THE MOON IS HELL - Book review

 

John W. Campbell’s novel The Moon is Hell was published in 1951; my copy was from 1975, some half-dozen years after the first moon landing. The back cover blurb states ‘... is a great writer’s vision of the first men on the Moon – not as the American space programme made it happen, but as it might have been!’

Regarded as a hard-science classic, it is a relatively short read, 123 pages. It’s in diary form by Dr Duncan, a physicist and second in command.

It’s 1981. Thirteen men have been on the moon in their protected dome for just over a year on the dark side of the moon. The crew consists of a surgeon, two chemists, two mineralogists, an astrophysicist, electricians and mechanics, and an engineer and cook. They expect to be relieved shortly. Unfortunately, the relief spaceship crashes, killing all crew and destroying equipment. ‘The burning fuel destroyed everything’ (p28); yet it’s unlikely that there would be any burning as there’s no air.

Because it’s on the ‘wrong’ side of the moon, there is no direct radio contact with Earth. To compound matters they learn that somebody is stealing food from the storehouse. Nil desperandum: the moon ‘is a single vast chemical laboratory’ (p33).  They begin to manufacture oxygen and, ultimately, artificial food from clothing and paper, and photo cells for electricity and power.

It’s a race against time. By trekking to the earthside of the moon they might be able to send a message to Earth and hope that a rescue ship can get to them. Their ingenuity is laudable and life-saving.

The narrative, being technical, cold and scientific, leaves little room for characterisation, so there isn’t a great deal of empathy for anyone. A story has to have conflict and in this sense their conflict is with the inhospitable satellite itself; however, none of the individuals evince any conflict, save for the thief when finally discovered. On p10 there’s a hint that not all of them will survive. Perhaps not surprisingly for the date of writing, when food becomes an issue cannibalism isn’t considered! Yet what shine through is their adaptability and the determined resistance to defeatism.

A worthy addition to any science fiction collection.

Of course the concept was used, with adjustments, to great acclaim by Andy Weir in The Martian (2014), some sixty-three years later...

SHARPE'S STORM - Book review

Bernard Cornwell’s twenty-fourth Sharpe novel, Sharpe’s Storm is actually the nineteenth in chronological order, taking place in 1813, following after Honour and Regiment (both 1813) and before Siege (1814). It isn’t a disappointment.

Sharpe and his battalion are with Wellington’s troops in Southern France, faced with crossing the river Nive to confront Marshal Soult’s formidable force. It’s winter and there seems to be perpetual rain, and it’s cold. Sharpe is tasked with escorting a couple of naval men on a secret reconnoitring mission: one of whom is Rear-Admiral Sir Joel Chase, a man he knew years ago (see Sharpe’s Trafalgar). Sir Joel’s enthusiasm soon becomes tiresome to Sharpe’ and to make matters worse he is also hindered by the buffoon Sir Nathaniel Peacock.

As well as Wellington, on good form as usual, we meet again Sharpe’s devoted Three Aitches: Harper, Harris, and Hagman.

All the ingredients we’ve come to expect are here: a couple of skirmishes, a fraught bloody battle, wife Jane, and a brief romantic interlude, laced with humour and pathos.

Sharpe is aware that the end of this war approached and if he survived it he doubted if his services would be retained. He would be at a loss if he didn’t soldier. Fighting, that’s what he was best at. And yet again he proves the truth of that.

As ever, the author’s historical note is enlightening, revealing the real characters and the author’s strategies to shoehorn his heroes into historical events.

A satisfying entry into the canon.

Editorial comment (for the benefit of writers):

‘Quiet!’ Sharpe hissed back (p27). This is not a word that can be hissed... A couple more inapt instances crop up...

‘... firing blindly though the smoke towards the far ridge’ (p126). Of course this should be ‘through’. It’s a common oversight made by editors.

‘Your men call you Mister Sharpe, not “sir”...’ (p150) This in essence repeats an observation made on p49 in the company of Sir Nathaniel Peacock.

CAKES AND ALE - Book review

Somerset Maugham’s novel Cakes and Ale was published in 1930; my paperback copy is its fifth printing, 1981 with an author’s preface. The book’s subtitle is The Skeleton in the Cupboard.

The actual book title doesn’t appear in the text but is, apparently, drawn from a quotation in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night – Toby Belch: ‘Dost thou think, because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?’ Or possibly Aesop's fable of ‘The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse’: ‘Better beans and bacon in peace than cakes and ale in fear.’ The phrase is old, understood to mean a life of pleasure, indulgence and ease.

Maugham first thought of the novel’s story as short fiction for the Cosmopolitan – between 1200 and 1500 words in length. However, he found there was no room for a character – Rosie – who persisted in crying out to be written about. ‘A character in a writer’s head, unwritten, remains a possession; his thoughts recur to it constantly, and while his imagination gradually enriches it he enjoys the singular pleasure of feeling that there, in his mind, someone is living a varied and tremulous life, obedient to his fancy and yet in a queer wilful way independent of him’ (p5).  Eventually, Rosie appeared, in this novel.

Still in his preface Maugham sympathises with fellow authors: ‘Every year hundreds of books, many of considerable merit, pass unnoticed. Each one has taken the author months to write, he may have had it in his mind for years; he has put into it something of himself which is lost for ever, it is heart-rending to think how great are the chances that it will be disregarded in the press of matter that weighs down the critics’ tables and burdens the booksellers’ shelves’ (p8). Nothing has changed there, then, even if publication is easier via the self-publish route.

The story is a first-person narrative by William Ashenden, highlighting certain snobbery in the world of books and book-writing. ‘Lady Hodmarsh and the duchess immediately assumed the cringing affability that persons of rank assume with their inferiors in order to show them that they are not in the least conscious of any difference in station between them’ (p43).

Ashenden has been asked to join a select few to visit a famous author, Edward Driffield; as a young fifteen-year-old boy he had known the author and his wife Rosie before he was famous. Rosie had enchanting eyes: ‘She gave herself as naturally as the sun gives heat or the flowers their perfume. It was a pleasure to her and she liked to give pleasure to others’ (p176).

Driffield ‘had written something like twenty books, and though he had never made more than a pittance out of them his reputation was considerable’ (p119). ‘It is always pleasant to be assured that you are a genius’ (p124).

One of the character’s remembered vividly from Ashenden’s childhood is Mary-Ann, a likeable depiction: (she) dropped her aitches freely’ (p56).

Some years later, Driffield’s second wife Amy has asked Ashenden’s writing associate Kear to write a life of her recently deceased husband. Kear seeks Ashenden’s early knowledge of the author, stating ‘... she could trust my discretion. I must behave like a gentleman.’ To which Ashenden responds, ‘It’s very hard to be a gentleman and a writer’ (p102).

This request resonates with Ashenden. ‘... nothing can bring back the past like a perfume or a stench’ (p168).

Cakes and Ale is a fascinating read, perhaps dwelling too much on the vicissitudes of writers and satire on the London literary society of the time, and yet there are plenty of amusing asides, regardless. Ashenden has little time for politicians, it seems: ‘no-one can have moved in the society of politicians without discovering that (if one may judge by results) it requires little mental ability to rule a nation’ (p93). ‘... now that the House of Lords must inevitably in a short while be abolished’ (p117).

Maugham inevitably perhaps inserts vignettes that could be construed as autobiographical, notably Ashenden’s medical studies and then subsequent authorship. There are many instances where his wit, sense of irony and descriptive imagery shine through:

‘... he gave a sort of low roar, like an orangutan in the forests of Borneo forcibly deprived of a coconut’ (p152).

‘The sky was blue and the air, warm and yet fresh, crackled as it were, with the heat. The light was brilliant without harshness. The sun’s beams seemed to hit the white road with a directed energy and bounce back like a rubber ball’ (p54).

‘... the weather was dreadful, a boisterous wind whistled down the street, piercing you to the bone, and the few women who had an errand were swept along by their full skirts like fishing boats in half a gale’ (p73).

There is a fine twist at the end and explains the subtitle.

Maugham seemed to be fixated on the name Ashenden as his First World War secret tales feature a character with that code-name (which are highly recommended). Some other non-spy stories feature the name also.

LIZA OF LAMBETH - Book review

Somerset Maugham’s first novel Liza of Lambeth was published in 1897; my edition is 1978.

Almost all of the dialogue is in the vernacular of the period, a bold decision for a first book. Maugham uses the omniscient point of view, which was probably appropriate at the time of publication due to the story’s controversial nature. ‘That is not precisely what she said, but it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story; the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue’ (p10). ‘Oh, you - ! she said. Her expression was quite unprintable, nor can it be euphemized’ (p12).

Liza Kemp is a nineteen-year-old factory girl who lives with her ailing often drunk mother in fictional Vere Street in Lambeth. Her best friend is Sally, who is being courted and is eventually wed: Sally had ‘an enormous mouth, with terrible square teeth set wide apart, which looked as if they could masticate an iron bar’ (p22). The Blakeston family has just arrived in the street – Jim, his wife and five children.

 Liza is popular with everyone, especially Tom who wants to court her. She likes him, but not that much: ‘Na then, she repeated, tike yer ’and away. If yer touch me there you’ll ’ave ter marry me’ (p33). She’s quite outspoken yet ingenuous at the outset. ‘Neither modesty nor bashfulness was to be reckoned among Liza’s faults’ (p40).

On a hot day, during a jolly street outing that entailed the quaffing of much beer, they all have a good time. ‘The ladies removed their cloaks and capes, and the men, following their example, took off their coasts and sat in their shirt-sleeves. Whereupon ensued much banter of a not particularly edifying kind respecting the garments which each person would like to remove – which showed that the innuendo of French farce is not so unknown to the upright, honest Englishman as might be supposed’ (p34). It is during this outing that Jim makes a pass at Liza, which has a stirring effect upon her. ‘Her heart seemed to grow larger in her breast, and she caught her breath as she threw back her head as if to receive his lips again. A shudder ran through her from the vividness of the thought’ (p49).

There is quiet humour, ribaldry, and black humour – notably when there’s a discussion about a corpse seemingly too large for his coffin. The grimness of the life in the slums is conveyed without layering it on with a trowel. Apparently, when first published this book received a mixed reception due to its subject matter, working-class adultery and its consequences and its tragic end, and yet it sold out within three weeks and was reprinted. Maugham was a medical student by day and wrote at night, qualifying shortly after the publication of Liza. While a student he encountered the poorest working-class, ‘life in the raw’ as he put it.

Maugham’s Liza is a vividly revealed character – as is her mother (‘me with my rheumatics, an’ the neuralgy!’ (p73)). It’s a moral tale, delivered with empathy, told by a twenty-three-year-old observant writer who quit medicine and relied on his writing for the rest of his life.

Editorial comment (for the benefit of writers):

 ‘he lifted her off her feet and threw her to the ground’ (p106). Unfortunately, this happens indoors, so ‘ground’ should properly read ‘floor’.

THE HERRENHAUS FORFEIT - Book review

 

Paul Phillips’s second book in the ‘Chasing Mercury’ series, The Herrenhaus Forfeit was published in 2024 and continues the story begun in The Borodino Sacrifice. Certainly, the books can be read independently, though it’s preferable they’re read in sequence.

Former US Army sniper Sam Bradley is being recruited by the shadowy character Doyle to chase down the Mercury outfit headed by Mila to discover what they were seeking. ‘Bradley’s sense of nausea increased. It was the motion sickness you got from the long, inescapable slide to inevitability... The thing about the long slide, the thing that let you cope with the dread of its inescapable outcome, was that wrapped up in the motion sickness was something else. Exhilaration’ (pp36/37).

Again, we tour the detritus of post-war Germany as we follow Bradley who has infiltrated a gangster group involved in smuggling whatever brought profit in the black market, while also dodging Nazis and Soviets. ‘There had been a serious lack of accommodation in Hamburg since the night the world had learned a new term: firestorm’ (p88).

As before there are many instances where Phillips conveys a scene with a minimum of description:

‘... a heavy vehicle had recently ploughed the neglected crust of mouldered mud and frozen leaves’ (p116).

The plot is convoluted, involving competing groups in a maelstrom of geo-political upheaval. There are double-crosses, betrayals and heroism, and death stalks nearby most of the time. Friendships are forged as are identity papers. There’s a sly name-change from Pfeffer to Salzen and a couple of fascinating character descriptions of middle-aged Marjorie Jessop and conniving Jack Penny. It’s not without humour; for example, when Bradley attempts to help some associates pretend to be Americans, ‘Most importantly, he handed out the Wrigley’s.’ (p159).

The blurb – and the previous book – indicate that Mila is searching for a lost child, which is not easy considering the mortality of children in the war-torn continent. ‘Before adoption, all Aryanised children were renamed, to bury their old identities, and welcome them as lifelong members of the race’ (p126). Though slight of stature, Mila is tough and determined – an irresistible force (p180).

Without telegraphing any spoilers, the forfeit of the title is referred to on p139 – it’s a kind of deal between Mila and some gangsters, where neither party actually trusts the other.

I felt the involvement of the criminal underground was inspired and realistic, the kind of thing that Len Deighton would have attempted. A number of chapter-endings reminded me of Adam Hall’s Quiller books where the protagonist would face a serious predicament at the end of a chapter and then in the next chapter he/she is Scott-free and the reasons are divulged after the event; it works well.

Mila and Sam are a great team.

Needless to say, in due course I shall be reading the third book in the trilogy, The Safehaven Complex.

Editorial comment for the benefit of writers:

‘... bring the leather doctor’s bag...’ (p95). This should read ‘bring the doctor’s leather bag’ or ‘bring the leather doctor’s-bag’ to avoid the perception that the doctor was made of leather.

‘She hissed “Now!”’(p174)  – there’s no susurration here, which is necessary for a hiss. Maybe whispered harshly or grated would be better?

HARVEST OF THE SUN - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s third book in the Retallick Saga Harvest of the Sun was published in 1978. It’s a direct sequel of Chase the Wind. 

Josh Retallick and Miriam Thackeray with their young son Daniel are sailing to Australia when their ship is wrecked off the Skeleton Coast of South West Africa.

Their small party encounter the Bushmen who have survived in the harsh land and climate for thousands of years. At times of prolonged drought the Bushpeople would abandon newborn babies in order that the mother would survive. (p59).

Next they befriend the Herero tribesmen where they find a German missionary, Hugo Walder, whose ‘capacity for loving his fellow-men was as large as the frame that held his great heart’ (p98).                   

Josh, Miriam and Daniel live with the missionary and the Herero. They become hardened to the land and its people, treading with care where the neighbouring chief Jonker is concerned. And there is the chief’s vicious ally, the Boer Jacobus Albrecht to contend with as well. ‘Africa is a restless continent, ever changing and shifting in moods – a vast rumbling pot-pourri where fortunes swirl this way and that, like the sand shifting before the four winds’ (p133).

As this is a saga, the narrative – third-person omniscient – spans the period from the early 1840s to 1858. The family also befriends a Jewish trader Aaron and his daughter Hannah. By the time Daniel is seventeen he is an experienced tracker and good shot with a rifle. There are mining opportunities for Josh here too. Inevitably there are clashes between Jonker’s people and the Herero and Josh and his family are caught in between. The reader soon cares about these characters as they overcome a succession of travails, not least the neighbouring Zulu tribesmen, successors to the mighty Shaka. Sadly, good people succumb. Also, past events in their saga have a tendency to rear up and bite. There’s tension, suspense, humility, humanity, physical and geographical conflict, and great insights of the period and place. Indeed, Thompson repeatedly puts the reader in the scene and does not shirk from revealing the unpleasant gruesome aspects of the time along with the raw beauty of the land. This is history and as such needs no trigger warnings.

Any fans of H Rider Haggard or Wilbur Smith would appreciate this saga. The next instalment is Singing Spears (which I read out of order in 1990 and was the first Thompson book I’d read – and clearly not the last).

CHASE THE WIND - Book review

E.V. Thompson’s second book in his Retallick saga, Chase the Wind, was published in 1977 and won the Best Historical Novelist Award. In the chronological story sense it’s the sequel to Ben Retallick (1980) though clearly the first book in the series was published three years later!

The story is written in the omniscient viewpoint in order to provide the thoughts and actions of assorted characters, and works well, pulling the reader into the saga.

Set mainly in 1840s Cornwall, it begins with young Josh Retallick down the copper mine of Wheal Sharptor – the same mine his father worked in. Ben, aged 35, was reckoned an “old man” by mining standards. ‘It was an era when a miner who had seen his fortieth birthday below ground was something of a rarity’ (p8). They worked hard, digging ‘deep into the bowels of the earth, raising mountains of rubble around their shafts’ (p65).

Josh is being taught to read and write by the local preacher, William Thackeray, a good man who ‘was concerned for the souls of his people... he saw no reason why they should suffer unnecessary hardships in this life in order to enter the same heaven to which their far more comfortable employers were bound’ (p61).

It’s the time of the Corn Laws that created a cost-of-living crisis for the working men and women, a time when unionism was being advocated at great risk to those who espoused it. ‘The shortage of corn had been growing steadily worse throughout England. It had not been helped by the government laws which prevented corn being imported, in a misguided attempt to protect the interests of the farmers’ (p64).

For many years as youngsters, Josh had been a play friend of Miriam Trago, a wild child. But Josh had to put childish play aside as he was going away on an apprenticeship to become a mine-engineer. While on his apprenticeship he befriends Francis Trevithick and is not slow to grasp the nettle of new inventions, always seeking greater efficiency and increased safety.

Miriam is given some advice by the preacher: ‘You must find a man who recognises that a woman is capable of thinking for herself – a rarity in these parts, I’m afraid’ (p130). Before long Miriam was thinking for herself all right – vociferously saddened and angry at the lot of a miner’s wife. If her husband died in a mine, she was cast out of her cottage within a month. Her future might be the poor house or selling herself to drunken miners to feed her children. ‘That’s the system her husband gave his life for’ (p155).

Not all the mine owners are despots; some are considerate with a conscience, and it’s Josh’s fortunate lot that he works for such men. But the odds are still stacked against him and tragedy strikes more than once to contrive the separation of Josh and Miriam before they can truly be together. The preacher becomes a zealot for unionism, though ‘He’s the spoon as does the stirring, not the pot as sits on the fire’ (p349). Betrayal, conflict with the armed forces of the law, love and death, trial and retribution create tension for the reader. The pages fly by as the denouement closes in.

A very satisfying historical novel that puts you there, with believable characters, which impelled me to pick up the next book in the series to find out what happens – Harvest of the Sun.

Ernest Victor Thompson died in 2012, aged 81.

Editorial comment (for the benefit of writers):

‘Where are we?’ he asked as he swung his legs to the ground (p104). This scene is indoors so the ‘ground’ should read the ‘floor’. A common error to be found in a number of books.

‘(Josh and John) galloped past the bridge...’ (p353). Having written several westerns, I have tussled with this ambiguity. Of course the rider isn’t doing the galloping, but the horse is; maybe instead it could read ‘They led their horses in a gallop past the bridge’. A quibble, really; we know what is meant.

LOVE - Book review

Angela Carter’s slim novel Love was published in 1971 and revised in 1987. In her new Afterword she states that the three main characters are ‘the pure perfect products of those days of social mobility and sexual licence’ (p113). Sadly, the characters themselves are not perfect – far from it.

 Annabel is psychologically unstable: ‘a sparse, grotesquely elegant, attenuated girl with a narrow face and hair so straight it fell helplessly down around her as a mute tribute to gravity. She had prehensile toes that could pick up a pencil and sign her name. She stole’ (p27).

Her husband is Lee: ‘Annabel was quite incomprehensible to him and he already knew she was unbalanced; yet his puritanism demanded he should be publicly responsible for her. He was overcome with conflicting apprehensions’ (p30).

Lee’s brother Buzz ‘had been grievously exposed to his mother’s madness’ (p13) and lived with the married couple. ‘Their mother’s madness, their orphaned state, their aunt’s politics and their arbitrary identify formed in both a savage detachment’ (p11).

It’s a distinctly destructive love triangle tainted with infidelity, self-loathing, suicide, jealousy and a split from reality for impaired souls. The kind of fractured relationships Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine indulged in most effectively.

At one point Lee is interviewed by Annabel’s psychiatrist, ‘She was dressed entirely in black and lavishly hung about with hair of metallic yellow. Her eyes were concealed behind tinted glasses and her voice was as if smoked also, dark-toned and husky’ (p55).

With few pen-strokes Carter effectively inhabits the damaged trio. And of course her prose is always readable, the writing of an astute and acute observer:

‘... and old men sit outside in shirtsleeves on kitchen chairs, as if put out to air upon the pavement. On the low window ledges, one might find, here, a pie set out to cool or a jelly to set, there, a dreaming cat’ (p11).

‘the peeling walls, bare and lopsided staircase, fissured linoleum underfoot, foetid accumulated reek of years of greasy cookery’ (p91).

‘He felt nothing but the absence of feeling which is despair’ (p100).

Indeed, it won’t end well.

THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS - Book review

Robert Wilson’s spy novel The Company of Strangers was published in 2001. It spans the period 1940 to 1991, though over two-thirds of the book is set in the 1940s.

In 1940 Andrea Aspinall has survived German bombing in London which reinforces her hate of Germans. Her mother seems cold towards her so there is no love between them either. We then leap two years to the German invasion of Russia. Captain Karl Voss is disillusioned by the incompetence of Hitler who is unwilling to admit his forces face defeat against the cannon fodder of Russia. ‘It’s as if God’s lost control of the game and the children have taken over – naughty children’ (p328). Before he can be slaughtered, he is sent home to Berlin on compassionate leave in 1943. While there he is approached by a high-ranking officer; he is to be transferred to the German Legation in Lisbon. He is to become a spy – with the intention of shortening the war by clandestinely meeting with sympathetic British agents... 

In 1944 Andrea is recruited and trained as an agent for ‘the Company’ to work in Lisbon under the name of Anne Ashworth. Despite Portugal being neutral and one of England’s oldest allies, the country was not regarded as a safe haven. Under Salazar’s quasi-fascist regime, ‘Secret police – Gestapo trained – called the PVDE. The city’s infested with bufos – informers’ (p82). ‘... what she knew about the Portuguese – they understood tragedy, it was their territory’ (p413).

Voss is entangled in the secret machinations of Operation Valkyrie – the assassination attempt on Hitler – as well as his growing relationship with Andrea. There are shifting allegiances, it seems, and nobody can be trusted. That includes the bickering Americans, Hal and Mary Couples, Andrea’s host Wilshere and his demented wife Mafalda, the SIS agents Meredith, Sutherland, Rose and Wallis and the suspected turncoat Lazard. There is also the mystery of her predecessor, the American Judy Laverne who was either deported or died in a terrible motor accident. And behind the scenes Russian spymasters are lurking.

The febrile atmosphere in Lisbon is projected realistically and the action scenes, where blood is spilt, are dramatic and exciting. From time to time the suspense is high, too. And while the plot is convoluted it remains compulsive, and despite the narrative moving across many years the reader’s interest is held for the 560+ pages.

The book title crops up at least twice. Once when strangely she suddenly harbours a fear while flying, when God might ‘let them drop from the sky and she would die in the company of strangers, unknown and unloved’ (p417) and referred to again on p542.

When writing of the tragedy of Portugal, he could have been referring to the tragedy of the main characters. Sadly, I found the ending unsatisfactory – though in all probability truthful. This is only my opinion, after all. Indeed, Wilson is a good writer and has a gift for the telling phrase and metaphor, such as these samples:

‘She gave him a smile torn from a magazine’ (126). [Like this, better than giving him an insincere smile...].

‘blistered with rust’(p203) – a good description.!

‘He stirred his tea for a long time for a man who didn’t take sugar’ (p431). [conveys disguised mental turmoil, perhaps].

‘She listened again to the settling house and painted the desktop with her torch beam’ (p202). [better than his torch lit up the desktop].

‘Cardew shifted in his seat and looked as wary as a grouse on the Glorious Twelfth’ (p95).

‘Cardew stared intently at the windscreen as if the entrails of squashed insects might lead him somewhere’ (p97).

‘... fighting his way into unconsciousness, desperate  to stop living with whatever he had in his mind’ (p118).

‘The wind was stronger out here, blowing sand across the road, which corrugated to washboard, hammering at the suspension’ (p121). [good visuals!].

The blurb refers to this book as a thriller. While there are thrilling interludes, I feel it is too sedate to be a thriller. It’s a good novel, though.

Editorial comment – for the benefit of writers:

‘the incessant chatter in the room suddenly grated on Anne’s ears like a steel butcher’s saw ripping through bone’ (p160). [Probably should be a butcher’s steel saw, since he wouldn’t be a robot?]

‘I tried to join the WRENS...’ (p181). This should be either lower case Wrens or uppercase WRNS.

So many scriptwriters do this all the time: ‘... she saw Lazard and I together in the casino...’ (p269) – Should be ‘Lazard and me’. And ‘...Rocha had seen Voss and I together in Bairro Alto’ (p330).

I feel that metaphors are sometimes best jettisoned:

‘... a voice as clipped as a shod hoof on cobbles’ (p149).

‘He searched himself for words, like a man who’s put a ticket in too safe a place’ (p163).

‘He waited for a lifetime, which in normal currency was only twenty minutes’ (p320).

THE CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS - Book review

Elizabeth Peters’s 1981 novel The Curse of the Pharaohs is the second in her Amelia Peabody mysteries. At her death there were nineteen books in the series; a twentieth was completed in 2017 four years after her death. This is the fourth I’ve read (the others were 1-The Crocodile on the Sandbank, 3-The Mummy Case, and 6-The Last Camel Died at Noon); clearly you don’t have to read them in sequence, though you may miss some back-references by not doing so. They’re thoroughly enjoyable with two strong main characters, wryly comic in tone yet interlaced with oodles of fascinating archaeological detail.

This first-person story narrated by Amelia occurs in 1892. Dear reader, she has married Emerson, the professor she met in the first book. ‘Five years of marriage have taught me that even if one is unamused by the (presumed) wit of one’s spouse, one does not say so... Emerson is a remarkable person, considering that he is a man. Which is not saying a great deal’ (p2). They’re Egyptologists but stuck in a rut – family life and a young precocious son, Walter, known as Ramses taking up their time. However, their ennui is about to be relieved by the arrival of Lady Baskerville whose husband died under bizarre circumstances while on a dig in Egypt.

Before long they have deposited Ramses with relatives and head for Egypt and Lady Baskerville’s

Dig. Lady Baskerville: ‘There was no colour in her cheeks, but her mouth was a full rich scarlet. The effect of this was startling in the extreme; one could not help thinking of the damnably lovely lamias and vampires of legend’ (p26).

The married pair are constantly at loggerheads. ‘ "I never raise my voice," Emerson bellowed’ (p108). Though invariably they kiss and make up at the end of the argument (most of which Amelia wins). ‘My suggestion that I call my maid to help me out of my frock was not well received. Emerson offered his services. I pointed out that his method of removing a garment often rendered that garment unserviceable thereafter. This comment was greeted with a wordless snort of derision and a vigorous attack upon the hooks and eyes. After all, much as I commend frankness in such matters, there are areas in which an individual is entitled to privacy. I find myself forced to resort to a typographical euphemism’ (p38). In short, three asterisks (for a scene break).

There are plenty of suspects, of course. They meet up with Mr Milverton, a photographer who has an air of mystery about him; Karl von Bork, ‘I was not surprised to find him prompt at his meals; his contours indicated that a poor appetite was not one of his difficulties’ (p66); American Cyrus Vandergelt; the overbearing Madame Berengeria and her artist daughter Mary; and journalist O’Connell.

Despite superstition threatening the dig, our erstwhile characters go ahead: ‘... crystalline powder, clinging to the men’s perspiring bodies, gave them a singularly uncanny appearance; the pallid, leprous forms moving through the foggy gloom resembled nothing so much as reanimated mummies, preparing to menace the invaders of their sleep’ (p153).

Another murder and a poisoning add to the mystery. Throughout Amelia’s narrative we’re treated to suspense and amusement with a dash of tension and delightful colourful descriptions. ‘Alarm seized me. Emerson never speaks French unless he is up to something.  “You are up to something,” I said’ (p223).

I have several more unread books in the series about this indomitable Victorian sleuth piled on a shelf. Something to look forward to in due course.

Elizabeth Peters is the pen-name of Barbara Mertz (1927-2013) with a PhD in Egyptology. She also wrote as Barbara Michaels.

SYCAMORE GAP - Book review

LJ Ross’s second DCI Ryan novel Sycamore Gap was published in 2015, several years before two deranged dullards actually felled this famous tree. It is a sequel to her Holy Island bestseller.

It begins with a Prologue: in 2005 on 21 June, the Summer Solstice. The murder of a woman is committed alongside the Roman wall by an unknown man.

Then, ten years later on the same date a female skeleton is discovered buried in the Roman wall itself. Ryan and his team are brought in to investigate.

Ross has deservedly garnered a vast readership with her mix of gruesome murders, personable detectives and humour. ‘...she carried an enormous designer handbag that Mary Poppins would have been proud of’ (p14). There’s also believable police procedural detail and apt social commentary: ‘It was easy to talk about restorative justice and the value of rehabilitation when the damage and destruction had never hit too close to home’ (p149).

Finding the murderer is not easy – and there is a second one before long. The team – older, experienced Phillips and bright and brave MacKenzie with Ryan – work well together and there are moments of charm, friendship and compassion. Ryan is still plagued by the awful murder of his sister. There is a lingering threat from the far-from-moribund black magic Circle. And Ryan’s relationship with Anna hits a few speed-bums during the case. The final pages speed towards a suspenseful denouement.

Not surprisingly, while this murder case is wrapped up satisfactorily, there are sufficient hints of more future trauma aimed at Ryan and Anna, doubtless in book three, Heavenfield.

LJ Ross’s twenty-fourth DCI Ryan Berwick is due out in November.

Editorial comment - for the benefit of writers:

Ryan puts his hands in his jacket pockets (p11). We don’t see him removing them yet he ‘shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket’ again on p12.

Ryan refers to the discoverer of the skeleton as Colin (p13). Yet his name isn’t seen to be revealed to him before this.

‘I’m sure that’s it,’ he nodded (p204). That sentence should end with a full stop. He nodded – as separate sentence. Or it could have been written as ‘I’m sure that’s it,’ he said and nodded...

THE BORODINO SACRIFICE - Book review

Paul Phillips’s spy thriller The Borodino Sacrifice (published 2024) is the first book in the Chasing Mercury trilogy. 

I can see why Phillips dedicated it in memory of Peter O’Donnell, author of the Modesty Blaise thrillers: the novel is fast-paced and introduces us to two characters who end up facing dangers together – in a similar manner to Modesty and Willie Garvin.

I’m a sucker for word-play in titles, chapter headings etc. There are four parts. 1 – Between the Lines; 2 – Behind the Curtain; 3 – Beneath the Ashes; 4 – Upon the Mountains. So we have four different yet relevant prepositions.

We start with US sergeant Sam Bradley protecting a Brit spy, Jones, in the Moravian forest when a violent altercation occurs between a partisans. Inevitably there’s plenty of action at this time of Cessation of Hostilities at the close of World War II in Europe. Czechoslovakia is a mess, with national militias, partisans, communists and anti-communist guerrillas on the rampage... Bradley’s observant and memory-scarred. ‘... the Red Army mechanics had the  jeep repaired by midday. Bradley wished flesh and blood was as responsive’ (p155).

Jones wants Bradley to find one of his people who is missing: Ludmila Suková, codename ‘Mercury’. Usually called Mila. She is almost a force of nature. ‘... there was something else about her, something real and strangely potent’ (p241). Mila is a layered character, an enigma, somebody who never gives up, no matter what obstacles get in her way. Like many spies, she used a poem to encrypt her messages, reminiscent of Violette Szabo’s written for her by Leo Marks in 1941; Mila’s is by W.B. Yeats. Gradually, we learn of her backstory and it seems the past has come to define her. Mila is on a quest of her own.

Bradley’s quest takes him to Berlin where he witnesses the devastation as well as the amazing rubble-women clearing away the detritus of war. Where there are razed buildings there are bodies: ‘Summer heat – the dead were making themselves known’ (p76).

Phillips's power of description puts you in the scene: ‘Smoke caressed the cobwebbed roof-space. The derelict mill was poorly shuttered and dusty beams of late afternoon sun were slinking across the walls. (He) heard an insect trapped somewhere, and the ticking of a watch’ (p55). And: ‘The sinking sun had turned the windows of the terraced tenements to molten ingots’ (p216).

His action scenes are intense; you can almost hear the shell casings hit the ground. However, it is not all action. Sometimes there’s poignancy. One individual reflects: ‘His heart had been buoyed by the last blessing, the tenderness of a woman, even directed at a worm such as he – a traitor, a nothing, a black joke, a geography teacher in a land without place names or frontiers, on a continent with its populations upended, in a world where the maps were redundant’ (p58).

The story has depth and is well researched, brilliantly evoking this period of post-war confusion. The assassination attempt on Heydrich in 1942 is pertinent. Men from GRU, NKVD and Smersh are plotting and loyalties are tested in grey areas. Behind the scenes the future of Czechoslovakia is and its people is being determined...

At the end of the book the reader is quite breathless. Happily, as you will be aware from the first sentence, there are two more in the continuing saga of Bradley and Mila. (I suppose that constitutes being labelled as a ‘spoiler’ – both survive the tense travails of this book!)

Note:

Berlin's rubble-women are detailed in Volume 4 of my Collected Stories - 18 history tales, Codename Gaby.

WHERE TIME WINDS BLOW - Book review

Robert Holdstock’s Where Time Winds Blow was published in 1981 – and on the surface it appears he is still haunted by time-displacement which he wrote about in Earthwind (1977).  

We’re on an alien planet, Kamelios; the planet is quite like a chameleon; for example there are electric storms called fiersig – ‘the power-fields of change, twisted and distorted the stable mind just that little bit more, scarring the mind irreversibly in a way too insignificant to note at the time, but with mounting effect over the months and years’ (p27).

The archaeological team consists of the leader, Lena Tanoway, Leo Faulcon and Kris Dojaan. They can only venture outside Steel City when wearing protective masks. Steel City is unusual – ‘the city rise on its engines, and hover almost silently above the blackened crater that had been home for the last quarter year’ (p31).  [Interestingly, Philip Reeve’s Mortal Engines (2003) concerns mobile cities].

The archaeologists investigate a particular rift valley where time winds blow and a phantom human occasionally lurks: ‘he had been snatched by time and flung somewhere, somewhen, some place and time where he had screamed and not-quite-died... a prison where the walls were centuries, where time itself was his gaoler’ (49). The winds deposited ancient buildings, or futuristic edifices, and then frustratingly swept them all away. These ephemeral deposits draw scientists and fortune hunters – all of whom risk being caught in a time squall and sent to oblivion. ‘Faulcon watched as white towers winked out of existence, to be replaced by moving spiral shapes that radiated redly as they turned... an immense spider’s web of girders was torn from vision, flickering a moment as a time squall knocked it into Othertime and back, and then it was gone and a hideous shape stood there, the carved, gargoyle-decorated gateway of a primitive era...’ (p185).

In the mountains were other humans who had been altered ‘to accept the organic poisons of the world, to be able to see without their eyes melting away, to breathe without corroding the linings of their respiratory tracts’ (p99). The manchanged.

The actual phrase ‘where the time winds blow’ is used on p202.

Holdstock’s world-building is excellent. The characters interact and are conflicted. There’s hubris, cowardice, bravery and (perhaps too much) philosophising.

A rewarding science fiction excursion from a brilliant mind.

And interestingly the prolific Holdstock wrote The Night Hunter series of supernatural thrillers using the pen-name Robert Faulcon!

Editorial comment:

‘Faulcon thought to himself that...’ (p212). Faulcon thought that... is all that is needed!

Mission: Falklands - Just Published!

Mission: Falklands is the fourth in the Tana Standish psychic spy thriller series. 

The Tana Standish missions are a mixture of fact and fiction but with ‘a nifty twist’, as one reviewer put it. The ‘smart, sexy female protagonist isn’t just a rare child survivor from Warsaw’s WWII ghetto. Nor is she merely a highly skilled covert operative, brought up by the British to be extremely effective against the KGB. Tana Standish has one more thing going for her: psychic talents. There’s nothing outlandish in the psi-spy’s capabilities – they’re neatly underplayed, a talent which isn’t understood or entirely controllable but which frequently tips the odds in her favour.’

Mission: Prague (Czechoslovakia, 1975).

Mission: Tehran (Iran, 1978).

Mission: Khyber (Afghanistan, 1979-1980).

Mission: Falklands (Argentina, the Falkland Islands, and South Georgia, 1982).

[All of the above are available on Amazon in paperback and e-book format]

It took thirty-four years for my original Tana Standish psychic spy novel The Ouija Message to grow and improve and eventually transmogrify into Mission: Prague. One of my first versions was rejected by Robert Hale with the comment that it was better than many books that were published but they ‘didn’t do fantasy’. (They accepted my first book sale in 2007, a western!). It came close a few times to being accepted but in retrospect I’m glad it didn’t get published earlier. The characters and the story required more depth, more time to evolve. Naturally, there has to be a willingness to suspend disbelief regarding psychic abilities! Then again, most fiction is fantasy anyway.

Prague garnered good reviews, such as ‘Interestingly, Morton sells it as a true story passed to him by an agent and published as fiction, a literary ploy often used by master thriller writer Jack Higgins. Let’s just say that it works better than Higgins.’ – Danny Collins, author of The Bloodiest Battles.

Each book begins with my first person narration. I receive a manuscript from a secret agent which recounts one of Tana’s missions. Here’s an excerpt of the Prologue from Mission: Falklands:

Beyond the headland the North Sea was grey and turbulent, white horses racing towards the shore. Leaden clouds swirled, harbingers of rain, threatening another bleak December day. I managed to find a parking space for my Dacia Sandero on the road opposite the Octagon Tower, built in 1720, in the Northumberland town of Seaton Sluice – known colloquially as ‘the Sluice’ – half-way between Whitley Bay and Blyth.

I walked the short distance past a dry-stone wall towards the King’s Arms, a large three-storey whitewashed sandstone pub. Almost everywhere you went in the north-east was steeped in history and this Grade II listed public house was no exception, built around 1764. Overlooking the small harbour and Seaton Burn with its smattering of small boats beached on mud, it had started out as an overseer’s house, and then became the King’s Arms Hotel and coach house. In the nineteenth century the coach house was used by HM Coastguard on the lookout for contraband smugglers.

On the left was a short bridge which crossed a manmade channel blasted out in the 1760s by Sir John Delaval and named ‘the cut’; the bridge linked the newly formed ‘Rocky Island’ to the mainland and is now adorned with love-padlocks.

Despite the slight chill in the air and the threat of rain, a handful of male and female regulars in shorts and T-shirts sat drinking at wooden tables outside in an area roped-off with beer-barrels: the usual tough north-easterners.

Keith Tyson, retired spy, stood waiting for me at the entrance porch, as punctual as ever. I was pleased to see under his arm he carried a familiar leather valise though it was now a little careworn – a bit like him.

The stories about her missions are told in multiple third person narrative, merging fact and fiction. Part of the inspiration for the series stems from my interest in history.

Wherever possible I have tried to write about places I’ve seen or visited, such as Gosport’s Fort Monkton, the Khyber Pass, Belize, Bahrein, the United States, the Falklands and South Georgia. Other places have required considerable research. In Mission: Tehran at a critical point there is an earthquake in Yazd; that actually happened on the date shown in the book. An episode in Mission: Falklands that involved two Soviets in Altun Ha is derived from my trek there. Another sequence describes a meal in the Pink House in Savannah, Georgia, which I’ve frequented. My memories of two days on South Georgia informed a section of the story too. And so on...

Tana has a few contacts in Argentina and several friends who suffer at the hands of the military regime. Tana is determined to help them. And of course betrayal lurks in the shadows... When she embarks on her rescue crusade she learns a devastating fact that changes everything and thrusts her towards the Falkland Islands and inhospitable South Georgia at the outset of the historic conflict...

Inevitably Argentina’s ‘disappeared’ and ‘death flights’ are relevant. As with all the books in the series, I’ve strived to inject realism even with the fantasy concept of psychics. As one reviewer has stated, ‘Such is the level of detail and ambition that Morton soon sweeps up the reader in the narrative and creates so convincing a canvas that we can easily accept the central conceit. Bouncing between different times and locations, he has created a book which feels big in scope, an adventure story with a supernaturally gifted protagonist that still feels absolutely real.’