a false trail buying tickets to various European cities. An unreliable eyewitness who hallucinates, not only leads Montalbano to where one of the bodies has ended up, but ultimately allows him to comprehend where that of Gargano actually is. This, the sixth novel in the series, benefits from being 'dialled down' a little. I have never found these books 'comic' as some describe them and indeed attempts at levity have been laboured and distracting. This one just gets on a does the business in a satisfying way while still encompassing the traits which mark out Montalbano stories.

'The Courts of Chaos' by Roger Zelanzy

This is the concluding book in the Princes of Amber pentalogy. Having discovered that his father, Oberon, has been masquerading as his old comrade, Ganelon, Corwin now has to go on a long journey to carry the Jewel of Judgment [sic] to the final climatic battle outside the Courts of Chaos. His brother Brand's attempt to erase the Pattern of this universe to install one of his own leads to a vast storm sweeping across all the different realms Corwin can pass through. Corwin's journey is I imagine intentionally like those of characters in 'The Faerie Queen' and 'Gawain and the Green Knight'. In addition to attempts by Brand to kill him or at least take the Jewel, there are others along the way who seek to tempt, seduce, harm or kill Corwin. He does seem rather gullible, perhaps because he is weary and concerned about being swept up by the unrelenting storm.

There is the battle outside the Courts of Chaos which leads to victory for the good (or at least amoral as opposed to immoral) side. Corwin is reunited with the son he was unaware he had, Merlin and a replacement king is found for Oberon who had already given his life in trying to prevent the storm destroying this universe. Probably not a spoiler to say that the new king is not Corwin but one of his siblings. There is some pontificating from Corwin at the end about what it all means, but it does not go on too long. There is some of the lengthy dialogue between the siblings - though fortunately less than in the previous novel - to continue to unknot the overly-complex plot Zelanzy had created and you do feel that like George R.R. Martin with his A Song of Ice and Fire, that he made it so knotty that he lost control of it. Fortunately the Amber novels come in at around 150 pages long, rather than 500-800 pages.

While at times the books in this series have been a bit irritating, I recognise that Zelanzy was trying to do something a bit different to what had been in fantasy up to then. The mixing of our world and a whole host of realms was in line with developments of the 1970s but he handles it differently to Moorcock. His usual of modern language and a kind of easy-going attitude that we perhaps associate with mid-1970s USA rather than the kind of quasi-medieval or barbarian tone adopted by so many fantasy novels before. I also have to remind myself that some 50 years on and with a lot of fantasy fiction published since then, some things that now appear hackneyed were fresher back then. The leprechauns trying to tempt Corwin to stay beneath the ground drinking was old hat even back then.

Zelanzy's focus on an extensive family rather than nations, the use of things like the Pattern, a challenging maze that both balances reality but can also present personal benefits or challenges and the Trumps (!) to contact family members and teleport to them, remain quite distinctive. I imagine at the time these aspects must have seemed refreshing even if now they may have lost - for a reader today - some of their spark.

Non-Fiction

'The Nine Lives of Otto Katz' by Jonathan Miles

This is about the Czechoslovak secret agent for the USSR, Otto Katz (1895-1952 executed). He was a successful propagandist and spy in the 1930s-50s. He adopted a string of identities and as Miles shows he was able to adapt his demeanour effectively to be convincing in each. He was involved in theatre and literature right throughout, moving as his Soviet masters required, from Prague to Berlin, Paris, London, civil-war Spain, New York and Hollywood. He was popular among leading celebrities of the movie industry. Katz was strongly anti-Nazi having witnessed the rise of Hitler at first hand in Berlin. He was able to enlist liberals into fund raising and propaganda events such as the 'trial' in London testing what had been put out by the Nazis around the Reichstag Fire. 

As Katz remained loyal to Stalin's regime, taking part of purging the non-Stalinists from the Republican side in Spain and not questioning Stalin's behaviour even when the USSR was in alliance with Nazi Germany 1939-41, Miles feels that any liberal Katz influenced must have either been pro-Soviet or deluded. He is dismissive of any other motive for opposing the Nazis. The author really buys into the McCarthyite attitude that there was really no way to oppose Nazism without being a Communist unless you were hard right-wing. This is despite the fact that he highlights people in Katz's various circles who became suspicious of him and either distanced themselves or cut him off completely. It seems to Miles that one touch is sufficient to contaminate someone entirely. Katz's loyalty did not pay off and he was one of the last to be executed in a purge by Stalin.

The book is academically robust with lots of references to sound sources. While there is lots of interesting detail, almost all of which is absent from Katz's Wikipedia entry, Miles seems obliged to make his story overly dramatic and at times it is not clear if he was meaning to write a thriller rather than a historical analysis. Especially at the beginning of the book there is a lot of jumping around in time and topic when in fact given the complexity of the story and the various aliases there needs to be real clarity. While I learnt some things from this book, Miles's melodramatic approach but above all his inability to see that not all (in fact most) anti-Nazis were not Communist and his repeated insistence on this point makes this an irritating book to read.

'Establishment and Meritocracy' by Peter Hennessy

This was the last, the newest (2014) and the shortest of Hennessy's books that I possessed. It is only 68 pages long. However, given what I have said before about despite his years in universities, Hennessy has not really shaken off the journalistic approach, this format works well for him. As usual he blends in personal memories and outlooks with quotes and input from notable people across the period. He looks at how the British Establishment is defined and how while the old structures like the elite public schools, the military, House of Lords, judiciary, etc. remain, there are new facets to the Establishment especially in terms of those influential or powerful in media and in finance. He looks at how meritocracy rose as a concept, in particular in terms of his beloved civil service, decades before the publication of  'The Rise of the Meritocracy' (1958) by Michael Dunlop Young put it into common parlance.

Reading the book more than a decade after its publication we can see in which facets Hennessy was very prescient. As he notes throughout, both the principles are about establishing hierarchy whether that is simply through birth or through recognition of a greater competency in certain skills. It is still a hierarchy and he cautions about the fate of those deemed to lack 'merit'. He warns of the possibility of a vicious populist backlash which would baulk against meritocracy instead seeking a hierarchy built on other characteristics. He notes wealth would be one of these, but perhaps did not spot that race would be thrust back into such thinking too. He does also pick up on how the 'ladders' that people of his generation were able to climb from relatively humble backgrounds, were liable to be removed or closed off. These things have all come to pass both quietly and in terms of vicious insistence, accompanied by violence, of a racial/wealth hierarchy by the populists and their supporters, even when it is actually detrimental to those supporters themselves. 

Hennessy here was not setting out to be a prophet but given his love of analysing how British society and politics function, he actually highlighted trends that would manifest in the following years in the way that he does tentatively caution about.

The Books I Read In January

Fiction

'It Walks By Night' by John Dickson Carr

I only found this Dickson Carr book recently. It was his first published novel (the British Library version I read also includes a short story he had printed in a college magazine) coming out in 1930. Whereas the books by him that I read last year, 'She Died A Lady' (1943) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/10/the-books-i-read-in-october.html and 'Till Death Do Us Part' (1944) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html were almost exemplars of 'Golden Age' crime novels set in Britain, this has a very different feel. It is set in Paris of the 1920s and features Henri Bencolin, a juge d'instruction, which anyone who watched the 'Spiral' ['Engrenages'] (broadcast 2005-20) knows, rather than the police, play a major role in France in investigations. He featured in five of Dickson Carr's novels. The novel is told, however, from the perspective of Jeff Marle, a young American friend of Bencolin's and he is aided by Austrian psychiatrist Dr. Grafenstein.

Dickson Carr was very much influenced by the work of fellow US author Edgar Allan Poe and his 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' (1841) similarly set in Paris. In fact Poe's influence goes deeper because, as the title suggests, this is not really a detective novel but more a Gothic horror one. This can be seen from the outset as the murder victim, the Duc de Saligny, is killed by being beheaded in a card room of a seedy though expensive Paris night club which is also a front for drug dealing. It is a locked room mystery which was a common approach for Dickson Carr.

 As I have noted before, Dickson Carr was very good at describing the scenes in which his stories were set though in this book it is often to give an air of sinister settings and a feeling of impending doom, which he does well, once you accept this is not a typical detective story. The sense of preordained death and misery is further developed by the fact that Bencolin seems to know what is going to happen in advance and at the end has all the answers yet fails to reveal them as the investigation continues. This seems to have come from the gimmick the publishers introduced in that the final section of the novel was sealed and if they had not broken the seal readers could return their edition for a refund. However, reading right through, it does make you feel: 'why did he not mention this before?', though admittedly the necessary clues are there and sometimes laid on a little thick.

Two further aspects add to the Gothic feel. While the Volstead Act which introduced Prohibition in the USA in 1920 is mentioned, we also pick up on the very strong US opposition to narcotics at the time with legislation in 1909 and 1924. Characters believe that the smoking of marijuana would kill the user within five years and in the meantime permanently distort their sense of self and make them see hallucinations. I am no supporter of even 'soft' drugs, but am aware that the effects are not as severe as shown here. European countries of the time had a much greater tolerance of drug abuse, in part because of the range of narcotics consumed by First World War soldiers. Drugs turn up quite regularly in both Sherlock Holmes stories (which Conan Doyle was publishing as late as 1927) and Agatha Christie novels. In this novel the narcotic abuse is also linked over to the psychoanalytical aspects, especially around questions of identity. Thus we have a context in which characters, especially women, are in a deadly hallucinatory state at times, uncertain of who they and the people around them, are.

This is a different read to other books in the British Library series that I have read. I am not a fan of horror and this is effectively a psychological horror book which seems hemmed in by strong views of the time. The publisher's gimmick also rather distorts the book making it feel even less realistic, but perhaps realism was not what Dickson Carr was seeking, rather this rather nightmare-like context in which no-one can really be certain of anything around them.

Perhaps it is unsurprising that many of these elements are found in the short story at the end, 'The Shadow of the Goat' (1926). This features Bencolin but really comes over very much like an episode of 'Jonathan Creek' (broadcast 1997-2016) in which a supposedly impossible, demonic like disappearance is explained. It is not bad.

'Lies, Damned Lies and History' by Jodi Taylor

It has been more than 45 years since I have abandoned reading a book, but I came very close with this one. It is the seventh book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's time-travelling series and from almost the outset I have found dealing with the erratic tone of the novels, difficult. They go between what I have termed 'jolly hockey sticks' almost humour of a British educational institution with harsh tragedy. This one takes that right up to the limit. I guess Taylor felt that despite all the deaths and life-changing injuries inflicted on her characters she had to raise the jeopardy level as the series continued. However, it is incredibly bleak and exudes immense hopelessness that you quickly want to distance yourself from. Only a convenient deus ex machina stops this book effectively becoming a psychological and even physical horror, given it is dealing with a heavily pregnant woman.

Yes, in this novel, the protagonist, Max is pregnant. This has minimal impact on the dangers she is thrust into. As one character noted a couple of novels back the St. Mary's Institute is largely staffed with incompetent people who put themselves and quite often history as we know it, at risk. While Taylor seems to battle in deciding what kind of novel she is writing, her strength does lie in her portrayals of the historic incidents that her characters visit. The series would have been better if these had formed larger parts of the novels as with them she really shows her abilities and raises fascinating questions about what went on. They, unfortunately, feature as little more than 'episodes'. Yes, it it is legitimate to say that the novels are more about the development of the protagonist as she moves from being a very immature young woman (though her age is not clear in the early books given she already has a doctorate) to a more accomplished, caring but still incompetent woman somewhere in her thirties.

The first visit in this novel is to a hilltop fort in 6th Century Wales where the people, aided by the man who effectively is remembered as King Arthur, fight against Saxon attackers. The location and the risks are well described. The way the male members of the St. Mary's party avoid having to fight and thus risking altering history, is ingenious. The jeopardy is well done and I really thought we were going to see a step-up in these books. The giving of a sword to a local hermit, brings in a mystical element which has not been present before. Coming back to modern times as is typical St. Mary's alerts its parent university, the fictional University of Thirsk so they can locate the sword and 'discover' it. However, this leads to a series of disasters in the area and Max and her friends steal the sword back. This gets them all set back in their careers and Max simply put on mundane duties for much of the book ahead of her maternity leave.

There is another fascinating trip back in time when the disgraced team travel to 1216 to see what they can recover from the crown jewels that King John supposedly lost in the Wash so it can be discovered by Thirsk bringing such wealth and prominence as to restore St. Mary's in its favour. There is a great scene in which we see a tidal surge crashing out of the Wash. Realising they cannot retrieve anything from the chaos it leaves, they go back further to see what they can grab earlier, almost like the 'Time Bandits' (1981).

Eventually restored to some standing within the institute, Max moves steadily to her maternity leave. However, leaving on her final day she is abducted and put into an utterly impossible situation in which she will be compelled to prostitute herself in some barren unknown past or abandon her child. This marks the return of Clive Ronan, the prime antagonist of these novels though he has been quiet for a while. I know Taylor wants to make him see a genuine threat but she goes far too far for what is supposedly packaged as a 'jolly' book and moves into the realm of the torture porn movies like the 'Saw' (2004-23) series. I do really think this book should have carried a warning. I am uncertain now if I will read any more in the series even though I own three more of them.

'Sharpe's Assassin' by Bernard Cornwell

With 'Sharpe's Storm' coming out late last year, this was now the penultimate of the Sharpe novels I had not read. It was published in 2021 and is set in 1815, with Sharpe moving on from the location of the Battle of Waterloo to chase down remnants of Napoleon's forces and then for the majority of the book hunting those seeking to assassinate the Duke of Wellington in Paris while he is part of establishing the occupation and the post-Napoleonic system. This is an interesting period to pick as in the older Sharpe novels, all we had seen of him after becoming a lieutenant colonel for the battle, was set in 1820-21 in 'Sharpe's Devil' (1992) by which time Lucille, his French wife, is dead and the wars in Europe are long over. Chasing after the Fraternity secret society allows Cornwell to show us early 19th Century Paris with all the left-overs from Napoleon's reign and also aspects like the vineyards contained within the city walls one of which proves to be the base of Wellington's would-be assassins.

As usual there are annoying, misguided officers, but Sharpe now in command of a British battalion is able to act on a larger scale. Saying that he does draw on his remaining riflemen and there are some great scenes fighting across Paris and then a confrontation at the vineyard with his final antagonist which did, however, remind me of the duel in 'Rob Roy' (1995). It was also good to see him enjoying time with Lucille. While Teresa Moreno his Spanish wife killed in December 1813 is a wonderful guerilla leader, it is nice we see him enjoying his relationship with Lucille who treats him far better than his uppity British wife Jane Gibbons. As there is no formal divorce and Jane, in theory, lives to 1844 Sharpe's other marriages are bigamous. Overall I enjoyed this book and found it engaging.

This was an interesting development for Sharpe and the book is better handled than 'Sharpe's Command' (2023) which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html  I do hope that Cornwell's editors took a firmer hand with 'Sharpe's Storm' to avoid the inconsistencies that so weakened Sharpe's Command'. I will have to see once the book reaches a charity shop near me.

'Excursion to Tindari' by Andrea Camilleri

This is the fifth book in the Montalbano series and is a straight forward police procedural. The only hiccough seems to be the inconsistency in the inspector's relationship with his deputy, Mimi Augello. I do not know if this is due to the translation, but whereas in the first three books Montalbano seemed to have contempt for the man and there was often friction between them, by the time of  'The Voice of the Violin' (1997) their relationship appeared to have sharply shifted. This is especially notable as the books follow each other tightly in terms of chronology feeling to cover a matter of weeks at most. Anyway, in this book Motalbano is so enamoured with Augello that he tries to stop his leaving for Sicily to live with his fiancée, a police officer, in Pavia. This is because he cannot envisage diminishing his team. His scheme is not too difficult as Augello is a womaniser and his boss engineers for an attractive young woman he has encountered in this book's cases to become friendly with Augello.

As with a number of the Montalbano books, there are two cases which seem unconnected but ultimately are locked together. One is the disappearance of an insular elderly couple, the Griffos, on the eponymous coach excursion to Tindari. The other is the shooting dead of a young man, a Nenè Sanfilippo, at the entrance to the apartment block where the Griffos lived.  He is into pornography and one of his sexual encounters provides the link between him, the Griffos and a third person.

This novel was written in 2000 and as seen in the previous book, technology is becoming part of police work. Not only is the user of scanners important but the horrendous crime behind the fate of the three victims is permitted by the use of a remote building that is well equipped with phone lines and internet connections. As before, Montalbano tries to navigate his way around the mafia who seem to favour him for their revelations. It appears that an old don is going to give up his fugitive grandson, but naturally it ends the way most things do with the mafia. This aspect, this helplessness in the face of the plans of others is added to by this floundering that Montalbano feels faced with what crimes the new technologies may permit.

There are the usual elements of the inspector eating a wonderful array of Sicilian cuisine, predominantly sea food, his long-distance relationship with Livia and the return of his ambivalent one with Ingrid who tends to act as a dea ex machina. In this novel she happens to know one of the women who features in one of Sanfilippo's videos that provides the final link in the chain. Overall this is a solid police procedural novel which is clever in its mechanics and makes good use of the Sicilian landscape and the food of the island.

'The Hand of Oberon' by Roger Zelanzy

Like I imagine quite a few people of my generation I did not come to Zelanzy's Amber stories through the books but through the Dungeons and Dragons module, 'Dungeon Module X2: Castle Amber (Château d'Amberville)' (1981) by Tom Moldvay. This makes use of the Amber family from Zelanzy's novels, but puts them into the Averoigne world of another author, Clark Ashton Smith. Anyway, this is the fourth book in Zelanzy's series. I read the first one in the series, 'Nine Princes in Amber' (1970), many years ago, so had some idea of that context.

The books of this pentalogy follow Corwin one of the numerous princes and princesses of Amber, a medieval style world that sits alongside our own which Amberites as they are known refer to as Shadow. In Shadow they are able run versions of themselves and they have different abilities to manipulate. There are also other realms they can visit including Rebma a mirror world of Amber under the sea, Tir-na Nog'th a sky city accessible when the Moon is shining on it and the Courts of Chaos. These things probably seemed a bit fresher in the 1970s than the tropes they have hardened into. These worlds are defined by the Pattern a kind of labyrinth that you find in European cathedrals. If someone from Amber is able to walk it they can achieve certain powers, notably attunement with the Jewel of Judgment [sic] which controls weather and has other powers.

In the first book, Corwin awakes in 1960s USA with a memory loss and it takes time for him to find out who are what he is before becoming embroiled in family feuds. The stories focus on the struggle for the throne of King Oberon, the father of all the princes and princesses who had disappeared at the opening of the series. Various siblings form factions to try to seize or protect the throne for others. A lot of this has gone in the preceding three books. Much of this book is about Corwin wandering around trying to untangle the various conspiracies. Chapter 2 also has an extensive info dump that recaps the entirety of the plots of the previous three novels. This feels really levered in. It reminded me of US TV documentaries in which after an advert break you get an extensive recap of everything that had been covered just minutes before.

The first half of the 188-page book is very slow. If you were someone who had read the preceding books then you would not need all this detail, except in a few places where deception had taken place. There is a lot of dialogue but really the book only starts going in the second half when Corwin in league with various of his brothers and a sister, and the neutrality of some, goes in search of his brother Brand who is seeking to erase the Pattern by spilling Amber prince blood on it so he can establish new worlds dominated by him. There are some clever encounters both on the Pattern and in Tir-na Nog'th. The set-up for the final book 'The Courts of Chaos' (1978), which I have a copy of, is soundly made with the revelation of who Oberon has been disguised as.

Overall, there are elements to this book which are decent fantasy and at the time must have seemed fresher still. In some ways Zelanzy (a little like Martin) has tied himself in knots by trying to be very clever with the family feuding. This would be less of a problem if he did not feel obliged to untangle every last thread for the reader before pushing on with the narrative. I think this fourth book suffers more than the others because it is very much a linking book to the the climax.

'Dictator' by Robert Harris

This is the final book in Harris's trilogy which charts the life of the Roman lawyer, orator and politician Cicero. The previous two books were 'Imperium' (2006) 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 This one covers the final decades of Cicero's life in which the Roman Republic he worked so hard to maintain was effectively ended with a civil war and Julius Caesar becoming a corrupt though magnanimous dictator before he was assassinated. This was followed by a second civil war among Caesar's adopted son and close associates of Caesar. Like a lot of people I was probably familiar with Caesar's assassination in isolation without all the context building up to it, let alone what followed before his adopted son took over and became Emperor Augustus, condemning Rome to being a dictatorial empire until its final end, in Western Europe, at least, 400 years later.

This book is told through the eyes of Tiro, Cicero's genuine secretary who was accomplished himself and developed short hand. This perspective allows Roberts to show not only the very complex politics of the times with the rise and fall of a string of politicians and generals, but also the personal side in Cicero's life and the tragedies of his period in exile, collapsing marriage, the mistreatment and early death of his daughter, his ill-advised second marriage and the fluctuating attitudes of his son, brother and nephew, who were supporters of Julius Caesar. He does capable portrayals of leading men like Pompey, Caesar and Octavian who in their different ways relied on Cicero. There are also the less familiar individuals like Clodius who caused so much harm and Milo who saved Cicero at various times. 

Thus, though we know the outcome, Roberts does very well in bringing tension and real drama to the story as it unfolds. He provides ample information on the Roman world and its political churn but using Tiro he is able to put this into a form which the reader can follow without difficulty nor turning it into a history or politics lecture. Tiro's life advances though he keeps close to Cicero. He is freed and given a farm in thanks for all his efforts. We also get to see inside not just the temples and public buildings but a whole range of homes of people of different wealth levels.

Perhaps reading this book in 2026 was the wrong thing to do. At regular points in the slow but steady climb of Julius Caesar to dictatorship you see him and his supporters using tactics to distort and ultimately destroy the semi-democratic process of the Roman Republic which could have come right from current headlines about the USA. The risks those trying to resist the steps he takes, also remain the same, though in fact these days the person is liable to be shot dead rather than sent into exile for some years.

I do heartily recommend the entire trilogy. Some might worry that will be very dry, almost academic in nature, but these books show Harris's skill at its peak, weaving excitement and drama into real life historical events to make what unfolds as tense and engaging as any of the best thrillers. 

Non-Fiction

'Putin's Killers' by Amy Knight

This is an interesting if rather galling account of the political assassinations carried out on the orders of Vladimir Putin. It was published in 2017, but my edition was an updated one from 2019 which had been extended to cover the attempted murder of Sergei Skripal and his daughter using the Novichok nerve chemical in Salisbury in March 2018. They survived but Briton, Dawn Sturgess died as a result of the attempt and her friend, Charlie Rowley suffering severe illness. Knight shows the historical background of Russian political assassinations and looks at Putin's career before going through various cases, perhaps the best known being Alexander Litvinenko also murdered in Britain this time using Polonium-210. 

Knight shows how patterns are repeated with typically Chechens being assigned and/or blamed for the various murders. Putin promises to catch the killers of his opponents, but the Russian legal system is very slow to do anything about the cases and eventually finds scapegoats. Many of those who are employed to do the killings, as the Skripal and Litvinenko cases showed, are incompetent. This demonstrates that the Russian government is not really concerned if their part in the killings is recognised, and in fact it adds to the intimidating factor of carrying them out. Like many semi-dictators, Putin is very petulant and is infuriated by any attacks on his policies notably the brutal war in Chechnya but also of any he feels has betrayed him. Despite the publication of this book, the killings have continued as can be seen in the case of lawyer Alexei Navalny who died in prison in 2024 from maltreatment following a sham trial.

Knight who has written extensively on contemporary Russian politics maintains a quiet optimism throughout this book, that Putin will be overthrown and that those who murdered for him would be brought to justice. However, it is now 9 years since the book first came out and nothing has changed. The approaches she shows here in detail continue and Putin's position appears under no threat. 

Knight's writing style is very brisk with lots of sub-sections. At first I found this a little too speedy a style, but as I progressed I realised given all the names she mentions and the twists of the various assassination set-ups and aftermaths, it helps the reader keep a handle on all the detail without becoming bogged down in it.

'Muddling Through. Power, Politics and the Quality of Government in Postwar Britain' by Peter Hennessy

Similar to 'The Secret State' (2002) which I read in December: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2025/12/the-books-i-read-in-december.html rather than new material, this is a collection of output from Peter Hennessy in other media such as radio programmes and lectures. However, much of it lacks even the linking theme that 'The Secret State' and is rather a 'muddle' to coin the phrase. Some of it is very esoteric. There is a whole chapter which simply recounts a discussion between the MPs Tony Benn and Enoch Powell on their ideas for the royal prerogative in the parliamentary system. Given that this book was first published in 1996 and the issue of the royal prerogative was to feature notably for legislation of the Blair government which came into office the following year, it was a missed opportunity to explore the issue better than simply hearing the views of two opposing old politicians. 

There is some interesting stuff on what might happen in terms of procedure with a hung parliament which was quite expected in the mid-1990s but did not really come about until 2010. There is a peon to the British Civil Service delivered as a lecture at the Civil Service College. Perhaps Hennessy was right to push its importance as though it was abolished in 2012, the National School of Government was established in 2021 with a campus at the former college's Sunningdale site. There is more material about Britain's relationship with nuclear weapons which covers a lot of the ground (sometimes in the same words) as these issues are handled in 'Never Again' (1993) and 'The Secret State'. The section on Britain seeking its role on the global stage and a study of the Suez Conflict of 1956 is better and has some interesting insight.

The best bit of the book are the vignettes of all the post-war Prime Ministers. As is typical for Hennessy he draws a great deal on the comments of those who worked with those people, and in a number of cases the former premiers themselves. Though short, these provide insightful essays of their periods in office and the personal contexts around those. The one on Margaret Thatcher is very rushed and Hennessy shows his distaste for her from the outset. There are no quotes from her colleagues or civil servants who served her. Given he wrote that piece in 1992, soon after she had left office, he probably felt it was too soon to really analyse her 11 years as Prime Minister.

Back in the late 1990s I heard someone very negatively compare Hennessy's work to that of his university colleague Donald Sassoon whose latest book 'Revolutions' came out just in November. Having met both men, I certainly would never say a warm word for Sassoon as a person. However, having read four Hennessy books over the past few months I can see why he is criticised for his historical writing. Yes, he is able to access aspects of British politics which otherwise would be unknown and he is a very good interviewer. Yet it seems that he 'rechews' the good elements he gets so much that unless you are unfamiliar with his body of work you might see them repeated multiple times. I now feel that his work is less than the sum of its parts, though there are 'gems' in those parts. He is also a great radio broadcaster and his programmes, many of which are available via BBC I-Player do show off his particular skills to the best and in a way this book, apart from the prime ministers' sections, does not really do.