Books I Read In October

 Fiction

'Fear in the Forest' by Bernard Knight

This is the seventh Crowner John novel and like the fifth, 'The Tinner's Corpse' (2001), Knight takes the opportunity to look at another specific aspect of English law in the late 12th Century. In this novel it is how the 'forests' were regulated. While the legal forests did contain woodland they also encompassed heathland and other landscapes. As the novel shows there was stringent but sometimes unrelated regulation of the forests which were deemed to belong to the King. Taking wood, let alone killing wildlife in them could lead to stringent penalties. This novel is really one about corruption by those who policed the forests and them working with criminals to enforce protection rackets and promote their businesses, e.g. in brewing or woodworking over those of locals. Coroner Sir John De Wolfe's antagonist through the novels, the Sheriff of Devon, his brother-in-law, also seems involved. De Wolfe's mistress, Nesta the landlady is pregnant and his wife goes off to a nunnery.

Overall, because there are a series of crimes, including murder, but also extortion and corruption, this is quite a messy novel. Even De Wolfe's relationship with the two women in his life seems scrappy. I guess clear motives should not be expected from people in such a situation, especially for women without societal agency to do all that they might want to. However, the novel does highlight the complexity of the legal situation that Knight wished to highlight and shows very well the difficulties even for nobles of navigating around laws which largely were about making money for the monarch rather than providing a rational legal system for day-to-day life. There are points of action and these come to a climax of violent action, a little as in some of the previous novels, notably 'Crowner's Quest' (1999) and 'The Awful Secret' (2000), melodramatically. However, I guess that it brings it to conclusion after all the various strands he has sent up during the novel and the inability of De Wolfe to challenge corruption in the church, which reminds me of books by Michael Dibdin and Leonardo Sciascia set in contemporary Italy.

'Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City' by K.J. Parker [Tom Holt]

A novel focused on the siege of a city seems a refreshing way to go in a fantasy context. The location is a Roman/Byzantine city and at times the almost explicit references to Roman culture jar in this fantasy context, even though the main race of the city are blue-skinned. The arena, the colours for different factions in the city, the names, the bronze chain at the harbour, even the use of engineering units, that the protagonist Orhan commands, seem to be lifted without much modification from the Roman setting. Parker does seem obsessed with engineers in his fantasy writing. I guess it makes a change from knights or sorcerers especially in this set-up of him defending a city, 'The City' from foreign invaders who have proven to be very clever strategically and well equipped.

It is an interesting book, as much about dealing with various types of people in society as about the technical issues of feed and arming people; of operation siege weapons, etc. The greatest problem I had was the 'cheeky chappy' style of the language for much of the book. It is written in the first person and quickly the kind of 'Cockney barrow boy' language becomes tiring. The book improves towards the end as this declines. The characters, aside from Orhan, are quite believable. The coincidences, especially who is leading the opponents are a further weakness. The ending is very poor, a complete anti-climax and it seems as if after all the hard work Parker put into the different developments and characters he simply ran out of steam and had no idea how to bring it properly to an end. Consequently the rushed conclusion undermines what had gone before. It is not a bad book and as I said at the start it has some refreshing elements. It certainly would have benefited from a map of the world it features as so much is dependent on people marching through particular terrain or not being able to get through a certain straits; a map of the city would also have helped as Orhan hares around different parts and where he and his helpers are and when is important for the story, but never really being clear about them makes it harder to enjoy.

'Burning Bright' by Tracy Chevalier

This is a 'slice of life' novel. It is set in 1792 and is about the family of a chair maker from an area of Dorset I know reasonably well relocating to south London. The family become connected to a circus located in Lambeth. The children in particular also interact with the neighbours, one of whom includes William Blake, the poet, songwriter, painter, engraver and printer. The family become embroiled in scandals at the circus and the attacks on Blake as a result of his support for the French Revolution. The novel simply documents what they see and do in London and the travails of the family. Women getting pregnant, which happens to three of the characters, one of them a major one, seems to be an important focus for Chevalier. You do wonder at the behaviour of some characters, though I think one point is that motherhood, despite its high risks, was seen as a path that many young women could not avoid and might even welcome. At the end of the novel, the family return to their village in Dorset and that is it. Nothing astounding happens, but I guess that is Chevalier's way.

One does have to admire the research Chevalier did and to get the location and the ordinary people of Georgian London so well observed. Much of the pleasure of the book is simply seeing it through the eyes of her protagonists. Even then, it is not perfect. She refers to 'Queen Elizabeth I', at a time when she would only have been 'Queen Elizabeth' the way that Queen Victoria and Queen Anne remain to us today. Given the suffix 'the First' would suggest the characters could see into the future and know that a second would come. The other thing is she refers to mauve some 65 years before it was famously invented as a colour; 'violet' would have done perfectly well instead.

'Angels Flight' by Michael Connelly

This is the sixth book in the Harry Bosch series by Connelly and is set a year after the previous one, 'Trunk Music' (1997). Bosch's precipitate marriage to Eleanor Wish at the end of that novel has already unravelled. Themes about racial tension in Los Angeles which have come in around the edges throughout the series are ramped up in this novel. It sees the murder of a leading black lawyer who has specialised in prosecuting police misconduct cases, on the Angels Flight funicular railway. This again allows Connelly to bring in the tensions he clearly felt writing at the time and to include more parts of the city in his writing. 

As is common with the Bosch novels, the first possible solutions turn out to not necessarily be false but certainly flawed. Working against the context of rioting adds to the dynamism of the story. We are also very much in that time. Cell phones have appeared as the novels have progressed and in this one we see the internet featuring, including, already, a paedophile dark website.

The story combines a nicely twisty case which highlights how people are judged differently both in terms of race but also wealth and influence. On that basis it works well as a mystery. What works less well is how Bosch relates to female characters, especially those closest to him. The best are those at a distance such as the public lawyer set to make sure when the police are investigating there are no conflicts of interest, but as the characters are closer to Bosch, his commanding lieutenant and a member of his team, they are handled less well. 

Eleanor Wish herself feels very much like a device that is dropped in and pulled out in now three of the novels, without really developing her as a full character. His previous 'love interests', Sylvia Moore and Jasmine Corian in 'The Black Ice' (1993), 'The Concrete Blonde' (1994) and 'The Last Coyote' (1995) were similarly under-developed and similarly whisked out of the story. 

I know Connelly was trying to produce a modern version of the 'hard-boiled' crime novel, but as his engagement with racial and technological issues shows, he has been compelled to recognise the changed times and yet the women close to Bosch are portrayed/treated in a way which may have been acceptable to readers in the 1940s but jarred even in the 1990s, let alone now. Eleanor Wish functioned very well as a de-facto femme fatale in 'The Black Echo' (1992) but when cast into a different role, Connelly seems to be at a loss with what to do with her.

This is the last of the Harry Bosch books I own. However, I have a couple more books from two of Connelly's other two series to read.

Non-Fiction

'War and Society in Renaissance Europe, 1450-1620' by J.R. Hale

Perhaps reflecting its theme, this book lacks the sprightly tone of Hale's 'Renaissance Europe 1480-1520' that I read last month: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/09/books-i-read-in-september.html  It also takes a different chronological view of the Renaissance and as Hale makes clear is in fact concerned with the period between the end of the Hundred Years' War in 1453 and the start of the Thirty Years' War in 1618, both conflicts which really defined the nature of warfare, at least in Western Europe. It is important to note that there is this geographical limit and despite some passing references to the Balkans, the focus is no farther East than 'Germany' and 'Italy' as they existed at the time.

Hale is keen as with the other book, however, to adopt a different approach to viewing the history than the ones which were prevalent when the book was published in 1985. He shows how accounts of various campaigns or focused on arms and armour effectively lift warfare out of the context in which it sat. There might be passing references to the politics that provoked, prolonged or ended the wars, but minimal in such histories about the connection to the societies either supplying the soldiers or suffering the consequences of the war, certainly in the pre-20th Century eras. Thus, Hale makes effective use of various examples across the period rather than progressing chronologically. It allows him to view who became soldiers of different kinds and why. It looks at the society of soldiers as being separate but also inter-connected with civilian society. He also looks at the economic and social impact not just of the war but the industries associated with war, especially as gunpowder and artillery played an increasing role through the period the book covers.

While it does lack the particularly engaging tone of the previous book of Hale's I read, it was no less interesting. It is analytical without being dry. The thematic sections are sensible and while covering the same period throughout, avoid repetition. I feel that this book is a very useful one to have alongside any you might read on campaigns and wars of the period to give them depth. It is also, as the other book was, a great resource for authors wanting to set stories in this period. There is a lot of detail here and even stories of different experiences of soldiers and civilians that people can draw from easily if seeking to write something set during the period, even if not explicitly focused on war.