CONCLAVE - Book review

Robert Harris’s novel Conclave was published in 2016 and became a ‘major motion picture’ in 2024. 

I haven’t seen the film yet but certainly enjoyed the book. Harris has a writing style which draws the reader in, no matter what the subject – and, let’s be honest his subjects have been remarkably varied over many novels.

When not employing the omniscient viewpoint we get 75-year-old Cardinal Jacopo Lomeli’s. He’s the Dean of the College of Cardinals in the Vatican and is responsible for organising the upcoming conclave following the recent death of the Pope.

There are 118 cardinals allowed to vote – that is, those who are under eighty years of age.  As is the case today following the demise of Pope Francis, there is a handful of front-runners who are likely to figure in the final voting.

Besides the concerns for the imminent conclave, there were worries about the reporting of the Holy Father’s death. ‘Once, God explained all mysteries. Now He has been usurped by conspiracy theorists. They are the heretics of the age.’ (p16).

Lomeli’s ‘guilty recreation was detective fiction.’ (p40). Certainly there are mysteries for Lomeli to tackle before the final vote and the white smoke is released to announce a new Holy Father has been selected. Lomeli is feeling his age, too. ‘Once, in his youth, Lomeli had enjoyed a modest fame for the richness of his baritone. But it had become thin with age, like a fine wine left too long.’ (p115).

The cardinals are locked in during the day to cast their votes. After which they are transported to accommodation where they can eat and sleep, abiding by the injunction not to discuss the vote in the hearing of outsiders such as drivers. The food is served by nuns. ‘If anything forces this Conclave to a swift conclusion, thought Lomeli, it will be the food’ (p100).

The Sistine Chapel is taken over for the Conclave.  ‘The freshly laid carpet smelled sweet, like barley in a threshing room.’ (p32).

Lomeli does not wish to be Pope yet he appears to be a good contender. ‘Once we succumb to “the dictatorship of relativism” as it has been properly called, and attempt to survive by accommodating ourselves to every passing sect and fad of modernism, our ship is lost. We do not need a Church that will move with the world but a Church that will move the world.’ (p152).

(I always use a bookmark when reading and in this case it proved useful. At a glance I could see the tabulated vote score for a half-dozen cardinals on the page but before actually reading it I covered it up with the bookmark until reaching that point in the narrative.)

There is a poignant interlude when a nun is holding a precious photograph of a boy: ‘The creases where she had folded and refolded it over the past quarter-century had cracked the glossy surface so deeply it looked as if he were staring out from behind a latticework of bars.’ (p218).

As certain revelations surface, the voting alters and it is obvious that it will take several days to reach a ‘winner’. ‘If it drags on much longer, I wonder what the actuarial odds are that one of us will die before we find a new Pope’ (p237).

Inevitably, there is intrigue and squabbling and a few skeletons emerge from the past. The final vote does indeed come as a surprise.

Dan Brown’s thriller Angels & Demons (2000) relates some of the aspects of a conclave; however, Harris goes much further – and depicts it more accurately. On the face of it, writing a mystery/suspense novel about the selection of a pope shouldn’t be riveting, and yet it proves to be so.

If you’ve seen the film then I suspect that the surprise ending (if it’s the same!) won’t work; however, the narration itself is a pleasure and doubtless the reader can superimpose the actors on characters while reading.

Recommended.

AFTER THE ACT - Book review

 

Winston Graham’s suspense novel After the Act was published in 1965.

Playwright Morris Scott has been married for seven years to Harriet, a rich older woman, his muse, who suffers from ill health. Over those years she supported and encouraged him: ‘You ought to be relentless, Morris. Relentless to writing it down. Once the bones are there you can drape them and undrape them at will’ (p63) And now he is successful and planning for one of his plays to appear in Paris.

It had not been planned. ‘I was a man going to meet a girl, surrounded only by the anticipation, tautened like a bow-string with pleasure’ (p17). Inevitably, he has an affair with Alexandra Wilshere, a secretary to a rich couple in France. Passion, obsession... ‘We walked on the quay and walked together through the little town, which was murmurous with people. Cars probed the narrow streets like medical isotopes in a bloodstream...’ (p67)

A budding writer could learn from some of Morris’s observations:

‘Half of writing is gestation’ (p26).

‘You have to be tough to reach the top in any profession these days. Stamina’s an essential part of genius, whether you’re a four-minute miler or a composer of symphonies’ (p27).

‘How easy it is for a writer to lie, the inventions spring to his lips’ (p47).

The suspense deepens when Harriet falls to her death from a Paris hotel balcony. Was it an accident, or murder, or carelessness? ‘We all make mistakes; the error is in trying to hide them’ (p197). That phrase could well be the epitaph of many a politician’s career! The fact is that now Morris is free to wed Alexandra. If his conscience will permit it. ‘To be honest around a central lie is like building a house with the foundations unlevel’ (p135).

Graham the craftsman has delved into life, death and guilt. ‘The sun set. Dusk crept in like the beginning of death’ (p191).

Editorial note:

‘a passionate unsophisticated fumbling in the dark... among the heather and the bickering cicadas’ (p75). Long ago I was corrected: cicadas make their noise in the hot day, crickets make their noise at night, and this seems borne out by my time in Spain.

THE MELTING MAN - book review

In the mid-1960s I read a few books by Victor Canning and thoroughly enjoyed them. For some reason I didn’t read any more (maybe suborned by Helen MacInnes, Len Deighton, Ian Fleming, Gavin Lyall, and Desmond Cory, among others!);  that is, until now, taking up his 1968 thriller The Melting Man, a collector’s item.

This is the fourth (and final) thriller featuring the investigator Rex Carver. Narrated in first-person, it begins with Carver contemplating a holiday, despite the fact that the firm’s bank balance could benefit from an injection of new cash. ‘... eleven months of the year I worked, if it was there to work at, but come September, season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, I took a holiday’ (p9). He told his business partner Hilda Wilkins, ‘I need feeding up.’ She pointedly looked at his lowest waistcoat button and said, ‘That’s not the impression I get’ (p2).

From the outset, the style grabs, with plenty of one-liners, amusing asides, and colourful descriptions. From time to time Carver undergoes a session in the gym run by Miggs, an ex-Commando sergeant who takes one look at Carver and says, ‘My God – a young man in an old man’s body. You’d better let me book you in for a dozen sessions...’ Carver responded: ‘I like to put it on around September. Live off my fat during the winter. Bears do it’ (p6).

His holidaying intentions are waylaid by the arrival in the office of beautiful Julia Yung-Brown. He’d been recommended to her by Miggs: ‘But you don’t quite come up to the description Miggs gave of you. Sort of blurred around the edges somewhere.’ He riposted: ‘Come autumn I begin to disintegrate a little. My best month is May’ (p11).

Despite inferring that Carver was unfit, he manages to hold his own, surviving more than one knock on the head, a near-drowning and a bomb in his car!

Julia and her sister Zelia are the step-daughters of millionaire Cavan O’Dowda, a man with a ruthless reputation. Apparently, Zelia went missing while driving her stepfather’s Mercedes 250 SL in France. Zelia subsequently turned up in Cannes with memory loss and no car. O’Dowda wants Rex to find the car. Simple.

He sets out on the trail of the car – Geneva, Cannes, Turin. And is tracked by his old Interpol pal Aristide Marchissy la Dole as well as the eccentric Alakwe brothers, Jimbo and Najib, together with their sex-mad 6ft 4” lethal assistant Miss Panda Bubakar. It’s obvious that there’s something hidden inside the car that is highly valuable to all the interested actors.

Aristide has appeared in earlier books. He likes his food, particularly if they’re Carver’s croissants ‘which were first made in Budapest in 1686. That is the year the Turks besieged the city. They dug underground passages beneath the city walls at night, but the bakers – naturally working at that hour – heard them, gave the alarm and Johnny Turk was thrown out. In return the bakers were given the privilege of making a special pastry in the form of the crescent moon which still decorates the Ottoman flag’ (p188).

The pace is fast, the characters are larger-than-life, the threats quite real, and the denouement in the millionaire’s mountain chateau is both intense and grim, with a dark and unexpected twist.

Even after fifty-five years, this is a satisfying and entertaining, page-turning thriller.

You can get a used copy for the price of a beer; all four Rex Carver books are available as e-books.

THE TUMBLED HOUSE - book review

 

Winston Graham’s 1959 novel The Tumbled House is a romantic suspense novel long out of print; my copy is the fourth impression dated 1976.

While dropping in on the empty house of her late father-in-law Sir John Marlowe, Joanna commits adultery with an ex-boyfriend Roger Shorn. It is not an affair; perhaps she was lonely since her husband Don, a feted conductor, was away in the States with an orchestra.

Shortly after Don’s return, a couple of anonymous articles are published in a newspaper, The Gazette, denigrating Sir John, claiming the great man plagiarised a book by an old associate (also deceased).

Don is incandescent and determined to discover the writer’s identity and clear his father’s name. He seeks legal advice but that’s not much help as you can’t libel a dead person. ‘What was the purpose of attacking the reputation of a dead man unless there was someone still alive to care?’ (p73). He has the sympathy of Joanna and his sister Bennie but ignores their suggestion that he forget the whole issue.

Unable to forgive and forget, Don finally learns of the writer’s identity and writes insults against the culprit. The added complication is that Bennie is in a relationship with the son of the writer.

This should be a fairly anodyne court case, but the interweaving of the personalities involved and the minor crimes on the periphery that affect Bennie and her beau Michael keep the reader turning the pages.

What lifts the book above the norm is Graham’s acute observation of character and place. The point of view is omniscient. Here are a few examples.

‘The Red Boar Club... Here the temperature was a uniform seventy-eight winter and summer, and tobacco-smoke hung in cirrus clouds about the room. You broke through them going down the steps like a plane coming in to land’ (p38).

In the club Don approaches the editor of the offending Gazette: ‘He had a square rather distinguished face on which the skin hung loosely as if it had a slow puncture. But there was nothing deflated about the way he looked at Don...’ (p39).

‘Sir Percy... was not expensively dressed and his Cockney accent still clung to him like a home-knitted pullover’ (p59).

‘When he opened the door the sunlight crowded in as if it had been queuing there’ (p72).

‘An artist of course was judged by his art, not by his life. It didn’t matter two-pence if Rembrandt was a rogue or Beethoven a bore... (p100) – though in the idiotic modern age of cancel culture that may no longer apply!

Despite the suspense, and Don discovering Joanna’s infidelity, there are smatterings of humour: asked about Don’s interpretation of Swan Lake, he responded, ‘It could well be the most original. Phone Leningrad and tell them to watch Tchaikovsky’s grave. If there’s movement, it’ll mean he’s turning over in it’ (p128).

‘She stared at him with unwinking eyes, a stout old lady with a bulging face like a purse that has never been opened for charity’ (p148).

‘... when they rode together the sun was slanting, and a breeze that came up from the sea had made the young leaves turn and glint like wild silk’ (p174).

‘... his grey, pachydermous face wearing a weary, dusty expression as if too many years of exposing human frailty had left him without illusions and without hope’ (p298).

Bearing in mind the time of writing, there are two uses of the n-word and an allusion to gays before that term was the acceptable description, none of which are malicious.

Graham describes a death without being mawkish: less is more.

The ending is satisfactory.

JACKDAWS - book review

 

The prolific Ken Follett’s Jackdaws was published in 2001. His output is varied and broad in theme and place and time. Here, he returns to the Second World War and spies – some twenty-three years after his WWII debut novel Eye of the Needle.

The story covers the nine days before D-Day, June 6, 1944. Twenty-eight-year-old Felicity 'Flick' Clairet, an SOE agent is leading a Resistance assault on a French chateau in the village of Sainte-Cecile, the German communications hub for the area. But it goes wrong and she and her French husband barely manage to escape. Some of their team are killed and others are captured.

The German interrogator is Colonel Dieter Franck who, while not enjoying inflicting pain on his victims, is good at it. The Germans are aware that an invasion is about to occur soon and that will entail the rising up of many Resistance cells. He is certain that if he can break the will of his captives, he can learn details about the various groups.

Flick returns to England and is given permission to try again to crack the chateau communications hub. She recruits the Jackdaws, a ‘dirty half-dozen’ – all-female team to infiltrate in place of the regular cleaners. Not all of them will survive...

This is a typical Follett page-turner with characters you soon come to know and care about. Even Franck evokes a measure of sympathy. The interrogators, the invaders, considered the SOE agents as terrorists. Both sides were ruthless. In these sensitive times perhaps some readers will find certain aspects of the violence depicted as distressing; yet this kind of thing – and worse – happened. I’ve read a number of nonfiction and fiction books about the SOE and Follett’s research seems very accurate – and never slows the pace.

If you want an involving fast read, this suspenseful thriller will fit the bill.

Editorial comment:

Blame the editor. On p312 a coded message mentions Friday 1 June. Yet on p315 we’re told that Friday is 2 June. Oops. [Hopefully it has been amended since my 2002 edition].

Promotion by Rough Edges Press

 

£0.99/$0.99 e-book For 1 week only – starting on 6 September!

From Rough Edges Press

CATALYST

Amazon UK: http://tinyurl.com/58mmcryc

Amazon US:  http://tinyurl.com/3w6nbc5h

A fast-paced thriller with plenty of threats and sexy suspense…

A catalyst is a person who precipitates events. That’s Catherine Vibrissae. Orphan, chemist, model, and crusading cat.

Seeking revenge against Loup Dante, the Head of Ananke—and the man responsible for the takeover of her father’s company—Cat will stop at nothing to uncover his wicked agenda. A trained chemist and an accomplished climber, she is not averse to breaking and entering. So, when she crosses paths with an attorney for the bloodless organization and uncovers a mysterious product called Catananche, Cat risks injury and death to learn more.

Ranging from South England to the North-east, from Wales to Barcelona, Cat’s quest for vengeance is implacable. But will she be able to escape the clutches of an unexpected and whip-wielding enemy?

The first in the Cat’s Crusade series, Catalyst follows a strong female character with a thirst for action.

THE LUTE AND THE PEN - Press Release

Historical fiction - 10th century Spain!

960AD. Al-Andalus.

Spirited and learned, Qamira has discarded the strictures of her life in Baghdad to travel with her grandfather to Cordoba. Here she embraces the undreamed-of freedoms accorded women. She befriends her neighbours, attractive young men and women of Jewish, Christian and Arabic faiths, all living in harmony. One of these is Zayd, a swordsman, poet and teacher from the Maghreb; they form a strong emotional attachment. Sadly, that harmony will be shattered…

Amazon UK: https://tinyurl.com/yaz96c77

Amazon US: https://tinyurl.com/545ctprh

Excerpts:

She had gone through twelve months of deep depression after her parents died horribly and swiftly of the plague that had wiped out hundreds of pilgrims on the way to Mecca. The vultures had made light work of the bodies.

When fellow travellers brought the devastating news, although a younger maiden aunt said she was happy enough to care for Qamira, Talha insisted she come to live with him. 

Since that day she had barely spoken, just sitting swaying, silent – an elective mute. She ate because she must; she said her prayers because God was watching her; she kissed her grandfather good morning and good night because it was expected; but all joy had fled her short life.

***

Talha and Qamira entered the splendid garden with the three-tiered fountain Qamira had glimpsed from above. They made their way along cobbled pathways, past myrtle hedges and a pool covered with water lilies. Jasmine clambered up the walls to reach the balconies of the upper floors and niches, pots and urns brimmed with scented roses.

They followed the colonnade that snaked round the house, passing tables and chairs, glass-fronted cabinets filled with ornaments and books.

Voices and laughter summoned them to the feast. Comfortable leather divans surrounded a convivial table in whose centre were bowls of water containing sweet-scented rose-petals and lemon peel. Soft cloths were provided to dry hands and faces. Each place had a drinking glass and ceramic plate. Ornate metal teapots and trays of food stood at the ready. Three young people sat in one corner, heads together, whispering, oblivious of the presence of strangers.

***

The gate swung open on well-oiled hinges and Yuhana and Qamira exited into glorious countryside. Qamira gasped at the view, deeply inhaling the cool morning air, scented with herbs and pine. Carobs and oaks lined the narrow winding path leading to the lake and in the distance the Dark Mountains were bathed in a ghostly white mist.

They ambled along the shady path then Qamira halted, suddenly anxious.

Yuhana grabbed her arm and lengthened her stride, pulling her past the high wall of the munyat cemetery. ‘Qamira, hurry, the lake is this way. Or have you lost your nerve, no longer daring to defy Urvan’s ban?’

‘Not at all.’ She slowed her pace. ‘Why do you let him dictate to you? Does your father also disapprove?’

Yuhana fell into step beside her. ‘Yes, he also fears for our safety and because he is my father I must obey him! Surely you obey your grandfather?’

Qamira gave her a devilish grin. ‘Most of the time. But he is always open to discussion. It is often the only way forward. Besides, he approves of swimming. This is an ideal time of day to bathe and,’ she indicated the cemetery, ‘the dead won’t talk, or harm us.’

They reached a clearing, uncultivated except for clumps of herbs. At a glance Qamira recognised borage and rosemary, comfrey and lavender. She stooped and squeezed a handful of rosemary, cupped her hand around her nose and inhaled the sweet smell. Rising, she observed a small copse of hazel and almond trees. A cluster of six beehives to her left crouched like slatted creatures from another world. ‘Whose are those hives?’ she asked.

‘Ours but no-one tends them. I stay away. I was stung once. Mother used marigold flowers to ease the pain.’

‘She was right to do so,’ Qamira said. ‘Perhaps I can take the beeswax for my creams and I must gather those herbs before the sun wilts them.’

Yuhana plucked a stem of lavender and breathed deeply. ‘Tell me about them.’

‘There are many types. Here we have thyme, parsley, sage and rosemary for cooking.’ She spun round. ‘And there are comfrey and witch-hazel for sprains and bruises, borage for fevers, lavender to aid restful sleep. There are poisonous plants too – arum, nightshade and wormwood – but they can be used safely…’ She ran ahead down the path, calling back, ‘if you know how.’

They arrived at the lake. Herons skimmed the calm surface seeking fish, a bunting hidden in the reeds called plaintively to its mate, frogs croaked unharmoniously and the reeds themselves whispered in the breeze. Along the shore-line, a row of willows stood sentry-like, a natural barrier from prying eyes. Qamira noted the trees. She must tell Grandfather.

She ran forward to the edge, removed her sandals and dipped in her toe. Glancing around, she stripped off her robe and undergarment then plunged into the rippling wavelets, naked and free. She disappeared below the surface, swam some way off then reappeared.

‘You are bold!’ Yuhana called. ‘And such a strong swimmer.’

‘It is heavenly. Come in.’

Yuhana began to wade in but Qamira called out peremptorily, ‘Your clothes? Remove them. Or walk home soaking.’

Yuhana blenched. ‘Someone may see.’

‘There is no-one. Anyway, the trees will hide us. You must, or your robe will drag you down.’

Yuhana removed her robe, threw it ashore then ducked down into the water.

***

Zayd sat beside her and eyed the poem. ‘Is that a muwashshah?’

‘I don’t know. It’s an ode.’

‘A qasidah, then, a classical ode. To…?’ the handsome Berber inquired gently.

‘Dido.’

‘Ah, the tragic Queen of Carthage.’

‘When Grandfather and I disembarked there, he recounted the sad tale of Dido and the Greek Aeneas: their love affair, his treachery, his abandonment. Her despair, her death,’ she finished with barely a whisper.

‘Please read me your ode.’

‘It’s not ready.’

‘No matter. It’s not the end-product that matters but the journey we make to achieve it. The road we pursue can enrich all things. So, may I hear it?’

She obliged, reading the poetry in a clear voice.

‘Your words are poignant. How they remind me…’

Qamira’s brow furrowed. ‘Remind you of what?’

‘Of my own land, Qamira, of El-Maghreb.’

His look was wistful, longing for something lost forever. Maybe, like her, he was a wandering soul, far from his native land, still on his own journey, accepted but apart, not quite at peace. Was this to be their common bond, then? Should she feel sorry for him, or a kindred spirit? Should she by silence demonstrate her understanding of his situation and his destiny or by questioning seek to discover more?

‘Do you miss your home?’

‘Sometimes.’ He ran his hand through his thick hair. ‘Tell me about Baghdad.’

‘It is a city of wondrous architecture: minarets, mosques. Much activity: learning, invention. Like here but bigger.’

‘And the people?’

‘Dark and mysterious.’

Zayd pursed his lips. ‘And life?’

‘Unbearably lonely. I had my dreams and I was afraid I would never achieve them, always bound by tradition and rules. A foolish desire.’

His eyes bored into hers. ‘No, Qamira. No ambition is foolish. The only rules that should bind your life are those that you yourself make. Nothing should constrain you.’

‘Easy to say.’ She turned slightly to contemplate the garden. ‘Are we not all constrained – even Nature? Do not the trees grow to their expected height, flowers bloom with their due colours, all things in their season? Dogs bark and cats mew? Unchanging? Never branching out?’

‘We are humans, not flowers. We may do as we please. You have branched out. You’re here with your grandfather, embracing a new life.’

Qamira contemplated this a while. ‘As did you,’ she agreed finally. ‘Do you have any family left in El-Maghreb?’

He gazed at the ground. ‘My parents are both dead.’

‘Mine died too – before their time. We’re both orphans, then.’

He looked up at her through long thick lashes. ‘Indeed we are.’

***

‘Do not run from me!’ His voice rasped unkindly in her ear. ‘I want you! I have made myself clear on countless occasions. I will wait no longer. You will submit to me.’

‘If Grandfather were here, you wouldn’t dare make so bold.’

‘But he is not here, and I am. Here, to fulfil your destiny.’

Then his mood changed, his voice pleading. ‘It is I who beg you, my sweet nightingale. You cannot comprehend how much I love and desire you. Not just your music–’

She turned her face away as he kissed her again, his beard scratching her soft cheek.

Remember Zayd! She sobbed, her will almost broken. Why was he suddenly so difficult to resist? Then from somewhere in her inner core she mustered the strength of mind to withstand him. ‘I cannot do this. I cannot love you as you would have me do. I do not want you!’

But to no avail. He was panting now, whether from passion or exertion, she could not tell. She tried to push him away, the heels of her hands against his shoulders, but his grip tightened and he slid down to his knees, kissing her stomach, her abdomen, moving lower until his hands were raising the hem of her nightgown. His desperation revolted her yet her whole being ached with a treacherous sensation of pleasure and betrayal – and she the betrayer.

Remember Zayd! Now his fingers probed, seeking her secret warmth.

The sudden unexpected stab of bliss surprised her. She gritted her teeth, shuddered. She must not succumb.

Remember Zayd! The dim light and his lustful eagerness made him awkward, fumbling, and in that instant she came to her senses, all thoughts of pleasure fled. Her fingernails dug into the soft flesh between his shoulders and neck. She hoped she’d drawn blood. He roared in pain and stumbled away, releasing her to massage the spot.

She slid sideways and staggered towards the door.

Available on Amazon - paperback and e-book

 

 

LAST CHANCE SALOON - Press Release

 

[#2 in the Bethesda Falls series - all self-contained stories!]

The Bethesda Falls stage is robbed and Ruth Monroe, the stage depot owner, is being coerced into selling up by local tycoon, Zachary Smith. Meanwhile, Daniel McAlister returns from gold prospecting to wed Virginia, the saloon’s wheel of fortune operator. Daniel hits a winning streak but is bushwhacked, his winnings stolen.

And newcomer to town, Horace Q. Marcy, seems to be playing a game close to his chest, too.

Virginia sees this romance with Daniel as her last chance of happiness and no matter what, she’s determined to stand by her man, ducking flying bullets if need be. Daniel and Virginia side with Ruth against Smith and his hired gunslingers.

Only a deadly showdown will end it, one way or another.

Amazon UK https://tinyurl.com/3sthcy8n

Amazon US https://tinyurl.com/aytn3cmu

***

The downhill swaying motion of the Bethesda coach dislodged Alfred Boddam and he fell forward, half-into the front boot, his arm crooked over the side-lantern, hand dangling and bashing against the flapping leather curtain.

‘What on earth’s happening?’ A passenger boldly peeled back the curtain and stared at Alfred’s limp hand. ‘Oh, dear Lord! Mr Boddam’s dead!’ he shrieked. ‘Nobody’s driving our coach!’

***

When Daniel McAlister entered The Gem saloon, Virginia Simone’s heart lurched against the fitted boned bodice of her red satin dress and she almost made a hash of triggering the concealed device under the roulette wheel.

Pulling her eyes away from the entrance with an effort, she turned back to her table and flicked the hidden lever to ensure that the House won. The ball bounced a few times and a couple of gamblers let out exclamations of surprise. But for Virginia it was no surprise at all. Yep, the House won when it mattered, when the stakes were high. She hated this part of her job, suckering the poor dupes just to line the pockets of owners Royce O’Keefe and Zachary Smith. Still your foolish pride, she told herself; it’s a job, and she was one of the best in the whole damned Dakota Territory.

***

Wading through the stream, Wolf Slayer came after him.

Daniel got to one knee, withdrew his knife and splashed water at the oncoming Indian’s face. As the Sioux warrior was deflected for a moment, Daniel sprang.

He grasped hold of the wrist of the Indian’s knife-hand and twisted harshly but the blade didn’t drop. Wolf Slayer grabbed Daniel’s wrist and simultaneously brought up a knee, thrusting it into Daniel’s belly. Daniel gasped, falling backwards, yet he managed to hold onto the Indian’s wrist and Wolf Slayer fell on top of him. The man’s breath was foul, but he imagined his own wasn’t much better.

The underwater rocks were smooth but unforgiving hard against his back. Spluttering, stream-water lapping round his face, Daniel felt his strength ebbing as Wolf Slayer thrust a knee on his chest, pressing down hard. It wouldn’t take long before his rib-cage broke under the pressure. Wolf Slayer’s free hand was clamped around Daniel’s throat, trying to force his head under water.

Review:  “This is one good read... not a typical western – it has character, humour and storylines with enough questions in the plot to maintain interest from beginning to end. Strongly recommended.”

Previously published by Robert Hale 2008 - now re-published as a paperback!

GREEK FIRE - Book review

 

Winston Graham’s Greek Fire was published in1957 and was one of several of his early suspense novels re-issued in the 1970s in response to his success with the Poldark series (my copy is dated 1974).

American Gene Vanbrugh is a post-war publisher visiting Athens, Greece. He has a history of fighting with the partisans during the war. ‘You have sad eyes, M. Vanbrugh – as if they have sen many things they would like to forget. But I think you are a man of honour’ (p58).

In the cellar night club The Little Jockey he is watching several people at their tables, including Anya Stonaris who is accompanied by the politician Manos. Anya is the mistress of politician Georg Lascou. There is an election due soon. Politics is dangerous, and there is the post-war grievances and pressure from Communist outfits.

The cabaret is Spanish: ‘Here was some inner truth from Spain stated in terms of the dance, an allegorical picture of the relationship of the sexes, spiritual more than physical but partly both, a statement of a racial anomaly which had existed for two thousand years’ (p11).

One of Vanbrugh’s contacts is a woman he knew during the war, Mme Lindos: ‘There are certain architectures of forehead and nose and cheek-bone which defy the erosions of age. She had them’ (p20). She will prove useful to Gene as things go awry.

One of the Spanish troupe is the victim of a hit-and-run. The police consider it is an accident but the man’s wife Maria thinks differently and enlists Gene’s help. These Spanish performers seem to be linked in some manner with Lascou.

Gene is not a fan of Lascou. ‘I’ve seen Communism at work. I’ve seen the cold mass slaughter, the children dying, the brutality to women, the absolute ruthless callousness in gaining one set objective. Above all, I’ve seen the lies – so that no words have any meaning any more. Nothing that’s worth living for has any meaning any more…  That’s what I want. Just to stop you.’ (p119).

Strange, how times haven’t changed – the lies and double-speak are still with us, though not merely spouted by avowed communists.

There’s quite a lot of Greek politics of the period, not particularly pertinent now, but that does not detract from a page-turning suspense novel with strong characterisation, a hint of romance and a haunting manhunt:

‘A hunted man is like a man at the centre of a cyclone; there are periods of calm when it’s impossible for him to assess the strength of the storm around him’ (p190).

Recommended.

DEATH IS A LONELY BUSINESS - book review

 

Ray Bradbury’s non-fantasy novel Death is a Lonely Business was published in 1985.

It might not be fantasy, but it’s pure Bradbury in its style, descriptions, characterisations, humour and pathos and nostalgia. The noir detective story is dedicated to the memory of Chandler, Hammett, Cain and Ross MacDonald, among others.

It’s a first-person narrative by an unnamed struggling fantasy and science-fiction writer in Venice, California, in July, 1949, which seems plagued by fog at this time of year.

‘During the night, the fog thickened and way out in the bay somewhere sunk and lost, a foghorn blew and blew again. It sounded like a great sea beast long dead and heading for its own grave away from shore, mourning along the way, with no one to care or follow’ (p19). This passage alludes to one of Bradbury’s famous short stories, ‘The Fog Horn’. He returns to the fog horn beast later: ‘You are left stranded on a cold dune with an empty typewriter, an abandoned bank account, and a half-warm bed. You expect the submersible beast to rise some night while you sleep. To get rid of him you get up at three AM and write a story about him, but don’t send it out to any magazines for years because you are afraid. Not Death, but Rejection in Venice, is what Thomas Mann should have written about’ (p50).

The story begins late at night when he is travelling on public transport and a passenger breathes on his neck from behind and whispers ‘Death is a lonely business’. He is so scared he doesn’t risk looking at the owner of the voice. And then the man is gone. On his way home, our narrator discovers a dead body in the canal. At the scene he meets detective Elmo Crumley; their paths are going to cross often, in two more books, in fact. Crumley ‘tilted his head now this way to look at me, and then tiled it the other way, like a monkey in the zoo staring out through the bars and wondering what the hell that beast is here outside’ (p54). Crumley’s heart is in the right place and takes a shine to our narrator, happy to compare notes. He says, ‘You know, I wish I could bring all the rot I see every week here and use it for mulch. Boy, what roses I’d grow!’ (p84). At one point Crumley uses the phrase ‘Long after midnight’ during a hypnotising session (p192) – which just happens to be the title of a Bradbury collection of stories. Bradbury named his detective after the crime author James Crumley, in tribute.

Later, the narrator is haunted by that phrase – and decides it will make a good title for a book. To make matters worse, he has caught a cold and his sense of smell has deserted him.

He is drawn to do a little bit of investigating and enters the rooming house of the deceased. Upstairs is the ‘canaries for sale’ lady, seemingly confined to her bed – a modern Miss Havisham, who possessed a ‘tiny yellowed head’: ‘She lay flat and strewn out so delicately I could not believe it was a living creature, but only a fossil undisturbed by eternity’s tread’ (p27).

There is a creeping suspenseful menace about the narrative. More than one person described the sensation of a person waiting outside their bedroom door. ‘… but what if one night whoever it was came into the room?  And brought his lonely business with him?’ (p33).

We meet a number of fascinating and even eccentric characters, including Cora Smith, who called herself Fannie Florianna. Grossly overweight, she is now a retired opera singer of some renown. Then there was the old lady  ‘who spun the pink cotton candy machine and sold illusion that melted in your mouth and left you hungry long before Chinese food’ (p73).  And Mr Shapeshade and Mr A.L. Shrank, a strange ‘shrink’. And Cal, the atrocious demon barber: ‘…cut hair so you looked as if  you’d been blown dry by a Kansas twister and combed by a maniac wheat harvester run amok’ (p109). And Constance Rattigan, the movie idol in her sixties: ‘I guess I have too many producers’ fingerprints on my skin’ (p138). And the matinee idol John Wilkes Hopwood who ‘threw his head back with that merciless grin that flashed sabres and promised steel. He laughed silently, in honour of the old days, before films talked’ (p160).

Bradbury makes many observations that catch the mood or the period: ‘Silence. And the sound that waiting makes on the telephone line’ (p62). Maybe that’s why we started getting plagued with canned music while we waited; silence was too terrible? Here’s another: ‘The car windshield was like a great eye, weeping and drying itself, weeping again, as the wipers shuttled and stopped, shuttled and stopped and squeaked to shuttle again’ (p113).

The narrator has a box beside his typewriter, where he keeps his ideas; ideas that spoke to him, telling him where they wanted to go and what they wanted to do. ‘So my stories got written. Sometimes it was a dog that needed to dig a graveyard. Sometimes it was a time machine that had to go backwards. Sometimes it was a man with green wings who had to fly at night lest he be seen…’ (p118). And he sells a tale to Bizarre Tales about a man ‘who feared the wind that had followed him around the world from the Himalayas and now shook his house late at night, hungry for his soul’ (p120).

There are a number of deaths before the end, most of them poignant and tragic.

As hinted, there is a measure of autobiography here as Bradbury lived in the area described until 1950; and this is where he wrote his early stories which began to establish his fame.

The cover is appropriate.

Two sequels follow: A Graveyard for Lunatics and Let’s All Kill Constance.

This is my review of A Graveyard for Lunatics, which clearly I read out of sequence:

WRITEALOT: Book review - A Graveyard for Lunatics (nik-writealot.blogspot.com)

THE INNOCENT - Book review

 

Harlan Coben’s 2005 thriller is as good as any of the other standalone novels of his I have read. He keeps you turning the pages as the plot twists and characters interact.

It begins with a flashback of Matt Hunter’s. He was involved in a brawl and his opponent died. It might have been an accident; Matt served four years in a penitentiary. When he got out, he joined his brother’s law firm and met the beautiful Olivia and they married. Everything was better than he could have hoped – until he received a mysterious phone call and his life began to spiral out of control.

Besides contending with a local cop who held a grudge, Matt has to cope with the suspicion that Olivia is having an affair with a stranger. And it seems that Matt is of considerable interest to two certain not particularly scrupulous FBI agents…

‘Matt realised that he needed the help of a private detective at the MVD agency. ‘By and large, Matt was not a fan of PIs. In fiction they were cool dudes. In reality they were, at best, retired (emphasis on the ‘tired’) cops, and at worst, guys who couldn’t become cops and thus are that dangerous creation known as the “cop wannabe”. Matt had seen plenty of wannabes working as prison guards. The mixture of failure and imagined testosterone produced volatile and often ugly consequences’ (p69).

However this PI was an exception: ‘the lovely and controversial Ms Cingle Shaker.' He tasked her with finding out about the anonymous phone caller… ‘…she wore a black turtleneck that on some women would be considered clingy but on Cingle could legitimately draw a citation for indecency’ (p70).

The past catches up in ways we hadn’t guessed at in our wildest imaginings. A past that tests his love for his wife.

To comment further would require spoilers. So, in conclusion, this is a complex tale, well told!

If you’ve read Coben already, you know what to expect – twists and surprises; if you haven’t, this is as good a place as any to make your acquaintance with his work.

As book covers go, this is atrocious in my opinion.

THE LITTLE WALLS - Book review

In the 1950s and early 1960s, Winston Graham had a number of suspense novels published. The Little Walls was published in 1955; my copy is the fourth impression, 1972. (Those were the days when you could see how often a book was reprinted!)

It’s written in the first person and I found it comparable to Hammond Innes in style and tone, though perhaps less technical. Philip Turner’s older brother Grevil’s body was discovered in a canal in Amsterdam. Suspected suicide. Philip can’t believe it and sets out to determine that it was murder. Apparently, on Grevil’s body was a letter from a woman called Leonie, breaking off their relationship. Philip still did not believe his brother would take his own life. Grevil had been on an archaeological dig with a mysterious adventurer called Buckingham.

Philip takes leave from his business in America and enlists the help of Martin Coxon, someone who knew Buckingham some years ago.

Grevil’s death occurred in the insalubrious district of De Walletjes – which translates as ‘the Little Walls’. ‘At one place, in a cellar decorated with modern murals which would have left Freud practically nothing  to interpret…’ (p50).

Dutch Inspector Tholen fears Grevil was involved in some shady dealings and ran foul of local villains. Philip’s investigations take him to Naples and Capri, where he links up with a group of rich individuals with intriguing back-stories and a liking of cocktail parties, which normally were anathema to Philip: ‘The buzz of voices, introductions forgotten as soon as made, remarks which meant nothing drowned by others which meant less…’ (p129).  

Reading the story, one could almost believe it had happened – always the sign of a good narrator. The descriptions of the scenery and characters are well done, and there is a burgeoning romance, a betrayal, a fight to the death, and a twist towards the end.

The cover is one of several that feature a character’s facial close-up, all of which are eye-catching. (Though in this case the female protagonist is fair-haired in the book!). These other covers of books I still have to read are: Greek Fire (1957), The Tumbled House (1959), and After the Act (1965).