Books I Read In January

 Fiction

'Blood Work' by Michael Connelly

This was the first non-Harry Bosch book I had read by Connelly. It has many of the same traits, being set in California and having a grittiness about it, that is reminiscent of 'hard boiled' crime novels of the mid-20th Century. However, he has tried to adopt a slightly different approach in having a former FBI investigator being asked by the sister of the dead woman who provided his heart transplant to investigate her murder. While the character Terry McCaleb lives on a boat, like Sonny Crockett in 'Miami Vice' (1984-90) though this one is rather a worn down one which belonged to his father, he has no legal standing and has to rely on favours especially from an old friend in the sheriff's office. As might be expected the killing during a hold-up proves to be more than it first appears and connected to a number of other killings.

The motivation for the killing does seem rather contorted and the signposts, retrospectively seem very blatant. However, the difficulty of trying to investigate without even the powers a US private investigator has and a man who is far from healthy, is an interesting approach; for much of the book he has to be driven around by his neighbour who keeps pushing his nose into the investigation. There are some interesting scenes when he is trying to get information illicitly and is running up against opposition from the police and those connected to the victims. It is pretty good on the impact of an apparently random killing on the people left behind. Overall, not a bad attempt. As I say, some of it seems rather far-fetched after the link between the crimes is revealed, but the story telling is otherwise reasonable.

I had not realised it was made into a movie in 2002, starring Clint Eastwood; I have never come across it.

'Dragonflight' by Anne McCaffrey

This is the first in a series of fantasy books that were very popular when I was a teenager. The edition I have, published in 1992 was the 19th reprint of the book first published in 1969. However, like 'The Lord of the Rings' (1954-55) trilogy and 'The Mists of Avalon' (1983), I felt it was too too much of a rather naff, overused fantasy trope. They say do not judge books by their covers, but with this one, from those covers I assumed the whole series was rather a wishy-washy fairy story sequence about princesses and dragons. I went off and read Michael Moorcock books instead. However, finding a slim copy in a charity shop - and you can tell the age because it is a fantasy novel coming in at 255 pages, rather than 855 - I thought I would give it a go. In fact it turned out as being far closer to anything by Moorcock than Tolkien or Zimmer Bradley.

For a start, it is effectively, science fiction as it is set on Pern, a world settled by humans, somewhere in the galaxy some millennia earlier. However, distant from Earth technology has reverted to being medieval. The dragons are very much those we know from Western mythology though they have to eat a rocky fuel in order to breathe flame. They have been trained to fly with human riders to intercept 'threads' which fall from another planet which is on an elliptical path and passes close to Pern every 200 years or so. The dragons can teleport and it subsequently proves, travel through time, too. However, seen the last passing, the dragon riders even the hatching of dragons, has declined and they are contested as being necessary for Pern's safety by the various local rulers.

Some of the elements of the novel follow classic fantasy tropes, so Lessa is a young noblewoman whose family were usurped from ruling a Hold, and she has to disguise herself and work in the kitchens until identified as a possible dragon rider and not only does she become one, but she is partnered with the current queen gold dragon. Much of the novel covers how the dragon riders, latterly led by F'lar the rider of the leading male bronze dragon, and Lessa work to restore the standing of the dragon riders in Pern society and ready for the imminent approach of the other planet. They face opposition to various steps from among the dragonriders and wider society, especially among leaders.

What is interesting about the book, is that on the surface this looks like a hundred other fantasy novels. However, undercut with a very strong feminist perspective McCaffrey dodges away from what you might expect. Lessa and F'lar have sex but they are not really lovers. They often have completely different opinions. The piecing together of the history of what happened, how the various Weyrs - strongholds of the dragon riders, have now fallen to just one, is interestingly done. Added to that it soon proves that some of the schemes go badly wrong. The use of apostrophed names probably did fit the trope and some are too alike to make it easy occasionally to decide who is being spoken about.

Overall though, I found the approach refreshing and meant I was uncertain what might happen next rather than going through the motions of a very similar story. I think this rather highlights what has been lost from fantasy writing which was apparent in the late 1960s/early 1970s when people were willing to experiment much more than they are these days. While there is greater representation in fantasy now, an author coming clearly along a feminist line seems less common.

I can see why these books were so popular, though knowing some of the people I know who read them, I do wonder how they got on with the more challenging aspects given the other books they read. Maybe they missed the feminism and simply looked to the dragons in action. Anyway, I do wonder who else like me, in contrast, was put off by the covers, so turned away from books that would have been of interest at the time.

'Eaters of the Dead' by Michael Crichton

This book probably deserves an award for the most misleading title. This book is not a zombie novel but the source of the movie 'The Thirteenth Warrior' (1999). It features a real man, Arab ambassador, Ahmad Ibn Fadlan (879-960 CE) who was sent in 922 CE from Baghdad to travel to Bulgaria but never got there and went off on other unrecorded adventures. The first three chapters are a translation of his actual account of travelling through the Middle East to southern Europe and are terribly simplistic and repetitive. Then Crichton brings in the fiction and has Ibn Fadlan travel through Russia to various parts of Scandinavia with a small band of Nordic warriors charged with ridding a particular region of the eponymous eaters of the dead. Most of the rest of the book is about the action against these people, who we are led to believe are Neanderthal survivors living on in remote parts of northern Europe. Crichton wrote the book in 1976 but the edition I have had was came out in 1992 and had a supplementary essay at the end about how his portrayal of different species of humans living on alongside Cro Magnon people has been reinforced. Of course, with the discovery of  Denisovans and Homo luzonensis, now among 20 species of humans identified, subsequently have strengthened his idea even further.

This is not a bad book, but while moderately diverting, it is not engaging. I think at the time Crichton expected us to be more excited by a story about Vikings and Neanderthals, but both are very well known in fiction now. He had no need to include the historical sections of the book and adopting the approaches seen in the movie would have worked much better. In general I would say, do not bother with the book, simply watch the movie, it is a much more satisfying experience especially for audiences today.

'Figure of Hate' by Bernard Knight

This is the ninth book in the novels about Sir John De Wolfe, coroner of southern Devon and as with the previous ones it follows on closely from the one before. The series has now reached October 1195 and there has been a bit of a re-set. The Bush tavern in which De Wolfe has an interest and is run by his mistress has been rebuilt and his brother-in-law has been removed from being Sheriff of Devon on grounds of corruption. Though compelled to retire to his estates he still makes trouble for De Wolfe in this novel. De Wolfe's clerk, Thomas de Peyne has been cleared of the charges against him and can re-enter the church and acquires an apprentice in his work for the coroner.

The novel opens with a fair imminent in Exeter. Perhaps because I have quite often worked as a market trader, I do enjoy stories set against the background of a medieval fair, such as 'Saint Peter's Fair' (1981) by Ellis Peters in the Cadfael series. However, this book does encompass a number of what appear to be distinct crimes, from the murder of a silversmith to the killing of a manor lord fifteen miles outside Exeter. Another element is the inclusion of jousts which were already developing as a kind of professional sporting circuit. The manor lord, Hugh Peverel and his his brother are leading lights in this field, though falling on harder times.

The novel is interesting for these aspects of medieval life. As noted before Knight liked to include different ones and their associated laws in each book. The bringing together of the different crimes is handled quite well, though there is a bit too much riding back and forth to the manor of Barton Peverell. Furthermore arrogant members of the gentry telling De Wolfe repeatedly that he has no jurisdiction and is wasting time is overdone and become very tedious. The level of poverty of serfs especially on a poorly run manor is, however, deftly highlighted. This then, is a solid entry in the series that could have been tauter with some editing of repeated encounters.

Non-Fiction

'American Scoundrel' by Thomas Keneally

Keneally is best known for 'Schindler's Ark' (1982). This book is less a novel than that book, but Keneally seems unable to keep it purely as a work of non-fiction. It focuses on US Congressman and diplomat Major General Daniel Sickles (1819-1914). He was a politician from New York city in the mid-19th Century. He was very involved in corrupt practices right from the start. He was highly disreputable, having a string of mistresses and taking a brothel madam as his companion to meet Queen Victoria when serving in the US diplomatic service in London. He made friends relatively easy and also created hangers-on via the corrupt allocation of posts at city and national level. He got to such a level that he was friendly with President James Buchanan, who when ambassador to Britain he served under and the wife of President Abraham Lincoln. Though supportive of the slave states' rights, he did a volte face at the outbreak of the civil war, infuriated by the secessionists' attacks on federal property. Raising army units in New York, he eventually rose to be a Major General in command of the Union's Third Corps and was at the Battle of Gettysburg where he lost a leg.

Though Keneally gives immense detail, at times very tedious about, Sickles, his main focus is on his acquittal for murdering Philip Key, the District Attorney for Washington D.C., close to the White House. He shot the man repeatedly with two pistols and there was no doubt he had murdered him. Key had been having an ill-concealed relationship with Sickles's wife, Teresa, eighteen years his junior. Sickles was acquitted on the grounds of temporary insanity provoked by the flagrant affair that Key had had with his wife. This was the first time temporary insanity had been used as a defence in the USA. Teresa and his daughter were compelled to retire from public life in shame and were neglected by Sickles for the rest of his life; his daughter Laura died in poverty aged 38. Sickles repeated the same behaviour with his second wife, the Spaniard Carmina Creagh who he met while US ambassador to Spain and with whom he had two children.

One might comprehend that this book highlights the double standards of the day and indeed that have persist into modern times. A man can be corrupt, have a string of lovers and cheat on his wife repeatedly, but one affair by her is condemned so severely that it is seen as permissible for her to have her lover murdered with impunity and for her to be shunned by society as the guilty party. Keneally largely neglects this perspective. His attitude towards Sickles is highly ambivalent and you keep feeling that he cannot help himself admire the man. At times, especially when Teresa was almost a recluse in New York, he throws in these weird speculations about how there could have been a reconciliation to her by her husband and how she could have played roles like other politicians' and generals' wives. These bits are odd in a book which in theory is a history book, because they have no basis beyond Keneally's imagination. They also neglect Sickles's supreme arrogance that despite his sustained promiscuous behaviour and even after having murdered her lover, it seems with malice aforethought if not cold blood, he was so offended as never to forgive her.

There are interesting background elements about US society in the mid- to late 19th Century. It is no surprise to see that corruption and violent crime even by 'respectable' members of US society were as rife then as they are now. The carrying of guns in Washington and their use seems very contemporary to us. The prime problem is that Keneally cannot shake off his admiration for Daniel Sickles and so throughout you feel that he is complicit with the corruption, the double standards and the arrogance. As a reader of today, that is a slant that is very hard to swallow. There are further problems at least with the version of the book I was given, published by Vintage in 2002. The type is tiny and to make it worse the opening lines of each chapter are in pale grey rather than black.

Overall unless you are a really arrogant misogynist who wants to look for some kind of role model, I would completely avoid this book. For a modern audience, even more than 20 years ago, the author's ambivalence to inappropriate behaviour really sticks in your throat.