The Books I Read In February

Fiction

'Murder Underground' by Mavis Doriel Hay

Doriel Hay mainly wrote on rural handicrafts but she did produce three crime novels, I have two of them. This one was published in 1934 and is very much set in the Belsize Park district of North London and neighbouring areas, in particular Hampstead Heath. While the characters in 'Hickory Dickory Dock' (1955) are younger, and it is set post-war (though the dramatization for 'Poirot' (broadcast 1995) took it back to the 1930s) has the same feel with extensive discussions between residents of a single hostel/hotel. This novel mainly features the residents of the Frampton private residential hotel. 

An elderly resident of the hotel, Miss. Euphemia Pongleton is found strangled with the leash of her dog on the steps going down to the platforms at Belsize Park underground station. Her nephew, Basil and his cousin, Beryl have been fluctuating heirs to Aunt 'Phemia but the initial suspect is a worker at the underground station, Bob, who is 'stepping out' with a maid at the hotel and often walks Miss. Pongleton's dog. Another major character, Basil's love interest is called Betty throughout, rather than her full name, so it was clear Doriel Hay was thumbing her nose at the precept for authors against having more than one character with a name starting with the same letter. It is very easy at times to mix up Betty and Beryl as they are very similar in nature.

I think some readers, perhaps me included, will feel rather disgruntled by the approach adopted in this novel. It is certainly different to that typical of most detective novels. Especially in the early phases of the novel, there is simply discussion between various sets of characters and long stretches of dialogue. In fact the police detective, while spoken about is not seen by the reader until very late on in the book.

 Three other characters effectively advance the investigation. They are a resident, Mr. Blend with his convenient archive of newspaper cuttings of various peculiar crimes, prompts Mrs. Daymer, another resident who is bohemian in style and a crime novelist, and Gerry Plasher - Beryl's fiancé - to travel to Coventry to chase up on a similar old crime. This particularly is seen by the police to make Plasher suspicious. Contrary to the advances the trio make, Basil, who was actually in the station where the body was found finds it difficult to keep his story straight, so pulls in numerous others to try to avert suspicion from him. However, trying to conceal a pearl necklace of his aunt's he had pawned just makes it more complex.

Doriel Hay does write a  largely credible crime story though one largely based on dialogue. Aside from Basil, a very Bertie Wooster character, she manages pretty much to avoid stereotypes though slips at time into it as with Mrs. Daymer's clothes and with the hotel's maid, Nellie. It can be frustrating when things twist around so much but I suppose it is a sound portrayal of how the people around the edges of a murder behave and they are often the people left out of crime novels, something the author clearly wanted to redress here.

'Fevre Dream' by George R.R. Martin

Having read 'The Armageddon Rag' (1983) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/07/the-books-i-read-in-july.html and 'Tuf Voyaging' (1986) https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2024/08/the-books-i-read-in-august.html?m=0 back in 2024, I got into conversation with the novelist and prolific book reviewer Dr. Laura Tisdall: https://drlauratisdall.wordpress.com/ While she enjoyed 'Tuf Voyaging' she did suggest I turn to this other non-Game of Thrones novel by Martin. While the ending is far too protracted, throughout this novel is well written. Louisiana vampires might now be commonplace but what Martin did with this one, published in 1982, was instead come from the focus of a steamship captain, Abner Marsh, working the upper tributaries of the Mississippi in the late 1850s. The Fevre is an actual river running from Wisconsin to Illinois and feeding into the wider Mississippi network. Even by the end of the novel in 1870, the river has been renamed the River Galena after the town it passes through just before joining the Mississippi.

Having lost four steamships to the previous year's ice flows, Marsh is approached by Joshua York who we steadily find out is a European vampire who relocated to the USA. He pays for Marsh to commission the largest, most opulent, and importantly, fastest, side-wheeled paddle steamer, the eponynmous 'Fevre Dream'. This he does and the two go into business, steadily working southwards until operating on the Lower Mississippi including into New Orleans. York is hunting other vampires operating in the regions they pass through in an attempt to convert them from killing humans to using his concoction instead, a kind of mid-Victorian version of TrueBlood. However, York's mission is not straight forward and once he encounters the old, powerful, cruel 'bloodmaster' Damon Julian and his vicious entourage things deteriorate. Marsh stays loyal and brings the novel, finally to a conclusion.

The whole concept even in the realm of vampire stories, is very refreshing, especially if we see how long ago the novel was written. However, what lifts it higher is Martin's attention to detail. Without having a lecture, along the way you learn so much about the riverboats - they ran on wood (and occasionally lard) in the 1850s, the people who operated them, the landscape and various locations up and down the rivers. The descriptions are really rich and I am sure even for US readers were really engaging. There are very good points of tension and indeed sometimes a sense of hopelessness in the face of power, but as some of the reviews have noted, that is actually what readers once expected from vampire stories rather than the approaches of the 21st Century. I wish Martin had ended the novel more sharply. There was no need to drag it on into the post-American Civil War period, even if he was insistent on the drawn-out climax. If you have the patience then this is a good read, especially in the first five-sixths of the novel.

'Munich Wolf' by Rory Clements

As someone who has written four detective novels set in Munich in the early 1920s I was fascinated to read this one set in that city but in 1935 when the Nazi regime had been established firmly in Germany. A young British woman, Rosie Palmer, one of many rich young Britons, is murdered while in Munich for the summer, learning German, partying and in many cases thoroughly engaging with the Nazi regime. Unity Mitford, genuinely a good friend of Hitler features heavily in the novel, alongside many other people who were part of the regime in and around Munich and Nuremberg, at the time. 

Inspector Sebastian Wolf is assigned to investigate the case. He benefits from the fact that his uncle is a very wealthy local politician. There is demand for a speedy resolution so as not to upset the negotiations around the Anglo-German Naval Treaty. Wolf is quickly handed a convenient suspect in the form of a Jew, Karl Friedlander who had had a relationship with Rosie in Britain that they continued in Germany, much to the disgust of Rosie's family and the racist Britons around them. Friedlander is executed but of course, he was never the murderer and the marks on Rosie's body, despite the disappearance of the photographs, were actually runic rather than Hebrew. To stop that coming to light, a homosexual linguistic's professor, a friend of Wolf, Caius Klammer is also murdered.

Given the context, Wolf faces a lot of obstacles and indeed physical attacks on him as he tries to resolve the case. On paper this sounds like a decent plot. Having read all of the Bernie Gunther (1989-2019) series of books by Philip Kerr which often involve investigations in Nazi Germany, I expected it to be of a similar quality. There are some aspects which are handled well. Clements portrays different parts of Munich effectively. He is also decent in the characterisations of the Britons and some of the Germans. Wolf's relationship with his girlfriend Hexie, his mother and his son, are done pretty well. However, other bits are two-dimensional. 

Wolf is a Murder Commission inspector investigating a high profile murder, but lacks a sergeant until one is transferred from the Political Police division (at the time run by Heinrich Himmler and not yet part of the Prussian Gestapo which was run by Hermann Göring). He seems to have no other detectives that he can command. In addition, he lacks senior officers, there are no superintendents, he simply reports to the deputy president of the Bavarian police. Yes, this man would be involved, but all the layers between him an Wolf, indeed a wider detective force, seems entirely absent.

There is a heavy-handedness. Yes, under the Nazi regime Jews and homosexuals would be blamed when guiltless, but the casual murders on the streets which are so prevalent in this novel, had come to an end with the Night of the Long Knives in 1934. It is improbable at this stage that a police inspector would be sent to the Dachau concentration camp by a lower ranking officer for not showing sufficient respect for Hitler. Wolf seems, despite his rank and standing, appears to have no authority of his own and is simply a catspaw for his uncle. The conversion of his assigned sergeant, Hans Winter, as a result of Wolf blackmailing seems far too abrupt. He starts as almost a comic nasty Nazi and then in an instant is a supportive collaborator with Wolf. Clements could have had similar points of tension made more subtly, more effectively, but really takes a sledgehammer to these aspects which quickly riles on the reader.

Overall, this story could have worked well. Clements shows he can write well, but here only when on the topics which particularly interest him. As he outlines in an essay at the end the whole milieu of rich Britons in Munich at this time, was the thing he was really interested in and as a result, the other aspects, necessary for an actual crime novel are just like theatre sets, not more substantial. At times, they are painful. There was no need to reference at the beginning, a zither player in the cafe or the men in Lederhosen. It seems Clements does not feel he can draw the reader in unless he piles on the Germanic tropes, scraped from 'The Third Man' (1949), 'Cabaret' (1972) and 'The Lady Vanishes' (1979 version). I still have not forgiven Kerr for featuring the Drittemann movie company in 'A German Requiem' (1991). The reader, who will often know and spot these conceits, feels that the illusion is broken. Anyway, I will certainly not be looking out for any more of the promised Sebastian Wolf novels.

'The Scent of the Night' by Andrea Camilleri

This is probably the most straight forward of the Montalbano mysteries. It has a lot of the usual characteristics such as the intermittent relationship with his long-distance girlfriend, the inspector eating high cuisine fish or shellfish dishes every day, deserted houses in the backwaters of Sicily and the - in theory - comic police phone operator. However, this is a neat and tidy story around the disappearance of Emanuele Gargano who was running a Ponzi scheme fraud. Naturally there are a lot of people who have lost money to the scheme would profess to want to kill the man. His middle-aged, besotted secretary waits for his return but then it transpires that Gargano's assistant has also disappeared after trying to lay a false trail buying tickets to various European cities. An unreliable eyewitness who hallucinates, not only leads Montalbano to where one of the bodies has ended up, but ultimately allows him to comprehend where that of Gargano actually is. This, the sixth novel in the series, benefits from being 'dialled down' a little. I have never found these books 'comic' as some describe them and indeed attempts at levity have been laboured and distracting. This one just gets on a does the business in a satisfying way while still encompassing the traits which mark out Montalbano stories.

'The Courts of Chaos' by Roger Zelanzy

This is the concluding book in the Princes of Amber pentalogy. Having discovered that his father, Oberon, has been masquerading as his old comrade, Ganelon, Corwin now has to go on a long journey to carry the Jewel of Judgment [sic] to the final climatic battle outside the Courts of Chaos. His brother Brand's attempt to erase the Pattern of this universe to install one of his own leads to a vast storm sweeping across all the different realms Corwin can pass through. Corwin's journey is I imagine intentionally like those of characters in 'The Faerie Queen' and 'Gawain and the Green Knight'. In addition to attempts by Brand to kill him or at least take the Jewel, there are others along the way who seek to tempt, seduce, harm or kill Corwin. He does seem rather gullible, perhaps because he is weary and concerned about being swept up by the unrelenting storm.

There is the battle outside the Courts of Chaos which leads to victory for the good (or at least amoral as opposed to immoral) side. Corwin is reunited with the son he was unaware he had, Merlin and a replacement king is found for Oberon who had already given his life in trying to prevent the storm destroying this universe. Probably not a spoiler to say that the new king is not Corwin but one of his siblings. There is some pontificating from Corwin at the end about what it all means, but it does not go on too long. There is some of the lengthy dialogue between the siblings - though fortunately less than in the previous novel - to continue to unknot the overly-complex plot Zelanzy had created and you do feel that like George R.R. Martin with his A Song of Ice and Fire, that he made it so knotty that he lost control of it. Fortunately the Amber novels come in at around 150 pages long, rather than 500-800 pages.

While at times the books in this series have been a bit irritating, I recognise that Zelanzy was trying to do something a bit different to what had been in fantasy up to then. The mixing of our world and a whole host of realms was in line with developments of the 1970s but he handles it differently to Moorcock. His usual of modern language and a kind of easy-going attitude that we perhaps associate with mid-1970s USA rather than the kind of quasi-medieval or barbarian tone adopted by so many fantasy novels before. I also have to remind myself that some 50 years on and with a lot of fantasy fiction published since then, some things that now appear hackneyed were fresher back then. The leprechauns trying to tempt Corwin to stay beneath the ground drinking was old hat even back then.

Zelanzy's focus on an extensive family rather than nations, the use of things like the Pattern, a challenging maze that both balances reality but can also present personal benefits or challenges and the Trumps (!) to contact family members and teleport to them, remain quite distinctive. I imagine at the time these aspects must have seemed refreshing even if now they may have lost - for a reader today - some of their spark.

Non-Fiction

'The Nine Lives of Otto Katz' by Jonathan Miles

This is about the Czechoslovak secret agent for the USSR, Otto Katz (1895-1952 executed). He was a successful propagandist and spy in the 1930s-50s. He adopted a string of identities and as Miles shows he was able to adapt his demeanour effectively to be convincing in each. He was involved in theatre and literature right throughout, moving as his Soviet masters required, from Prague to Berlin, Paris, London, civil-war Spain, New York and Hollywood. He was popular among leading celebrities of the movie industry. Katz was strongly anti-Nazi having witnessed the rise of Hitler at first hand in Berlin. He was able to enlist liberals into fund raising and propaganda events such as the 'trial' in London testing what had been put out by the Nazis around the Reichstag Fire. 

As Katz remained loyal to Stalin's regime, taking part of purging the non-Stalinists from the Republican side in Spain and not questioning Stalin's behaviour even when the USSR was in alliance with Nazi Germany 1939-41, Miles feels that any liberal Katz influenced must have either been pro-Soviet or deluded. He is dismissive of any other motive for opposing the Nazis. The author really buys into the McCarthyite attitude that there was really no way to oppose Nazism without being a Communist unless you were hard right-wing. This is despite the fact that he highlights people in Katz's various circles who became suspicious of him and either distanced themselves or cut him off completely. It seems to Miles that one touch is sufficient to contaminate someone entirely. Katz's loyalty did not pay off and he was one of the last to be executed in a purge by Stalin.

The book is academically robust with lots of references to sound sources. While there is lots of interesting detail, almost all of which is absent from Katz's Wikipedia entry, Miles seems obliged to make his story overly dramatic and at times it is not clear if he was meaning to write a thriller rather than a historical analysis. Especially at the beginning of the book there is a lot of jumping around in time and topic when in fact given the complexity of the story and the various aliases there needs to be real clarity. While I learnt some things from this book, Miles's melodramatic approach but above all his inability to see that not all (in fact most) anti-Nazis were not Communist and his repeated insistence on this point makes this an irritating book to read.

'Establishment and Meritocracy' by Peter Hennessy

This was the last, the newest (2014) and the shortest of Hennessy's books that I possessed. It is only 68 pages long. However, given what I have said before about despite his years in universities, Hennessy has not really shaken off the journalistic approach, this format works well for him. As usual he blends in personal memories and outlooks with quotes and input from notable people across the period. He looks at how the British Establishment is defined and how while the old structures like the elite public schools, the military, House of Lords, judiciary, etc. remain, there are new facets to the Establishment especially in terms of those influential or powerful in media and in finance. He looks at how meritocracy rose as a concept, in particular in terms of his beloved civil service, decades before the publication of  'The Rise of the Meritocracy' (1958) by Michael Dunlop Young put it into common parlance.

Reading the book more than a decade after its publication we can see in which facets Hennessy was very prescient. As he notes throughout, both the principles are about establishing hierarchy whether that is simply through birth or through recognition of a greater competency in certain skills. It is still a hierarchy and he cautions about the fate of those deemed to lack 'merit'. He warns of the possibility of a vicious populist backlash which would baulk against meritocracy instead seeking a hierarchy built on other characteristics. He notes wealth would be one of these, but perhaps did not spot that race would be thrust back into such thinking too. He does also pick up on how the 'ladders' that people of his generation were able to climb from relatively humble backgrounds, were liable to be removed or closed off. These things have all come to pass both quietly and in terms of vicious insistence, accompanied by violence, of a racial/wealth hierarchy by the populists and their supporters, even when it is actually detrimental to those supporters themselves. 

Hennessy here was not setting out to be a prophet but given his love of analysing how British society and politics function, he actually highlighted trends that would manifest in the following years in the way that he does tentatively caution about.

The Otto Braucher Stories - Revisiting the Weimar Germany Detective

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008FRHKY4?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1754231531&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008GEA2WS?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_1&storeType=ebooks&qid=1754231531&sr=8-3

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FKZZMC12?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_tkin_2&storeType=ebooks&qid=1754231531&sr=8-3

Very influenced by the Maigret novels by Georges Simenon plus teaching modern history, back in 1995 I decided to write a series of crime novels set in 1920s Germany. Not only was it a period that I knew a lot about, but it seemed that it offered ample opportunities for crimes given the political and economic turbulence and the availability of guns as a result of the First World War. Berlin would have been a logical location but I realised that as Munich had suffered less as a result of the Second World War, finding out what it looked like in the 1920s would be rather easier. I was very fortunate to be given a tourist guide to the city published in that period. 

You have to remember that back in 1995 the public did not have the internet. Email tended to be restricted to academia. Libraries had moved to computer-based lists of their books, but you still had to go and find the physical book and read it. Having moved to London in 1994, I was in a better position to access a variety of libraries. I had a GCSE in German that I had got three years earlier when unemployed, so with the aid of a large German dictionary I was able to get material from German-language texts too. Friends also lent me books, notably about the German Army in the First World War. I assembled a huge file of notes (which I still have) including hand copied and photocopied maps and long lists of names from the era. 

I was determined that my detective would be in contrast to so many would be a family man rather than a loner. I also felt it was appropriate for him to be a serious Catholic and knew this would impinge on how he went about his work. Him having a family also allowed me to bring in connections to different elements of society through his wife and children. He was to maintain a positive outlook, though given the context it is unsurprising that he becomes cynical. I revisited the idea of a positive detective in 'Death in Amiens' (2016) which drew heavily on my very depressed time I spent in that town and the police detective was an intentional counterpoint to my perspective on the place.

Otto Braucher started out as Otto Beckmann, using the name of a German family I had known in West Germany in the 1980s. It was also supposed to reference the artist of the inter-war Weimar Germany era, Max Beckmann (1884-1950). However, then in 1996 there was the UK TV crime series 'Beck' and in 1997, the Swedish police series also called 'Beck', began. The German series, 'Beckmann' which began in 1999, was a chat show, but still I felt the name was getting too much usage. So, looking for an alternative name, I switched to 'Braucher' which I saw used in the USA but had a German ring to it and as a German friend said to me, it had an analogous meaning which might seem useful/appropriate.

Anyway, through the late 1990s and into the 2000s, I was writing these stories, 15,000-20,000 words, so novellas very influenced by Simenon. I did not have an idea of publishing them and any hopes seemed dashed when I encountered the first three Bernie Gunther novels of Philip Kerr published 1989-1991. Though set in Berlin, I felt I was be seen to be aping his novels. However, especially in the covers of these first three (there was a shift in style when he revived the series in 2006), which echoed the Penguin crime novel editions of the 1960s, I had to go with that green urban style myself. Of course, since then we have seen numerous crime novels set in the Weimar Germany era, the most successful being the Gereon Rath novels of Volker Kutscher, published since 2007. Berlin has primarily remained the focus, but Rory Clements has now left crime in 16th Century England for 1930s Munich with 'Munich Wolf' (2024).

Self-publishing ebooks did not really become a thing until the 2010s. My wife, a published author, suggested I got into it and having already produced 12 Braucher stories and even faked up some covers for them (pretending that Penguin had taken me up), these seemed sensible ones to start with. My original idea had been 3 x 6-story anthologies and I launched 'Braucher's Solution' and 'Braucher's Inheritance' on this basis. However, in the mid-2010s, there was a real fade for short and episodic ebook fiction, stories people could complete in a single train journey, so I disaggregated the stories and launched them as stand-alone novellas. I was rather uncomfortable selling them in that way, but it seemed to work. I continued writing more finally reaching 17 novellas in total.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0174OXGA0?ref_=dbs_mng_crcw_0&storeType=ebooks&qid=1754231531&sr=8-3

In 2015 I finally got around to completing the full-length Braucher prequel novel, set in 1922, 'Munich White' which I had started at the same time as the novellas back in 1995 but had run out of steam. Having worked more with Braucher and his setting, but the 2010s I was ready to come back and complete the novel. Having three story threads that occasionally bisected was probably rather over-ambitious but we can put that down to the confidence of my youth back then. There have long been plans for 'Munich Brown' set during Munich's Beer Hall Putsch of November 1923, but, despite lots of ideas for what might happen in it and some of the roots of these being laid in the Braucher novellas, I have been unable to come up with a satisfactory structure whether the three-story strand or a focus just on Braucher. This is often a challenge with historical novels, having an appropriate set of characters able to witness what you need them to witness without them teleporting all over the place or having to employ a whole platoon of characters as I ended up doing for 'Scavenged Days' (2018) and some would argue, unsuccessfully.

Now the fad of the 2010s for short or episodic ebooks seems to have died, indeed ebooks themselves seem to be waning, I still felt uncomfortable when speaking about my books having to say, 'well, of course, 17 of those crime novels are just novellas, not full-length [read 'proper'] novels.' Thus, I decided to reassemble the novellas back into the three anthologies I had originally envisaged. I was short the 18th story to complete the third anthology. For a long time I had intended to write 'Braucher and the Circle' which would be around spiritualism something which was extremely popular in Britain and Germany in the post-First World War period - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was very into it. However, again despite coming at it from different angles I could not get a satisfactory structure. Thus, I decided to swap it with 'Braucher and the Expectation' which I had intended to be set in 1924, but seemed to work instead in October 1923, rounding out the third anthology. I decided to title that anthology 'Braucher's Value' referencing the hyperinflation of mid to late 1923 that is in the background and influenced a lot of what happened at the time in Germany.

Of course, reaggregating the novellas I took the opportunity to check and revise the writing. I realised how far my writing has come since 2012, let alone 1995 and I feel these revised editions are more lucid than the approach I had back then. In addition, it is so much easier to get hold of detailed information about the era especially on political groups and the law. Accessing maps and images is also incredibly easy certainly compared to having to read through scores of books. This has allowed me to expand and indeed correct some of the details that I featured, notably on the A.G.V.K. political grouping which is mentioned in all three anthologies. Details of when certainly newspapers, cars and weapons were available is also so much easier, indeed I can access German newspapers of the time from the comfort of my own desk at home, something that would have seemed very futuristic back in 1995.

Thus, while I have always been proud of my Braucher stories, I do feel these three re-released anthologies do show the stories at their best and the 'train spotters' of historical novels might be more satisfied that anything even mildly anachronistic has been corrected. While the competition is much stiffer now than thirty, let alone thirteen years ago, I do hope that even a few readers enjoy the Braucher books, cheaper and more accessible than before, simply with fewer of those green-tinted photograph covers that myself and others have long enjoyed.

Books I Read/Listened To In October

 Fiction

'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

This is the first part of Ruiz Zafón's renowned tetralogy. It is set in Barcelona, 1945-56. It is a little magic realism, with most elements quite realistic, if Gothic in tone. The Cemetery of Forgotten Books which the protagonist is taken to as a boy and is the home to books that would otherwise be lost has a fantastical element. However, other aspects such as the role of the secret police under the Francoist regime, established right across Spain in 1939, is realistic. Daniel is allowed to pick one book from the cemetery and selects 'The Shadow of the Wind' by Julian Carax an unsuccessful published author from Barcelona who spent much of his life in the inter-war years in Paris. Daniel sets out to discover the story of Carax, especially his subsequent death in Barcelona, and those who knew him that remain. This involves a lot of investigating among deserted buildings of the city and avoiding various nasty characters including the man intent on burning all Carax's work. It is also a coming of age story and Daniel's challenges with the young women he falls for, in part mirror Carax's own.

This book has been immensely successful. It was published in 2001 and translated into English in 2004. I am not sure why I had not come across it before, though possibly as given my reading patterns I typically reach books some 15-20 years after they have been successful and they are common in charity shops. I was interested in the setting, having read quite a lot on the Spanish Civil War, but much less on the period afterwards. The Gothic atmosphere is well rendered. The investigation and the sense of jeopardy were handled effectively. I did feel that it went too far in trying to be twisty in its narrative and its revelations and that my patience with how many times it might loop around or parallels be drawn, was probably exhausted by the three-quarter mark, though I continued to the end. Perhaps the petty, and at times violent, nastiness of characters especially towards their children, becomes tiresome after a while.

I have the second book, in the sequence, 'The Angel's Game' (2008) which is a prequel to read. While it was a labour to finish the first book, I did admire the imagination of the author and his portrayal of the settings so will not abandon reading the second one in due course.

'A Question of Blood' by Ian Rankin

I actually listened to the audio book version of this back in August 2018: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/08/books-i-listened-toread-in-august.html Interestingly, this time round, reading it, I felt that it was actually tighter than I felt back then listening to it. There is some travelling about, but compared to some of Rankin's books I have read in recent months, this felt to be necessary. The fact that Rebus and DS Clarke work together rather than separately for much of the book, may be one reason why aspects do not feel superfluous. The story does move on briskly and as I noted before, not being a standard murder mystery in that the killer is known from the outset, does not undermine the investigation and it is interesting that some of the 'red herrings' are put in intentionally by people working to their own agendas. Thus, overall, I was glad I came back to this book as I was much more satisfied with reading this particular entry in the series, the 14th, then I was listening to it five years ago.

'Breakfast in the Ruins' by Michael Moorcock

While I have read a lot of Michael Moorcock books down the years, this was one, published in 1971, that I had not come across before. It is a short novel (174 pages in my edition) which see the protagonist Karl Glogauer dropping into various versions of himself, usually as a boy in various locations from 1871 to 1990. He is projected into these roles, it appears, through having homosexual sex with an unnamed Nigerian man who he meets in the roof garden cafe of the Derry & Tom's department store, a location regularly turning up in many of Moorcock's books.

Aside from the mode of 'transport' and a vignette set in 1990, there is not much science fiction or fantasy, rather they are quick portrayals of different historical settings including Paris under the Commune, 19th Century Brunswick, Capetown, Havana at the time of the Spanish-American War, the east end of London,  (German) Alsace during the First World War, Kiev during the Russian Civil War (a popular context for Moorcock), New York at the time of Wall Street Crash, Shanghai during the 28th January Incident of 1932 (rather than the Japanese invasion of 1937), Berlin in 1935, Auschwitz in 1944, Tel Aviv in 1947 at the end of British mandate, Budapest in 1956, Kenya in 1959 during the Mau Mau Emergency, with US troops in Vietnam in 1968 and the west end of London (notably Ladbroke Grove another venue Moorcock likes to use) with a prediction of rioting and unemployment in the 1980s which was a reasonably accurate prediction. As you can tell all the settings are grim; often violent.

Also in common with his style, Moorcock mixes in excerpts from newspapers and non-fiction books of various periods. He also presents a moral dilemma at the end of each chapter. In many ways he was the precursor of a lot of what goes on in terms of social media these days. At the time the book must have appeared like a lot of his work, as a challenging text in terms of the incidents it focused on, its very format and the engagement with topics such as homosexuality and abuse. Now such are commonplace features on TV and in books thought non-linear, multi-perspective structures are unpopular with readers even if they do feature in movies and TV series. Consequently what a reader in 2023 is likely to pick up on is the quality of the descriptions of the contexts and in one case quite an engaging short story. Aside from that, it does feel at times as if Moorcock was showing off his ability to be non-traditional in his approach which would have jarred/challenged readers in 1971 much, much more than it does 52 years later.

'Walking on Glass' by Iain Banks

I believed that I had not read this book, though given I get through about 50 per year, perhaps it is to be expected that I forget some from a decade or two ago. This was published in 1985 so I would have had ample time to read it in the past 38 years. It was not as if I was entirely familiar with the book and I did not know the ending. It consists of three strands that we move between in turn. Two of them are about men living in London in 1983/84: Graham Park, an art student and Steven Grout, a man who maybe neuro-diverse or mentally disabled. For much of the novel we see them moving around on a particular day, one in which Graham is going to visit a woman called Sara who he is in love with but has been rather toying with his affections and Steven loses his job as a roadworker. I did not recall either of these stories. 

I did recall the third strand which features a man called Quiss and a woman called Ajayi who come from opposing sides of a war on a different planet or time. They are confined to a vast castle in a bleak landscape and have to play out almost impossible games such as one-dimensional chess, open-plan Go, spotless dominoes, Chinese Scrabble and Tunnel. Working out how to play and completing a game allows them one chance to answer the riddle and be released from the castle. In the depths of the castle are rooms in which other prisoners can insert themselves into the lives of others as a distraction from their imprisonment.

This was Banks's second 'contemporary' book and like 'The Wasp Factory' (1984) combines the mundane with the rather outré aspects. It also points to his other stream of writing as Iain M. Banks, as a science fiction author. Overall the book, rather like its predecessor, shows different personal Hells. It shows how we can construct or at least contribute to constructing contexts which distress us mentally and then fall victim to these; often unable to break out of them even if in (large) part we have built them up in the first place. This does say something about neuro-diversity and mental health, explored less sensitively in the 1980s than now. Unfortunately Banks's 'solution' seems to be simply to seek oblivion, whether that is through self-destruction, suffering a severe injury or simply abandoning even our best work. Added to that it makes a strong message that we should never hope and ultimately the nastiest people in our world will always come out best off.

While it might not be perceived this way, as with 'The Wasp Factory' this novel is effectively a low-key horror story and should be approached in that way. It is an unhelpful musing on the mental worlds we construct and its overall message is that anyone finding themselves in such situations should simply give up, whether on their efforts or indeed life itself. As you can imagine, I did not enjoy this book. It is engaging as it goes along but in all three strands ends up being utterly bleak.

Non-Fiction

'The Weimar Republic' by Eberhard Kolb

This was a good book to read after Wehler's 'The German Empire' (1985) which I read in August: https://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2023/08/books-i-readlistened-to-in-august.html Like Wehler, Kolb provides a brisk but focused analysis of the next period in German history, which eschews being dogmatic down any of the lines which became very ensconced in German history in the 1960s-80s. The first part of the book is an account, which really cuts through the confusion and draws attention to aspects which are overlooked. He makes the notable point that the state's democracy had died by 1930, almost three years before Hitler came to power. Kolb dismisses many of the 'easy' answers that have been put forward for the failure of the Weimar Republic and indeed misconceptions, perhaps even myths, that for so long persisted, regarding the rise of the Nazis. The second half of the book looks at research into different themes of the period as it was when this edition, the first in English was published in 1988. The bibliography was updated from the German first edition four years earlier; there is a 2004 edition in English available too. Thus, this book provides a valuable insight into a period of history which retains interest (e.g. 'Babylon Berlin' TV series, which began in 2017 is still running with a 5th season planned) and a good counter to many of the lazy answers that people continue to wheel out about how the republic fell.

Audio Books

'Prince' by Rory Clements; read by Peter Wickham

Set in 1593, this is the third in Clements's series of spy thrillers featuring John Shakespeare, brother to the more famous William. It is very well done with aspects of what you might expect from a modern spy thriller but clearly set in the late Elizabethan period with rich descriptions of all the sights, sounds and smells of the time. Shakespeare works for Robert Cecil, effectively spymaster for Elizabeth I in the last decade or so of her reign. While his father Cecil acted as her Secretary of State, 1590-96, Robert despite being disabled, carried out a growing part of his work before taking on the position 1596-1612.

John is initially set to investigate terrorist incidents using gunpowder against Dutch refugees from the Eighty Years War who have settled in London. There is much tension around these immigrants though it is soon apparent it is being exploited for a range of purposes. John is later sent to find out about the possibility of an unknown Catholic child of Mary, Queen of Scots who it is believed the Spanish fighting against the Dutch and hostile to Britain, are aiming to set on the Scottish and perhaps the English throne too. Between them John and his assistant Boltfoot Cooper investigate around London and especially into Essex for the conspirators.

Clements handles the story well. There is rivalry between John and his fellow agents which adds interesting points of tension and dynamics to the plot. Clements does not hold off from brutality of the times, with regular reference to tortures and violence even to

 John's loved ones. There are vain people and brutal people involved, so the jeopardy feels genuine and there are blind alleys which John goes down. He is capable but not all-seeing, which allows us to feel an affinity with him. Some of the conspirators are rather larger than life, but throughout Clements does ground them with genuine motives and behaviours appropriate for the late 16th Century. There is an epic climax which is built up to well and does not feel ahistorical.

Overall, there is a lot going on in this book, but it maintained my interest without losing me, right throughout. It runs to almost 13 hours on audio, unabridged. Wickham is called on to do a lot of voices from France, Spain, Scotland and the Netherlands, and most of these are handled well, including the female voices. The only gripe is one of his Dutchmen sounds more Polish, though that only brought home how many parallels there can be felt to be between xenophobia of the the Englands of both Queens Elizabeth. This is part of an 8-book series and I would certainly buy more that I come across whether printed or in audio format.

'End in Tears' by Ruth Rendell; read by Christopher Ravenscroft

I have never read any of Ruth Rendell's novels, though I have seen TV dramatisations of 'A Fatal Inversion' (1987; broadcast on TV 1992) and 'Gallowglass' (1990; broadcast 1992) novels she wrote under the pseudonym Barbara Vine. This novel is the 20th in the Chief Inspector Wexford series and was published in 2005, so after the 48-episode 'The Ruth Rendell Mysteries' TV series (broadcast 1987-2000), which I never saw but was aware on.

The novel is a classic contemporary-set British police procedural novel set in Sussex. A killing of a woman by a lump of concrete being dropped on the car she was travelling in is soon followed by the murder with a brick of a young single mother. This brings Wexford into a complex investigation despite the small range of suspects and it is soon tied up with inheritance, surrogacy and the guardianship of children, with echoes in Wexford's own life. Aside from fewer people having internet access and a lingering discomfort over homosexuality, this book could be set now and Rendell does well in combining modern concerns with a classic crime genre with some tropes, notably the brothers, that would have fitted in earlier decades. It jogs along quite well and the conclusion comes across as believable though perhaps unexpected.

Ravenscroft does reasonably well with the voices, especially as there are a lot of women of differing ages to cover. His Wexford ironically is perhaps his weakest voice and I think this is because he was seeking to emulate the actor George Baker's portrayal of Wexford in the long-running TV series, but at times the deep West County accent wobbles. It would probably have been better for him to deliver his own take on the character's voice.

'Tomorrow Never Dies' by Raymond Benson; read by Simon Vane

As regular readers of this blog will know about five years ago I listened to all of the original Ian Fleming James Bond books in audio format. Since I read 'James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me' (1979) by Christopher Wood, when it came out, I have not read any of the novelisations of the movies until I came across this one. Apparently it is based on an unused version of the movie script. However, in common with what I understand is usual with these novelisations, coming to the book does add quite a lot to the movie. There are back stories to Elliot Carver, Paris, Mr. Stamper and so on which develop these characters. In particular through showing their flaws and their physical traits, the characters especially of Carver and Stamper that we see in the movie, make more sense. There is a whole extra character, a non-binary heir to the Chinese throne who does not even turn up in the movie.

Wai Lin gets more detail too and we see 'behind the scenes' before she encounters Bond. She is, however, portrayed as being 28 (which does seem young to be a Colonel in the Chinese Ministry of State Security) and petite whereas Michelle Yeoh who portrayed her in the movie was 35 at the time and 1.63m (5'4") but shot so she looks little shorter than Pierce Brosnan at 1.86m.

The action scenes are well handled, influenced by the movie, clearly, though in some cases much more practically portrayed and factors such as the need for decompression when coming up from the sunk ship are addressed rather than skipped over as in the movie. Bond also has to use more initiative when aboard the stealth ship than being fully kitted out as he is in the movie. Rather scary is a scene which does not feature in the movie in which Carver outlines the wars he intends to start in the coming years, including a vicious Arab-Israeli conflict, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and an American civil war. Benson, or whoever wrote the script back in 1997, had pretty decent insight into the likely conflicts of a quarter of a century into the future.

Simon Vane does well on the accents, just avoiding sounding too stereotypical with the German and Chinese ones. He is clearly influenced by the movie portrayals and captures Jonathan Pryce's Carver well and indeed even Judi Dench's M decently. I would certainly be interested to see other novelisations of the movies though this is rated to be one of the best. The two I have read/heard do add depth to what is shown in the movies; the background stories and the grittier elements do feel to bring them closer to the Fleming books than mainstream movies probably permit.

'A Murder of Quality' by John Le Carré [David Cornwell]; read by John Le Carré

I read the novel of this some time in the past but had forgotten the plot. It is a murder mystery set at a public school. Le Carré was educated at Sherbourne and taught at Eton. Like George Smiley, the protagonist of the novel, Le Carré had been a spy working for both MI5 and MI6 at different times before becoming a novelist. This novel is set in the 1950s with the overhang of the war not too distant. However, a lot of the attitudes and behaviour shown would be no different if you set it, as many authors do, in a British public school of the 21st Century. I suppose this makes it ironically more accessible to readers (even though only a small minority would ever attend such as school) than if it had been set in a grammar school or a secondary modern school of the time.

The wife of schoolmaster is beaten to death with a coaxial cable. Thus reminding us though the context of the public school is a supposedly genteel setting, in fact the brutality of the war and the cheapness of life continued to impact on the attitudes of many in the following years - you sometimes often spot this in Agatha Christie novels of the time and I instantly think of 'A Murder Is Announced' (1950). This novel has a similar element in that Smiley is drawn in after the victim has sent a message predicting her murder.

The novel is brisk but conjures up a range of characters in this constrained setting, which perhaps while they have become stereotypes in the years since, seem to be nuanced when portrayed by Le Carré. He is particularly adept at showing us characters and then completely undermining our perception of them. Some readers might be riled by this, but the author does remind us that even his protagonist's view of people may be far from perfect and especially coming fresh to the locus, largely judges them through what people say about them.

I can see why this novel has retained its appeal as it is almost an exemplar of writing a 20th Century English murder mystery and you feel that Le Carré did it to put himself into that context and show what he could do in that genre rather than spy fiction. It is not common to have the author read their book on audio. This is only the third book I have listened to where that has been the case. It does take Le Carré a little time to get into his performance, perhaps because it was not something he did habitually. However, he is soon well underway and coming from the class and background he is portraying he proves very capable of portraying characters of both genders from that context well. At just 2 hours 30 minutes in total, this is certainly one to listen to (or indeed read) if you have exhausted your collection of Christie, Marsh and Sayers, but want something clever set in a context they would recognise.