Fiction
'The Mammoth Book of SteamPunk' ed. by Sean Wallace
There was a recent debate on the Never Was online journal about whether you could be steampunk and right-wing: https://neverwasmag.com/2019/06/can-you-be-right-wing-and-steampunk/ I had said that it was not that simple and there are elements of the genre such as the excitement of heavy industry and portrayal of Victorian social structures that could be seen as favoured by right-wing commentators. However, reading this anthology which came out in 2012, I realised that my reading in the genre was dated. Almost every protagonist in the 30 stories of this collection is either disabled or gay or from a black, Asian or other group in a minority in Western Europe. Indeed Ekaterina Sedia has written an opening essay that emphasises what she feels is the prime purpose of steampunk to paint a better picture of the alternatives available in the past as this can be the only basis of a brighter future. Though a number of the stories connect more clearly to the fantasy genre, Sedia links them explicitly to science fiction, bouncing from the past into the future.
If this was your first contact with steampunk (or SteamPunk as Wallace has it) you would assume that these were necessary parts of the genre and perhaps, in the late 2000s they had already become and are this firmly in the late 2010s. In many ways by emphasising all the bad that steampunk has kept concealed beneath its bluster, this collection showed me that the genre is effectively dead or, at best, a very gloomy type of writing. It has turned me away from the genre completely to the extent there seems no point in me ever writing in it again. I guess for the authors featured in this book, that would be a victory because it is apparent my kind of steampunk has no place in their universe. I am sure the authors would tell you that as a white, middle-aged, formerly middle class man from Western Europe, I have no place in the genre anyway given the views that I must hold given that background.
All the stories collected are certainly informed by feminism. This becomes anti-man in James Morrow's 'Lady Witherspoon's Solution'. I do not know why editors of steampunk anthologies feel obliged to include horrific stories that really, despite their steampunk trappings, belong in the horror genre. I still shudder when I think of 'The Steam Man of the Prairie and the Dark Rider Get Down' by Joe R. Lansdale in 'Steampunk' (2008) by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer which is effectively torture porn; 'Victoria' by Paul Di Filippo in the same collection features bestiality. Morrow's story featuring the reduction of men to beasts and their castration and the collection of testes as entertainment for Victorian ladies, is of the same ilk. The men are portrayed as the worst of their kind, but even the USA, parts of which tolerate the death penalty would not permit such abuse of prisoners let alone lionise it the way Morrow does. Simply putting something into a steampunk setting does not excuse authors from churning out such vile work. If they feel obliged to include such 'stories', editors should include a warning. The inclusion of the story undermines the feminist approach adopted elsewhere in the book by suggesting it is no better than male chauvinism. Imagine if Morrow had written a story in which women were injected with chemicals that reduced them to beasts that were then compelled to fight to the death and then the victors were mutilated; he would have been roundly condemned.
'Machine Maid' by Margo Lanagan, is almost as bad. It sees a skilled woman left largely deserted in a house in the wilds of Australia, altering a clockwork 'sex robot' to mutilate her husband. Fortunately Lanagan uses implied outcomes more than Morrow. However, it does alarm me how we have come to such a bad situation in relations between the sexes that it is seen as alright to have a 'mild' little story having men mutilated and this not been deemed to be horror if not a form of sick pornography. Apparently if an uncaring man, let alone a malicious one, is the victim then it is acceptable. Even the USA has a law against 'cruel and unusual punishment' of the kinds apparently happily shown by the authors in these stories. Such porn has no place in true steampunk.
Aside from Morrow and Lanagan's chapters, there is a mixed bag of stories. Interestingly, a number of them shade from strict steampunk into fantasy. 'Clockwork Fairies' by Cat Rambo is set in Ireland and features real fairies countering the ones of the title. 'Icebreaker' by E. Catherine Tobler, concerning a dwarf widow of a scientist taking his remains to bury at the South Pole has fantastical creatures at the pole too. 'Tom Edison and His Amazing Telegraphic Harpoon' shows North America fragmented as the Mormons have summoned forth demonic flying creatures to defend Deseret. In both cases, the steampunk technology helps the protagonists win through. 'Prayers of Forges and Furnaces' by Ailette de Bodard combines her use of South American contexts with both a post-apocalyptic setting and a vampire. 'Numismatics in the Age in the Reigns of Naranh and Viu' by Alex Dally MacFarlane, is one of the stories that uses 'artefacts' as the basis of the story rather than telling the story in a straight forward way. It is a feminist story in a fantasy setting and shows how a queen went off to form her own realm, via the coins that she and her followers produce. It is an interesting idea but a bit lifeless.
'To Follow the Waves' by Amal El-Mohtar is one of a number of Middle Eastern set stories, a context unusual for steampunk stories; one of the lesbian romances in the book and features a woman who can craft dreams into jewellery that reminded me a lot of crafting in 'Humility Garden' (1995) and 'Delta City' (1996) by Felicity Savage. 'The Mechanical Aviary of Emperor Jula-ud-Din Muhammad Akbar' by Shweta Narayan is told by a clockwork bird and straddles not only those stories which seem to be more from mainstream fantasy than steampunk, but also come over as morality tales. 'The Clockwork Chickadee' by Mary Robinette Kowal is another of these, set among clockwork toys with a rather nasty revenge story. 'The Ballard of the Last Human' by Lavie Tidhar is in a similar vein though even less realistic as the heroes are a clockwork dog and a clockwork spider. 'Clockmaker's Requiem' by Barth Anderson is a surreal story about a world shifting from personal time to clock-based time, something which happened in our world, but not in a context as bizarre as this. As a result it is one of the philosophical stories of the book rather than one with real action. The clearest of the morality tales is 'The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi' by Peter M. Ball in which very little happens and it is really a parable than a standard short story.
Less fantastical, but with the same philosophical questioning at its heart is 'To Seek Her Fortune' by Nicole Kornher-Stace which features a single mother travelling the world with airship gypsies seeking a true prediction of her death. It is really about how she raises her son and is better on the context than the story. 'Fixing Hanover' despite being by Jeff VanderMeer a writer I have come to strongly disapprove of, is rather a parable too, about fixing a humanoid robot that washes up in a seaside town where a technician has fled. However, like the best short stories it hints at a far larger world that could easily fill a novel. It has a feel a bit like the settings of the 'Dishonored' (2012-16) computer games. Perhaps similar if 'The Steam Dancer (1896)' by Caitlin R. Kiernan is like the warnings seen in the 'Terminator' movies (1984-2019) about robots becoming aggressive and/or dominant. It also highlights how much more sophisticated machinery is now portrayed in steampunk.
'Arbeitkraft' by Nick Mamatas is similar in seeing clockwork cyborgs to do dangerous jobs. It combines a robot takeover story with a Marxist critique as Friedrich Engels is the hero of the story. It is easily assumed in these stories that with steam and clockwork technology robots with the intelligence of machines we see in science fiction would be possible, further ensuring that link to the genre I highlighted above. To me, though, this is really breaking down steampunk as having a level of rational limits and so making it simply a science fiction or indeed fantasy sub-set. 'Dr Lash Remembers' by Jeffery Ford, straddles such 'warning' stories with a fantastical element in which steam has been made into the carrier of a disease that leads to loss of control among humans so wrecking the steampunk world. 'Reluctance' is a steampunk zombie story with a disabled airship postman fighting against zombies in a remote USA town in order to refuel and escape. It is fast moving but very much as I have described it.
In my view the best story in the book is around a lesbian romance. This is 'The Effluent Engine' by N.K. Jemisin and sees an alternate history in which the uprising on Haiti has led to a black sovereign nation seeking help to defend its position by making use of the by-products of rum manufacture. Though a short story it is a great little adventure with a romancing of a female engineer at its heart and certainly hinting at a far greater 'world' that could feature in a novel. Another one, though with an tragic lesbian theme, is' Hands that Feed' featuring a Jewish female engineer and people in a city that she encounters, one a young female thief. Again, it is set in a rich context that you want to find out more about. You hope for a happy outcome but I guess with the tone of much of this collection a tragic one should be predicted from the oppression of the setting. Similarly mournful in tone is 'The Celebrated Carousel of the Margravine of Blois' by Megan Arkenberg. A ghost hunter is brought to the house of the former lesbian lover of the late margravine but finds that really all that is happening is all the clockwork devices she built are decaying on her death; melancholy and little more.
I wonder if it is the alternate history facet that attracts me, but I feel another strong story is 'The People's Machine' by Tobias S. Buckell, not only in a steampunk context but one in which the Aztec Empire, rather as Japan did in the 19th Century, has persisted and the geography of North America is different with New Amsterdam having persisted and the British having won two American Wars of Independence have kept the independent USA no greater than the Thirteen Colonies. It is a murder mystery with a computer at the heart of it, like 'The Steam Dancer (1896)' addressing concerns that many science fiction stories look at.
'A Serpent in the Gears' by Margaret Ronald is a strange story about a robot protecting his master while they are approaching a cut-off settlement which has sophisticated technology combined with biology, it is a kind of steam version of cyberpunk, though it is unclear where this is located even though the story is in theory set on Earth. It is not bad but rather unsatisfactory. I found I mixed it up easily with 'Biographical Notes to "A Discourse on the Nature of Causality, with Airplanes" by Benjamin Rosenbaum' which is by Benjamin Rosenbaum who in a conceited way has put himself into this alternative world. This story sees a steampunk world in which India has become the dominant force in the world and its culture supreme. In the book while avoiding airborne assassins he considering writing an alternate history novel in which Western philosophical approaches are used and aeroplanes rather than airships predominate. The background rather stymies the action presented, though jumping between airships after the assassin is well done.
'The Zeppelin Conductors' Society Annual Gentlemen's Ball' by Genevieve Valentine is not really a story but one of these 'artefact' chapters, in this case a series of fragments outlining how men working in airship envelopes become physically distorted, so effectively it is another story featuring disability as well as highlighting the detrimental impact of steampunk developments. However, it is really a series of notes for a setting rather than a developed story. 'The Anachronist's Cookbook' by Catherynne M. Valente is another artefact one. It has a bit more of a story but it is largely outlined in flyers that the heroine carries calling on revolution against what a lot see as traits, certainly pre-2000s, of steampunk in being socially oppressive and misogynistic. It is an interesting approach but basically you are reading bombastic political leaflets for a fictional setting, so it is imagined propaganda rather a real story. Not an artefact story but one in which very, very little happens is 'The Armature of Flight' by Sharon Mock which is about a male gay couple splitting up as one goes to be fitted with mechanical wings and the other marries a woman. It is more like ideas for a story, rather than an actual story.
'Zeppelin City' by Eileen Gunn and Michael Swanwick is a fast moving story in a city ruled by brains in glass tanks where aerial bombing has become a sport. It has interesting ideas and is adventurous with a couple of engaging heroines. However, it is clearly dieselpunk, even with 1950s US slang, rather than steampunk and it belongs in a different collection to this one. 'Cinderella Suicide' by Samantha Henderson which seems to be set in Australia is so full of slang from that context that it is very, very difficult to work out what is going on. I do not know if Australian readers could make any sense of it. It seems to be about an exploration to where a spaceship has crash landed on the interior of Australia. It might be more mainstream science fiction than steampunk, it is hard to tell.
Overall, how tiresome I have found reviewing this anthology has brought home to me that I was largely unimpressed by the stories. Aside from the horrific, many lecture the reader as if we are all ignorant of various essential lessons and readers. Others drown the reader in the authors' conceits. You read a novel or short story for entertainment rather than to be harangued as happens so often in this collection. There are some good and interesting stories but in a large anthology they are quickly lost amongst the bulk of the others. In the future I will certainly avoid any steampunk anthologies, even if, as with this one, I find them cheap at a carboot sale.
'Silesian Station' by David Downing
This is the second book in Downing's 'Station' series set in Germany in the late 1930s and 1940s. This one begins in the summer of 1939 and ends with the outbreak of the Second World War in Europe that September. His hero, John Russell returns from the USA where he has visited with his son and has been given a US passport in place of his British one. He now also writes for a San Francisco newspaper. As in the first book, 'Zoo Station' (2007), Russell spends a lot of time simply travelling around, whether in parts of Berlin or out to various countries. In this one he manages to go to Austria, the Protectorate of Bohemia-Moravia, Slovakia and Poland as well as visiting the Silesian region of Germany. There are various motives for his journeys. In Berlin he socialises with his girlfriend and takes his son by his divorced German wife to various locations. Ridiculously he is working not only for US intelligence, but also the German SD counter-intelligence organisation and the Soviet foreign intelligence body at the time, INO. Russell is also given personal missions, to help track down a missing Jewish woman from Silesia and help another Jewish woman who is the mistress of a high-ranking SS officer to escape Germany. This web detracts rather than adds to the tension of the novel. There is far too much about where Russell is going with his girlfriend, a film star, or his son, where he parks, where he has lunch, what he has for dinner and so on. Downing gives us loads of detail about Prague and Bratislava and other locales Russell visits, but largely to show off his research than truly add to the story. There is tension but only right at the end of the novel when Russell seeks to rescue Jewish women from an SS brothel and get a friend who has committed a murder, out of Germany. Downing simply has too much going on for his main character and insists on so much detail, for the novel to really work. It is all very interesting but there are only brief moments when he snares you as a reader of a work of fiction rather than a book of popular history.
'Sherlock Holmes and The Hentzau Affair' by David Stuart Davies
As you might guess from the title this is a double pastiche, on both the Sherlock Holmes novels of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the Ruritania novels of Sir Anthony Hope. It is written as the Holmes stories were from the perspective of Dr. Watson. It is very much in the style of one of those stories and Davies only makes a few slips, most jarringly when he uses to the term 'surrealistic tableau' to describe when two men masquerading as King Rudolf V of Ruritania encounter each other on a platform of Streslau station. The story is set in 1894 and supposedly written in 1919, five years before the first meeting of the Surrealist group. He might have got away with it if he had said 'Dadaist'. Overall, however, it is a brisk action story with sword fighting, abductions and numerous deaths. It is a pleasure to read if you enjoy either Doyle's or Hope's work and can avoid trying to spot where Davies erred.
Non-Fiction
'Creative Editing' by Mary Mackie
I bought this book when it was published in 1995. I have dipped into it periodically since then but have never before read it cover-to-cover. While it shows its age, wordprocessors were only really coming into common use when it was published; it suggests you go to a library to do research because there were no internet searches and novels were still submitted on paper rather than via email, it has many principles that remain useful today. I should have read this book sooner because it has become apparent recently that with my school's strange aversion to direct speech, at times insisting on only reported speech in creative writing, what I learned about it was wrong. I was depressed to realise that I had not noticed my errors from reading hundreds of books since then. This added to the sense of despair that I will come back to at the end.
I did find Mackie's guidance on handling points of view much better than other commentators who insist on just one. I do disagree with her on the passive voice as she seems oblivious, like many people, to how it can distort the intended meaning and lead to highly contorted sentences. One compensatory thing is that Mackie, while highlighting various aspects to consider, keeps emphasising that it is down to the author themselves to decide how to apply them, rather than insisting that the author follows her prescriptions to the letter the way that some other help books on authoring do. Added to that, including exercises, the book in the edition I read is only 208 pages long and is broken up into easy to access sections. Thus, while I would recommend reading the book right through, it can be dipped into in the way I foolishly did over the past 24 years. Having read the book in its entirety, I now recognise that even from this 'light touch' rather than dictatorial book, there are just so many things that you must get perfectly right to just get your book to a level at which a publisher might consider it, that it is an impossibility and that I should have abandoned my fantasy of ever getting a book published, decades ago.
Audio Books - Fiction
'On Her Majesty's Secret Service' by Ian Fleming; read by David Tennant
Unlike for most James Bond books, the movie of this one stuck very close to the original novel. As a consequence, if you have ever seen the movie, you will have a very good idea of what happens and even individual lines from the book feature in it. At the start of the novel, Bond is back in Royale-les-Eaux a fictional town between Étaples and Montreuil-sur-Mer that featured in 'Casino Royale' (1953), following Teresa 'Tracy' di Vicenzo who had beaten him racing recklessly through neighbouring towns. Paying her gambling debt he is then abducted by Tracy's father, Marc-Ange Draco who happens to be head of the Union Corse organised crime group. He tries to bribe Bond into marrying his daughter. Draco puts Bond on to the trail of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, the head of S.P.E.C.T.R.E. he has been pursuing since the end of 'Thunderball' (1961). Bond goes undercover as a member of the College of Arms to Piz Gloria, a mountain top base in Switzerland where Blofeld is hypnotising British and Irish women to spread agricultural pests and diseases to wreck the British economy.
This novel actually feels like a James Bond movie, with the chases and the final climactic explosions. While lining up to marry Tracy who is murdered at the end by Blofeld and his accomplice Irma Bund, he still sleeps with one of the hypnotised women. While Bond is ambivalent about marrying Tracy until very late on, he seems to have less self-doubt than in the previous novels, though he wearies of chasing Blofeld with so little outcome. His relationship with Tracy is almost accidental but he feels that he has found someone of his nature who is as equally reckless as himself driving and gambling. Bond does not, however, have any qualms dealing with Draco despite him being a major criminal engaging in smuggling and prostitution. In fact the burgeoning relationship between the two men develops more steadily than that between Bond and Tracy and is reminiscent of the relationship between Bond and Felix Leiter which features in a number of the novels. For Fleming to have continued the series Tracy had to be killed to free up the agent once more. As a result, perhaps you come to expect it and it is less cutting when she dies than you might expect.
There are longeurs when Bond is undercover at Piz Gloria. He seems very dim in failing to work out what Blofeld is up to. This leads to an extended section of Bond being at M's house working with various ministers over the Christmas period, which as it is laboured, fortunately does not feature in the movie. For some reason Fleming felt compelled to replicate large tracts of a US government document on biological warfare as if he feared readers would not believe the basis of the plot featured in the story, but at times it is just a list, slowing the story unnecessarily. The action scenes are well handled but interspersed at times with too much 'info dump' sections.
Tennant does pretty well and seems to have been brought in for this book because his natural accent is Scottish which Bond uses when pretending to be Sir Hilary Bray while undercover at Piz Gloria. He is generally good on all of the voices, though, as he outlines in the interview at the end of my edition of the book, he struggled with the French and German names. Overall, this is perhaps the book in the series which we would see as being most clearly 'James Bond' as it is understood in popular culture and it does that job pretty well, but could have been tauter. Perhaps by this stage of his career, Fleming was not being edited as thoroughly as in the past.
Wednesday, 31 July 2019
Sunday, 30 June 2019
The Books I Listened To/Read In June
Fiction
'Prince of Legend' by Jack Ludlow
This is the final book in Ludlow's Crusades trilogy and features events during the 1st Crusade from soon after the capture of Antioch to the fall of Jerusalem. I have long been interested in the Crusader States set up from what is now southern Turkey through modern Syria and Lebanon to Palestine/Israel, so was interested to read this book. Ludlow is a successful historical fiction author with a number of trilogies set in Ancient Rome and medieval Europe. This novel showed me why I have had complaints about my own (alternate) history books if Ludlow's approach is what is expected. Aspiring authors are repeatedly told 'show, don't tell'. In other words events should be seen through the eyes of the characters rather than simply narrated by the author. Ludlow totally throws aside that expectation. Much of the book is not a novel, it is a popular-level history book. At times it was as if I was re-reading 'The First Crusade' (1980) by Steven Runciman that I read in December: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/12/books-i-listened-toread-in-december.html
The 'action' features the leaders of the Crusade and every time one is introduced there is extensive background on him, his relatives and their rivalries back in Europe. Dialogue is minimal and was described to me as being like television documentaries in which they have some actors going through the motions to give a feel for a particular meeting. There are no female characters and we hear from no-one outside the inner circle of leaders. There is tension and rivalry between them, but it is handled in a clinical way. If the minimal dialogue was stripped out, then this could simply be presented as a history book.
There were some interesting details especially about the nature of Antioch and the villages and castles around it that I was not familiar with and then about the progress of the crusaders from Antioch to Jerusalem and briefly how they interacted with the emirates they went through on the way. However, it was not a work of fiction and there is no real story. If this is what people who buy my books think a novel is, then they are misinformed and they would be better off seeking out popular history books, which might lack the exciting covers and bombastic rhetoric on the front, but provide the technical detail these readers are looking for. For myself, while well informed, this did not at all feel like a novel. I found it interesting, but lacking any character development and full of historical facts rather than story, I was not engaged with it as I would have been with a work of fiction.
'Death in a Strange Country' by Donna Leon
This is the second book in the Commissario Brunetti series by Leon, featuring a police detective from Venice. I am still waiting to read one of her books which would explain the acclaim that there is for her series. At times Leon does not seem certain whether she is writing a 'cosy' crime novel set amongst the beauty and decay of Venice or wants to produce something more gritty. While I accept the series may improve, so far she has not approached Michael Dibdin in terms of writing crime novels set in contemporary Italy. This novel is patchy in terms of pace. When an American serviceman is found floating dead in a canal in Venice, Brunetti has to travel to Vicenza which at the time of the novel (1993) had a large US Army base. He has to navigate between the American authorities and powerful Italian businessmen but is aided by a member of the local carabinerie. The first two-thirds of the book are pretty slow, with Brunetti trekking back and forth between Venice and Vicenza. The pace is not aided by the fact that Leon goes into immense detail about how people have their coffees and other details which are clearly aimed to add atmosphere but really slow up the book. In contrast there are two 'info dumps' when Brunetti simply has a meeting with a person and they provide a great deal of the information he needs with no difficulty. The pace picks up towards the end of the book when corruption and environmental damage is uncovered. A side story about the theft of expensive paintings is connected in too, but again it has been a laboured affair with Brunetti taking ages to track down the supposed thief even though he knows him and he is in the constraints of Venice. There are some interesting elements in this novel, but the execution is erratic.
Non-Fiction
'A Brief Survey of Austrian History' by Richard Rickett
I have no idea where I got this book from. First published in 1966 (I have the 1972 edition) by a Viennese publishers, it was aimed at giving English-speaking tourists to Austria a history of the country. The flow of the book is very erratic and seems largely to alight on particular topics or individuals which interest Rickett rather than giving an even picture of the country. There is quite a lot of stuff on the medieval expansion of Austria and then on various rulers, notably Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph and the failed attempts at reform. Metternich gets particular attention, but so does a lot of cultural aspects especially in the 18th Century. The fight for Tyrol during the Napoleonic Wars was something I knew nothing about but despite being brief is covered in detail. The period up to the assimilation by Germany, through the 1920s and 1930s also gets much attention, but almost everything after that is covered briefly. I particularly wished for more about Austria in the 1950s and 1960s which gets scant coverage. Overall it is a odd, but perhaps charming little book, rather let down by the fact it flits from topic to topic on the basis of the author's interest rather than giving a thorough coverage no matter how brief.
Audio Books
'Death Message' by Mark Billingham; read by Robert Glenister
Having listened to 'Lifeless' (2005) and found it refreshing, I was looking forward to this book that while two books later in the same series, featured the detective Tom Thorne. I know that Billingham has striven for grittiness and realism in his portrayal of policing in London. However, with this book it went too far and Thorne ends up as much a criminal as many of those he arrests. He is drawn into a series of killings as the murderer sends him mobile phone messages, a mix of text, photos and video, of the victims. While trying not to give away too much of what happens, Thorne begins to use the serial killer, not turning him into the police and eventually using him to exact revenge. There are some qualms on his part, but it seems towards the end as if Billingham has lost control of the plot.
It is common these days in novels to see things from both the criminal's and the detective's perspective, even when dealing with serial killers. We also have stories featuring corrupt or vengeful police officers, but you get the sense that this is not really what the author intended for his character (though I may be wrong). By the end you see Thorne as no better than the people he is supposed to be pursuing. It really undermines his relationship with his girlfriend, also a police detective of the same rank and his best friend, a police pathologist. His deceit of them removes any faith we had in Thorne. I do not know if it is the beginning of Thorne's slide into criminality; 7 books follow this one. However, for me, I was riled feeling that the sympathy built up for Thorne was tossed aside and it was far too easy for him to become the companion and indeed user of a serial killer, with minimal doubts about his actions.
Glenister did well with all the London voices, pretty decently with the female characters. However, my engagement with his narration was overshadowed by a novel which went right off the rails and made the 'hero' seem like it was him who should be being arrested rather than those he was meant to be going after, almost all of whom end up dead anyway, because of Thorne's negligence, and his use of a killer to carry out his own ends.
'Gallows View' by Peter Robinson; read by Neil Pearson
This book is the first book in the D(C)I Banks series of novels which have been televised in recent years. It is set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Eastvale where Banks and his family have moved from London. The book is set in the 1980s. This is one of the interesting things about crime novels, is that they really show up the technology of the time. As 'Death Message' (2007) was about mobile phones of the mid-2000s, this book, published in 1987 is about mid-1980s technology including early police computers, film cameras and even slide projectors. I would put it in the category of 'cosy' crime books, if it was not so sordid.
It has trappings of a cosy story being set in a small town with various characters and a very limited number of suspects. Many of the points of tension are low key as whether Banks will sleep with an attractive police psychologist and activities are old fashioned like building a dry stone wall and attending the camera club. One of the prime crimes investigated is a 'peeping tom' which seems to precede the sophisticated stalking of today. However, the story involves a rape and the rapist is detected through catching gonorrhea. Given that by the end three residents have been arrested - for manslaughter, rape and voyeurism, you do worry at the crime level of the small town and how quickly Robinson would have got through much of the population.
While I cannot put my finger on why, overall, I was disappointed by the book. Perhaps it felt too old without being period. Perhaps it seemed contrived, though I have accepted many crime books set in small places that have been so as well. I suppose the mix of these elements, simply did not work for me. Pearson who voices a lot of crime audio books, did well, capturing the Yorkshire accents of a range of people and doing convincing female voices. I was left feeling that, despite his efforts, Robinson's work is not something I will return to.
'The Winter Ghosts' by Kate Mosse; read by Julian Rhind-Tutt
This book features tropes that Mosse has built her career upon - a stranger coming to southern France and having a time-slip experience. There is also reference to the Occitan language and the Cathars, a persecuted heretical Christian-based religion prominent in the region in the 13th and 14th Centuries, the followers of which were massacred. It is different in that the protagonist is a man rather than a woman and it is set in 1928 and 1933 rather than in modern day. It features Freddie Watson, a young man from Sussex who has been unable to recover from the death of his elder brother, George, in June 1916, fighting on the Western Front. He has come out of a psychiatric institution but is still heavily troubled by grief. In December 1928 on a driving holiday in southern France he crashes his car and ends up in a small village. He is invited to attend a celebration for the feast day of St. Etienne but slips through time to a 14th Century version of the event where he encounters Cathar locals and witnesses their suppression.
Mosse is great at portraying the locales, here more into the Pyrenees than in her previous books; the physicality of moving around them is well represented. She is also good at the mystery of people from the past impacting on the present. The challenge with this book is that it was extended from a 2009 novella and at times you felt it has been 'padded'. In particular Freddie, despite being haunted by his brother, is slow to realise that he is interacting with more ghosts, especially the beautiful Fabrissa who he falls for and this drives on his subsequent actions. While Mosse is good on what happened in the 14th Century, I am surprised that she makes no reference to how popular spiritualism had become following the First World War. Even if Freddie did not previously subscribe to its beliefs, he certainly would have been aware of rational people (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle notable among them) who felt they could be in contact with the dead. She does present Freddie's sustained grief well and reminds us that people do not 'get over' death easily, especially when it was on such a horrific scale as the First World War with so many very grim ends for people.
Rhind-Tutt, though best known for his comedy work, was an excellent choice to read the book, which is largely told in the first person, though jarringly at the end it switches to third person. It is not simply his voice but all the mannerisms that he puts into the portrayal of Freddie that make it very credible. Overall, I found this an interesting book though built on a simple premise. Mosse's descriptions are great and her sense of people is strong. She weakens the jeopardy with the looking back from 1933 so we know that not only Freddie survives the 1928 encounters despite their hazards, but mentally he is sound. I think this could have been handled differently. At times, especially given how long it takes Freddie to work out that Fabrissa is a ghost, there would have been much tighter editing, but Mosse is renowned for writing long books. If this had run for 3 hours rather than 5 hours 22 minutes as it did in my edition, it could have had a real punch. With length some of that is dissipated, but not to the extent that this is a poor book.
'Prince of Legend' by Jack Ludlow
This is the final book in Ludlow's Crusades trilogy and features events during the 1st Crusade from soon after the capture of Antioch to the fall of Jerusalem. I have long been interested in the Crusader States set up from what is now southern Turkey through modern Syria and Lebanon to Palestine/Israel, so was interested to read this book. Ludlow is a successful historical fiction author with a number of trilogies set in Ancient Rome and medieval Europe. This novel showed me why I have had complaints about my own (alternate) history books if Ludlow's approach is what is expected. Aspiring authors are repeatedly told 'show, don't tell'. In other words events should be seen through the eyes of the characters rather than simply narrated by the author. Ludlow totally throws aside that expectation. Much of the book is not a novel, it is a popular-level history book. At times it was as if I was re-reading 'The First Crusade' (1980) by Steven Runciman that I read in December: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/12/books-i-listened-toread-in-december.html
The 'action' features the leaders of the Crusade and every time one is introduced there is extensive background on him, his relatives and their rivalries back in Europe. Dialogue is minimal and was described to me as being like television documentaries in which they have some actors going through the motions to give a feel for a particular meeting. There are no female characters and we hear from no-one outside the inner circle of leaders. There is tension and rivalry between them, but it is handled in a clinical way. If the minimal dialogue was stripped out, then this could simply be presented as a history book.
There were some interesting details especially about the nature of Antioch and the villages and castles around it that I was not familiar with and then about the progress of the crusaders from Antioch to Jerusalem and briefly how they interacted with the emirates they went through on the way. However, it was not a work of fiction and there is no real story. If this is what people who buy my books think a novel is, then they are misinformed and they would be better off seeking out popular history books, which might lack the exciting covers and bombastic rhetoric on the front, but provide the technical detail these readers are looking for. For myself, while well informed, this did not at all feel like a novel. I found it interesting, but lacking any character development and full of historical facts rather than story, I was not engaged with it as I would have been with a work of fiction.
'Death in a Strange Country' by Donna Leon
This is the second book in the Commissario Brunetti series by Leon, featuring a police detective from Venice. I am still waiting to read one of her books which would explain the acclaim that there is for her series. At times Leon does not seem certain whether she is writing a 'cosy' crime novel set amongst the beauty and decay of Venice or wants to produce something more gritty. While I accept the series may improve, so far she has not approached Michael Dibdin in terms of writing crime novels set in contemporary Italy. This novel is patchy in terms of pace. When an American serviceman is found floating dead in a canal in Venice, Brunetti has to travel to Vicenza which at the time of the novel (1993) had a large US Army base. He has to navigate between the American authorities and powerful Italian businessmen but is aided by a member of the local carabinerie. The first two-thirds of the book are pretty slow, with Brunetti trekking back and forth between Venice and Vicenza. The pace is not aided by the fact that Leon goes into immense detail about how people have their coffees and other details which are clearly aimed to add atmosphere but really slow up the book. In contrast there are two 'info dumps' when Brunetti simply has a meeting with a person and they provide a great deal of the information he needs with no difficulty. The pace picks up towards the end of the book when corruption and environmental damage is uncovered. A side story about the theft of expensive paintings is connected in too, but again it has been a laboured affair with Brunetti taking ages to track down the supposed thief even though he knows him and he is in the constraints of Venice. There are some interesting elements in this novel, but the execution is erratic.
Non-Fiction
'A Brief Survey of Austrian History' by Richard Rickett
I have no idea where I got this book from. First published in 1966 (I have the 1972 edition) by a Viennese publishers, it was aimed at giving English-speaking tourists to Austria a history of the country. The flow of the book is very erratic and seems largely to alight on particular topics or individuals which interest Rickett rather than giving an even picture of the country. There is quite a lot of stuff on the medieval expansion of Austria and then on various rulers, notably Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Joseph and the failed attempts at reform. Metternich gets particular attention, but so does a lot of cultural aspects especially in the 18th Century. The fight for Tyrol during the Napoleonic Wars was something I knew nothing about but despite being brief is covered in detail. The period up to the assimilation by Germany, through the 1920s and 1930s also gets much attention, but almost everything after that is covered briefly. I particularly wished for more about Austria in the 1950s and 1960s which gets scant coverage. Overall it is a odd, but perhaps charming little book, rather let down by the fact it flits from topic to topic on the basis of the author's interest rather than giving a thorough coverage no matter how brief.
Audio Books
'Death Message' by Mark Billingham; read by Robert Glenister
Having listened to 'Lifeless' (2005) and found it refreshing, I was looking forward to this book that while two books later in the same series, featured the detective Tom Thorne. I know that Billingham has striven for grittiness and realism in his portrayal of policing in London. However, with this book it went too far and Thorne ends up as much a criminal as many of those he arrests. He is drawn into a series of killings as the murderer sends him mobile phone messages, a mix of text, photos and video, of the victims. While trying not to give away too much of what happens, Thorne begins to use the serial killer, not turning him into the police and eventually using him to exact revenge. There are some qualms on his part, but it seems towards the end as if Billingham has lost control of the plot.
It is common these days in novels to see things from both the criminal's and the detective's perspective, even when dealing with serial killers. We also have stories featuring corrupt or vengeful police officers, but you get the sense that this is not really what the author intended for his character (though I may be wrong). By the end you see Thorne as no better than the people he is supposed to be pursuing. It really undermines his relationship with his girlfriend, also a police detective of the same rank and his best friend, a police pathologist. His deceit of them removes any faith we had in Thorne. I do not know if it is the beginning of Thorne's slide into criminality; 7 books follow this one. However, for me, I was riled feeling that the sympathy built up for Thorne was tossed aside and it was far too easy for him to become the companion and indeed user of a serial killer, with minimal doubts about his actions.
Glenister did well with all the London voices, pretty decently with the female characters. However, my engagement with his narration was overshadowed by a novel which went right off the rails and made the 'hero' seem like it was him who should be being arrested rather than those he was meant to be going after, almost all of whom end up dead anyway, because of Thorne's negligence, and his use of a killer to carry out his own ends.
'Gallows View' by Peter Robinson; read by Neil Pearson
This book is the first book in the D(C)I Banks series of novels which have been televised in recent years. It is set in the fictional Yorkshire town of Eastvale where Banks and his family have moved from London. The book is set in the 1980s. This is one of the interesting things about crime novels, is that they really show up the technology of the time. As 'Death Message' (2007) was about mobile phones of the mid-2000s, this book, published in 1987 is about mid-1980s technology including early police computers, film cameras and even slide projectors. I would put it in the category of 'cosy' crime books, if it was not so sordid.
It has trappings of a cosy story being set in a small town with various characters and a very limited number of suspects. Many of the points of tension are low key as whether Banks will sleep with an attractive police psychologist and activities are old fashioned like building a dry stone wall and attending the camera club. One of the prime crimes investigated is a 'peeping tom' which seems to precede the sophisticated stalking of today. However, the story involves a rape and the rapist is detected through catching gonorrhea. Given that by the end three residents have been arrested - for manslaughter, rape and voyeurism, you do worry at the crime level of the small town and how quickly Robinson would have got through much of the population.
While I cannot put my finger on why, overall, I was disappointed by the book. Perhaps it felt too old without being period. Perhaps it seemed contrived, though I have accepted many crime books set in small places that have been so as well. I suppose the mix of these elements, simply did not work for me. Pearson who voices a lot of crime audio books, did well, capturing the Yorkshire accents of a range of people and doing convincing female voices. I was left feeling that, despite his efforts, Robinson's work is not something I will return to.
'The Winter Ghosts' by Kate Mosse; read by Julian Rhind-Tutt
This book features tropes that Mosse has built her career upon - a stranger coming to southern France and having a time-slip experience. There is also reference to the Occitan language and the Cathars, a persecuted heretical Christian-based religion prominent in the region in the 13th and 14th Centuries, the followers of which were massacred. It is different in that the protagonist is a man rather than a woman and it is set in 1928 and 1933 rather than in modern day. It features Freddie Watson, a young man from Sussex who has been unable to recover from the death of his elder brother, George, in June 1916, fighting on the Western Front. He has come out of a psychiatric institution but is still heavily troubled by grief. In December 1928 on a driving holiday in southern France he crashes his car and ends up in a small village. He is invited to attend a celebration for the feast day of St. Etienne but slips through time to a 14th Century version of the event where he encounters Cathar locals and witnesses their suppression.
Mosse is great at portraying the locales, here more into the Pyrenees than in her previous books; the physicality of moving around them is well represented. She is also good at the mystery of people from the past impacting on the present. The challenge with this book is that it was extended from a 2009 novella and at times you felt it has been 'padded'. In particular Freddie, despite being haunted by his brother, is slow to realise that he is interacting with more ghosts, especially the beautiful Fabrissa who he falls for and this drives on his subsequent actions. While Mosse is good on what happened in the 14th Century, I am surprised that she makes no reference to how popular spiritualism had become following the First World War. Even if Freddie did not previously subscribe to its beliefs, he certainly would have been aware of rational people (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle notable among them) who felt they could be in contact with the dead. She does present Freddie's sustained grief well and reminds us that people do not 'get over' death easily, especially when it was on such a horrific scale as the First World War with so many very grim ends for people.
Rhind-Tutt, though best known for his comedy work, was an excellent choice to read the book, which is largely told in the first person, though jarringly at the end it switches to third person. It is not simply his voice but all the mannerisms that he puts into the portrayal of Freddie that make it very credible. Overall, I found this an interesting book though built on a simple premise. Mosse's descriptions are great and her sense of people is strong. She weakens the jeopardy with the looking back from 1933 so we know that not only Freddie survives the 1928 encounters despite their hazards, but mentally he is sound. I think this could have been handled differently. At times, especially given how long it takes Freddie to work out that Fabrissa is a ghost, there would have been much tighter editing, but Mosse is renowned for writing long books. If this had run for 3 hours rather than 5 hours 22 minutes as it did in my edition, it could have had a real punch. With length some of that is dissipated, but not to the extent that this is a poor book.
Friday, 17 May 2019
Books I Listened To/Read in May
Non-Fiction
'Don't Mention the War: The British and the Germans since 1890' by John Ramsden
I have noticed that historians who become 'grandees' with a career of academic books under their belts, are often exempted from being edited. This can make their later books (Ramsden retired in 2008, three years after this book was published and died in 2009) rather bloated and often meandering. This book is an example of that problem. It is interesting and despite the title, actually goes back much further than 1890, looking at relations between the British and Germans in the early modern period and the full length of the 19th century. The problem is that Ramsden keeps wandering off the thread. He confesses at the start to being a fan of opera, so music and indeed the broader arts, whether high-brow or highly populist, are probably over-represented when talking about relations. The book really gets going when it reaches 1914 and Ramsden is best on the animosity between Britain and (West) Germany in the post-1945 period. However, he spends a lot of time considering specific war films and goes on at length about Noel Coward and Bert Trautmann. Their role is important but the space Ramsden gives them is out of scale with their importance to the story and means he neglects broader issues and wider examples. East Germany is largely forgotten.
This book has interesting points, but it very much feels to be not a thorough history book, but more a transcript of what you would have heard if you had sat down with Ramsden over tea and talked about Britain and Germany over a number of afternoons. That may have been the intention, that it would be a book that straddled the popular and academic spheres. However, if that was the case, it is too bulky for the popular audience and too meandering for the academic. Aside from this character, Ramsden, a historian of the Conservative Party, misses no opportunity to make petty, almost childish jibes against not on the Labour Party, but even the liberal media, being very dismissive of 'The Guardian'. Again, with proper editing these barbs, which are entirely unnecessary for the story being told, would have been eliminated. Left in they add to the sense that this was a late draft of the book rather than a version which could be deemed a finished book. However, perhaps that is no surprise in the 21st century when editing is left to authors and people they may employ rather than being done by the publishers themselves.
Fiction
'Witch Hunt by Jack Harvey [Ian Rankin]
This book is from 1993, early in Rankin's career but not at the start. As is typical for successful authors it seems his agent or publishers encouraged him to try other series aside from his long-running Rebus books. This is a sort of a spy novel. It attempts to be a John le Carré novel and a little like the Villanelle e-novels/novel that Luke Jennings produced 2014-18 with much greater success. A major problem is that Rankin is uncertain who he wants to focus upon and whether the tone will be the downbeat, almost desultory one of Le Carré's work or something a bit more action filled and glamorous. As a result it feels very much like a book of bits. He lacks the ability to make the downbeat elements as intriguing or tricky as Le Carré so they just come across as tedious. He even has a retired operative, Dominic Elder, a specialist on the assassin being hunted, brought in just as George Smiley is to deal with Karla.
There is far too much about different levels of the British security system that adds nothing of interest and slackens off any tension Rankin has built up with the killings. The relationship between Michael Barclay from Special Branch and his French equivalent in the DST (now the DGSI) Dominique Herault is so predictable as to be painful to read; only Herault's mother adds an interesting element. The novel is about the hunt for a female assassin, codenamed 'Witch' who has returned to the UK at the time of an international summit and the rather ineffectual attempts to prevent her. There are some interesting twists, but overall, because of his uncertainty the book really lacks life. You feel he could have taken all the same elements and written a much better book. It does show that someone who specialises in police procedural can struggle when attempting a spy novel.
'Brasyl' by Ian McDonald
This book is marginally better than 'River of Gods' (2004) which I read in March: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html While McDonald continues to completely overload the reader with too many characters, haring around, he at least restricts himself to three settings this time, different parts of Brazil in 1733, 2006 and 2032. A lot of McDonald's, and indeed Cyberpunk's, themes come out again in this book. Especially the 2032 features all the trappings of the cyberpunk tropes and indeed the mono-molecular blades so favoured in classic Cyberpunk, appear in all three time periods. As with 'River of Gods' McDonald is interested in the quantum and the use of alternate universes, in this novel to provide computing power rather than energy. The book ends up being pretty much like 'The Matrix' movies (1999-2003), in revealing that the universe is almost dead and we are in fact living in a computer simulation of previous versions of the universe. The antagonists, The Order, are reminiscent of Mr. Smith from 'The Matrix' movies. However, the overarching context strays into Michael Moorcock's principles from 'The Dancers at the End of Time' books (1972-81) too. This multi-layered context shows the central problem of the book. Added to this, at least two of the characters have doppelgangers from other realities. The 1733 strand is laden with heavy parallels to 'Apocalypse Now (1979) itself drawing on 'Heart of Darkness' (1899) by Joseph Conrad and 'The Mission' (1986) especially with its very robust, sword-fighting priests; the floating cathedral reminded me much of 'Oscar and Lucinda' (novel 1988; movie 1997) as well.
There is another problem with the book, which despite all the action scenes whether involving capoeira or mono-molecular blades or rapiers, is a very heavy-going read. I complimented McDonald on how well he brought to life a future India in 'River of Gods' and here he seeks to do it with Brazil. The trouble is, that he digs so deeply into the culture of the music, religions, martial arts, soap operas, slums and so on, that some sections are almost not written in English but in Portuguese and dialect. When you have a 6-page glossary of terms, you have to know that the average reader of the book in the language it is supposed to be written in, is going to struggle. I have encountered authors before who are more concerned by showing off than telling a good story and it is becoming clear that McDonald was one of these. Read this book for the bright lights (some of which have been reconditioned from 30 years ago) but do not expect it to make any sense or to be coherent for much of the time, it is pushing around far too much bulk and trying to make it go fast for that to work, especially if you do not speak Brazilian Portuguese slang.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Troll Fell' by Katherine Langrish; read by Alex Jennings
As I often buy mixed boxes of audio books, I sometimes have no idea about the nature of the books I am purchasing. Though this one is read by (the male) Alex Jennings who I tend to hear reading heavy-weight classics, this is actually a children's book. It is quite enjoyable all the same. It is set in a fictional Nordic setting though one which seems to have some connection to the real world as the father of one of the characters sails beyond Iceland and Greenland to land in North America. However, it is also a fantasy as Nordic creatures including a house 'elf', a were-eel (!) and lots of trolls feature. The story follow orphaned Peer Ulfsson who is 12, when he is sent to live with his cruel uncles at a watermill near Troll Fell. Dealing with their cruelty and then the deals they make with the trolls who live under Troll Fell, to sell Peer and his new friend Hilde provides the basis of the adventure. Peer gets aid from some other fantastical creatures.
Like the best children's fiction the book does not baulk from unpleasant elements in the harshness of life, notably the loss of parents and the need to protect siblings. At one stage Peer believes he is going to remain a slave for life or indeed hideously transformed. Thus, I found this novel easier to engage with than perhaps I would have done with other children's books. I liked the Norse feel to it as well. Jennings is a capable reader of audio books, but felt he was out of place with this one, making me feel that it should be a 19th century novel or a dry contemporary commentary. Still he is not bad with the various realistic and fantastical voices, it is just this is not really his kind of book to narrate. The book is the first of a trilogy but this story wraps up quite neatly and I am not going to seek out any others intentionally but would not chuck them out if they turn up in a box of audio books I buy.
'Outbreak' by Chris Ryan; read by Rupert Degas
This was another from a box that I mistook. Given that Ryan is ex-SAS, I had expected something along the lines of an Andy McNab novel. It is an action adventure, set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but focused on a 13-year old boy (despite his youth he can drive cars and even a lorry) where Ben Tracey's father, a mining expert is investigating a source of an important mineral, only to stumble across a reservoir of a disease that is worse than ebola. The story is an adventure set around a small village as Ben tries to survive against the opposition of the mining company and warn the world about the risk of the disease. It fits different tropes. It is almost a colonial adventure from the 19th century though, fitting with much children's fiction of today, Ben partners up with a local girl Halima, whose knowledge helps them survive facing not just the baddies but the various ferocious creatures of the region. It is a frantic adventure, though it feels reasonably realistic.
I was a little apprehensive that it would be a neo-colonial story especially when Halima's beliefs are introduced, and Ryan walks a fine line. Individual readers will have to judge whether he manages to remain appropriate in his approach. Similarly I was rather concerned at Degas putting on accents of Congolese people. He seems to have gone to a great deal of effort and at times, I had assumed that the company had brought in someone else to do those voices. In reality most of the dialogue would be in French, but Degas, just about pulls off sounding authentic without being a caricature. Again some readers might be offended by the fact he even tries. Whereas I might listen to some McNab books, I am unlikely given the areas Ryan strays into, to come back to anything by him in the future, even if aimed at full adults rather than young adults.
'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' by Stieg Larsson; read by Martin Wenner
This book published in 2005 (though not in English until 2008) revived the English-speaking interest in Scandinavian crime novels (as opposed to television series) that had perked up in 1995 with 'Sidetracked' by Henning Mankell having lain largely dormant since the last Sjöwall and Wahlöö book had been published in 1975. I have seen the Swedish movie, but not the English one. Coming to the book showed me that really this was a classic detective story with a contemporary, edgy element bolted on top. Without the appearance of Lisbeth Salander a young female hacker under the care of the state, this book could have appeared in 1976, though some of this made have been due to the toning down of the book for English-language audiences in translation. The Swedish title of the book is nowadays well known to be 'Men Who Hate Women'. Larsson was dead when the book was published so had lost control over it.
Still, the bulk of the book is about a journalist Mikael Blomkvist, following a libel conviction, retreating to a remote Swedish island to investigate the disappearance of a girl of a wealthy industrial family in 1966. Much of his work to uncover what occurred, handling all the unpleasant family members could have come from a book by Maria Lang [Dagmar Lange] who published crime novels between 1949-90. The fact that Blomkvist reads novels by Elizabeth George and disparages one by Val McDermid for being too gory in 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) which I listened to last year: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/09/books-i-listened-toread-in-september.html indicates really where Larsson's writing lies.
Salander has her own revenge to wreak which she does with the latest technology of the time and helps Blomkvist in the latter stages of his investigation, though old photographs are the real source of the clues. Blomkvist has a girlfriend his own age, sleeps with one of the old women of the family and has a sexual relationship with Salander too. These developments are highly unconvincing and I do wonder if it is to be expected in Swedish novels. Aside from 'Sidetracked' which I read 17 years ago, I have not read Swedish novels and to be honest this one hardly won me over. It is not a bad book, but really it is a very old-fashioned murder mystery with more contemporary elements put on top to give it some 'edge' but they are not well integrated into the book and so it seems like two separate novels and the connection between them really forced and unconvincing.
Wenver sounds convincing as the various characters, though far better with the men than the women and his Salander is a real stereotypical Londoner accented young woman, which jars with the rest of the voices. I have the other two books in the series to listen to, but I am not expecting much from them.
'The Spy Who Loved Me' by Ian Fleming; read by Rosamund Pike
The James Bond movies have done Fleming a great misservice. While he never would have been notable in the feminist movement, the more you read of the James Bond novels, the more you see a nuanced approach to women and a recognition of the inequalities of the time. This book is unique among the series as Bond appears only towards the end and it is narrated from the view of a French Canadian woman, Vivienne Michelle. Much of the book covers her personal experiences being mistreated by men in Britain. Her shame at having sex in a public place might be absent these days, but this book could come out with modifications in the MeToo era, showing up how men manipulate women for sex and insisting on their own rules. Michelle is compelled by her second lover to have an abortion when these were illegal in the UK, but given the changes in US law at present such a path is liable to become common once more for American women, bringing the references back into currency.
There is action in this book as Michelle, travelling down the eastern side of the USA on a scooter, is set-up to be the one to blame for an insurance-fraud fire at a motel where she is temporarily working in New York state. The two gangsters sent to carry out the fire are eager to rape her but want to keep her alive so she can be seen as the cause of the fire when burnt to death. Though the language is dated, the way the men abuse her and insist she behaves in certain ways could be written today. Bond turns up as a deus ex machina, recounting at length an action against SPECTRE that he had carried out in Canada. He does get things wrong even when dealing with just two gangsters and Michelle has to keep active even when he is charge. Perhaps all of her being joyful at finding a decent man and being lectured by a policeman about not falling in love with men like Bond would be absent from a novel today. However, ultimately Michelle rides off on her journey to Florida, very independently, simply with a view that some few men can treat her well especially sexually. In many ways, this book should stand outside the Bond series and is better judged as something distinct which it comes out pretty well for being.
Despite the distinctiveness of this novel among his work Fleming features many of his usual tropes. At length he condemns the USA as tawdry with few redeeming characteristics and highlights particularly the Italian-American gangster culture. He shows men manipulating women to their own ends as a signal of their genuine evil. There is lots of attention to detail in terms of products, vehicles and clothing both in the UK and especially in the USA. I guess I would not have come to this book if it was in the Bond series, but am reasonably glad I did because it is engaging even for its age (published 1962) which it shows very clearly in its references to President John Kennedy (1917-November 1963).
Pike does the narration excellently. Much of it is in the first person as a woman, but she does not sound like a British actress, but a Canadian. Her voicing of Bond is handled pretty well, though the gravity she gives it makes her sound like Honeysuckle Weeks acting in the 'Foyle's War' series.
'Don't Mention the War: The British and the Germans since 1890' by John Ramsden
I have noticed that historians who become 'grandees' with a career of academic books under their belts, are often exempted from being edited. This can make their later books (Ramsden retired in 2008, three years after this book was published and died in 2009) rather bloated and often meandering. This book is an example of that problem. It is interesting and despite the title, actually goes back much further than 1890, looking at relations between the British and Germans in the early modern period and the full length of the 19th century. The problem is that Ramsden keeps wandering off the thread. He confesses at the start to being a fan of opera, so music and indeed the broader arts, whether high-brow or highly populist, are probably over-represented when talking about relations. The book really gets going when it reaches 1914 and Ramsden is best on the animosity between Britain and (West) Germany in the post-1945 period. However, he spends a lot of time considering specific war films and goes on at length about Noel Coward and Bert Trautmann. Their role is important but the space Ramsden gives them is out of scale with their importance to the story and means he neglects broader issues and wider examples. East Germany is largely forgotten.
This book has interesting points, but it very much feels to be not a thorough history book, but more a transcript of what you would have heard if you had sat down with Ramsden over tea and talked about Britain and Germany over a number of afternoons. That may have been the intention, that it would be a book that straddled the popular and academic spheres. However, if that was the case, it is too bulky for the popular audience and too meandering for the academic. Aside from this character, Ramsden, a historian of the Conservative Party, misses no opportunity to make petty, almost childish jibes against not on the Labour Party, but even the liberal media, being very dismissive of 'The Guardian'. Again, with proper editing these barbs, which are entirely unnecessary for the story being told, would have been eliminated. Left in they add to the sense that this was a late draft of the book rather than a version which could be deemed a finished book. However, perhaps that is no surprise in the 21st century when editing is left to authors and people they may employ rather than being done by the publishers themselves.
Fiction
'Witch Hunt by Jack Harvey [Ian Rankin]
This book is from 1993, early in Rankin's career but not at the start. As is typical for successful authors it seems his agent or publishers encouraged him to try other series aside from his long-running Rebus books. This is a sort of a spy novel. It attempts to be a John le Carré novel and a little like the Villanelle e-novels/novel that Luke Jennings produced 2014-18 with much greater success. A major problem is that Rankin is uncertain who he wants to focus upon and whether the tone will be the downbeat, almost desultory one of Le Carré's work or something a bit more action filled and glamorous. As a result it feels very much like a book of bits. He lacks the ability to make the downbeat elements as intriguing or tricky as Le Carré so they just come across as tedious. He even has a retired operative, Dominic Elder, a specialist on the assassin being hunted, brought in just as George Smiley is to deal with Karla.
There is far too much about different levels of the British security system that adds nothing of interest and slackens off any tension Rankin has built up with the killings. The relationship between Michael Barclay from Special Branch and his French equivalent in the DST (now the DGSI) Dominique Herault is so predictable as to be painful to read; only Herault's mother adds an interesting element. The novel is about the hunt for a female assassin, codenamed 'Witch' who has returned to the UK at the time of an international summit and the rather ineffectual attempts to prevent her. There are some interesting twists, but overall, because of his uncertainty the book really lacks life. You feel he could have taken all the same elements and written a much better book. It does show that someone who specialises in police procedural can struggle when attempting a spy novel.
'Brasyl' by Ian McDonald
This book is marginally better than 'River of Gods' (2004) which I read in March: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/03/books-i-listened-toread-in-march.html While McDonald continues to completely overload the reader with too many characters, haring around, he at least restricts himself to three settings this time, different parts of Brazil in 1733, 2006 and 2032. A lot of McDonald's, and indeed Cyberpunk's, themes come out again in this book. Especially the 2032 features all the trappings of the cyberpunk tropes and indeed the mono-molecular blades so favoured in classic Cyberpunk, appear in all three time periods. As with 'River of Gods' McDonald is interested in the quantum and the use of alternate universes, in this novel to provide computing power rather than energy. The book ends up being pretty much like 'The Matrix' movies (1999-2003), in revealing that the universe is almost dead and we are in fact living in a computer simulation of previous versions of the universe. The antagonists, The Order, are reminiscent of Mr. Smith from 'The Matrix' movies. However, the overarching context strays into Michael Moorcock's principles from 'The Dancers at the End of Time' books (1972-81) too. This multi-layered context shows the central problem of the book. Added to this, at least two of the characters have doppelgangers from other realities. The 1733 strand is laden with heavy parallels to 'Apocalypse Now (1979) itself drawing on 'Heart of Darkness' (1899) by Joseph Conrad and 'The Mission' (1986) especially with its very robust, sword-fighting priests; the floating cathedral reminded me much of 'Oscar and Lucinda' (novel 1988; movie 1997) as well.
There is another problem with the book, which despite all the action scenes whether involving capoeira or mono-molecular blades or rapiers, is a very heavy-going read. I complimented McDonald on how well he brought to life a future India in 'River of Gods' and here he seeks to do it with Brazil. The trouble is, that he digs so deeply into the culture of the music, religions, martial arts, soap operas, slums and so on, that some sections are almost not written in English but in Portuguese and dialect. When you have a 6-page glossary of terms, you have to know that the average reader of the book in the language it is supposed to be written in, is going to struggle. I have encountered authors before who are more concerned by showing off than telling a good story and it is becoming clear that McDonald was one of these. Read this book for the bright lights (some of which have been reconditioned from 30 years ago) but do not expect it to make any sense or to be coherent for much of the time, it is pushing around far too much bulk and trying to make it go fast for that to work, especially if you do not speak Brazilian Portuguese slang.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Troll Fell' by Katherine Langrish; read by Alex Jennings
As I often buy mixed boxes of audio books, I sometimes have no idea about the nature of the books I am purchasing. Though this one is read by (the male) Alex Jennings who I tend to hear reading heavy-weight classics, this is actually a children's book. It is quite enjoyable all the same. It is set in a fictional Nordic setting though one which seems to have some connection to the real world as the father of one of the characters sails beyond Iceland and Greenland to land in North America. However, it is also a fantasy as Nordic creatures including a house 'elf', a were-eel (!) and lots of trolls feature. The story follow orphaned Peer Ulfsson who is 12, when he is sent to live with his cruel uncles at a watermill near Troll Fell. Dealing with their cruelty and then the deals they make with the trolls who live under Troll Fell, to sell Peer and his new friend Hilde provides the basis of the adventure. Peer gets aid from some other fantastical creatures.
Like the best children's fiction the book does not baulk from unpleasant elements in the harshness of life, notably the loss of parents and the need to protect siblings. At one stage Peer believes he is going to remain a slave for life or indeed hideously transformed. Thus, I found this novel easier to engage with than perhaps I would have done with other children's books. I liked the Norse feel to it as well. Jennings is a capable reader of audio books, but felt he was out of place with this one, making me feel that it should be a 19th century novel or a dry contemporary commentary. Still he is not bad with the various realistic and fantastical voices, it is just this is not really his kind of book to narrate. The book is the first of a trilogy but this story wraps up quite neatly and I am not going to seek out any others intentionally but would not chuck them out if they turn up in a box of audio books I buy.
'Outbreak' by Chris Ryan; read by Rupert Degas
This was another from a box that I mistook. Given that Ryan is ex-SAS, I had expected something along the lines of an Andy McNab novel. It is an action adventure, set in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but focused on a 13-year old boy (despite his youth he can drive cars and even a lorry) where Ben Tracey's father, a mining expert is investigating a source of an important mineral, only to stumble across a reservoir of a disease that is worse than ebola. The story is an adventure set around a small village as Ben tries to survive against the opposition of the mining company and warn the world about the risk of the disease. It fits different tropes. It is almost a colonial adventure from the 19th century though, fitting with much children's fiction of today, Ben partners up with a local girl Halima, whose knowledge helps them survive facing not just the baddies but the various ferocious creatures of the region. It is a frantic adventure, though it feels reasonably realistic.
I was a little apprehensive that it would be a neo-colonial story especially when Halima's beliefs are introduced, and Ryan walks a fine line. Individual readers will have to judge whether he manages to remain appropriate in his approach. Similarly I was rather concerned at Degas putting on accents of Congolese people. He seems to have gone to a great deal of effort and at times, I had assumed that the company had brought in someone else to do those voices. In reality most of the dialogue would be in French, but Degas, just about pulls off sounding authentic without being a caricature. Again some readers might be offended by the fact he even tries. Whereas I might listen to some McNab books, I am unlikely given the areas Ryan strays into, to come back to anything by him in the future, even if aimed at full adults rather than young adults.
'The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' by Stieg Larsson; read by Martin Wenner
This book published in 2005 (though not in English until 2008) revived the English-speaking interest in Scandinavian crime novels (as opposed to television series) that had perked up in 1995 with 'Sidetracked' by Henning Mankell having lain largely dormant since the last Sjöwall and Wahlöö book had been published in 1975. I have seen the Swedish movie, but not the English one. Coming to the book showed me that really this was a classic detective story with a contemporary, edgy element bolted on top. Without the appearance of Lisbeth Salander a young female hacker under the care of the state, this book could have appeared in 1976, though some of this made have been due to the toning down of the book for English-language audiences in translation. The Swedish title of the book is nowadays well known to be 'Men Who Hate Women'. Larsson was dead when the book was published so had lost control over it.
Still, the bulk of the book is about a journalist Mikael Blomkvist, following a libel conviction, retreating to a remote Swedish island to investigate the disappearance of a girl of a wealthy industrial family in 1966. Much of his work to uncover what occurred, handling all the unpleasant family members could have come from a book by Maria Lang [Dagmar Lange] who published crime novels between 1949-90. The fact that Blomkvist reads novels by Elizabeth George and disparages one by Val McDermid for being too gory in 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) which I listened to last year: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2018/09/books-i-listened-toread-in-september.html indicates really where Larsson's writing lies.
Salander has her own revenge to wreak which she does with the latest technology of the time and helps Blomkvist in the latter stages of his investigation, though old photographs are the real source of the clues. Blomkvist has a girlfriend his own age, sleeps with one of the old women of the family and has a sexual relationship with Salander too. These developments are highly unconvincing and I do wonder if it is to be expected in Swedish novels. Aside from 'Sidetracked' which I read 17 years ago, I have not read Swedish novels and to be honest this one hardly won me over. It is not a bad book, but really it is a very old-fashioned murder mystery with more contemporary elements put on top to give it some 'edge' but they are not well integrated into the book and so it seems like two separate novels and the connection between them really forced and unconvincing.
Wenver sounds convincing as the various characters, though far better with the men than the women and his Salander is a real stereotypical Londoner accented young woman, which jars with the rest of the voices. I have the other two books in the series to listen to, but I am not expecting much from them.
'The Spy Who Loved Me' by Ian Fleming; read by Rosamund Pike
The James Bond movies have done Fleming a great misservice. While he never would have been notable in the feminist movement, the more you read of the James Bond novels, the more you see a nuanced approach to women and a recognition of the inequalities of the time. This book is unique among the series as Bond appears only towards the end and it is narrated from the view of a French Canadian woman, Vivienne Michelle. Much of the book covers her personal experiences being mistreated by men in Britain. Her shame at having sex in a public place might be absent these days, but this book could come out with modifications in the MeToo era, showing up how men manipulate women for sex and insisting on their own rules. Michelle is compelled by her second lover to have an abortion when these were illegal in the UK, but given the changes in US law at present such a path is liable to become common once more for American women, bringing the references back into currency.
There is action in this book as Michelle, travelling down the eastern side of the USA on a scooter, is set-up to be the one to blame for an insurance-fraud fire at a motel where she is temporarily working in New York state. The two gangsters sent to carry out the fire are eager to rape her but want to keep her alive so she can be seen as the cause of the fire when burnt to death. Though the language is dated, the way the men abuse her and insist she behaves in certain ways could be written today. Bond turns up as a deus ex machina, recounting at length an action against SPECTRE that he had carried out in Canada. He does get things wrong even when dealing with just two gangsters and Michelle has to keep active even when he is charge. Perhaps all of her being joyful at finding a decent man and being lectured by a policeman about not falling in love with men like Bond would be absent from a novel today. However, ultimately Michelle rides off on her journey to Florida, very independently, simply with a view that some few men can treat her well especially sexually. In many ways, this book should stand outside the Bond series and is better judged as something distinct which it comes out pretty well for being.
Despite the distinctiveness of this novel among his work Fleming features many of his usual tropes. At length he condemns the USA as tawdry with few redeeming characteristics and highlights particularly the Italian-American gangster culture. He shows men manipulating women to their own ends as a signal of their genuine evil. There is lots of attention to detail in terms of products, vehicles and clothing both in the UK and especially in the USA. I guess I would not have come to this book if it was in the Bond series, but am reasonably glad I did because it is engaging even for its age (published 1962) which it shows very clearly in its references to President John Kennedy (1917-November 1963).
Pike does the narration excellently. Much of it is in the first person as a woman, but she does not sound like a British actress, but a Canadian. Her voicing of Bond is handled pretty well, though the gravity she gives it makes her sound like Honeysuckle Weeks acting in the 'Foyle's War' series.
Tuesday, 30 April 2019
The Books I Listened To/Read In April
I must apologise, but despite repeated efforts to rectify this, Blogger keeps spacing out the paragraphs in an odd way.
Fiction
'Steampunk!' ed. by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
As the title suggests this is an anthology of Steampunk stories. Link and Grant say that they have sought out locations rather than Victorian London, though I think one slips through the net. Despite the inclusion of two cartoon stories, the collection is far better than the 'Steampunk' one edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer that I read 7 years ago. That included one horrendous story and some very unpleasant ones. In my view that gave Steampunk collections a bad name: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-book-i-read-in-september.html
As a result I have stayed away from Steampunk anthologies and am no longer abreast of the different authors that write in the genre. The decline of Steampunk writing as opposed to cosplay, crafting and music has been noted. I picked up this collection and another I plan to read later in the year, unread at a carboot sale.
This collection, while predominantly featuring US authors with the odd Australian and New Zealander thrown in, does not have that sense that Steampunk somehow is American. It is good to see a balance of genders both in terms of authors and the leading characters; in fact female protagonists predominate. There are no golems feature in the collection, but there is more time travel than I have seen before in Steampunk stories. Setting aside the two cartoons by Shawn Cheng and Kathleen Jennings which have their place, but not in a book like this, I enjoyed the stories and found them refreshing.
'Some Fortunate Future Day' by Cassandra Clare is a well formed short story which hints at more than it covers, rather than feeling like a chunk of a broader project. It has a well realised though insular setting in a Steampunk context and a kind of 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) feel, though you hope for a better outcome than that movie. Despite the title, as the editors promised, 'Clockwork Fagin' by Cory Doctorow is not set in London but the USA. It does well in looking at the impact of a Steampunk world in the cost of mutilated child machine operators. It is an upbeat story as these children increasingly take control of their lives through their engineering skills. It thus well combines the grittier aspects of the genre but in a way which is part of the story rather than preaching. While a long short story it is worked through in its extent.
'The Last Ride of the Glory Girls' by Libba Bray feels like the pilot for a longer novel. It also features a time manipulation device combined with a group of female bandits in a Steampunk American West. It is crisp and well realised with engaging characters and is one of the stories I would like to see more of. Another one which seems like the start of something larger is 'Hand in Glove' by Ysabeau S. Wilce which covers a female detective in a Steampunk city and the challenges she faces in solving a murder, the perpetrator of which is highly unexpected. The story has some standard elements but is good in portraying places and has some interesting twists. One could envisage novels featuring the protagonist, Constable Aurelia Etreyo.
'Ghost of Cwmlech Manor' by Delia Sherman is set in Victorian Wales and has the feeling of a classic Victorian horror story though the Steampunk elements, here seen in a rural rather than an urban setting. It did however remind me of the 'The Unquiet Dead' episode of 'Doctor Who' set in Cardiff in 1869 which was broadcast in 2005. Despite these elements it is an upbeat story with both the local and incoming characters interesting and just about avoiding being a set of tropes. 'Gethsemane' by Elizabeth Knox is another which feels to be as much a different Victorian genre as a Steampunk novel. It shows Steampunk technology being used on a tropical island to gain energy from a volcano, but the focus of the story is more on the island's inhabitants, a form of zombie and sailors who come to the island with the Steampunk facet in the background of what happens rather than the foreground. 'Oracle Engine' by M.T. Anderson is very sandalpunk, being set in an alternate Roman Empire where a computer is constructed. It is really a morality tale looking to take the style of accounts by Roman historians, so while not bad, has something irritating in the tone, rather self-righteous.
'The Summer People' is not really a Steampunk story at all and feels more like a folklore story set in just a slightly different North America from the one we know. It focuses very much on a kind of magical creatures, the eponymous people. It has interesting ideas and has that nice edge of such stories but you do wonder if it would have been included if Kelly Link was not one of the editors. 'Steam Girl' by Dylan Horrocks is another oddity for this collection. In it Steampunk is not real, we just see contemporary USA, so it is a meta-story as the Steampunk elements including the 'golden age' science fiction aspects of travelling to see civilisations on Mars and Venus, are just in the mind of a schoolgirl. I do wonder if contemporary American teenagers actually have interest in stories of that kind; perhaps it would have been more realistic to have a Japanese teenager featured.
'Everything Available and Obliging' by Holly Black also owes more to a different science fiction genre than Steampunk and is really a steampunked version of 'I, Robot' (1950) though with more awkward questions about affection for humanoid machines. 'Nowhere Fast' by Christopher Rowe is a post-apocalyptic story set in one of the states which has formed in the eastern USA. It is reasonable largely interesting for seeing how the insular American communities you find in these post-apocalyptic stories react when technology, even of the Steampunk kind, is the thing to hate.
'Zoo Station' by David Downing
It took some time for me to realise that this was the same David Downing (it is a surprisingly common name combination as an online search quickly shows) who had written 'The Moscow Option' (1979) a successful alternate history novel of the Second World War, though all I remember from it was the sex scene and the assassination of Adolf Eichmann in Palestine, it was about 35 years ago that I read it. Anyway, since then I had been unaware of Downing writing anything until this series was given to me by a family member. This is the first book concerning a British journalist working in Berlin early in 1939. He has a son by his German ex-wife and has a long-standing German girlfriend, both he is loath to leave despite the sense that war is approaching.
Downing has done an immense amount of research regarding Berlin at the time and that is part of the problems. Russell traipses all over the city with great detail about where he is going, what public transport he is using, where he stops for his meals and what he eats and drinks. It begins to expand out from Berlin with him paying visits to Hamburg and the Baltic coast; to Poland and Czechoslovakia. The detail is great but it reduces rather than adds to the tension. Russell, a former Communist is recruited by Soviet intelligence and then British intelligence to carry out various tasks; he is also monitored by the German SD counter-intelligence body. He helps a Jewish family get away from Germany and sort of investigates the murder of a US journalist who had stumbled across the T4 Programme of killing disabled German children.
I know the book is establishing the characters and the situation, but nothing is really resolved. It is very much a 'slice of life' novel that just peters out. This might be alright if it was a literary novel, but it is supposed to be a spy novel and really lacks the tension necessary. I have the rest of the books in the series and hope that now everything is established the tension will be built up. I assume it is a successful series given how many books are in it.
Audio Books
'Aggressor' by Andy McNab [Steven Billy Mitchell]; read by Steven Pacey
Having been presently surprised by listening to 'Zero Hour' (2010):http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/02/books-i-listened-toread-in-february.html I thought I would give another McNab story featuring Nick Stone a go when I came across it cheaply. It is pretty similar to the previous book, though it is a friend of Stone's who is suffering a terminal illness and the adventure takes place in the country of Georgia rather than Moldova. The story is fast moving and you get what you expect, though the course of events does not run smoothly for the hero. McNab shows awareness of the political situation in the places he sets his stories and is sympathetic to local conditions, showing how big money manipulates the situations and groups are played with so this is not a colonial adventure. As with 'Zero Hour' the role for men, especially ex-servicemen, in peacetime society and male ageing feature as themes. While a pretty straight forward book, it is better than it might otherwise have been and if this is a genre you like, McNab seems to be one of the best writers in it. Steven Pacey is another reader who sounds very much like the character and was pretty good at doing not just British but Australian, German and Georgian accents, women as well as men.
'Pulse' by Julian Barnes; read by David Rintoul
I mistakenly thought I had read some of Barnes's books before. This is a collection of short stories, a genre I usually enjoy, but having heard this book, I know I will now steer clear of Barnes's work. Most of the stories are set in Britain of the 2000s (the book was published in 2011). They are painfully middle class and in many cases painfully male. Many of the protagonists are white Englishmen unable to have successful relationships with women. There are a few exceptions to these dreary stories, but the round dinner table discussions, while showing off Rintoul's ability with accents and jumping between characters are very like the dinner party sketches in featuring John Bird, John Fortune, Pauline McLynn and Frances Barber on 'Bremner, Bird and Fortune' (broadcast 1999-2010). One of these would have been fine but they become repetitive. The only really decent story is about a painter in the USA in the 18th Century. Otherwise I found the collection dreary and repetitive, very narrowly focused on what I imagine is Barnes's life experiences at the time. Rintoul, a well-established audio book narrator, does well, though for many of the stories there is little to stretch him, but when called upon he does demonstrate why he is among the leading narrators at present for accents and portraying female as well as male characters.
Fiction
'Steampunk!' ed. by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant
As the title suggests this is an anthology of Steampunk stories. Link and Grant say that they have sought out locations rather than Victorian London, though I think one slips through the net. Despite the inclusion of two cartoon stories, the collection is far better than the 'Steampunk' one edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer that I read 7 years ago. That included one horrendous story and some very unpleasant ones. In my view that gave Steampunk collections a bad name: http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-book-i-read-in-september.html
As a result I have stayed away from Steampunk anthologies and am no longer abreast of the different authors that write in the genre. The decline of Steampunk writing as opposed to cosplay, crafting and music has been noted. I picked up this collection and another I plan to read later in the year, unread at a carboot sale.
This collection, while predominantly featuring US authors with the odd Australian and New Zealander thrown in, does not have that sense that Steampunk somehow is American. It is good to see a balance of genders both in terms of authors and the leading characters; in fact female protagonists predominate. There are no golems feature in the collection, but there is more time travel than I have seen before in Steampunk stories. Setting aside the two cartoons by Shawn Cheng and Kathleen Jennings which have their place, but not in a book like this, I enjoyed the stories and found them refreshing.
'Some Fortunate Future Day' by Cassandra Clare is a well formed short story which hints at more than it covers, rather than feeling like a chunk of a broader project. It has a well realised though insular setting in a Steampunk context and a kind of 'The Butterfly Effect' (2004) feel, though you hope for a better outcome than that movie. Despite the title, as the editors promised, 'Clockwork Fagin' by Cory Doctorow is not set in London but the USA. It does well in looking at the impact of a Steampunk world in the cost of mutilated child machine operators. It is an upbeat story as these children increasingly take control of their lives through their engineering skills. It thus well combines the grittier aspects of the genre but in a way which is part of the story rather than preaching. While a long short story it is worked through in its extent.
'The Last Ride of the Glory Girls' by Libba Bray feels like the pilot for a longer novel. It also features a time manipulation device combined with a group of female bandits in a Steampunk American West. It is crisp and well realised with engaging characters and is one of the stories I would like to see more of. Another one which seems like the start of something larger is 'Hand in Glove' by Ysabeau S. Wilce which covers a female detective in a Steampunk city and the challenges she faces in solving a murder, the perpetrator of which is highly unexpected. The story has some standard elements but is good in portraying places and has some interesting twists. One could envisage novels featuring the protagonist, Constable Aurelia Etreyo.
'Ghost of Cwmlech Manor' by Delia Sherman is set in Victorian Wales and has the feeling of a classic Victorian horror story though the Steampunk elements, here seen in a rural rather than an urban setting. It did however remind me of the 'The Unquiet Dead' episode of 'Doctor Who' set in Cardiff in 1869 which was broadcast in 2005. Despite these elements it is an upbeat story with both the local and incoming characters interesting and just about avoiding being a set of tropes. 'Gethsemane' by Elizabeth Knox is another which feels to be as much a different Victorian genre as a Steampunk novel. It shows Steampunk technology being used on a tropical island to gain energy from a volcano, but the focus of the story is more on the island's inhabitants, a form of zombie and sailors who come to the island with the Steampunk facet in the background of what happens rather than the foreground. 'Oracle Engine' by M.T. Anderson is very sandalpunk, being set in an alternate Roman Empire where a computer is constructed. It is really a morality tale looking to take the style of accounts by Roman historians, so while not bad, has something irritating in the tone, rather self-righteous.
'The Summer People' is not really a Steampunk story at all and feels more like a folklore story set in just a slightly different North America from the one we know. It focuses very much on a kind of magical creatures, the eponymous people. It has interesting ideas and has that nice edge of such stories but you do wonder if it would have been included if Kelly Link was not one of the editors. 'Steam Girl' by Dylan Horrocks is another oddity for this collection. In it Steampunk is not real, we just see contemporary USA, so it is a meta-story as the Steampunk elements including the 'golden age' science fiction aspects of travelling to see civilisations on Mars and Venus, are just in the mind of a schoolgirl. I do wonder if contemporary American teenagers actually have interest in stories of that kind; perhaps it would have been more realistic to have a Japanese teenager featured.
'Everything Available and Obliging' by Holly Black also owes more to a different science fiction genre than Steampunk and is really a steampunked version of 'I, Robot' (1950) though with more awkward questions about affection for humanoid machines. 'Nowhere Fast' by Christopher Rowe is a post-apocalyptic story set in one of the states which has formed in the eastern USA. It is reasonable largely interesting for seeing how the insular American communities you find in these post-apocalyptic stories react when technology, even of the Steampunk kind, is the thing to hate.
'Zoo Station' by David Downing
It took some time for me to realise that this was the same David Downing (it is a surprisingly common name combination as an online search quickly shows) who had written 'The Moscow Option' (1979) a successful alternate history novel of the Second World War, though all I remember from it was the sex scene and the assassination of Adolf Eichmann in Palestine, it was about 35 years ago that I read it. Anyway, since then I had been unaware of Downing writing anything until this series was given to me by a family member. This is the first book concerning a British journalist working in Berlin early in 1939. He has a son by his German ex-wife and has a long-standing German girlfriend, both he is loath to leave despite the sense that war is approaching.
Downing has done an immense amount of research regarding Berlin at the time and that is part of the problems. Russell traipses all over the city with great detail about where he is going, what public transport he is using, where he stops for his meals and what he eats and drinks. It begins to expand out from Berlin with him paying visits to Hamburg and the Baltic coast; to Poland and Czechoslovakia. The detail is great but it reduces rather than adds to the tension. Russell, a former Communist is recruited by Soviet intelligence and then British intelligence to carry out various tasks; he is also monitored by the German SD counter-intelligence body. He helps a Jewish family get away from Germany and sort of investigates the murder of a US journalist who had stumbled across the T4 Programme of killing disabled German children.
I know the book is establishing the characters and the situation, but nothing is really resolved. It is very much a 'slice of life' novel that just peters out. This might be alright if it was a literary novel, but it is supposed to be a spy novel and really lacks the tension necessary. I have the rest of the books in the series and hope that now everything is established the tension will be built up. I assume it is a successful series given how many books are in it.
Audio Books
'Aggressor' by Andy McNab [Steven Billy Mitchell]; read by Steven Pacey
Having been presently surprised by listening to 'Zero Hour' (2010):http://rooksmoor.blogspot.com/2019/02/books-i-listened-toread-in-february.html I thought I would give another McNab story featuring Nick Stone a go when I came across it cheaply. It is pretty similar to the previous book, though it is a friend of Stone's who is suffering a terminal illness and the adventure takes place in the country of Georgia rather than Moldova. The story is fast moving and you get what you expect, though the course of events does not run smoothly for the hero. McNab shows awareness of the political situation in the places he sets his stories and is sympathetic to local conditions, showing how big money manipulates the situations and groups are played with so this is not a colonial adventure. As with 'Zero Hour' the role for men, especially ex-servicemen, in peacetime society and male ageing feature as themes. While a pretty straight forward book, it is better than it might otherwise have been and if this is a genre you like, McNab seems to be one of the best writers in it. Steven Pacey is another reader who sounds very much like the character and was pretty good at doing not just British but Australian, German and Georgian accents, women as well as men.
'Pulse' by Julian Barnes; read by David Rintoul
I mistakenly thought I had read some of Barnes's books before. This is a collection of short stories, a genre I usually enjoy, but having heard this book, I know I will now steer clear of Barnes's work. Most of the stories are set in Britain of the 2000s (the book was published in 2011). They are painfully middle class and in many cases painfully male. Many of the protagonists are white Englishmen unable to have successful relationships with women. There are a few exceptions to these dreary stories, but the round dinner table discussions, while showing off Rintoul's ability with accents and jumping between characters are very like the dinner party sketches in featuring John Bird, John Fortune, Pauline McLynn and Frances Barber on 'Bremner, Bird and Fortune' (broadcast 1999-2010). One of these would have been fine but they become repetitive. The only really decent story is about a painter in the USA in the 18th Century. Otherwise I found the collection dreary and repetitive, very narrowly focused on what I imagine is Barnes's life experiences at the time. Rintoul, a well-established audio book narrator, does well, though for many of the stories there is little to stretch him, but when called upon he does demonstrate why he is among the leading narrators at present for accents and portraying female as well as male characters.
Sunday, 31 March 2019
Books I Listened To/Read In March
Fiction
'River of Gods' by Ian McDonald
Though published in 2004, this book is very much a Cyberpunk novel of the old style from the 1980s. Set in 2047 the action largely takes place in an India which has fragmented independent states, sometimes at war with each other. Artificial intelligence has advanced to a level at which it can exceed human thought and its application is policed. In the classic Cyberpunk approach, McDonald weaves together a range of apparently disparate characters whose various stories come together towards the climax. He handles this in a less clunky way than some of the 'heroes' of Cyberpunk, notably William Gibson. Though a westerner, he has done well, in my view anyway, in envisaging a future India, though some traits such as a love of cricket and soap operas, perhaps have been assumed to continue unchallenged.
The level of technology with drone attack devices and surgery that has led to the rise of 'nutes', literally surgically created neuter people, seems appropriate for the coming decades. It even features a sentient soap opera which I liked as a concept. There is some standard science fiction with a device close to Earth which is of ancient alien design and the development by a company which derives power from parallel universes, but they are merged in with the more down-to-Earth Cyberpunk technology without much of a jar. In addition there is a small scale war and climate change that has led to extended droughts. However, to some degree including all of these elements is pretty overwhelming for the reader.
The characters are diverse and believable, with their different motives, some pretty mundane such as escaping a cloying marriage, others exotic such as connecting to another universe. He has done reasonably well in looking at how a different world would shape attitudes, but crucially old world attitudes repeatedly shape the action and the fate of a number of the characters especially those that end tragically. Overall, this is an interesting book and if I had not read as much Cyberpunk as I have I think I would have been excited by it. The prime problem is the length (584 pages in my edition) and so you reach the closing stages of the book feeling worn out and wanting it to be over because you have had so many concepts, so many twists and turns, that by the end, you simply want the climax to be finished. The book is good, but ultimately drowns in all of the ideas, characters and activities that McDonald piles in.
'Pattern Recognition' by William Gibson
It was ironic that the next book I read was by William Gibson who had been one of the leading lights of the Cyberpunk era. However, I have been unaware that he has continued writing, indeed I was not even aware he was still alive. He seems, if 'Pattern Recognition' is characteristic of his post-Cyberpunk writing to have moved on to contemporary novels. This one is set in 2002, only a year before the book was published. Much activity happens in London, especially around Camden an area I visited a lot at that time. The first thing I noticed is how much Gibson has improved as a writer since I read his books in the 1980s. As noted in the review above, I always found the working out of his stories very clunky and you could see where they were heading from very early in the book. Added to that his writing has become far more lucid and there were passages in this book that I really admired for their skill. I cannot remember seeing an author develop so far as Gibson seems to have done and I guess it suggests there is hope for all authors, or maybe he just employed a better editor than before. Perhaps writing contemporary fiction, publishers do not simply bow down before his apparently stunning concepts as they might have once done.
The book focuses on American Cayce Pollard who has an allergy to brand logos and so is used by companies to test out whether their new logo will have impact. She is also alert to global trends and highlights 'the next big thing'. Rather erratically she becomes involved with artists and film makers, but as it progresses the book narrows down to her pursuing the maker of snippets of a film which have been released sporadically over the internet with no contextualisation. A community has grown up trying to read meaning into the snippets. The quest means her interacting with cool people from London to Tokyo to Moscow as ultimately she is successful in locating the source and keeping the information out of the hands of wealthy obsessives and corporations. At times the book is satirical about corporate culture and especially marketing and branding and takes a wry look at life in the capitals of the UK, Japan and Russia. The improvement in Gibson's writing really helps these elements be effective. His characters are interesting, not all of them are likeable and some verge on caricatures, but he creates a rich complex environment both real and virtual which does not go too far the way McDonald does to drown you in all that he has conjured up. While I will not rush out and buy all of Gibson's 21st Century output, if I come across others from this phase of his writing, I would not pick them up.
'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon
I have been given a lot of the books in Leon's Comissario Brunetti series, this book, published in 1992 was the first. I think this is because I enjoyed Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series also set in contemporary Italy. I have been annoyed by comments made by Leon in an interview to 'The Guardian' newspaper in which she said while no male author can successfully write female characters, female authors, because they live in a male-dominated world, are well capable of writing male characters. I found that a very arrogant attitude but given that she is an American I suppose such sweeping claims are to be expected.
This book is certainly a feminist crime novel. Though her police detective is a man, much of the story features women who have suffered at the hands of men. All the men beside Brunetti are at best bitchy or short-sighted in their arrogance and at worst repeated paedophile offenders. The story is around a famous German conductor who is found poisoned mid-way through a performance at La Fenice opera house in Venice. The story is pretty straight forward, like many detective stories set around theatres or concert halls. Leon is less concerned about the mystery and in fact the reader may be able to work out the solution from very early on. Her concern is showing how nasty the dead man was in his treatment of women, children, gay men and lesbians. These factors are more important to the story than the conductor's collaboration with the Nazi regime.
Perhaps it is Leon's upbringing, but in many ways I felt this novel was far older than 1992, especially in terms of its attitude to how women and lesbians are perceived. The view that the entire population is interested in opera and familiar with its participants also jarred. Hanging over much of the book is a very old fashioned social attitude. I think Leon, who lived in Italy for man years is chiding the country for not being up-to-date. In passing she notes it corruption, something which often featured in Dibdin's books. However, she does not successfully disengage from the dated social attitudes in her own portrayals which makes her seem complicit in them even while she might be aiming to counter them. Then again, she might not, but given what I have heard from her, I do not believed she sees these things this way herself or maybe she has a range of attitudes that it is difficult to entangle. Thus, overall, the women are largely victims of circumstances and maliciousness and the men are at least incompetent if not nasty in a range of ways. The only exception is her hero.
I do not really understand why the book received so much acclaim, perhaps because of its feminist agenda, maybe because of its detailed portrayal of Venice. It is a standard murder mystery that exposes the author's views on subjects very clearly to some degree removing much of the intrigue and at times compelling characters to be pretty exaggerated. I have a string of these books to get through and hope that Leon's writing improved especially in terms of subtlety.
Non-Fiction
'Rethinking British Decline' ed. by Richard English and Michael Kenny
There is so much going on in this book that it is difficult to review. It was published in 2000, but it is fascinating reading it now because of so many of the antecedents of the current Brexit crisis can be seen in it, even going back to 1962 and the leader of the Labour Party of the time, Hugh Gaitskell, warning about the dangers of European federalism. The first part of the book is a series of interviews with many of the great economic historians of the last two-fifths of the 20th Century, Sidney Pollard, Samuel Brittan, David Marquand and other commentators from that late period such as Corelli Barnett and Will Hutton. Much of their time is spent dismissing the views of the others and in some cases, notably Jonathan Clark, arguing that Britain actually did not decline in the 20th Century, in part due to the more widely held view that its economy has always been more about finance and insurance than manufacturing and emphasis on standards of living and opportunities; Britain still being in the G7.
The second part of the book is a more standard collection of chapters looking at the same aspects often mentioned in the first half of the book, such as problems with British culture and institutions, plus relationship with the European Community and the former Empire. There are no firm conclusions, except perhaps that declinism as a political tool has been greater than actual evidence of decline itself. Interestingly, it is all handled at a very high level of society and politics and aside from comments on the rise of unemployment under the Thatcher governments, there is no reference to rising poverty, debt, homelessness, ill-health and declining education and opportunities across the UK. I do not think an update today would have such a neutral sense, but then it was produced in the days of 'things can only get better' early in the Blair governments. I think this is a good summary of the different angles on British decline and especially on declinism as a ideology usable across the political spectrum. In some ways it also marks a changing of the guard, and despite the persistence of some of those interviewed into old age, it seems unlikely that economic historians will ever have such an impact on politics as they did in the 1960s-90s and that in itself is interesting to see as that breed of academic/commentator was coming to their sunset in terms of influence.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Sepulchre' by Kate Mosse; read by Lorelei King
I felt I had read Mosse's best seller 'Labyrinth' (2006) longer ago than it had been published. I have seen some of her later books, including this one published in 2007, regularly in charity shops, but had been put off by the length of them, so it was ideal to have as an audio book. As with 'Labyrinth' in 'Sepulchre', Mosse uses the approach of parallel stories between two women's lives, one in the present and one in the past, in this case 1891 rather than the 13th Century. Meredith Martin travels to France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a book she is writing and as a side mission to find out a little about her birth family, which it proves, originated in southern France. Martin ends up going to Rennes-les-Baines and staying at a hotel in the Domaine de la Cade. In 1891, with her brother mixed up with a jealous wealthy man's revenge and fleeing creditors, the teenager Léonie Vernier travels to the same house owned by her widowed aunt. A further connection is a sepulchre in the grounds of the house, apparently connected to the Cathars persecuted in the region in the 13th Century and the source of both music and art work, notably tarot card designs, that both Vernier and Martin come into contact.
At first I thought that the book was going to be at a very populist level. King's opening narration, very breathless in the US audio book style, added to this sense. However, I was glad that I persisted. Both King and the book settled down and while you might feel the connections are rather contrived, as the story progressed you had the sense that the motives and behaviour in both times were legitimate. While the genuinely nasty antagonist closes in on the Vernier siblings, Martin becomes involved in investigating the death of her new lover's father. This was the section which jarred most. Martin, in her late twenties, seems willing to hop into bed with a stranger and to become his partner very quickly, involving herself in a dangerous situation with aplomb. I do not know if that is the self-confidence of American women, but given that the author is asking us to accept tarot readings and phantoms and does so pretty well, this aspect really jarred and I felt she had been ordered to include it for some sex rather than to genuinely advance the story. Interestingly, this was a book that I enjoyed as it progressed. However, I do think she did not need to go into the latter years of Léonie Vernier's life and it would have been crisper to end it all in 1891. Thus, at times I had mixed feelings about the book, but was ultimately satisfied by it. I largely believed the characters and what they go up to. The Gothic elements were handled well without becoming overblown or too deeply trope coining. The research and attention to detail was excellent.
While I often have difficulty with US narrators over-exaggerating their readings and really worried that King was going to persist with this, as I have found with other such readers, if you give them a few chapters at the start, they settle down and given a more level tone. She does the range of voices both male and female, in both time periods well. While I feel a reader of a different nationality would have made the story sound more sinister, King's performance was not as much out of step as I initially feared.
'Fever of the Bone' by Val McDermid; read by Michael Mahoney
I listened to the first of McDermid's stories featuring psychologist Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan, 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) last year. This book published in 2009, is the sixth in the series which this year reached 11 books. Hill and Jordan now live in the same building though not together. In large part this is blamed on Hill's impotence which has continued through the novels.Furthermore Jordan, heading a specialist murder investigation team, is encouraged not to call on Hill's services when teenagers begin to go missing and then turn up dead with their genitals removed and instead use a cheaper police psychologist. Hill goes from the fictional Bradfield to work for the police of Worcester which develops the sub-plot of the death of his father who disappeared before he was born and his own poor relationship with his nasty mother. Hill is brought into a case which soon connects to the killings in Bradfield and aided by the arrogant incompetence of the police psychologist is brought into the broader case. While the book is about a serial killer, the motive differs from those which usually turn up and the twist to keep the killer's identity secret is well handled. Overall, the book is competent and engaging with very believable characters. I have another of McDermid's novels on my stack to listen to. Mahoney handles the story telling well and does convincing women, not simply Jordan but also a range of bereaved mothers and female friends of the victims, to the extent that you forget he is there, a sign of a good reader.
'The Secret Adversary' by Agatha Christie; read by Samantha Bond
Most people tend to think of Agatha Christie having written murder mysteries set in English country houses. However, this, like 'The Seven Dials Mystery' (1929) which I read last month, is one of her adventure stories, of the Bulldog Drummond ilk, though with women taking a leading role. This is the first of five books featuring Thomas 'Tommy' Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley who subsequently marry. Though published in 1922, it is actually set just ten months after the end of the First World War, so around September 1919, though is not dramatized as such when seen on television. Seeking work, Tommy and Tuppence set themselves up as private detectives and are drawn into a conspiracy by Bolshevik agents to trigger a general strike, influencing trade union leaders by revealing a secret deal that was to be brokered with the Americans in 1915 but which was thought lost when the RMS 'Lusitania'. At the time it is set the Russian Civil War was still raging and the Russo-Polish War was about to break out. There was a concern about Russian revolutionaries trying to spread unrest across exhausted Europe, so it has a political currency akin to featuring ISIS agents planning unrest in Britain today.
As with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' the tone of the book is almost like an Enid Blyton story with lots of haring around Britain and being confined and escaping. At the heart of the mystery is identifying the prime Russian agent, Mr. Brown and recovering the proposed treaty, which is interesting to speculate on what it might contain. Fortunately the antagonists are not idiots and pull off tricks on the heroes and there are two well handled deceptions by other characters. Again, common with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' it is impossible to trust many of the characters and rather than the bulk being suspects, the majority are trusted until the real malefactor is revealed. This adventure story probably lacks the stately unravelling of a Christie mystery; instead it has frantic action and demonstrative dialogue and is very much of its time. I enjoyed it as a romp but little more. Samantha Bond is now one of my favourite readers and handles a whole spectrum of European accented English as well as catching the energy of the two leads appropriately.
'Poirot's Early Cases' by Agatha Christie; read by David Suchet and Hugh Fraser
This book was published in 1974 but was made up of 18 short stories that had appeared in magazines between 1923-35. You can see Poirot's progress through the stories. At the start he and Captain Hastings are sharing rooms and stories are told from Hastings's perspective, very much like John Watson recounting Sherlock Holmes's cases. By the end of the collection, Poirot is widely renowned, Hastings has moved out and Miss. Lemon has been appointed as his secretary, though she is less enthusiastic than portrayed in television dramatizations. Having seen dramatizations of all of the stories, it is interesting to note how they are fleshed out, I will not say 'padded out' because I do not feel there is anything extraneous in the television versions, but coming back to the original stories, you see their epigrammatic nature and demonstrate that Christie was adept at short story writing, something which requires different skills to writing novels, especially in terms of crime fiction.
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings, appeared right throughout the TV series 'Poirot' (broadcast 1989-2013) so it is fun to hear them when putting on the voices they acted with, when presenting these stories. They read alone on different stories. Suchet is far more adept at not only doing his Poirot voice, but a wide range of characters that feature in the short stories. Fraser, puts on the voices far less but I know some listeners appreciated the story being narrated rather than the norm of performing it. Both bring a richness to the stories and conjure up the time in which they are set. The crispness of these stories, interesting characters, the clever ploys used by the criminals and the detective, plus some interesting twists even in a short story, make these very enjoyable without having to become involved in lengthy detail. They do very well at showing up a particular side of Christie's writing. The two actors associated so much with the stories in the public consciousness being the reader just rounds off the success of this audio book.
'River of Gods' by Ian McDonald
Though published in 2004, this book is very much a Cyberpunk novel of the old style from the 1980s. Set in 2047 the action largely takes place in an India which has fragmented independent states, sometimes at war with each other. Artificial intelligence has advanced to a level at which it can exceed human thought and its application is policed. In the classic Cyberpunk approach, McDonald weaves together a range of apparently disparate characters whose various stories come together towards the climax. He handles this in a less clunky way than some of the 'heroes' of Cyberpunk, notably William Gibson. Though a westerner, he has done well, in my view anyway, in envisaging a future India, though some traits such as a love of cricket and soap operas, perhaps have been assumed to continue unchallenged.
The level of technology with drone attack devices and surgery that has led to the rise of 'nutes', literally surgically created neuter people, seems appropriate for the coming decades. It even features a sentient soap opera which I liked as a concept. There is some standard science fiction with a device close to Earth which is of ancient alien design and the development by a company which derives power from parallel universes, but they are merged in with the more down-to-Earth Cyberpunk technology without much of a jar. In addition there is a small scale war and climate change that has led to extended droughts. However, to some degree including all of these elements is pretty overwhelming for the reader.
The characters are diverse and believable, with their different motives, some pretty mundane such as escaping a cloying marriage, others exotic such as connecting to another universe. He has done reasonably well in looking at how a different world would shape attitudes, but crucially old world attitudes repeatedly shape the action and the fate of a number of the characters especially those that end tragically. Overall, this is an interesting book and if I had not read as much Cyberpunk as I have I think I would have been excited by it. The prime problem is the length (584 pages in my edition) and so you reach the closing stages of the book feeling worn out and wanting it to be over because you have had so many concepts, so many twists and turns, that by the end, you simply want the climax to be finished. The book is good, but ultimately drowns in all of the ideas, characters and activities that McDonald piles in.
'Pattern Recognition' by William Gibson
It was ironic that the next book I read was by William Gibson who had been one of the leading lights of the Cyberpunk era. However, I have been unaware that he has continued writing, indeed I was not even aware he was still alive. He seems, if 'Pattern Recognition' is characteristic of his post-Cyberpunk writing to have moved on to contemporary novels. This one is set in 2002, only a year before the book was published. Much activity happens in London, especially around Camden an area I visited a lot at that time. The first thing I noticed is how much Gibson has improved as a writer since I read his books in the 1980s. As noted in the review above, I always found the working out of his stories very clunky and you could see where they were heading from very early in the book. Added to that his writing has become far more lucid and there were passages in this book that I really admired for their skill. I cannot remember seeing an author develop so far as Gibson seems to have done and I guess it suggests there is hope for all authors, or maybe he just employed a better editor than before. Perhaps writing contemporary fiction, publishers do not simply bow down before his apparently stunning concepts as they might have once done.
The book focuses on American Cayce Pollard who has an allergy to brand logos and so is used by companies to test out whether their new logo will have impact. She is also alert to global trends and highlights 'the next big thing'. Rather erratically she becomes involved with artists and film makers, but as it progresses the book narrows down to her pursuing the maker of snippets of a film which have been released sporadically over the internet with no contextualisation. A community has grown up trying to read meaning into the snippets. The quest means her interacting with cool people from London to Tokyo to Moscow as ultimately she is successful in locating the source and keeping the information out of the hands of wealthy obsessives and corporations. At times the book is satirical about corporate culture and especially marketing and branding and takes a wry look at life in the capitals of the UK, Japan and Russia. The improvement in Gibson's writing really helps these elements be effective. His characters are interesting, not all of them are likeable and some verge on caricatures, but he creates a rich complex environment both real and virtual which does not go too far the way McDonald does to drown you in all that he has conjured up. While I will not rush out and buy all of Gibson's 21st Century output, if I come across others from this phase of his writing, I would not pick them up.
'Death at La Fenice' by Donna Leon
I have been given a lot of the books in Leon's Comissario Brunetti series, this book, published in 1992 was the first. I think this is because I enjoyed Michael Dibdin's Aurelio Zen series also set in contemporary Italy. I have been annoyed by comments made by Leon in an interview to 'The Guardian' newspaper in which she said while no male author can successfully write female characters, female authors, because they live in a male-dominated world, are well capable of writing male characters. I found that a very arrogant attitude but given that she is an American I suppose such sweeping claims are to be expected.
This book is certainly a feminist crime novel. Though her police detective is a man, much of the story features women who have suffered at the hands of men. All the men beside Brunetti are at best bitchy or short-sighted in their arrogance and at worst repeated paedophile offenders. The story is around a famous German conductor who is found poisoned mid-way through a performance at La Fenice opera house in Venice. The story is pretty straight forward, like many detective stories set around theatres or concert halls. Leon is less concerned about the mystery and in fact the reader may be able to work out the solution from very early on. Her concern is showing how nasty the dead man was in his treatment of women, children, gay men and lesbians. These factors are more important to the story than the conductor's collaboration with the Nazi regime.
Perhaps it is Leon's upbringing, but in many ways I felt this novel was far older than 1992, especially in terms of its attitude to how women and lesbians are perceived. The view that the entire population is interested in opera and familiar with its participants also jarred. Hanging over much of the book is a very old fashioned social attitude. I think Leon, who lived in Italy for man years is chiding the country for not being up-to-date. In passing she notes it corruption, something which often featured in Dibdin's books. However, she does not successfully disengage from the dated social attitudes in her own portrayals which makes her seem complicit in them even while she might be aiming to counter them. Then again, she might not, but given what I have heard from her, I do not believed she sees these things this way herself or maybe she has a range of attitudes that it is difficult to entangle. Thus, overall, the women are largely victims of circumstances and maliciousness and the men are at least incompetent if not nasty in a range of ways. The only exception is her hero.
I do not really understand why the book received so much acclaim, perhaps because of its feminist agenda, maybe because of its detailed portrayal of Venice. It is a standard murder mystery that exposes the author's views on subjects very clearly to some degree removing much of the intrigue and at times compelling characters to be pretty exaggerated. I have a string of these books to get through and hope that Leon's writing improved especially in terms of subtlety.
Non-Fiction
'Rethinking British Decline' ed. by Richard English and Michael Kenny
There is so much going on in this book that it is difficult to review. It was published in 2000, but it is fascinating reading it now because of so many of the antecedents of the current Brexit crisis can be seen in it, even going back to 1962 and the leader of the Labour Party of the time, Hugh Gaitskell, warning about the dangers of European federalism. The first part of the book is a series of interviews with many of the great economic historians of the last two-fifths of the 20th Century, Sidney Pollard, Samuel Brittan, David Marquand and other commentators from that late period such as Corelli Barnett and Will Hutton. Much of their time is spent dismissing the views of the others and in some cases, notably Jonathan Clark, arguing that Britain actually did not decline in the 20th Century, in part due to the more widely held view that its economy has always been more about finance and insurance than manufacturing and emphasis on standards of living and opportunities; Britain still being in the G7.
The second part of the book is a more standard collection of chapters looking at the same aspects often mentioned in the first half of the book, such as problems with British culture and institutions, plus relationship with the European Community and the former Empire. There are no firm conclusions, except perhaps that declinism as a political tool has been greater than actual evidence of decline itself. Interestingly, it is all handled at a very high level of society and politics and aside from comments on the rise of unemployment under the Thatcher governments, there is no reference to rising poverty, debt, homelessness, ill-health and declining education and opportunities across the UK. I do not think an update today would have such a neutral sense, but then it was produced in the days of 'things can only get better' early in the Blair governments. I think this is a good summary of the different angles on British decline and especially on declinism as a ideology usable across the political spectrum. In some ways it also marks a changing of the guard, and despite the persistence of some of those interviewed into old age, it seems unlikely that economic historians will ever have such an impact on politics as they did in the 1960s-90s and that in itself is interesting to see as that breed of academic/commentator was coming to their sunset in terms of influence.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Sepulchre' by Kate Mosse; read by Lorelei King
I felt I had read Mosse's best seller 'Labyrinth' (2006) longer ago than it had been published. I have seen some of her later books, including this one published in 2007, regularly in charity shops, but had been put off by the length of them, so it was ideal to have as an audio book. As with 'Labyrinth' in 'Sepulchre', Mosse uses the approach of parallel stories between two women's lives, one in the present and one in the past, in this case 1891 rather than the 13th Century. Meredith Martin travels to France to research the life of Claude Debussy for a book she is writing and as a side mission to find out a little about her birth family, which it proves, originated in southern France. Martin ends up going to Rennes-les-Baines and staying at a hotel in the Domaine de la Cade. In 1891, with her brother mixed up with a jealous wealthy man's revenge and fleeing creditors, the teenager Léonie Vernier travels to the same house owned by her widowed aunt. A further connection is a sepulchre in the grounds of the house, apparently connected to the Cathars persecuted in the region in the 13th Century and the source of both music and art work, notably tarot card designs, that both Vernier and Martin come into contact.
At first I thought that the book was going to be at a very populist level. King's opening narration, very breathless in the US audio book style, added to this sense. However, I was glad that I persisted. Both King and the book settled down and while you might feel the connections are rather contrived, as the story progressed you had the sense that the motives and behaviour in both times were legitimate. While the genuinely nasty antagonist closes in on the Vernier siblings, Martin becomes involved in investigating the death of her new lover's father. This was the section which jarred most. Martin, in her late twenties, seems willing to hop into bed with a stranger and to become his partner very quickly, involving herself in a dangerous situation with aplomb. I do not know if that is the self-confidence of American women, but given that the author is asking us to accept tarot readings and phantoms and does so pretty well, this aspect really jarred and I felt she had been ordered to include it for some sex rather than to genuinely advance the story. Interestingly, this was a book that I enjoyed as it progressed. However, I do think she did not need to go into the latter years of Léonie Vernier's life and it would have been crisper to end it all in 1891. Thus, at times I had mixed feelings about the book, but was ultimately satisfied by it. I largely believed the characters and what they go up to. The Gothic elements were handled well without becoming overblown or too deeply trope coining. The research and attention to detail was excellent.
While I often have difficulty with US narrators over-exaggerating their readings and really worried that King was going to persist with this, as I have found with other such readers, if you give them a few chapters at the start, they settle down and given a more level tone. She does the range of voices both male and female, in both time periods well. While I feel a reader of a different nationality would have made the story sound more sinister, King's performance was not as much out of step as I initially feared.
'Fever of the Bone' by Val McDermid; read by Michael Mahoney
I listened to the first of McDermid's stories featuring psychologist Tony Hill and police detective Carol Jordan, 'The Mermaids Singing' (1995) last year. This book published in 2009, is the sixth in the series which this year reached 11 books. Hill and Jordan now live in the same building though not together. In large part this is blamed on Hill's impotence which has continued through the novels.Furthermore Jordan, heading a specialist murder investigation team, is encouraged not to call on Hill's services when teenagers begin to go missing and then turn up dead with their genitals removed and instead use a cheaper police psychologist. Hill goes from the fictional Bradfield to work for the police of Worcester which develops the sub-plot of the death of his father who disappeared before he was born and his own poor relationship with his nasty mother. Hill is brought into a case which soon connects to the killings in Bradfield and aided by the arrogant incompetence of the police psychologist is brought into the broader case. While the book is about a serial killer, the motive differs from those which usually turn up and the twist to keep the killer's identity secret is well handled. Overall, the book is competent and engaging with very believable characters. I have another of McDermid's novels on my stack to listen to. Mahoney handles the story telling well and does convincing women, not simply Jordan but also a range of bereaved mothers and female friends of the victims, to the extent that you forget he is there, a sign of a good reader.
'The Secret Adversary' by Agatha Christie; read by Samantha Bond
Most people tend to think of Agatha Christie having written murder mysteries set in English country houses. However, this, like 'The Seven Dials Mystery' (1929) which I read last month, is one of her adventure stories, of the Bulldog Drummond ilk, though with women taking a leading role. This is the first of five books featuring Thomas 'Tommy' Beresford and Prudence 'Tuppence' Cowley who subsequently marry. Though published in 1922, it is actually set just ten months after the end of the First World War, so around September 1919, though is not dramatized as such when seen on television. Seeking work, Tommy and Tuppence set themselves up as private detectives and are drawn into a conspiracy by Bolshevik agents to trigger a general strike, influencing trade union leaders by revealing a secret deal that was to be brokered with the Americans in 1915 but which was thought lost when the RMS 'Lusitania'. At the time it is set the Russian Civil War was still raging and the Russo-Polish War was about to break out. There was a concern about Russian revolutionaries trying to spread unrest across exhausted Europe, so it has a political currency akin to featuring ISIS agents planning unrest in Britain today.
As with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' the tone of the book is almost like an Enid Blyton story with lots of haring around Britain and being confined and escaping. At the heart of the mystery is identifying the prime Russian agent, Mr. Brown and recovering the proposed treaty, which is interesting to speculate on what it might contain. Fortunately the antagonists are not idiots and pull off tricks on the heroes and there are two well handled deceptions by other characters. Again, common with 'The Seven Dials Mystery' it is impossible to trust many of the characters and rather than the bulk being suspects, the majority are trusted until the real malefactor is revealed. This adventure story probably lacks the stately unravelling of a Christie mystery; instead it has frantic action and demonstrative dialogue and is very much of its time. I enjoyed it as a romp but little more. Samantha Bond is now one of my favourite readers and handles a whole spectrum of European accented English as well as catching the energy of the two leads appropriately.
'Poirot's Early Cases' by Agatha Christie; read by David Suchet and Hugh Fraser
This book was published in 1974 but was made up of 18 short stories that had appeared in magazines between 1923-35. You can see Poirot's progress through the stories. At the start he and Captain Hastings are sharing rooms and stories are told from Hastings's perspective, very much like John Watson recounting Sherlock Holmes's cases. By the end of the collection, Poirot is widely renowned, Hastings has moved out and Miss. Lemon has been appointed as his secretary, though she is less enthusiastic than portrayed in television dramatizations. Having seen dramatizations of all of the stories, it is interesting to note how they are fleshed out, I will not say 'padded out' because I do not feel there is anything extraneous in the television versions, but coming back to the original stories, you see their epigrammatic nature and demonstrate that Christie was adept at short story writing, something which requires different skills to writing novels, especially in terms of crime fiction.
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot and Hugh Fraser as Captain Hastings, appeared right throughout the TV series 'Poirot' (broadcast 1989-2013) so it is fun to hear them when putting on the voices they acted with, when presenting these stories. They read alone on different stories. Suchet is far more adept at not only doing his Poirot voice, but a wide range of characters that feature in the short stories. Fraser, puts on the voices far less but I know some listeners appreciated the story being narrated rather than the norm of performing it. Both bring a richness to the stories and conjure up the time in which they are set. The crispness of these stories, interesting characters, the clever ploys used by the criminals and the detective, plus some interesting twists even in a short story, make these very enjoyable without having to become involved in lengthy detail. They do very well at showing up a particular side of Christie's writing. The two actors associated so much with the stories in the public consciousness being the reader just rounds off the success of this audio book.
Thursday, 28 February 2019
Books I Listened To/Read In February
Fiction
'The Black Book' by Ian Rankin
This is the fifth book in the Rebus series in another edition in which Rankin starts by outlining how lucky he was in his career. Having moved to live in France, his wife has a baby and then he gets a writing fellowship in the USA. You realise that there is no point comparing yourself to Rankin, because he is not an outstanding writer, but he has been a very lucky writer.
One thing I have liked about Rankin's Rebus books is that they do not follow the clear linear narrative that you find in so many crime novels. At times you are not even certain of the mystery he is seeking to uncover. This comes across as a realistic reflection of police work. However, at times it goes rather too far. While in this book Rankin has revived characters from previous books, including Rebus's brother, Michael, you feel that a lot is missing from the back story. Both with this one and the previous, 'Strip Jack' (1992) you feel as if you have missed out on a book in between. Having decided to live with Dr. Patience Atkin in the previous book, he has now been kicked out by her after coming back late from the pub. She is just a shadowy figure in this novel as if Rankin was uncertain whether to bother continuing with her. DC Siobhan Clarke does turn up for the first time in this book and will prove to be an enduring character in the series.
The story, when it finally decides what to focus on is about a murder and a fire at a disreputable hotel 5 years previously. It seems to have been triggered as an insurance scam, but the body found it the fire had been shot dead. On his own initiative Rebus treks around the gangsters and others who might have been at the hotel and as often happens in the Rebus books it overlaps with other cases he is working on. Ultimately though he has to set-up the main suspect and you feel in this book that he is on the fringes of the law. The black book of the title seems to fall away as having minimal purpose in the story. It is not a bad novel and certainly avoids the linear path of so much crime fiction. However, while it is part of a long-running series you feel you are missing so much 'between' the books so it is rather than disruptive as you are trying to work out what has happened, especially in Rebus's personal life, which confuses your following of the crime plots.
Non-Fiction
'The War That Never Was: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1985-1991' by David Pryce-Jones
This is a very disappointing book. Pryce-Jones put a lot of work into it especially in interviewing people at all levels of society across the former Soviet bloc. However, he kept forgetting that he was writing a history book and his editor seems not to have put in any effort to keep him to his title. Thus, between sporadic accounts from people who experienced the period and knew the bloc before and during its fall plus interesting statistics and some analysis of how the system 'worked' and failed, you get pages of polemic from Pryce-Jones. He seems stunned that more violence was not used and keeps asking why that was not the case. The polemic which is just him wittering on, often with no reference to time, place or people, so it simply is sounding off. This weakens the strong parts of the book by losing them among personal opinion.
As you read on you realise that Pryce-Jones actually thinks that nuclear weapons are a good thing and he is disappointed in President Ronald Reagan, otherwise his hero, when he began to take steps to nuclear disarmament. Pryce-Jones believes the 'Star Wars' SDI weaponry was feasible; a real thing which impacted on East-West relations. He is highly dismissive of President George H.W. Bush and sees the reason for him not securing re-election in 1991 as down to him being too weak towards the USSR and insufficiently supportive of the nationalists wanting to break away. Of course, given Pryce-Jones's politics, Bush's defeat could have nothing to do with the US public tiring of New Right economic policies and the impact on their lives.
While he is disparaging of Republicans for being insufficiently hardline, Pryce-Jones's prime problem is that he has an all-consuming hatred of liberal and left-wing opinion in the West. Thus he articulates its horrors and its failings as a weapon then to go on and hammer anyone who did not subscribe to Reaganite values. Such people are deemed to have been a collaborator with the Soviet regime. Activities such as welfare states, a desire for nuclear disarmament, an attempt to prevent proxy wars in the Third World are not seen as having any intrinsic value for anyone living in the West, they are purely driven by Soviet covert activity and funding. He portrays large portions of Western societies and government as willing puppets of the Soviet machine without indicating how it was apparently so successful when it was useless at so much else.
What might have been a decent book, with very useful accounts and some good insights, simply drowns in him slipping off regularly to have another go at anyone to the left of the far-right of the US Republican Party, before he remembers the title of the book and slips in a bit of history before he loses control of his anger once again. An editor should have reined him in and got him to stick to writing history. Few people alive at the time will be able to read this book without being offended by the author's attitude towards them.
Fiction - Audio Books
'The Seven Dials Mystery' by Agatha Christie; read by Jenny Funnell
I remember enjoying the 1981 dramatisation of this novel so when I saw it for sale cheaply, I decided to come back to it. I realised quickly why I had enjoyed it as a teenager. It is more like an adventure story for young adults, though many of the characters are in their twenties. It features 'jolly' young people - notably Lady Eileen Brent known as 'Bundle' (who also featured in 'The Secret of Chimneys' (1925) along with other characters in this book) with lots of rushing around in cars between London and the countryside, and the secret society, The Seven Dials. There are two murders, but as critics at the time it was published in 1929 noted, it is not a murder mystery of the kind that Christie usually writes. There were times when she did do conspiracy stories such as 'The Big Four' (1927) and 'Passenger to Frankfurt' (1970) but you can understand why critics were rather exasperated by this one, seeking a return to her more classic crime stories.
For all the caveats about this seeming more like Dornford Yates novel, I enjoyed it, because though it is light, it proves very good about wrong-footing you about which of the characters can and cannot be trusted. This is something which distinguishes it from many of Christie's books. The fact that two of them turn out to be untrustworthy and others prove to be reliable despite first impressions, is refreshing for a book of the period. Critics complained that Christie did not follow the rules in providing the reader with all the information they needed to be able to work this out for themselves. I disagree with this. Looking back you can clearly see indications to both of the guilty parties throughout. It might not be the best Christie novel, but it has charm and it additionally appealing for stepping away from the usual pattern in this playing with who you can trust.
Jenny Funnell sounded very like Samantha Bond to me, who also voices audio books. Funnell is ideal for the bubbly young characters in the book, both the men and women. The only one who rather riled with me was Superintendent Battle, who while described often as 'wooden,' comes over as too ponderous when Funnell voices him.
'I, Alex Cross' by James Patterson; read by Tim Cain and Michael Cerveris
I was not certain why there were two readers for this book. I wondered if it was because Alex Cross is a black Washington DC detective (this was the first of 6 books featuring him) and people might feel that a white man voicing him was cultural appropriation. However, I searched out all the Tim Cains and Michael Cerverises and while I might not have found the correct pair, all those I can find are white. I guess then that this approach was to distinguish the first person and third person narrative, though the latter declines a great deal as the book proceeds.
Having got that out of the way, and ready for very breathless narration from a US crime novel, this book was not too bad. Cross finds out that an estranged niece has been working for a high class brothel in Virginia but has been shot and then minced. It draws him into the disappearance of other young women and then to the place itself where the wealthy and influential go. One of them who names himself Zeus, has to kill whenever he has sex there and the book is about identifying him. Obviously given the powerful men involved, Cross runs up against lots of obstacles.
The second element is Cross's attempt to maintain his family life, especially with his elderly mother having a heart attack and being hospitalised for much of the book. Despite his efforts to spend more time with his family (and why are US women called 'Bree'? This one is 'Bri' short for 'Brianna'; I keep thinking on audio that it is 'Brie' as in the French cheese) he utterly fails and actually puts them at risk. At the end of the novel his wife gives up on ever changing anything.
The book is not too bad. There is a lot of running back and forth which at times seems excessive. However, the frustrations of dealing with different branches of law enforcement come across as realistic, though Cross is lucky that he has so many friends. The setting is an alternate history because there is a female President in the White House, Margaret Vance, whether any relation to Cyrus Vance, the US Secretary of State in the late 1970s is not made clear. The conspiracy and the killer are believable. The family elements are rather cloying but I guess that is usual for a US novel. I do not know which of the men voices who, but one of them does a reasonable British accent for brothel-owner, Tony Nicholson, though making him sound pretty much like Russell Brand.
'Zero Hour' by Andy McNab [Steven Billy Mitchell]; read by Rupert Degas
I was surprised by this book. Down the years I have come across various novels by former soldier Andy McNab, but have avoided them fearing they would be macho books glorifying war. I got this in a mixed box of audio books and decided to listen to it. It is an action story but it comes over as both gripping and gritty. Unlike the US versions there is not a bombastic approach. McNab is low key, and while he will put in the technical details of guns and vehicles which appear essential for this genre, there is a credibility about him and it does not come across as a 'trainspotter's book'. The novel features Nick Stone, a former SAS soldier. This was the 13th book in the series that McNab began publishing in 1998. In 2017 the 19th book came out, rather undermining some of the premise of this book.
Stone is suffering headaches and a diagnosis shows he has an advanced brain tumour. Having been happy with his life and his Russian journalist girlfriend, but now thinking he has only months to live, he decides to do one last mission. British intelligence asks him to track down the kidnapped daughter of a Moldovan arms manufacturer who has been abducted by people traffickers. The mission takes Stone to Moldova, Denmark and the Netherlands. He shows the impact of his illness and the thought that he must 'do the right thing' beyond completing the mission. It is also increasingly clear that he is being manipulated and cannot trust anyone much. As you can imagine from the sequels, the illness does not prove to be as terminal as Stone believes for much of the novel. The book is fast moving and feels realistic in terms of locations and action. Degas is excellent in portraying Stone's very deadpan manner but is also surprisingly good at doing a range of young Moldovan women. While I will not rush out to buy more by McNab, I would certainly not ignore another of his books if it turns up in a mixed box of audio books in the future.
Non-Fiction Audio Book
'Toast' by Nigel Slater; read by the Author
I do not read or listen to many autobiographies, but I had imagined that most do not seek to turn the reader off from the person featured. Nigel Slater has been one of the most popular food writers in our house. We have some of his recipe books and watched his television programmes, liking the mix of gardening and cooking and his quiet but enthusiastic tone. However, this book has really turned me and my wife away from him. The book covers his life from his childhood (he was born in 1958) to when he was 18 and went to work for the Savoy Grill. He has focused sections on different foods, going through many popular recipes and brands from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. I think he intended the book to be rather like a version of the Adrian Mole books. The trouble is, it is clear that Slater was a very nasty boy; snobbish and spoilt. He cannot keep those traits out of his writing.
Slater's father owned an engineering factory and they were clearly a lot richer than he tries to make out. Not only did his father drive a Rover, but employed both a gardener and a housekeeper. He attend social events. Slater got pocket money daily and had so many toy cars that he could lay them out in a line right across the large house. Slater is highly dismissive of his mother primarily on the basis of what a poor cook she was, though she seems to have put a lot of effort in. For any recipe she cooked he cannot hold back from saying (with knowledge he only gained much later) how it should be done.
Slater only seems to come to love his birth mother even a little, after her death from asthma when he was approaching his 9th birthday. He is very snobby especially to his step-mother who had formerly been their housekeeper. Though she is a far better cook than his birth mother, he is scathing about her throughout on the basis of lots of social mores and no understanding of what challenge it must have been for her, especially in an age when divorce was rarer. Unsurprisingly his step-sisters who he is equally unpleasant about have contested his view. His father died when he was 16 and he is pretty nasty about him too, especially in marrying the housekeeper and moving them to the Worcestershire countryside. The book was published in 2004 when Slater was 56 but he clearly has done nothing to shake off his spiteful manner from forty to fifty years earlier. Overall, the book is a very long whinge, lacking in humour and given you a dim impression of the author. I suppose this is the privilege of celebrity that you can portray everything the way you see it with no real challenge.
Slater was sexually abused by his uncle and one of the gardeners. He was also sexually assaulted by a neighbour's dog. It is fine that he includes these incidents in an autobiography, but they certainly jar with the light, even whimsical tone, Slater seemed to be affecting at the beginning. The book literally left a bitter taste in my mouth and I certainly will not be reading, listening to or watching anything by him again.
'The Black Book' by Ian Rankin
This is the fifth book in the Rebus series in another edition in which Rankin starts by outlining how lucky he was in his career. Having moved to live in France, his wife has a baby and then he gets a writing fellowship in the USA. You realise that there is no point comparing yourself to Rankin, because he is not an outstanding writer, but he has been a very lucky writer.
One thing I have liked about Rankin's Rebus books is that they do not follow the clear linear narrative that you find in so many crime novels. At times you are not even certain of the mystery he is seeking to uncover. This comes across as a realistic reflection of police work. However, at times it goes rather too far. While in this book Rankin has revived characters from previous books, including Rebus's brother, Michael, you feel that a lot is missing from the back story. Both with this one and the previous, 'Strip Jack' (1992) you feel as if you have missed out on a book in between. Having decided to live with Dr. Patience Atkin in the previous book, he has now been kicked out by her after coming back late from the pub. She is just a shadowy figure in this novel as if Rankin was uncertain whether to bother continuing with her. DC Siobhan Clarke does turn up for the first time in this book and will prove to be an enduring character in the series.
The story, when it finally decides what to focus on is about a murder and a fire at a disreputable hotel 5 years previously. It seems to have been triggered as an insurance scam, but the body found it the fire had been shot dead. On his own initiative Rebus treks around the gangsters and others who might have been at the hotel and as often happens in the Rebus books it overlaps with other cases he is working on. Ultimately though he has to set-up the main suspect and you feel in this book that he is on the fringes of the law. The black book of the title seems to fall away as having minimal purpose in the story. It is not a bad novel and certainly avoids the linear path of so much crime fiction. However, while it is part of a long-running series you feel you are missing so much 'between' the books so it is rather than disruptive as you are trying to work out what has happened, especially in Rebus's personal life, which confuses your following of the crime plots.
Non-Fiction
'The War That Never Was: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1985-1991' by David Pryce-Jones
This is a very disappointing book. Pryce-Jones put a lot of work into it especially in interviewing people at all levels of society across the former Soviet bloc. However, he kept forgetting that he was writing a history book and his editor seems not to have put in any effort to keep him to his title. Thus, between sporadic accounts from people who experienced the period and knew the bloc before and during its fall plus interesting statistics and some analysis of how the system 'worked' and failed, you get pages of polemic from Pryce-Jones. He seems stunned that more violence was not used and keeps asking why that was not the case. The polemic which is just him wittering on, often with no reference to time, place or people, so it simply is sounding off. This weakens the strong parts of the book by losing them among personal opinion.
As you read on you realise that Pryce-Jones actually thinks that nuclear weapons are a good thing and he is disappointed in President Ronald Reagan, otherwise his hero, when he began to take steps to nuclear disarmament. Pryce-Jones believes the 'Star Wars' SDI weaponry was feasible; a real thing which impacted on East-West relations. He is highly dismissive of President George H.W. Bush and sees the reason for him not securing re-election in 1991 as down to him being too weak towards the USSR and insufficiently supportive of the nationalists wanting to break away. Of course, given Pryce-Jones's politics, Bush's defeat could have nothing to do with the US public tiring of New Right economic policies and the impact on their lives.
While he is disparaging of Republicans for being insufficiently hardline, Pryce-Jones's prime problem is that he has an all-consuming hatred of liberal and left-wing opinion in the West. Thus he articulates its horrors and its failings as a weapon then to go on and hammer anyone who did not subscribe to Reaganite values. Such people are deemed to have been a collaborator with the Soviet regime. Activities such as welfare states, a desire for nuclear disarmament, an attempt to prevent proxy wars in the Third World are not seen as having any intrinsic value for anyone living in the West, they are purely driven by Soviet covert activity and funding. He portrays large portions of Western societies and government as willing puppets of the Soviet machine without indicating how it was apparently so successful when it was useless at so much else.
What might have been a decent book, with very useful accounts and some good insights, simply drowns in him slipping off regularly to have another go at anyone to the left of the far-right of the US Republican Party, before he remembers the title of the book and slips in a bit of history before he loses control of his anger once again. An editor should have reined him in and got him to stick to writing history. Few people alive at the time will be able to read this book without being offended by the author's attitude towards them.
Fiction - Audio Books
'The Seven Dials Mystery' by Agatha Christie; read by Jenny Funnell
I remember enjoying the 1981 dramatisation of this novel so when I saw it for sale cheaply, I decided to come back to it. I realised quickly why I had enjoyed it as a teenager. It is more like an adventure story for young adults, though many of the characters are in their twenties. It features 'jolly' young people - notably Lady Eileen Brent known as 'Bundle' (who also featured in 'The Secret of Chimneys' (1925) along with other characters in this book) with lots of rushing around in cars between London and the countryside, and the secret society, The Seven Dials. There are two murders, but as critics at the time it was published in 1929 noted, it is not a murder mystery of the kind that Christie usually writes. There were times when she did do conspiracy stories such as 'The Big Four' (1927) and 'Passenger to Frankfurt' (1970) but you can understand why critics were rather exasperated by this one, seeking a return to her more classic crime stories.
For all the caveats about this seeming more like Dornford Yates novel, I enjoyed it, because though it is light, it proves very good about wrong-footing you about which of the characters can and cannot be trusted. This is something which distinguishes it from many of Christie's books. The fact that two of them turn out to be untrustworthy and others prove to be reliable despite first impressions, is refreshing for a book of the period. Critics complained that Christie did not follow the rules in providing the reader with all the information they needed to be able to work this out for themselves. I disagree with this. Looking back you can clearly see indications to both of the guilty parties throughout. It might not be the best Christie novel, but it has charm and it additionally appealing for stepping away from the usual pattern in this playing with who you can trust.
Jenny Funnell sounded very like Samantha Bond to me, who also voices audio books. Funnell is ideal for the bubbly young characters in the book, both the men and women. The only one who rather riled with me was Superintendent Battle, who while described often as 'wooden,' comes over as too ponderous when Funnell voices him.
'I, Alex Cross' by James Patterson; read by Tim Cain and Michael Cerveris
I was not certain why there were two readers for this book. I wondered if it was because Alex Cross is a black Washington DC detective (this was the first of 6 books featuring him) and people might feel that a white man voicing him was cultural appropriation. However, I searched out all the Tim Cains and Michael Cerverises and while I might not have found the correct pair, all those I can find are white. I guess then that this approach was to distinguish the first person and third person narrative, though the latter declines a great deal as the book proceeds.
Having got that out of the way, and ready for very breathless narration from a US crime novel, this book was not too bad. Cross finds out that an estranged niece has been working for a high class brothel in Virginia but has been shot and then minced. It draws him into the disappearance of other young women and then to the place itself where the wealthy and influential go. One of them who names himself Zeus, has to kill whenever he has sex there and the book is about identifying him. Obviously given the powerful men involved, Cross runs up against lots of obstacles.
The second element is Cross's attempt to maintain his family life, especially with his elderly mother having a heart attack and being hospitalised for much of the book. Despite his efforts to spend more time with his family (and why are US women called 'Bree'? This one is 'Bri' short for 'Brianna'; I keep thinking on audio that it is 'Brie' as in the French cheese) he utterly fails and actually puts them at risk. At the end of the novel his wife gives up on ever changing anything.
The book is not too bad. There is a lot of running back and forth which at times seems excessive. However, the frustrations of dealing with different branches of law enforcement come across as realistic, though Cross is lucky that he has so many friends. The setting is an alternate history because there is a female President in the White House, Margaret Vance, whether any relation to Cyrus Vance, the US Secretary of State in the late 1970s is not made clear. The conspiracy and the killer are believable. The family elements are rather cloying but I guess that is usual for a US novel. I do not know which of the men voices who, but one of them does a reasonable British accent for brothel-owner, Tony Nicholson, though making him sound pretty much like Russell Brand.
'Zero Hour' by Andy McNab [Steven Billy Mitchell]; read by Rupert Degas
I was surprised by this book. Down the years I have come across various novels by former soldier Andy McNab, but have avoided them fearing they would be macho books glorifying war. I got this in a mixed box of audio books and decided to listen to it. It is an action story but it comes over as both gripping and gritty. Unlike the US versions there is not a bombastic approach. McNab is low key, and while he will put in the technical details of guns and vehicles which appear essential for this genre, there is a credibility about him and it does not come across as a 'trainspotter's book'. The novel features Nick Stone, a former SAS soldier. This was the 13th book in the series that McNab began publishing in 1998. In 2017 the 19th book came out, rather undermining some of the premise of this book.
Stone is suffering headaches and a diagnosis shows he has an advanced brain tumour. Having been happy with his life and his Russian journalist girlfriend, but now thinking he has only months to live, he decides to do one last mission. British intelligence asks him to track down the kidnapped daughter of a Moldovan arms manufacturer who has been abducted by people traffickers. The mission takes Stone to Moldova, Denmark and the Netherlands. He shows the impact of his illness and the thought that he must 'do the right thing' beyond completing the mission. It is also increasingly clear that he is being manipulated and cannot trust anyone much. As you can imagine from the sequels, the illness does not prove to be as terminal as Stone believes for much of the novel. The book is fast moving and feels realistic in terms of locations and action. Degas is excellent in portraying Stone's very deadpan manner but is also surprisingly good at doing a range of young Moldovan women. While I will not rush out to buy more by McNab, I would certainly not ignore another of his books if it turns up in a mixed box of audio books in the future.
Non-Fiction Audio Book
'Toast' by Nigel Slater; read by the Author
I do not read or listen to many autobiographies, but I had imagined that most do not seek to turn the reader off from the person featured. Nigel Slater has been one of the most popular food writers in our house. We have some of his recipe books and watched his television programmes, liking the mix of gardening and cooking and his quiet but enthusiastic tone. However, this book has really turned me and my wife away from him. The book covers his life from his childhood (he was born in 1958) to when he was 18 and went to work for the Savoy Grill. He has focused sections on different foods, going through many popular recipes and brands from the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s. I think he intended the book to be rather like a version of the Adrian Mole books. The trouble is, it is clear that Slater was a very nasty boy; snobbish and spoilt. He cannot keep those traits out of his writing.
Slater's father owned an engineering factory and they were clearly a lot richer than he tries to make out. Not only did his father drive a Rover, but employed both a gardener and a housekeeper. He attend social events. Slater got pocket money daily and had so many toy cars that he could lay them out in a line right across the large house. Slater is highly dismissive of his mother primarily on the basis of what a poor cook she was, though she seems to have put a lot of effort in. For any recipe she cooked he cannot hold back from saying (with knowledge he only gained much later) how it should be done.
Slater only seems to come to love his birth mother even a little, after her death from asthma when he was approaching his 9th birthday. He is very snobby especially to his step-mother who had formerly been their housekeeper. Though she is a far better cook than his birth mother, he is scathing about her throughout on the basis of lots of social mores and no understanding of what challenge it must have been for her, especially in an age when divorce was rarer. Unsurprisingly his step-sisters who he is equally unpleasant about have contested his view. His father died when he was 16 and he is pretty nasty about him too, especially in marrying the housekeeper and moving them to the Worcestershire countryside. The book was published in 2004 when Slater was 56 but he clearly has done nothing to shake off his spiteful manner from forty to fifty years earlier. Overall, the book is a very long whinge, lacking in humour and given you a dim impression of the author. I suppose this is the privilege of celebrity that you can portray everything the way you see it with no real challenge.
Slater was sexually abused by his uncle and one of the gardeners. He was also sexually assaulted by a neighbour's dog. It is fine that he includes these incidents in an autobiography, but they certainly jar with the light, even whimsical tone, Slater seemed to be affecting at the beginning. The book literally left a bitter taste in my mouth and I certainly will not be reading, listening to or watching anything by him again.
Thursday, 31 January 2019
Books I Listened To/Read In January
Fiction
'The Ghosts of Altona' by Craig Russell
Though I have always been interested in crime stories set in Germany, for some reason I had not come across Russell's series though the first came out in 2005. This book published in 2015 is the seventh, and so far, last book in the series featuring Jan Fabel. In this book he has risen to the rank of Erster Kriminalhauptkommissar which Russell clumsily renders as 'Principal Chief Commissar' and is even offered the chance to become head of all of Hamburg's detectives. It is always a challenge with a successful police detective character that they tend to get promoted and so moved away from the heart of crimes. Ian Rankin has resolved this by trapping John Rebus at Inspector rank for many years. The rendering of Hamburg police ranks, though not other German titles into English is one thing I do not like about the book. It leaves the reader in confusion about what standing the various police have.
Overall, I felt this book was much like one written by Colin Dexter, added to by the fact that it features a club from a university. Though at times Morse's investigations on screen felt ponderous (the books are far brisker) this book stretched for far too long (535 pages in my edition). Though there are some reasonable twists, a bright reader, let alone one who reads crime novels regularly, will have solved the crime well before Fabel does, so it is rather frustrating to find that the detective who is supposedly nationally famous for his skills, is slower than amateurs like us. It would have been a far better book with 200 fewer pages. The details about Hamburg and its surrounding districts, plus Fabel's background, his colleagues and family, are fine, but at times feel like padding when we want greater speed. The murders are well portrayed and the meshing of different cases is reasonably done, though the 'lesson' from one for another seems heavy handed and again suggests that Fabel lacks imagination, even deductive powers. Fabel could be an interesting character, and maybe he is in the earlier books. If Russell has decided not to continue with this series, it is probably slightly overdue. I might check out one of the earlier books if it crosses my path, but while this book was not bad, it was far from brilliant.
'Ruled Britannia' by Harry Turtledove
This was another book that could have benefited from tightening up. My edition came in at 458 pages but with smaller than standard text size, so probably as wordy as 'The Ghosts of Altona'. Turtledove is the undisputed king of alternate history fiction and it is disheartening to read quoted on the cover '[n]obody plays the what-if game of alternate history better' in one stroke being complimentary to the author but utterly dismissing his genre as a 'game'. I notice his latest book will be historical fiction rather than alternate history.
While with my alternate history books, I often get people complaining that the focus is on everyday life in the changed world and that the focus should always be the point of departure, typically a violent one, I am glad that Turtledove takes a different line. This novel is set in London in 1597, nine years of the victory of the Spanish Armada. Queen Isabella and Archduke Albert are on the throne of England, with Isabella's father, the ailing King Philip II, still in charge of Spain. The book focuses primarily on William Shakespeare and the Spanish playwright, Senior Lieutenant Lope de Vega, who is serving with the occupying army. Other real people appear including the imprisoned Elizabeth I and some of her ministers, Christopher Marlowe, killed 6 years later than in our world, and a range of people connected with the theatre that Shakespeare knew or worked with. The plot is around Shakespeare being pressured to both write a play celebrating the life of Philip II on behalf of the occupiers and one around the story of Boudicca in an attempt to rouse English resistance to the occupation.
The setting is excellently portrayed. Turtledove shows acute knowledge of the context and paints it richly in this novel. He makes use of plays from the time to provide 'what if?' lines and plays for Shakespeare - he has not produced any of his historical plays, but his comedies and tragedies are well liked; he is still active as an actor too. It takes some time to become comfortable with the Tudor language and terms. At times you feel Turtledove does not know where to go next and though the book builds to a climax, you feel it wonders and could have been tightened a great deal. The role of a witch with the ability to hypnotise really riled me and she seemed just to be a very irritating plot device. There is also far too much sex in the book. Shakespeare is at it a lot of the time and De Vega has a string of mistresses, some simultaneously. At times it gives the author a chance to show different facets of the alternate London he has created, notably the bear-baiting, but given the longeurs anyway this just adds more padding. Thus, while there were points which irritated me, even riled me, I felt this was a very strong alternate history book, well researched and very interesting. I hope people will remember it when insisting that all alternate history novels must focus on the immediate point of departure and subsequently only on warfare.
'Redcoat' by Bernard Cornwell
This books suffers from a problem that I have noticed in other of Cornwell's books set in North America and many which do not feature Richard Sharpe. The problem is, that while he creates rich characters with a good attention to attitudes and behaviour of the time, far too few of them elicit any sympathy from the reader. As a result you wade through nasty people being nasty to other nasty people. While is it great to have some strong antagonists, if unpleasant people are in the vast majority, it is difficult to be more than a spectator sitting well back from the conflict. In the Sharpe books, while you had nasty people, you could always fall back on Sharpe and his comrades, who while flawed, were people you could feel sympathy for, even affinity with. Cornwell seems to have particular problems with sergeants and women. All the women in this book are self-serving even when professing zealous patriotism, deceptive and really people you would not want to go anywhere near. There are the fragments of a love story, but even then the woman featured is so hard, she seems to have very little romance in her and is much more concerned about victory for the American side than anything or anyone else.
The book is set in Philadelphia in 1777 during the American War of Independence. It was the largest city in the Thirteen Colonies at the time and at the start of the book is occupied by British forces. However, many still loyal to the American side remain in the city and most of the book is really about spying and passing on information, focusing on the British soldiers and American civilians who get mixed up in this which ultimately leads to the British occupation being troubled and costly, ultimately after the book has finished, to end. I like the fact that Cornwell has focused on a specific location and set of characters rather than ranging all over the place. He does well in portraying the city in grim weather (to the extent that I would never want to visit it) added to the growing shortages it faces. As always, Cornwell has good battle scenes, but in this novel they are pretty limited. For the rest you are effectively watching a dance of unpleasant and/or deluded people in a very grey setting. Thus, it was quite interesting, but far from engaging.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Lifeless' by Mark Billingham; read by Robert Glenister
This appears to be the fifth of what so far are fifteen books featuring police detective, Tom Thorne, published since 2001. Again it reminded me of how many books are coming out in genres that interest me, that simply pass me by, for many years at a time, until I stumble over them. This one sees Thorne go undercover as a rough sleeper on the streets of Central London. I used to spend a lot of my time in the 1990s and early 2000s in that area and so could really envisage the places Billingham writes about and the kind of people encountered there. The case involves the murders of rough sleepers. Billingham cleverly dodges a standard serial killer approach and is very good about sowing distrust about those in authority that Thorne meets. The case is soon connected to the military - in part because so many rough sleepers are ex-armed forces - and to atrocities committed in Iraq. I thought Billingham handled the novel very well, especially in terms of the setting and the homeless people that Thorne encounters and develops friendships with. The plot is reasonably twisted and again, like the setting, very credible. This might not be the best crime novel I have ever come across, but I was engaged by it and have already bought a couple more audio books of Billingham's novels. Glenister sounds how you would imagine Thorne to be and that works very well for the story, but he does a pretty decent job with the other characters, including the few women that appear.
'Thunderball' by Ian Fleming; read by Jason Isaacs
This novel has formed the basis for two movies 'Thunderball' (1965) and 'Never Say Never Again' (1983) which stick surprisingly close to features of the book. It starts with Bond, smoking 60 cigarettes a day and drinking the equivalent of half-a-bottle of whisky a day, being sent to a health retreat where he ends up in a fight with another guest which actually postpones the schemes of SPECTRE - the first time the criminal organisation appears, rather than having Smersh of the USSR involved somewhere even if far in the background. The story is pretty straight forward, with MI6 and the CIA scrambling to find where one of their atomic bomber aircraft has ended up, Bond is sent to the Bahamas and is fortunate enough, with the aid of his old friend Felix Leiter to find out that Emilio Largo (the deputy head of SPECTRE but in this book number No. 1) has retrieved the bombs and is planning to use them to destroy a US missile testing base in the Caribbean and threaten Miami. A ransom of £100 million in gold (worth about £5 billion now) is demanded to prevent the attacks.
The book is reasonable. Fleming returns to some of his favourite themes - the Caribbean and treasure hunting. Domino Pettachi, the sister of the man who stole the bomber and is kept by Largo, comes over as a flawed character who as in quite a few of these books, is the woman who saves Bond's life when he makes mistakes. As Isaacs points out in the interview at the end, though Bond and Leiter have clandestine Geiger counters, they are in fact poorly equipped compared to SPECTRE and Bond's intervention to prevent the planting of the first Bond leaves 6 US sailors aiding him, dead. Bond is certainly not the superhero of the movies, and in fact is very unhealthy. The book is engaging rather than gripping but also is a slice of history, showing the concerns; the continued hang over from events of the Second World War and even the brands of 1961 and that while they were misogynistic times, Fleming, as in previous books, is content to let a woman win through when Bond proves slow-witted. Isaacs does the voices very well, including Domino, though as he points out, trying to work out what half-Greek, half-Polish Blofeld, based in Paris, sounded like, was a real challenge.
'The Ghosts of Altona' by Craig Russell
Though I have always been interested in crime stories set in Germany, for some reason I had not come across Russell's series though the first came out in 2005. This book published in 2015 is the seventh, and so far, last book in the series featuring Jan Fabel. In this book he has risen to the rank of Erster Kriminalhauptkommissar which Russell clumsily renders as 'Principal Chief Commissar' and is even offered the chance to become head of all of Hamburg's detectives. It is always a challenge with a successful police detective character that they tend to get promoted and so moved away from the heart of crimes. Ian Rankin has resolved this by trapping John Rebus at Inspector rank for many years. The rendering of Hamburg police ranks, though not other German titles into English is one thing I do not like about the book. It leaves the reader in confusion about what standing the various police have.
Overall, I felt this book was much like one written by Colin Dexter, added to by the fact that it features a club from a university. Though at times Morse's investigations on screen felt ponderous (the books are far brisker) this book stretched for far too long (535 pages in my edition). Though there are some reasonable twists, a bright reader, let alone one who reads crime novels regularly, will have solved the crime well before Fabel does, so it is rather frustrating to find that the detective who is supposedly nationally famous for his skills, is slower than amateurs like us. It would have been a far better book with 200 fewer pages. The details about Hamburg and its surrounding districts, plus Fabel's background, his colleagues and family, are fine, but at times feel like padding when we want greater speed. The murders are well portrayed and the meshing of different cases is reasonably done, though the 'lesson' from one for another seems heavy handed and again suggests that Fabel lacks imagination, even deductive powers. Fabel could be an interesting character, and maybe he is in the earlier books. If Russell has decided not to continue with this series, it is probably slightly overdue. I might check out one of the earlier books if it crosses my path, but while this book was not bad, it was far from brilliant.
'Ruled Britannia' by Harry Turtledove
This was another book that could have benefited from tightening up. My edition came in at 458 pages but with smaller than standard text size, so probably as wordy as 'The Ghosts of Altona'. Turtledove is the undisputed king of alternate history fiction and it is disheartening to read quoted on the cover '[n]obody plays the what-if game of alternate history better' in one stroke being complimentary to the author but utterly dismissing his genre as a 'game'. I notice his latest book will be historical fiction rather than alternate history.
While with my alternate history books, I often get people complaining that the focus is on everyday life in the changed world and that the focus should always be the point of departure, typically a violent one, I am glad that Turtledove takes a different line. This novel is set in London in 1597, nine years of the victory of the Spanish Armada. Queen Isabella and Archduke Albert are on the throne of England, with Isabella's father, the ailing King Philip II, still in charge of Spain. The book focuses primarily on William Shakespeare and the Spanish playwright, Senior Lieutenant Lope de Vega, who is serving with the occupying army. Other real people appear including the imprisoned Elizabeth I and some of her ministers, Christopher Marlowe, killed 6 years later than in our world, and a range of people connected with the theatre that Shakespeare knew or worked with. The plot is around Shakespeare being pressured to both write a play celebrating the life of Philip II on behalf of the occupiers and one around the story of Boudicca in an attempt to rouse English resistance to the occupation.
The setting is excellently portrayed. Turtledove shows acute knowledge of the context and paints it richly in this novel. He makes use of plays from the time to provide 'what if?' lines and plays for Shakespeare - he has not produced any of his historical plays, but his comedies and tragedies are well liked; he is still active as an actor too. It takes some time to become comfortable with the Tudor language and terms. At times you feel Turtledove does not know where to go next and though the book builds to a climax, you feel it wonders and could have been tightened a great deal. The role of a witch with the ability to hypnotise really riled me and she seemed just to be a very irritating plot device. There is also far too much sex in the book. Shakespeare is at it a lot of the time and De Vega has a string of mistresses, some simultaneously. At times it gives the author a chance to show different facets of the alternate London he has created, notably the bear-baiting, but given the longeurs anyway this just adds more padding. Thus, while there were points which irritated me, even riled me, I felt this was a very strong alternate history book, well researched and very interesting. I hope people will remember it when insisting that all alternate history novels must focus on the immediate point of departure and subsequently only on warfare.
'Redcoat' by Bernard Cornwell
This books suffers from a problem that I have noticed in other of Cornwell's books set in North America and many which do not feature Richard Sharpe. The problem is, that while he creates rich characters with a good attention to attitudes and behaviour of the time, far too few of them elicit any sympathy from the reader. As a result you wade through nasty people being nasty to other nasty people. While is it great to have some strong antagonists, if unpleasant people are in the vast majority, it is difficult to be more than a spectator sitting well back from the conflict. In the Sharpe books, while you had nasty people, you could always fall back on Sharpe and his comrades, who while flawed, were people you could feel sympathy for, even affinity with. Cornwell seems to have particular problems with sergeants and women. All the women in this book are self-serving even when professing zealous patriotism, deceptive and really people you would not want to go anywhere near. There are the fragments of a love story, but even then the woman featured is so hard, she seems to have very little romance in her and is much more concerned about victory for the American side than anything or anyone else.
The book is set in Philadelphia in 1777 during the American War of Independence. It was the largest city in the Thirteen Colonies at the time and at the start of the book is occupied by British forces. However, many still loyal to the American side remain in the city and most of the book is really about spying and passing on information, focusing on the British soldiers and American civilians who get mixed up in this which ultimately leads to the British occupation being troubled and costly, ultimately after the book has finished, to end. I like the fact that Cornwell has focused on a specific location and set of characters rather than ranging all over the place. He does well in portraying the city in grim weather (to the extent that I would never want to visit it) added to the growing shortages it faces. As always, Cornwell has good battle scenes, but in this novel they are pretty limited. For the rest you are effectively watching a dance of unpleasant and/or deluded people in a very grey setting. Thus, it was quite interesting, but far from engaging.
Audio Books - Fiction
'Lifeless' by Mark Billingham; read by Robert Glenister
This appears to be the fifth of what so far are fifteen books featuring police detective, Tom Thorne, published since 2001. Again it reminded me of how many books are coming out in genres that interest me, that simply pass me by, for many years at a time, until I stumble over them. This one sees Thorne go undercover as a rough sleeper on the streets of Central London. I used to spend a lot of my time in the 1990s and early 2000s in that area and so could really envisage the places Billingham writes about and the kind of people encountered there. The case involves the murders of rough sleepers. Billingham cleverly dodges a standard serial killer approach and is very good about sowing distrust about those in authority that Thorne meets. The case is soon connected to the military - in part because so many rough sleepers are ex-armed forces - and to atrocities committed in Iraq. I thought Billingham handled the novel very well, especially in terms of the setting and the homeless people that Thorne encounters and develops friendships with. The plot is reasonably twisted and again, like the setting, very credible. This might not be the best crime novel I have ever come across, but I was engaged by it and have already bought a couple more audio books of Billingham's novels. Glenister sounds how you would imagine Thorne to be and that works very well for the story, but he does a pretty decent job with the other characters, including the few women that appear.
'Thunderball' by Ian Fleming; read by Jason Isaacs
This novel has formed the basis for two movies 'Thunderball' (1965) and 'Never Say Never Again' (1983) which stick surprisingly close to features of the book. It starts with Bond, smoking 60 cigarettes a day and drinking the equivalent of half-a-bottle of whisky a day, being sent to a health retreat where he ends up in a fight with another guest which actually postpones the schemes of SPECTRE - the first time the criminal organisation appears, rather than having Smersh of the USSR involved somewhere even if far in the background. The story is pretty straight forward, with MI6 and the CIA scrambling to find where one of their atomic bomber aircraft has ended up, Bond is sent to the Bahamas and is fortunate enough, with the aid of his old friend Felix Leiter to find out that Emilio Largo (the deputy head of SPECTRE but in this book number No. 1) has retrieved the bombs and is planning to use them to destroy a US missile testing base in the Caribbean and threaten Miami. A ransom of £100 million in gold (worth about £5 billion now) is demanded to prevent the attacks.
The book is reasonable. Fleming returns to some of his favourite themes - the Caribbean and treasure hunting. Domino Pettachi, the sister of the man who stole the bomber and is kept by Largo, comes over as a flawed character who as in quite a few of these books, is the woman who saves Bond's life when he makes mistakes. As Isaacs points out in the interview at the end, though Bond and Leiter have clandestine Geiger counters, they are in fact poorly equipped compared to SPECTRE and Bond's intervention to prevent the planting of the first Bond leaves 6 US sailors aiding him, dead. Bond is certainly not the superhero of the movies, and in fact is very unhealthy. The book is engaging rather than gripping but also is a slice of history, showing the concerns; the continued hang over from events of the Second World War and even the brands of 1961 and that while they were misogynistic times, Fleming, as in previous books, is content to let a woman win through when Bond proves slow-witted. Isaacs does the voices very well, including Domino, though as he points out, trying to work out what half-Greek, half-Polish Blofeld, based in Paris, sounded like, was a real challenge.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
