The Books I Read In March

Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

'The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard' by Arthur Conan Doyle

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

'The Other Side of Silence' by Philip Kerr

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

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

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

Non-Fiction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Books I Read In February

 Fiction

'The Lady from Zagreb' by Philip Kerr

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

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

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

'The Second Sleep' by Robert Harris

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

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

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

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

'Dinner for Two' by Mike Gayle

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

Books I Read In January

 Fiction

'My Name is Red' by Orhan Pamuk

It was highlighted that this book translated from Turkish was written very much in a Turkish style. I have to confess I found that hard going. There are multiple points of view and we move between them at random almost like a game of 'tag' rather than in a structured way.  In addition, drawings and even a colour appear as 'characters' in the book. The murderer has two identities that we see through the eyes of at different times.

The book is set in Constantinople in the 1590s and rotates around book illustrators, one of whom is murdered near the start of the book, and their various relatives. It informs you a great deal about the style of book illustration of the time and the stories which were most popular. The style of a particular artist is used in part to determine the killer. There is also the background tension of the traditional approach to illustration inherited from Persia and other regions east of Anatolia and the 'new' more realistic approach coming from western Europe via the Venetians which is a more realistic rendering of people's features and perspective. This then touches on religious questions around the representation of people in Islamic art. 

Though the cast of characters is well drawn, at time the book descends into soap opera territory especially about the wife of a missing soldier husband and whether she can remarry - and who - and whether she should live in her father's house or her in-laws house and so on. While this aspect tells us more about the characters it does become rather laboured, piling an extra layer on top of the murder mystery and all the discussions about art. The investigation itself also goes off into philosophical paths using a formula which I imagine may be familiar for Turkish readers but for Western readers just adds further complications.

There is a lot in this book and it is informative. The characters are believable. However, the very slow pace of the book and constant diversions from one or other of the main threads makes it quite tiresome to read. I admire the work that went into this book but did not enjoy reading it.

'The Vampye and Other Tales of the Macabre' ed. by Robert Morrison and Chris Baldick

This is a collection of stories and articles published in literary magazines, 1819-1838. While following on from the Gothic mania of the previous century, these stories, notably 'The Vampyre' (1819) by John Polidori really developed horror tropes which remain with us even some 200 years later. It was written during the same competition at Villa Diodati near Geneva where Mary Shelley wrote 'Frankenstein' (1818). Indeed when  'The Vampyre' was first published it was attributed to their host Lord Byron rather that Polidori, the doctor of Byron's friend, the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Polidori is acknowledged for changing the character of the vampire from being undead peasants to a lord, a man of society. Interestingly, the vampire antagonist, Lord Ruthven as well as drinking blood, also works to ruin decent men and to promote nefarious ones, so you have the sense of his evil beyond the standard vampire diet.

The stories in the collection are written in a style and language of the time, but fortunately the editors provide a lot of background information on each, if the reader is unfamiliar with the context, and translations of archaic terms. In the case of 'Sir Evelyn's Dream' by Horace Smith this is particularly necessary as it is set some 200 years earlier still and he seeks to use language of that time. While many of the stories are supernatural in nature, featuring ghosts, others are more accounts of grim happenings of the time 'Confessions of a Reformed Ribbonman' by William Carelton is simply the account of a vigilante killing in Ireland and 'Some Terrible Letters from Scotland' collected by James Hogg, is largely accounts of the spread of cholera. 'Life in Death' featuring a reanimation potion with only partial effects, in fact can be considered a science fiction story.

Others such as 'Monos and Daimonos' by Edward Buller, 'The Master of Logan' by Allan Cunningham, 'The Curse', 'The Red Man' by Catherine Gore, 'The Bride of Lindorf' by Letitia E. Landon and 'Passage in the Secret History of an Irish Countess' by the better known Sheridan Le Fanu, are all satisfyingly either supernatural or of a horror nature for the reader looking for short classic Gothic stories. They also remind me of Roald Dahl's 'Tales of the Unexpected' (1979), the sequels and TV series based on them. Overall this was an interesting collection of often forgotten stories which impinge on Gothic and horror writing long after they were published.

Non-Fiction

'The Hare with Amber Eyes' by Edmund De Waal

This is the second time in two months that I have mistaken a non-fiction book for fiction. In fact this was an investigation by the author, a descendant of the incredibly wealthy Ephrussi family. The linking aspect are the 264 intricate netsuke - ornate Japanese ornaments made of wood or ivory, to keep cords in place on someone's clothing in the 19th Century - that he inherited. You have to admire his effort in finding how they first arrived in Europe during the mid-19th Century fad for Japonisme and the context in which they were housed in Paris before moving to Vienna as a wedding present and then to the care of De Waal's uncle who lived in Japan following the Second World War. It is an interesting account of an incredibly wealthy family who were destroyed by the coming of Nazism and the persecution of Jews. Their wealth did allow most to escape into exile. A dedicated servant preserved the netsuke during the Second World War so they could be reunited with the family afterwards. However, vast quantities of artwork sold to help pay for passage into exile or seized by the Nazis are now housed in galleries across the world.

I really admired the hard work De Waal put in digging up the story of his ancestors especially in the turbulent times in which they lived. However, you quickly have had enough of all the details of the vast houses they built and the extensive art collections they assembled. While their wealth did not exempt them from persecution, most of the family came away alive. In addition, it is clear that De Waal is rather unaware of his own privileges. He works as a potter and yet owns a house in London and clearly has the time and the money to fly off across Europe and into Asia, whenever he wishes. While it is an interesting story it is one that left me feeling uneasy, particularly for those Jewish people living in Vienna and Paris who were unable to get away.

'The Hitler State' by Martin Broszat

This is a good supplement to the four volumes on the rise and maintenance of power by Noakes & Pridham that I read in 2022/23, notably Volume 2: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-books-i-read-in-november.html Broszat goes a level deeper and shows just how complicated Germany was under the Nazis. We are familiar with the sense that the regime was chaotic and that Hitler was happy to foster competing organisations often overlapping. This book provides the detail of those and how different bodies ebbed and flowed throughout the period, particularly in the pre-war years. It features many of the second- and third-rank Nazis which tend not to get featured even in specialist books on the regime and shows how different characters and ambitions, and the arguments among them, fuelled the chaos. In particular Broszat addresses the balance between Party and State, contrasting Germany with the USSR in this respect and articulating the contests between authoritarian - due to the persistence of so much from the previous state systems - and totalitarian trends. In the fields of the economy and industry, he shows how the entwining between official positions and private business was 'messy' but in fact allowed the German economy and output to continue. Ironically this mashing together of the private and the official was very much how Britain ran its wartime economy too. Overall this is a detailed account which really demonstrates the every-changing 'machine' of the Nazi regime. However, it does beg the question how much more deadly Nazi Germany would have been to the world if it has been organised effectively or even just on a rational basis.