The Books I Read In June

 Fiction

'Prussian Blue' by Philip Kerr

Like many of the Bernie Gunther stories, this one is set in two time periods, 1956 - following on directly from the events shown in 'The Other Side of Silence' which I read in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html and the spring of 1939. Gunther is chased out of the French Riviera by Stasi agents and the actions goes between him trying to reach West Germany and get clear of them and when he was sent to Hitler's complex near Berchtesgaden where an official has been shot dead by a sniper. There are reasons to connect the two time periods, but in fact it would have worked if simply the 1939 case had been shown. For this case Gunther is sent by Heydrich but is working to Martin Bormann. He encounters a variety of different forms of corruption not simply around the construction of Hitler's retreat at Obersalzberg but also a local brothel.

The brief coverage of the flight in 1956 only occasionally distracts from the fascinating portrayal of how extensively Obersalzberg was remodelled above and below ground, including evicting numerous local residents and demolishing houses. This provided the basis for motives among very many. This combined with the tradition of hunting in the region makes it a challenge for Gunther to identify the killer especially when dodging around internecine Nazi rivalry. The tightness of focus for the majority of the book on the neighbourhood in southern Bavaria, I feel makes this one of the more effective of the late Gunther books and it was a satisfying crime novel read, whether or not you are familiar with the details of the era.

'City of Fallen Angels' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fourth book in the Mortal Instruments Series series. I ended up with the final three books as well as the preceding three I read a few years back. As I noted having finished 'City of Glass' (2009): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2021/04/books-i-listened-toread-in-april.html that felt like the end of a trilogy. Thus, this one feels a little like an anti-climax. It occurs all in New York and the leads of the previous novels are generally living lives as young adults with exceptional powers. Simon the vampire features much more in this novel and gets into complicated situations dating both a shadowhunter and a werewolf and slowly a greater threat than the love lives of these teenagers comes to the fore. The latter parts of the novel work well on the basis of a fantasy novel and I am guessing the YA elements of much of the book did not overly appeal as I am certainly not part of that demographic. Saying that the book moves along steadily and despite the fantasy outlook and the particular preoccupations of the young people, the characters and what they do comes over as convincing. For example Simon fearing he might have killed a girl when losing control of his vampire hunger, is well handled.

'The Crow Road' by Iain Banks

After reading 'Espedair Street' (1987) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html in April and having seen the dramatization of this novel back in 1996 I was optimistic that this would be a good read. Unfortunately, this book is less than the sum of its parts. Banks ranges back and forth in time to feature various members of the McHoan family and their neighbours across the social classes, in south-west Scotland. There are well written scenes, but sometimes you have no idea what time period is featured in the particular slice of text before it jumps on to something else. Featuring many of the same characters at different stages from 1945 to 1990, makes this very difficult. Sometimes the jump from one chunk to the next is only a matter of a few months or years, at other times it can be decades.

The book also suffers from that pretentious approach, which I guess might have seemed exciting or innovative back in the 1980s, of featuring a book in it which has the same title as the novel itself. In fact two embryonic 'Crow Road' novels are featured in the story and one has some of the same text as the one we are reading. None of this helps with clarity. By the end I realised why Banks had adopted this approach and that was because if it had all been written out 'straight' then it simply would have been a family drama across the decades. While there was a legitimate mystery it would still be akin to many other unexceptional novels. Fragmenting it and jumbling up the pieces seems to be aiming to instill a greater sense of mystery and somehow to make it more sophisticated than a Julie Garwood novel.

The portrayal of various locations in Scotland, no matter in what era they are shown in, is handled very well and is a highlight of the book. In addition, the angst of a teenager/young man attracted to various women, is also written well, I imagine from the author's personal recollection.

I must say that unless I had relocated to Scotland in 2021, I would have really struggled to have understood some of the dialogue especially in the early chapters. If you are unfamiliar with mid- to late 20th Century Scottish version of English vernacular, this might prove a real challenge. Overall, though if interested in this story, I suggest you watch the BBC TV series instead.

'Surfeit of Suspects' by George Bellairs [Harold Blundell]

Published in 1964, this is the fortieth book in the Thomas Littlejohn series, by which time the protagonist is a Superintendent. It is set in the fictional Surrey town of Evingden where an explosion kills three directors of a failing joinery company. It soon transpires they were killed with dynamite and Littlejohn and his Inspector Cromwell are drawn into a complex fraud involving three shell companies. As is noted in the introductory essay by Martin Edwards who has this role for these British Library reprints, the outlook of the book even in 1964 was dated. Bellairs first book had been published in 1941 and you could certainly envisage this one being published a decade earlier. However, a lot of the motive for the multiple murders (and a suicide) are around the modernisation of the town including electric street lighting replacing gas lighting; the building of new shopping centres and housing estates leading to an increase in population. Thus, the very fact of the passing of an era forms the basis for the story and shows how the characters themselves are looking to engage with business in the 1960s boom.

The plot becomes increasingly complex and it is no surprise that Bellairs was a bank manager all his life. Perhaps a modern reader will be more familiar with shell companies and insider trading, but even so you have to pay attention, though the author takes you through the increasing layers steadily rather than in a rush. He does conjure up a feasible setting and his characters, none of whom are particularly likeable, come across as believable especially for that time and place. While if writing in 2024 Bellairs would probably be categorised as writing 'cosy' crime novels, the spite and selfishness, let alone their sense of entitlement, of these multiple suspects is well communicated. Even now, let alone when it was published, I feel sure readers can identify people very much like those portrayed.

Non-Fiction

'A History of British Trade Unionism' by Henry Pelling

This is a brisk and accessible account of trade unions in Britain (and indeed their connections to foreign unions) from the late 18th Century 'combinations' through to 1963 just ahead of the return to power of Labour and the final steps in the corporatism into which unions had been drawn during the Second World War. Despite the complexity of the numerous unions in British society, Pelling handles this well without simply focusing on the largest, to give a solid picture of developments at each stage. Both showing how extensive situations like the Taff Vale Judgement of 1901, the 1911 national strikes and the General Strike of 1926 developed and panned out but drawing on examples from across the country to show the range of experiences and indeed the frictions between unions.

I had my attention drawn to Margaret Bondfield, Chair of the TUC Council in 1923 and Minister of Labour, 1929-31, who I have to confess I was ignorant of and there may be others who played important roles in UK industrial relations that tend to have been forgotten. Perhaps most disheartening was recognising the challenges that many workers faced in the mid- to late 19th Century are those plaguing workers in the 2020s. Pelling charts the growth and steady success of trade unions but was oblivious to how much this was to be reversed in 20 years of his book being published.

The Books I Read In April

 Fiction

'A Second Chance' by Jodi Taylor

This is the third book in the Chronicles of St. Mary's series (though with the additional 'between books' added in subsequently, it is now the fifth) about a British university unit which uses time machines. As noted with the previous ones, the tone of these books is uncertain. It opens with the heroine Max having been captured at the Fall of Troy waiting in a line of women who are being raped and then killed or shipped off to slavery. This harrowing scene, more of which appears later, contrasts with the jaunty, sometimes humorous tone of the book. 

The light-heartedness certainly jars when genuine grave decisions are called for and when tragedy hits. I have mentioned before that while Max is an adult, probably in her thirties, with a doctorate, her attitude is very much like a girl half her age. Taylor does take the stories off in unpredictable directions. While there are "rules" she is happy to break them and at the end of this story Max ends up in a parallel universe.

Despite this awkwardness, the stories move along briskly. The portrayal of the various scenes in history is well handled. Poor Sir Isaac Newton gets interfered with (as he did in a recent 'Doctor Who' episode) and it seems that without the input of time travellers he would never have achieved anything much except determine the date the world was created. Though grim, the scenes in Troy are done very well and provide an excellent historical interpretation of the various myths around the war. 

I have now got quite a lot of the books in this series second hand so while I have some uncertainties about them, I am liable to be reviewing more over the next couple of years.

'Doing Time' by Jodi Taylor

This is the first book in Taylor's Time Police series. It runs parallel to and sometime bisects with her St. Mary's books. They are all set in some undeclared near future though one where mid-20th Century technology seems still to be in use too. This one is set a couple of decades ahead of the St. Mary's stories and answers some of the glaring questions from those books, notably how come only a small British university unit are the only ones to have time machines. This book is set after the Time Wars in which different nations tried to rewrite history to favour them leading to chaos. The international Time Police have been set up, conveniently for a UK author, based in London and seeming to feature exclusively British staff.

This book is more clearly YA in tone, featuring three young people: Jane, Luke and Matthew who for various reasons have had difficult upbringings. Once we find out who Matthew is, it provides spoilers for the St. Mary's series so I suggest ready well beyond Book 3 in that series before being tempted over to this one. While Taylor's outlook fits well with YA protagonists there is still a jarring between the brutal and the chummy/light-hearted. The Time Police have the authority to execute anyone doing illegal time travel and a brutal murder is also at the heart of this novel. As typical of Taylor's work, the pace and attention to historical details - they go to see the assassination of Julius Caesar - rather carries you over the cracks.

'Espedair Street' by Iain Banks

On the surface, the premise of this novel, published in 1987, about an ageing 1970s rock star living in a converted church in Glasgow reminiscing, seemed unpromising. However, I think it is the best book by Banks that I have read so far. Dan Weir recounts his rise from his early days in Glasgow to being the bassist and lyricist with globally successful Frozen Gold. It alternates between the present when he hangs around with local oddballs and the history of the band. Readers often liken the band to Fleetwood Mac, though in music style more to Pink Floyd. Banks himself has said Dan is rather like Fish from Marillion. However, there are elements such as a tragic death on stage and enraging Christians in the USA that come from the pool of rock myths/legends so seem familiar from the stories of The Beatles and 'This is Spinal Tap'  (1984). There are probably references that I have missed.

I recognise that I have come to this book very late and 37 years ago when it was published it probably seemed fresh, even satirical. Yet, despite the tropes and the familiar situations, I really feel this is where Banks's skill shines through. At times you feel he is over-rated but in this case I could understand where admiration for him shines through. There is a real deftness in the writing of this book which carries you on briskly and makes you genuinely interested in the character.

'The Body in the Dumb River' by George Bellairs [Harold Blundell]

This is another of those forgotten mystery authors - he published fifty books in his life, this is the 35th in his Thomas Littlejohn series - that was featured in the British Library reprint collection. I picked up quite a few more at the weekend so there will be more coming up. This was published in 1961, but set in rural Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire, aside from the reference to council estates and the Second World War, it could easily have been published between the wars. The novel begins during heavy flooding when the body of a man identified locally as James Lane is found in a flooded embanked river. He is known as a man who runs a hoopla stall at travelling fairs across southern and eastern England. However, it is soon revealed that he is in fact James Teasdale a seller of arts supplies from a small town in Yorkshire close to Sheffield.

The book is a very good representation of social class in 20th Century English society. The dead man is entangled with a generally nasty wife and father-in-law who despite their decline in fortunes think very highly of themselves. Teasdale's alternate, somewhat freer life seems to be set in contrast to the more 'respectable' one he had lived, though he was having an adulterous relationship with a younger woman who also worked the fair. The mystery is soon resolved and it becomes more an issue of interlocking personalities. The strengths of the novel are less the mystery and more the portrayal of desultory decaying settings and a range of unpleasant people each with their own myths and drivers.

Non-Fiction

'Industrial Society: Social Sciences in Management' ed. by Denis Pym

It might seem strange to be reading a book published in 1968 about management practices. However, if you look back down the non-fiction books I have reviewed over the past few years you can see that I had an interest in the economic developments of the post-war period 1945-75. This book was published at a time when sociology and psychology and their application to industrial and economic practices was growing. There had been a couple of decades of research since the war, more applied than the theoretical work inter-war, which allowed analysis to be applied. This book takes on a whole host of topics and some seem very dated now, though the expectations of computerisation were prescient. Market research and ergonomics were also becoming commonplace. This such as concerns about restrictive practices and corporatism with trade unions, do feel very historic.

Perhaps the most interesting chapters for a modern reader are the early ones. The fuss about restrictive practices and why they occur is a good reminder from Alan Fox about how different the post-war workplace was. However, Dorothy Wedderburn on redundancy, the Belbins on retraining older workers and in later chapters, D.G. Clark on the industrial manager, P.J. Sadler on executive leadership and Peter B. Smith on training and developing executives, unfortunately have perceptive things to say, that seem to need to be repeated even some 56 years later. Perhaps the two most acute chapters are by the editor himself. Pym has a chapter on the misuse of professional manpower (one thing that dates the book is that all workers and managers are 'he' unless seamstresses or waitresses) and on individual growth and strategies of trust.

Much of what is recommended in this book written over half-a-century ago, would be what we would expect to see in the best functioning, inclusive companies today. The examples of poor management practice, the dismissing of the development of workers and hierarchical behaviours, unfortunately are all too prevalent even in the 2020s. One situation and set of approaches by managers leading to poor outcomes, shown by Pym, is identical to my workplace experience under such a manager, just last year.

I suppose what Pym and his colleagues did not foresee was the rise of the New Right in the mid-1970s and how the Thatcher governments were not simply going to eliminate what were identified here of difficulties with working with unions, but to reassert a very old fashioned, 'Victorian values' approach to the workplace that employers naturally felt liberated to adopt. The authors in this book could not accept that mass unemployment would ever be allowed again, let alone be engineered to return in order to 'discipline' the workforce in the way that was to follow within 12 years of this book being published.

It is interesting to look back to see what people analysing industry, thought. However, it is highly disheartening to realise that the things that they identified as making the British workplace dysfunctional and inefficient, indeed quite toxic to work in, have not just continued largely unchallenged but have been reasserted as the 'only right way' to run capitalist industry.