The Books I Read In September

 Fiction

'Metropolis' by Philip Kerr

This is the last of the Bernie Gunther novels, the second published posthumously. Unlike the ones leading up to it, rather than straddling two time periods and going into the 1950s, this one is focused purely on Berlin in 1928. Consequently, despite Gunther encountering a range of celebrities and indeed spurring the development of the movie 'M' (1931) is more of a down-to-Earth detective story, not involving espionage, and all the better for that. Gunther is new to the Murder Commission in the Berlin police and is charged with the murder of four prostitutes and then with the killings of disabled war veterans. The two topics can be seen as quintessential foci for a Weimar Republic novel, something emphasised when Gunther meets both George Grosz and Otto Dix, attends rehearsals for the 'The Threepenny Opera' and spends time among representatives of the criminal rings and the Berlin night clubs. It is almost as if for this final book, Kerr put in every element which a reader might expect for a novel in that context.

I do find the 'name checking' rather tiresome and it rather exposes the 'wiring' of the novel too much. An encounter with one of these famous people of the era would have been sufficient. However, setting this aspect aside this is a decent crime novel and like the best of Kerr's work really gets you into the place and the time while providing a convincing series of events. As the last novel, it is nice that it effectively takes you back to the first in the series, 'March Violets' (1989). While the quality of the Gunther novels varies and his 'conceits' can be irritating, for the large part they are really engaging and much less of the unnecessary tangle that those of Volker Kutscher set in the same context are prone to. I will miss the Bernie Gunther books.

'City of Heavenly Fire' by Cassandra Clare

This is the sixth and final book in Clare's The Mortal Instruments series and like the preceding ones follows on directly from the one before which I read in July: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html  As you might expect this one works to the climax with the protagonists of the novels coming to the final showdown with the heroine Clary's estranged half-brother, Sebastian/Jonathan who is threatening to conquer Idris the home of the Shadowhunters. It requires all the young people to go into a hellish realm to fight him and save all the Shadowhunters especially in stopping them being termed into obedient zombies of Jonathan, and naturally the Earth. It does rather feel like a typical YA story, given the range of abilities, more like the Famous Five, than the Buffy team. Clary and her love of all the books, Jace, have sex, even though I am concerned they are underage - something the TV series was careful to alter - and have holy lava running through them. In many ways especially in the other realm, while they still all have the sassiness of New York teenagers, it is more like a usual fantasy novel quest. While a lot of people get killed, even relatively major characters, there is a satisfying ending for the world and even for Simon, Clary's childhood friend and vampire who is stripped of his powers. 

The series is almost an archetype of YA fantasy coming out from the USA. Perhaps reading it when it came out 2007-14 it would have seemed fresher than now. However, now so much of it is common across a whole host of books. However, credit must be given to Clare for her deft control of her material and knowing what her prime audience are seeking. It does appear as if she is developing characters in this one for a follow-on series, but as yet that has not manifested and perhaps suitably she has gone on to similar, but as far as I understand, not directly connected stories.

'Stonemouth' by Iain Banks

I do not know if I am picking the wrong books to read from Banks's work, but after 'The Crow Road' (1992) I feel I am seeing too much of him writing kind of family epics set in different parts of Scotland. This one is set across a few days in the fictional town of Stonemouth, on the North-East coast of Scotland, north of Aberdeen. It does really pander to stereotypes of Scotland, with bleakness, violence, suicide (mainly from a bridge, one of Banks's obsessions) alcoholism and drug abuse being dominant. In some ways it is also like a Western. Stewart Gilmour now successful in lighting buildings artistically returns to the town to attend the funeral of an elderly man he had known well. The town is divided between two crime families. Historically he fell in love with, Ellie Murston, the daughter of one of these and was engaged to marry her. As the novel unfolds we find out what he did that so angered the woman's brothers who chased him from the town, so I will not give that away. Gilmour has to seek permission from both the families to return to the town even for a matter of days. He does reconnect with old friends both male and female from the place and much is about the different roads they have followed in the years since.

The book feels pretty much like an Ian Rankin novel, with the portrayal of tacky wealthy houses and seedy pubs and clubs in the town. The fact that violence can occur almost in an instant and something that happened five years earlier with harm to a sense of propriety rather than anything else can be sufficient for someone to draw a gun, is chilling and realistic, but you did wonder if we needed to see it again. Rankin, among many others, has this well covered. Ironically Banks brings in another common thread from his novels, that of the rather pathetic man in love with the (almost) unattainable woman, that we saw in 'Walking on Glass' (1985), The Crow Road' and 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I have all read this year. 'Stonemouth' could be seen as a (bleak) romance, not quite a 'Romeo & Juliet' story but certainly about trying to have a relationship when others feel they have a right to police it. I see that the novel was dramatised for television in 2015, but I saw too many episodes of 'Taggart' (broadcast 1985-2010) to want to seek it out.

'Jumping Jenny' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkeley Cox]

This novel from 1933 is another in the British Library reprint series. Like Cox's other books I have read: 'The Poison Chocolates Case' (1929) - https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html and  'The Murder in the Basement' (1932) - https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html in this one, the author seeks to subvert the standard approach to crime writing of the time, something he was familiar with from being the founder of a club for crime fiction authors of the time. The setting is a party at a large country house populated with upper middle class people all dressed as murderers from history. There is a gallows tree on the roof from which hang three mannequins, one female. This proves to be the site of the death of the most obnoxious guest Ena Stratton, a noisy exhibitionist who whines when not the centre of attention. Roger Sheringham, the crime writer and amateur detective is one of the guests. However, in contrast to most crime novels of this ilk, when accused of the murder himself, he goes to great lengths not simply to prove he was not the perpetrator but also to clear the man he thinks was the killer but happens to be a friend of his.

While the setting is a well known one, Cox is deft in his writing and you really engage with the story as Sheringham works hard to persuade the other guests that his account of what has gone on, and that Ena committed suicide, is the correct interpretation, in particular around the location of a specific chair. Once more in Cox is gently critiquing crime novels and how they contort things to make the story work, to a lesser extent than in 'The Poison Chocolates Case' but in a way which is of interest to anyone who has read the classic crime novels of the era. The ending has twist upon twist which simply brings that critique right home.

'Cursed' by Benedict Jacka

Well, as I said when I read the first book in this series, 'Fated' (2012) back in December 2018, https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/12/books-i-listened-toread-in-december.html I did come across the next book, this one, and bought it. It is written in the first person as we see Alex Verus, a mage with the ability to see the future, trying to run his business in Camden and train his apprentice Luna to control the unluck curse she has. Quickly he is drawn into attacks on magical creatures that live in modern day London and is particularly concerned for Arachne, his friend who is a giant spider that happens to be a dressmaker living under Hampstead Heath. With the character and the milieu of the Light and Dark mages established in the previous novel, there is less of the info dumping in this one and this means the action can move on more briskly. Jacka maintains the 20-something character of Alex and how he is perhaps too easily trusting and love/lust gets in the way especially when dealing with Luna and Meredith a charmer mage.

In general Jacka steers clear of predictable tropes and manages to world build well both in terms of the magic world and contemporary London (though Hampstead Heath is far less deserted at nighttime than portrayed in the novel, but I can see why he did not reflect that here!). It seems to 'work' both in terms of magic and the magical items. There is some real jeopardy and the betrayals are handled well. The series now stretches to 12 books and Jacka has a blog which he keeps up to date, which provides lots of background information on the books and his other activities: https://benedictjacka.co.uk/  'Taken' (2012) is the next one in the series. Again I will not rush to buy it, but if I see it, I would get it.

'Midwinter' by John Buchan

This novel from 1923 has many of the usual Buchanite traits, notably rich descriptions of the landscape, though in this case of the West Midlands, Peak District and Cumbria rather than anywhere in Scotland. It also has a protagonist being pursued all through these landscapes. However, aside from those aspects the book is a shambles. It is as if Buchan had too many ideas and did not know how to fit them all together. The story focuses on Captain Alistair Maclean who has come to Scotland in 1745 with the Jacobite army led by Prince Charles Edward. Maclean is sent ahead as the army moves from Scotland into England to sound out potential support in the south Midlands and co-ordinate offers of support from Wales.

It becomes apparent that among the English sympathisers someone is intercepting vital messages and betraying the Jacobite cause. Ill-informed the Jacobites advance too slowly and cautiously before retreating from Derby back to Scotland where they are crushed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746. This could be a gripping story but Buchan handles it poorly. Maclean does eventually identify the traitor, but the result is an anti-climax. He falls in love with Claudia Norrey one of the English sympathisers but she is devoted to her slippery if rather guileless husband and Maclean slowly realises he could never win her heart even if he killed that man.

Maclean does face jeopardy most clearly in being held to be thrown into a maelstrom in a pothole. However, much of the novel, he is sick, exhausted and imprisoned while the invasion advances around him. When he meets government supporters and even a general of the government army, they have genial chit-chat and there is no threat, just convoluted genteel conversation. Apart from some short stretches all sense of jeopardy is neglected. In addition there is an deus ex machina, the eponymous Midwinter, a kind of travelling man who has an extensive network of common men able to aid him and his friends at the drop of a hat or in fact the whistling of a tune. They are a neutral force in the conflict but able to rescue Maclean repeatedly.

Samuel Johnson, the dictionary composer appears as the former tutor and mentor of Claudia Norrey and keeps crossing paths with Maclean, ultimately doggedly following him across the country. While Johnson tempers Maclean's reactions to those he feels deserve death he appears more as a point of curiosity as a real life character in a fictional story but at a time when his whereabouts were unknown. He adds little except to drain more of the drama from the book. We do not even get to witness the Battle of Culloden which might have been a suitable climax, instead, Maclean through his tardiness and failures notably his personal obsessions takes on blame for the failure of the invasion.

While the descriptions are good, the life has been taken from this story and it is not a patch on 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898). If you want a decent novel set around the Jacobite invasion I suggest 'The Flight of the Heron' (1925) by D.K. Broster instead.

Non-Fiction

'Akenfield' by Ronald Blythe

When I bought this book, in a Penguin edition published in 1969, I thought it was fiction. However, it turns out to be an oral history of a rural village in eastern Suffolk. Though in reality it has a different name, the stories recounted to the author were all genuine. By interviewing people from a whole range of roles and standings in the community, from those on the bread line to the landowners, and public servants like police, teachers and trade unionists it aims to get the story of the place in the 20th Century and look at the changes the 1960s were bringing, in terms of society, the economy and agriculture, especially the training of new farm labourers. There is some nostalgic charm to it, such as the comments about bell-ringing. However, other parts are as bleak, almost as harrowing, as a book by Studs Turkel. What it alerts you to is while a lot of the focus of the 1930s Depression is on industrial closures, the countryside suffered just as much and in fact a kind of neo-feudalism reasserted itself, with the workers on poverty pay and at risk of losing their tied cottages. It also highlights the migration of Scottish farmers to take up abandoned farms in Suffolk.

For all the gloom of the accounts - and despite the improvements of the post-war era, the future still looks bleak at the time of writing, especially in terms of the fragmentation and segregation of village society - it is fascinating to hear the words of the different people. Sometimes they go off at a tangent which Blythe is happy to keep in. Social and oral history were really seeing a real burst of interest at the time the book was published and you can see why it was acclaimed. These days it is very useful for anyone writing a story set in the English countryside of the time, much less rose-tinted than some portrayals we see. It is also useful especially for that leavening of the story of the Depression which reached far beyond the Jarrow Crusade and South Wales coalminers in terms of its impact.

The Books I Read In August

Fiction
'The Poison Chocolates Case' by Anthony Berkeley [Anthony Berkely Cox]
Like his 'Murder in the Basement' (1932) which I read back in March: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/03/the-books-i-read-in-march.html this one from 1929, in many ways fits the writing of the 'golden age' of British detective novels, but also does well in subverting the genre. This one also features author Roger Sheringham and to a lesser extent Chief Inspector Moresby. In real life Cox established a club of detective authors and provides a fictional version of such a club in this novel. The members look into a 'cold case' in which Graham Bendix was given a box of poisoned liqueurs that had been received by an acquaintance of his, the disreputable Sir Eustace Pennefather, who had in turn been sent them at their gentlemen's club. Taking them home, Graham's wife, Joan eats many more of them and dies. In turn the six members of the club provide what sounds like a feasible explanation for the crime, who the intended victim actually was and the motives behind it. While they all bring in additional information, each of the explanations are effectively dismissed by other members of the club. In addition, in 1979 Christinna Brand and then in 2016 the introducer of this edition, Martin Edwards, provided their own chapters with two further explanations.


This novel might frustrate many readers because we never actually find out the 'truth'. In large part this was Cox's intention and it was pointing out to the fans of crime fiction of the era how easily they could be directed, even manipulated, into accepting an explanation which in fact might be no more feasible than any other. In that way it works as a kind of meta-fiction and would be useful for those who are interested in the 'mechanics' of classic crime fiction. The various characters are well drawn and there is a good insight into English middle/upper class society of the time. Cox avoids being smug in showing 'behind the scenes' and does really leave it to the reader, and whilst giving his message does not patronise us with his cleverness.


Some might find the novel repetitive and maybe it should be approached as a well-crafted exercise more than a standard detective story. However, apparently it was enjoyed by Agatha Christie. She had produced the short story 'The Clue of the Chocolate Box' for The Sketch in May 1923; it later appeared in 'Poirot's Early Cases' (1974), but while Cox uses a similar approach and mix-up, he does not seem to be critiquing Christie's story, unless one sees him having a go at detective fiction of the time in general.



'Tuf Voyaging' by George R.R. Martin
This is a collection of 8 short stories published mainly published in Analog magazine (one in Andromeda), 1976-85. They are science fiction and feature an obese, vegetarian, cat loving man called Haviland Tuf. He acquires a derelict 'seed ship', a 30Km long spaceship built to inflict biological warfare on enemies. The opening story is like the movie 'Alien' (1979) raised to a higher power as a group of looters are transported to the ship, 'The Ark' and face a range of horrendous diseases and creatures unleashed by the vessel in its own defence. While the stories were written out of sequence, the order in which they are organised here, works well and if you did not know otherwise you would imagine this had been created as a 'fix-up' book, i.e. a sequence of stories providing an overall novel, from the outset.


Tuf travels around between planets colonised by humans using the power of his ship's facilities to push the different colonies in directions that he prefers. One plagued by over-population needs repeated visits. Others are addicted to arena fights between ferocious animals, one is facing the rapid evolution of super-predators and a further one is suffering from a religious zealot trying to turn the clock back in terms of technology. Tuf is not a likeable character. He is snide in his behaviour and very picky in his language, constantly (sometimes very annoyingly) showing up the lack of logic in people's speech. He is self-righteous, though sometimes you would agree with the approaches he takes. While the smugness of the main character can jar, overall, the book even though it was put together, comes over as well constructed. There are rich portrayals of different colonies, their leaders and their challenges which do seem feasible. The opening story is gory, but it does settle down in the following seven.



'Prester John' by John Buchan
As 'John Burnet of Barns' (1898) which I read last month: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html clearly showed Buchan's engagement with the south Scottish countryside which would feature in later novels, this one published in 1910, brings out his personal connection and interest in South Africa. It features another young Scot, this time David Crawfurd, who is offered employment at a trading post in northern South Africa, following the 2nd Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). While there he re-encounters a black African church minister, John Laputa, he had run into back in Scotland in his youth and suspected, despite his preaching at kirks, that he was into black magic. It soon becomes apparent that Laputa is seeking to bring together various tribes and rise up against British rule, both drawing on the legend of 'Prester John' the mythical 'lost' king in central Africa and authority granted by wearing The Great Snake, a priceless ruby necklace that supposedly belonged to Prester John.


Clearly the book is pro-colonial and as you might expect the characters have a paternalistic, racialist approach not simply to the Africans but also the Portuguese, who at the time ruled neighbouring Mozambique. However, so that Crawfurd does face a real challenge, the rebels are not shown as fools and Crawfurd has a very challenging time trying to defeat Laputa and aid the defeat of the uprising. As is typical for Buchan there is a lot of rushing around the countryside. His portrayal of the landscape and its climate is always a strength of his writing. In addition, in part because of misreading the introductory essay, I had assumed Crawfurd would not survive the novel and the jeopardy, especially the exhaustion and scrambling across the rocky landscape seemed genuine. While very much of its time, you can see why Buchan's books have well outlasted the other 'empire adventures' written at the time.




Non-Fiction
'Fontana British Battlefields: The North' by Philip Warner
This is a 1970s book that appears to have been written in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey, certainly it gives details of which of their maps relate to the battlefield sites and how to reach them. This was the second book in a series covering different regions of Britain. By 'the North' it means England from Nottingham to the Scottish border. It gives crisp summaries of battles from Stamford Bridge in 1066 to Preston in 1648. It is adept at contextualising these in the broader contexts such as the Wars of the Roses and the War of Three Kingdoms and would be useful if visiting these areas. Whether the directions would remain accurate some 50 years on, I do not know. However, as part of the popular local history movement of that era it provides a useful and engaging brisk survey of the various battlefields ably putting them into both the local and wider contexts. I bought this book second hand some 40 years ago and while I see you can buy them second hand online and indeed there was a re-release in the 2010s, I have never myself stumbled across another since.


'Encyclopedia of the Third Reich' by Louis L. Snyder
Though I read it cover-to-cover, as the name indicates, this is an alphabetised reference book on an array of individuals, organisations and other aspects of the Nazi Regime. In fact, it goes back long before 1933 to look at the racialist and anti-Semitic writing and philosophies and the people that produced them, which fed into Nazi ideology. The edition of the book I had was published in 1998 but it is quickly apparent it was not revised from its original 1976 edition, so continues to show a lot of people still alive who were dead by the date of this edition's publication. There are consequently some gaps which would surprise the modern reader such as the fate of Martin Bormann and Josef Mengele. There is nothing more than speculation on the perpetrator of the Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler in November 1939, whereas we know it was carried out by Georg Elser, a woodworker and clock maker, who was arrested trying to escape across the Swiss border; imprisoned and later executed in April 1945.


Being an American publication, there tend to be lengthy quotations from American journalists and commentators of the time, that are longer than the topic really warrants, for example, on the signing of the armistice between France and Germany at Compiègne in June 1940. Another oddity is that it goes into some detail on particular aircraft or tanks, but does not do this generally. It is most useful if you want to find out about the history and the role of particular individuals in the regime, especially those of the second and third rank and how they interrelated to more senior members and each other. It is also useful for connecting between acronyms and German terms for things such as various organisations and their English translations.


What was most alarming was just how much of the Nazi and nationalist/racialist language which is quoted in this book sounds as if it comes straight from so many speeches and social media of today. It is really chilling when the same terms, the same blaming and excuses are right there.

The Books I Read In July

 Fiction

'The Armageddon Rag' by George R.R. Martin

This book published in 1983 is probably the best I have read by Martin. It has some supernatural elements, but these are handled subtly and are in the background for much of the novel, to the extent that I would classify it as magic realism. The story is about novelist and former music journalist Sandy Blair (a man) who is asked by a magazine editor who he previously worked for, to dig into the murder of music promoter, Jamie Lynch. This soon leads Sandy to reconnect with old friends from the hippie era, across the USA and to track down the former members of rock band The Nazgûl which broke up following the assassination of their lead singer, Patrick Henry 'Hobbit' Hobbins during an open-air concert at West Mesa in 1971. One of the most fantastical elements is that any band would be permitted to use that name, the name of the Ringwraiths in 'The Lord of the Rings' (1954-55) given how assiduous Tolkien's estate is in taking legal action against anyone making use of his legacy, no matter in how minor a way. 'The Armageddon Rag' is a 21-minute long track filling the whole B side of their last album. 

Martin was born in 1948 so was 21 in 1969 at the peak of the hippie movement. In many ways this is a contemplation of that movement. While not explicitly set in the Reagan era, it does reference to business and societal culture of that time as a means of reflecting what 'went wrong' with the hippie movement - various characters express a range of views on this. Steadily Edan Morse begins to reassemble the band and introduces a lookalike to replace their dead lead singer. Morse may have been involved in radical direct action in the 1960s and it increasingly appears he is using supernatural means to get the band back together and to be a success with old and new fans alike, culminating in a performance at the West Mesa venue.

The book is in part a murder mystery, but is it also a paean to hippie culture. The discussion of the fictional band also reminded me of 'Espedair Street' (1987) which I read in April: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/04/the-books-i-read-in-april.html While acclaimed at the time, it did not attract a wide readership and has clearly been re-released on the back of the dramatisation of Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-2011) series and its prequels. However, I feel the drawing of the range of characters, the representation of the performances, the mystery and the very subtle but credible supernatural perspective is a good mix, perhaps could be seen these days alongside Stephen Leather's Jack Nightingale series. Anyway, it was an engaging read that I enjoyed more than I had anticipated.

'John Burnet of Barns' by John Buchan

This was the first novel that Buchan published, at the age of 23. It is a melodrama set in late 17th Century south-west Scotland and is particularly strong in making use of the geography of that region. You could trace the protagonist, Laird John Burnet, across many of the same landscape features today. Initially this is the story of a young scholarly man's life and his love for a neighbour, Majory Veitch. However, his path crosses with his bullish cousin, Gilbert Burnet. 

Returning to Scotland from the Netherlands, John finds Gilbert has laid false charges against him of being a Covenanter, during the Killing Time (1679-88) when government forces under Charles II and then James II/VII persecuted and executed the Covenanters who favoured presbyterianism over the enforcement of an episcopal church, i.e. one with bishops. There are various adventures with John trying to escape capture by moving around the uplands of the Borders while trying to keep in touch with Marjory. There are lots of dramatic scenes and John is only really saved by the overthrow of King James and his replacement with the Dutch King William III. 

The language is aimed to sound very 17th Century anyway even for being written in the 1890s. The greatest challenge comes from Nicol Plenderleith, a very energetic local who offers himself as man servant to John and accompanies on his adventures. His speech is full of Scots terms and is rendered almost phonetically. Having moved to North-East Scotland (rather than South-West) helped me comprehend what he was saying a little better. Overall, this is a romp very much of its time, but has a richness due to strong portrayals of characters and a real connection to the landscape in which it is set.

'Greeks Bearing Gifts' by Philip Kerr

This was the 13th and penultimate book in Kerr's Bernie Gunther series which was published in 2018 soon after his death. It breaks from many of the others as it does not run in two time periods. Instead, following on from 'Prussian Blue' (2017): https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/06/the-books-i-read-in-june.html it is now 1957 and Gunther is living in Munich and working as a mortuary attendant when he is blackmailed into helping foil a Stasi plan to undermine a new political party in West Germany. This then leads to him being recruited as a loss adjuster for an insurance company and in turn being sent to Greece to investigate the suspicious sinking of a private yacht on an archaeological voyage. Soon, when one of the men involved is murdered, Gunther is compelled by the Greek police to assist and he uncovers a plot to secure gold taken from Jews in Thessaloniki during the war and believed to be aboard a sunken ship offshore. There are a range of suspects each trying to shift the blame on to others and portrayal their role in Germany's occupation of Greece as a minor one.

This novel comes over effectively as a 1950s hard-boiled novel, building well on what Gunther has seen and done. Naturally it asks questions about individuals' complicity in wartime atrocities and the reinvention of West Germany and its people after the war. The plot is suitably twisty and gives a feel of Greece at the time. Unlike with previous novels because we do not see Gunther in the "now" the jeopardy is more genuine than when we know he must have escaped from whatever danger is shown as occurring in the past. His connection to an attractive young female Greek lawyer and her feelings towards him jar. Given his age he is old enough to be her father, if not grandfather. He could have been partnered with a contemporary, but in these latter books Kerr seems to have felt compelled to repeatedly show Gunther as alluring to younger women, when ironically women of his own age, including more than one wife, have left him. Overall, this is a solid crime thriller with a good feel for time and place.

'City of Lost Souls' by Cassandra Clare

This is the fifth book in her Mortal Instruments novels. It feels rather like an episode of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' with the Lightwood siblings of Shadowhunters: Jace, Alec and Isabelle, notably Jace, who is the protagonist, Clary Fray's love interest; Simon the vampire and his housemate/mentor Jordan the werewolf and his returned love Maia, also a werewolf, as his Clary's soon-to-be stepfather Luke. After the drama at the top of the tower block in the last novel, 'City of Fallen Angels' (2011) Jace has disappeared taken away by Sebastian/Jonathan, Clary's evil brother. The book is basically the assorted "gang" working without the knowledge of the authorities to locate Jace and retrieve him, in various ways.

 Being an uber-YA book there is a lot of romance and kissing. Jace and Clary hold off from having sex, which is a good thing given it is not clear whether they remain underage. In the movie and TV series, they are appropriately portrayed as young adults. However, the stories of the other characters, especially Simon (who is having an on-off relationship with Isabelle). We see more of Sebastian and the scenes in which Clary infiltrates the teleporting flat which he and Jace are using to move around Europe, are interesting. After all the various relationship tensions (including between Alec and his co-habiting boyfriend, immortal warlock, Magnus) there is another big battle, this time in a remote part of Ireland. While the creation of an evil army is thwarted, Sebastian escapes.

These books are almost an archetype of YA fantasy. There is a lot of angst around relationships and parents, and breaking the rules. However, it does move along briskly and after five books, the characters are rounded out. The uncertainties when Jace is shifting back and forth between evil and good(ish) personalities is handled competently. It delivers the kind of action you expect. The portrayals of Venice, Paris and Prague are well done.

'Dead Air' by Iain Banks

I am beginning to wonder if I misjudged the quality of Banks's writing. This was another poor effort, from later in his career, published in 2002. It is set around Kenneth Nott, who is a DJ on a talk radio channel that sounds rather like LBC or the Jeremy Vine Show on Radio 2. The novel opens with the character at a party when they hear about the 11th September 2001 atrocity in the USA. Aside from setting the date, nothing is done with that. From then on it simply wanders. Much of it feels like a Martin Amis wish fulfillment novel as Nott who has an established girlfriend has sex with a range of women who generally go off him after a while. He lives on a boat on the Thames, drinks a lot and goes to night clubs and parties. He talks with his co-presenter and his two close friends and sometimes refers to his early life in Scotland, which does tend to make you feel he is an avatar for Banks, perhaps this is even semi-biographical. He starts having a relationship with Celia, wife of a gangster. There are moments of jeopardy, one where he is kidnapped as the result of a road rage incident, one where he hits a fellow guest on a TV programme and particularly when he crosses paths with the gangster. However, it is only when he is threatened by direct violence that he seems to take anything seriously. For the rest of the time he does not take measure of his behaviour or its consequences.

Reviews on the cover of the book suggest it was intended to be satirical. Given the time that has passed, even though I was living in London at the time and saw and heard the kind of programmes that are shown, I cannot see if it is satirising anyone in particular or a compilation of people. I guess there is enough to satirise in so-called 'shock jocks', but in many ways the book just ends up portraying their behaviour simply in a fictional form rather than based on real people and the situations they got into. For a reader today, the challenges of US President George W. Bush and of global conflicts appear almost as if they could come from the current news, only the names have changed. There is really no character development, so we have simply spent time as audience for this slice of the character's life. It is credible, but by the end you do wonder what the point was. Certainly it does not come close to the kind of book the cover reviews suggest, even taking into account their usual exaggerations.

Non-Fiction

'Hitler's War Directives, 1939-1945' ed. by H.R. [Hugh] Trevor-Roper

This is a translated and commented on collection of a specific set of directives issued by Adolf Hitler throughout the Second World War. Naturally there is a shift in tone from 1943 to a similar but different sort of directive. The book does show what Hitler intended at each stage and some were never issued as events overtook the directive. As Trevor-Roper highlights, there is a mix of very high ambitions and then rather too detailed planning coming from a commander-in-chief. It does highlight some perhaps unexpected views of Hitler. He did seem to believe the British would surrender, but then that they would re-invade Norway when Germany invaded the USSR. He was obsessed with coastal landings throughout the war and gave many directions on protecting these, though ironically such preparations proved inadequate with the Normandy Invasion. He did fear an invasion of Denmark and ordered that as much effort be put into defending it as the Dutch, Belgian and French coastlines. An interesting book which despite its age - published in 1964 - is a useful reminder of things which it seems many mainstream commentators forget about Hitler's intentions when at war.

'The 39 Steps' (2008)

As anyone who has read this blog over the past couple of years will know despite my liberal politics I am enamoured with adventure novels of the 1910s-1930s. Partly in an age in which the individual has so little power against governments and those of wealth, I like to look back to stories in which a hero can alter things, though I recognise that even then, they probably had less power than the fictional characters wield. Having actually read many of them, I am aware when liberal critics are accurate in referring to the discrimination and misogyny in the stories and when they are lumping together very different authors and stories. One author I have particularly admired is John Buchan. I have read all of his Richard Hannay novels, and have seen all the film versions of the first and best known of the novels, 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' (1915).

The novel is readable online at: http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/558

The basic story of 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' is that Richard Hannay, a British mining engineer, brough up in Scotland, has returned to Britain in 1914 and rather bored with life is drawn into a conspiracy when a neighbour in the block of flats he is living in, Scudder, passes him information about an assassination attempt on the life of the Greek premier. Scudder hiding in Hannay's flat is murdered by German agents and Hannay has to flee when accused of the murder. Scudder's information takes him to South-West Scotland where he seeks out the German gang seeking to not only carry out the assassination but also uncover the plans of Britain's naval dispositions in the war the assassination is expected to trigger off. In the novel the thirty-nine steps are particular steps down to the sea at a location on the East coast of Britain where the spies plan to escape after the plot has been carried out.

There have been three film versions of the novel. All of them have a train journey from London to Scotland, a traitorous local professor and a pursuit over the Scottish countryside, plus Hannay having to stand in for a Liberal Party politician at a public meeting. In contrast to the novel, the movies as with the latest television dramatisation, have an element of romantic interest, often with the woman handcuffed or tied to Hannay. In 1935 there was the Alfred Hitchcock version in which Hannay is played by Robert Donat. The story is set in the contemporary period, which is only 21 years after the novel was set and of course with new tension between Britain and Germany. In this story the woman is Annabella Smith, a British spy who reveals German plans to steal the designs of a silent aircraft engine. In this movie 'The 39 Steps' are a group. There are striking features such as the use of an aircraft to chase Hannay (revived by Hitchcock for his 'North by Northwest' (1959)) and the traitor identifiable by his missing fingers which allows a very subtle revelation of what is going on when Hannay thinks he is safe but realises he has walked into the enemy's base in Scotland.

The Ralph Thomas 1959 version is really a remake of the 1935 movie rather than a new version of the novel. It is set in the contemporary period. This time the 'MacGuffin', to use the Hitchcockian phrase, is a ballistic missile called Boomerang. A woman rather than Scudder brings the information and is killed in his flat. In the Hitchcock version the traitor is Professor Jordan and in the Thomas version, Professor Logan. In both versions a stage performer, Mr. Memory plays a role, though in the latter version he is shot before he can reveal what the 39 Steps are. The 1959 version is admired, but I find it very weak, almost comical at times and lacking the suspense of other versions. The featuring of light comedy actors such as Sid James, and Kenneth More playing Hannay struggling to keep up with a cycling club reduce the tension greatly. Having a missile called 'Boomerang' is also comic as boomerangs are famous for coming back! In the 1935 and 1959 versions Hannay is handcuffed to the female lead and they spend a night in hotel together.

The 1978 version directed by Don Sharp returns to the novel. It is set in 1914. Given the increasingly exotic set-ups for Second World War movies that had developed by the 1970s, there was a brief erratic fad for returning to 1900s-1910s settings, such as 'Zeppelin' (1971) and 'The Riddle of the Sands' (1979). Anyway, in the 1978 movie Scudder is present but he is British (played by John Mills) rather than an anti-Semitic American as he is shown in the novel; his full name being Franklin P. Scudder. He is still a freelance agent (this is a necessary plot device, if he had been working for British intelligence directly he could have communicated what he knew immediately and directly) but much more pleasant than the man in the novel. Anyway, the plot in this movie, like the novel is that the Germans are plotting to assassinate the Greek premier Constantine Karolides (the real Greek prime minister October 1910-March 1915 was Eleftherios Kiriakou Venizelos who was the country's prime minister seven times between 1910-33). In the novel it is believed that such an assassination will lead to war between Germany and Russia which would be to the benefit of anarchists backed by Jewish financiers and disaffected members of the German nobility. In the movie, this complexity is left out and it is really seen as a replacement for the actual assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Bosnia in June 1914 which actually helped provoke the war.

The German agents are led by Sir Edmund Appleton who near the end of the movie disguises himself as Sir Walter Bullivant (a character appearing in a number of the Hannay novels but more in a spymaster than cabinet secretary type role) who is taking minutes at a inner Cabinet meeting about the naval dispositions. Of course we know now that Buchan was wrong to see anyone else bar the Kaiser and the German High Command as being keen on a war with Russia. As early as December 1912 between the Kaiser and his military advisors there were discussions about provoking a war following an assassination in the Balkans in the Summer of 1914 when the widening of the Kiel Canal would be completed so allowing Germany's heaviest gunned battleships to sail easily to the North Sea to oppose the British. To this extent, the Sharp movie was closer to the reality even than Buchan had been. While the Germans had hoped the British would stay out of the war, they were conscious from 1898 onwards that either at the time of war with Russia and France or sometime in the future they would have to fight the British at sea.

The Sharp movie has romantic interest in the form of Alex(andra) Mackenzie, an Englishwoman engaged to Scottish landowner David Hamilton on to whose land Hannay runs while being pursued across Scottish moors. Hamilton and Mackenzie help Hannay evade the Germans (well, they are specified as Prussians, though given that Prussia covered two-thirds of Germany at the time that is not overly specific) and Hamilton is killed as a result, leaving Hannay open to woo Mackenzie at the end of the movie. What is interesting is that in these movies it is the working class Scots, the shopkeepers, crofters, landladies, etc. who have Scottish accents and aside from Hamilton, the other upper class Scots shown seem to be English living in Scotland. The Sharp movie ends in London with Appleton seemingly got away with the naval plans and the bomb to blow up Karolides when he addresses the Houses of Lords and Commons concealed in Big Ben tower (Big Ben is the bell, not the clock) over the Houses of Parliament. Hannay ends up hanging off the arm of the clock to stop the bomb detonating and giving a very dramatic scene over London. This, no doubt, was done with an eye to the potential US audience for the movie. The scene is similar to the climax of the black comedy Will Hay movie 'My Learned Friend' (1943). While Hannay prevents the death of Karolides war is not averted, but capturing Appleton who is waiting disguised as a river policeman does stop the naval plans going to the Germans. In this movie the 39 steps are a set of steps in the Big Ben tower.

So, this brings me to the 2008 version which was shown on BBC1 last night, 28th December 2008, showing 20.00-21.30 GMT. There were efforts to shake off the Hitchcock influence. There were some elements such as the use of the aircraft by the treacherous Professor Fisher (very suitably played by Patrick Malahide), the fact that two of the characters, Sir George Sinclair (also a British traitor) and his niece Victoria Sinclair have photographic memories. Rather than missing fingers, one of the key German agents wears a distinctive signet ring on his little finger.

As with the 1935 and 1959 movies there is no assassination attempt just the Germans trying to get hold of intelligence on British naval dispositions, in this case through using Sir George Sinclair who is at the meeting of the National Defence Committee (NDC) which I imagine was based on the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) 1902-14 (permanent from 1904, subsumed by the War Council once war broke out) which co-ordinated the British Empire's defence plans but had no executive powers. Using the acronym CID in the programme would have led to confusion as this is the acronym for the police detective units, Criminal Investigation Department. The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on 28th June 1914 is mentioned so the action takes place in that tense period of pressure being put on Serbia by Austria-Hungary that did not lead to war until the start of August. As with the other adaptations there is love interest, this time in the form of Victoria Sinclair (played by Lydia Leonard). She collars Hannay after he has been thrust on stage at a Liberal Party rally (in 1914 the Liberals had been in power since 1906 and would remain there ending in a coalition which fell in 1922). An election was scheduled for 1914 but did not come about due to the war. There is a similar scene in the 1978 movie. In this story Victoria's brother, Harry, is the local candidate, an Englishman seemingly accepted by the local Scots. Victoria puts herself forward as a suffragette (as opposed to the more numerous suffragists) who were the radicals willing to adopt civil disobedience and even vandalism and suicide as policies to win female votes. This may be because the word 'suffragette' is better known these days despite there being more 'suffragists' in the pre-1914 era.

Hannay and Victoria are handcuffed briefly by Fisher but Victoria releases them with her hairpin and they blast their way out of the oubliette of Fisher's castle. It later turns out that she is an agent of the Secret Service Bureau who has been put on to tailing Hannay when it becomes known he has Scudder's book that the Germans are seeking. Why Victoria was oblivious to the fact that her uncle who she sees regularly was a German traitor and he to the fact that she was a British agent does seem a bit of a weakness in the set up. However, the use of the term Secret Service Bureau is historically accurate. This was formed in March 1909 (or August or October, the reports are conflicting) prompted by the CID and this was what the British Security Service (MI5) and the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) grew. Captain Vernon Kell (known as 'K') who features in the programme (it wrongly had him in naval uniform whereas in fact he had been a staff captain in the South Staffordshire Regiment and fought during the Boxer Rebellion of 1900; he later rose to be a major-general) was in reality a founder of the Bureau along with naval Captain Mansfield Smith-Cumming ('C'). Kell served as Director General of MI5 from its foundation in 1914-42. The reference to 'The Weekly News' offering £10 for German spies that its readers could uncover was also factual. It is unlikely that given that by April 1914 the Bureau only had 14 staff that Victoria would be an agent. However, the Bureau did capture 20 German agents 1909-14. One could imagine with such small forces they would need freelance agents like Scudder. Hannay is said to have been in British intelligence in the Boer War which seems feasible as by the middle of that war the British Field Intelligence Department had 132 officers and employed thousands of agents of different races and women as well as men.

I am rather uncertain that it was as easy to ring up the Secret Service Bureau in 1914 as was shown in the programme. In those days, as shown, all calls went through a local exchange, you could not dial directly, so even accepting that Hannay has worked in intelligence and Victoria is an agent it would have been a challenge to get connected. When MI5's phone number (now 020 930 9000) was released for the first time in March 1998 it was said that it was the first time it had been given out. This number is for people who want to provide information about subversive groups, apparently it is not for people who want to join MI5 (for that write to Inquiries Desk at PO Box 3255, London SW1P 1AE; they are currently especially seeking people from ethnic minorities). When I met the Director General of MI5, Sir Stephen Lander, in the late 1990s he did say that at the time he had had 22,000 calls; in 2000 they started advertising in newspapers for recruits. MI5 does filter out crank calls and also people trying to apply, and so this number effectively works in the way that something like Crimestoppers does that people can ring up with information. I suppose even in 1914 they would not turn away such calls as Hannay and Victoria were trying to make even with the spy hysteria prevalent at the time.

The drama handled the tension of an unmarried man and woman spending the night together in 1914 well and much better than the rather light-hearted approach of the 1935 and 1959 movies. To some degree the revelation of Victoria's role sows doubt in viewer's mind (as for the character) whether any feelings for Hannay are genuine or part of the job. Of course the writer of the drama, Lizzie Mickery (who was a TV actress 1978-2000 and a screenwriter since 1989; she played a suffragette in the 1983 series 'Number 10') has to appeal to a far broader audience than Buchan ever had to. In fact more of her audience may have been female than male whereas in 1915 the bulk of Buchan's readers would have been men (though even he, in 'Mr. Standfast' (1919) has romantic interest in the form of nurse Mary Lymington). There is no climax over the Houses of Parliament, partly because the assassination element has gone. Instead the vital meeting of the 'NCD' is at Stirling Castle in central Scotland, which not only makes a picturesque backdrop but also makes sense if the German operation is being run in Scotland. In the programme the 39 Steps are a staircase leading from Fisher's castle through the rock to a sea loch in which a German U-boat emerges to transport away Fisher, Sinclair and the German agents. This seems to be a logical conclusion to the story and allows a dramatic gunfight, with Victoria blasting away and Hannay plunging in to wrestle Sinclair. The emergence of the submarine even for a modern audience is a moment of suspense. The apparent death of Victoria and then the revelation that she has survived work pretty well, though the scene four months later, i.e. October 1914, when Victoria reappears, with Hannay and Harry Sinclair both at Charing Cross awaiting shipment to the Continent, does seem rather tacked on

You feel that Mickery has been influenced by the movie 'Enigma' (2001). Victoria Sinclair seems like a combination of Kate Winslet's intelligent, sparky, practical Hester and the more glamorous Claire played by Saffron Burrows who in fact is a British counter-spy with her own agenda. At the end of 'Enigma' with the hero Thomas now married to Hester he sees the supposedly dead Claire (she, like Victoria has supposedly drowned) walking through Trafalgar Square (which abuts Charing Cross railway station). The climax of that movie is Thomas trying to prevent the traitor 'Puck' boarding a German submarine in a remote northern location too. I suppose the logistics of the revised story would lead Mickery in this direction and it might be intentional as 'Enigma' was a well known wartime movie set in the UK with similar themes of treachery and weakening the British war effort through revealing secrets. Mickery also seems to have been aware of the 'Hannay' series of 1988-9 which ran to 13 episodes over two seasons and featured Robert Powell reprising the role from the 1978 movie. These stories are set in 1912 (with Gavin Richards probably doing his best TV role as Hannay's German nemesis Count von Schwabing in 4 episodes) and one in the first series sees 'The Fellowship of the Black Stone' (the Black Stone is the spy ring in the original novel) involves Hannay preventing German agents spying on the British fleet at Scarpa Flow and in the second series in 'The Terror of the Earth' Hannay charges around the countryside with a Swedish female scientist, Kirsten Larssen (played by the ever excellent Alex Kingston) who comes over very much like Victoria Sinclair (as do a number of other women in the series, such as Lady Madrigal Fitzjames played by Geraldine Alexander in the episode 'A Point of Honour' in which her and Hannay as in this recent story, have to pretend to be a married couple and share a bed).

I have rather neglected the heroes of the different movies. The worst I feel is Kenneth More (1914-82), not because he was a poor actor but because he was miscast in the role. He does not have that effete manner necessary to play Hannay. The character combines being a 'clubland hero' with a practical side and More seems to have insufficient of either of those characteristics. Donat and Powell are far better cast. Robert Donat (1905-58) is more of the man about town and Robert Powell (born 1944) looks more like the man who has been a mining engineer and a wartime intelligence agent. Their respective ages playing the roles are 30, 45 and 34 (and 44-5 when Powell was in the television series). The latest actor is Rupert Penry-Jones (born 1970), whose actual name sounds like a character from a Buchan novel. He appeared in the drama about MI5, 'Spooks' 2004-8. Though he is now 38 he easily looks ten years younger than that and that is an issue. If he had been an intelligence agent in the Boer War (1899-1902) it is feasible to have a man who would have been 23-26 in that role, but Penry-Jones as Hannay looks like he would have been 16 when the Boer War finished. That is not the actor's fault. It does go to the issue of casting period dramas and why so many British actors appear in US series because they physically look like someone who could have been around in 1914 or 1812 or whenever, whereas American actors look too well fed and samey. He plays the man about town part role well; he was good with the encounters with Victoria and can act the gentleman well enough but somehow lacks the grit when on the moors. However, this may be an issue around interpretation of the Hannay character.

Just to finish off. Casting Eddie Marsan as Scudder is interesting. Mills looked rather like a gentleman painter, but Marsan with his East End background has often played criminal or characters on the margins of society. He seemed well cast for the rather furtive role of a freelance spy. The other thing was the biplane. Penry-Jones wanted to be pursued by one over the moors like Cary Grant in 'North by Northwest', but it did lead to anachronism as he is pursued by a 1916 biplane, acceptable given there were biplanes but twin machine guns firing through the propellor which was introduced to Fokker EI-IIIs in the Summer of 1915 with a synchronising gear. I know the Germans had been working on it since 1914 but anyone having a working model then would have become immediately supreme in the air when war broke out. Perhaps it is Professor Fisher's own invention or a prototype that the Germans were inventing. Having the pilot fire with a pistol (presumably an automatic like the other German agents are shown wielding in wide variety).

Overall, aside from some minor details and the difficulty of killing then resurrecting Victoria Sinclair and the issues of her relationship with her uncle, I enjoyed the programme and liked the efforts to set it in the correct time. It would be nice to see some of the other original Hannay stories made into programmes. They are quite short so easily adaptable for a one-off drama of 90 minutes. Not all are as gripping as 'The Thirty Nine Steps', but 'Greenmantle' with its Middle Eastern setting and the more low key 'The Three Hostages' might be interesting.

Rehabilitating John Buchan

There are many things which come back to irritate me at regular intervals, that probably seem trivial to the bulk of the population, but for some reason grate me. One purpose of these 'lead tablets' is to get them out in the open and so lift some of that irritation from myself and to show people my particular perspective on these things, a perspective they are free to agree with or challenge or ignore as they feel fit.

Now, whenever a version of 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' (there were versions made in 1935, 1959 and 1978) is shown on television, someone writes in the review 'based on the book by the anti-Semitic author John Buchan'. I have no time for anti-Semites (i.e. people who hate Jews) and I once dumped a friend immediately when she spouted anti-Jewish views (I stand up equally strongly for Arabs not to be prejudiced against either), but I do have time for John Buchan (1875-1940). In some ways he stood for things I am opposed to, the nobility (he ended his life as Baron Tweedsmuir) and imperialism, but certainly in the novels of his I have read I have not detected anti-Semitism which is why I get irritated when he is labelled constantly that way. He acted as a journalist and as an intelligence officer, being UK Director of Intelligence at the end of the First World War. He was a Conservative MP 1927-35 and ended his life as Governor-General of Canada. He published almost 30 novels, 7 collections of short stories and about 60 historical books, political tracts and even a tax guide. You can find one of his short novels, 'The Power-House' in available in its entirety online and extensive extracts of his other novels are also available if you surf for them.

Buchan is best remembered for his Richard Hannay books, 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' (1914), 'Greenmantle' (1915), 'Mr. Standfast' (1919), 'The Three Hostages' (1924) and 'The Island of Sheep' (1936). These stories drew on his own expertise as an intelligence officer, from South Africa and living in London. They are of their period and exhibit attitudes of the time such as a hostility to foreigners (though this is one that has persisted in the UK into the 21st century). Hannay is a so-called 'clubland hero' but unlike the heroes of other similar authors of the time such Dornford Yates and Sapper, he is more of a self-made man, a mining engineer originally from Scotland, (a country which influenced Buchan's work, for example also in 'Castle Gay' (1930)) who though he has experience in intelligence and warfare from the Boer War (1899-1902) is in fact an amateur who gets drawn into conspiracies. Buchan manages to bring excitement and realism to his plots, including incidents during the First World War which must have been difficult given so many people were affected by it at the time he was writing. The well written adventure of these stories often with themes that chime with us today is one reason why they have outlived many of their contemporaries. Even in 1988, Thames Television produced two series of dramas entitled 'Hannay', set in 1912, two years before 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' and based just on Buchan characters not actual stories, shows the kind of appeal the concepts retained. 'The Complete Richard Hannay' an anthology of the five original books was published as late as 1993.

To some extent, though an amateur, Hannay able to charm ladies (though as was typical of the time he marries and has a son in the later books) and mix in different levels of society he forms a link between Sherlock Holmes and James Bond and his legacy runs on into spy novels of the 1960s and 1970s such as the 'Harry Palmer' novels of Len Deighton and Robert Ludlum's Jason Bourne character recently seen in movies ('The Bourne Identity' (2002), 'The Bourne Supremacy' (2004)). These later characters are professionals but like Hannay are important for readers in an age when we feel we are at the mercy of faceless conspiracies and the machinery of governments and their networks (as people really began to feel for the first time during the First World War, a sense that peaked again during the Cold War), the individual, though at times cynical of what he can achieve, can make a difference through cunning, good humour and with a moral sense too of what is ultimately good and bad for the world.

So, this is really an appeal for television reviewers, next time, do not write 'John Buchan - anti-Semite', read the books and see that he was a man of his age with attitudes of his age, no less attractive than those of many authors today, and see that he wrote exciting but realistic stories that decades afterwards people were keen to film (another screen version, probably for television, of 'The Thirty-Nine Steps' is being discussed, apparently).