SALT IS LEAVING - Book review

 

J.B. Priestley’s 1966 novel Salt is Leaving was first published as a Pan paperback original and attained a second printing in the same year.

From the first page, I was drawn in by the story and the writing style. The last novel of his I read was Saturn Over Water in 1980, which I found impressive. I still have five more of his books to read.

It begins in a Midlands bookshop owned by Mr Edward Culworth, Maggie’s father. Recently returned from London and a failed three-year affair, Maggie is helping at the shop. At times ‘Maggie felt she was quite attractive, but there were other times, and now more and more of them, when she was almost sure she was just a thick, dull lump’ (p9).

This particular day, however, her father doesn’t appear at the shop – and before long she realises he has ‘gone missing’, something he has never done before. Maggie lives with her parents and brother Alan, a University lecturer in physics.

Dr Lionel Humphrey Salt, a widower, is also concerned about a missing person – one of his patients, Noreen Wilks. At the last consultation he prescribed medicine for her liver problem. If she didn’t take the life-sustaining drug, she would die. Salt is about to depart from the town after seven years and has already been relieved in his GP role; however, he wants to locate Noreen before he goes.

Salt makes enquiries at various places, such as the George Pub: ‘The counter was thick with high blood pressures and potential coronaries, either shouting at one another or at the waiter and the barmaid’ (p24).

A link is made between Noreen and Dr Salt. So Maggie approaches the good doctor. ‘He seemed the oddest mixture – one minute sleepy, simple and rather sweet – the next minute hard and ruthless’ (p46).

Salt takes her to meet a local nightclub owner, Buzzy Duffield, who has contacts and owes the doctor a favour or two... Buzzy is quite a character – ‘He was wide and fat and bald, with an enormous face on which his features merely seemed to be huddled together in the middle’ (p47). He also exhibits a verbal tick, uttering Bzzz from time to time, but not often enough to become tedious.

Another contact they encounter is Jill Frinton, ‘A classy handsome piece – and about as soft and tender as a sheet of high-duty alloy’ (p51).

A daughter of a local big-wig and benefactor is Erica Donnington: ‘no hat but a lot of hair that needed washing, and was an expensive slut with a long loose face and body’ (p102).

Before long, Salt is approached in a heavy-handed manner, suggesting he should depart from the town immediately. ‘Somebody wants me to clear out of Birkden... simply because I’m asking questions about Noreen Wilks’ (p53).

Salt is well travelled, having served in Burma, then lived and worked in the New Territories, Hong Kong, in North Borneo, Penang and Singapore before returning to England. He’s forthright, persistent, brave, and a student of human nature. ‘When they’re deliberately lying, most people can’t maintain a steady tempo. When the big lie comes, either they hurry a little or slow down. There’s a change in tone too... With the early lies, when they feel they’re getting away with it, there’s a faint faint note of triumph, the impudence begins to show’ (p72).   

The interplay between Salt and Maggie is one of the book’s strengths.

Priestley throws in the occasional social comment in an amusing manner, such as: ‘There was no longer a railway connection between Hemton and Birkden, the nearest large town, apparently in order to make the road between them even more congested with buses and cars’ (p13). The town names are fictitious.

As the puzzle unfolds for the odd pair, sex, drugs and corruption figure though not too graphically for the reader.

The cover (artist unattributed) is excellent: Priestley refers to the ‘maze that finally turned into a high road’ (p5); the cinema ticket and the hotel room key are relevant, as is the rag doll.

A light quick read.

A PLACE IN THE HILLS - Book review

The novel A Place in the Hills is Michelle Paver’s second book, published in 2001.Though 523 pages, it’s a quick read. It’s a time-slip novel paralleling lives in Rome in 53 BC and in France in the 1980s.

It begins in 53BC in Rome during the festivities of the Day of Blood: ‘The air was thick with the smell of balsam and trampled roses, and the salty, metallic undertow of blood’ (p12). Among the crowds are a Roman officer, Gaius Cassius Vitalis, who is also renowned as a poet. His eye has caught the attractive figure of a young woman, Tacita, daughter of Publius Tacitus Silanus, one of the oldest clans in Rome. There is a mutual attraction, though a relationship is quite impossible due to their different stations in society. ‘One long look and I was brought down. She entered my blood.’

Then we briefly shift to 1972 in the French Pyrenees where Toni, eight-year-old daughter of archaeologist Charles Hunt is being bloody awkward, unlike her sister Caroline. Charles is determined to locate clues to back up his theory that the poet-soldier Cassius lived here, at the so-called Source. A book quotes Cassius writing ‘I know a place in the hills where the gods walk the earth’ (p334). In a lucid moment Toni realises that the only way she can win her father’s devotion is by becoming an archaeologist herself.

Next, we move to 1988 and meet a poor American, Patrick McMullan, who is joining his rich university friend Myles Cantellow. Myles is with Antonia Hunt, working on an archaeological site with her father, Charles. Also on the site is eight-year-old Modge (short for Imogen) and Antonia’s half-sister Nerissa.

Myles is not a likeable character. He ‘belonged to the fast set, which took hard drugs, was far too cool to do any work...’ (p51).

Against her father’s wishes, Antonia wanted to prove that Lycaris – the woman Cassius referred to in his love poems – ‘was not some dry poetic construct, but a living woman whom he had loved with all his heart’ (p365).

The dig is claustrophobic, passions are in conflict, there’s a love triangle, a misguided Modge who has a crush on Patrick, an intransigent father, and a tragedy that changes everything, and all seems lost for almost fourteen years.

The parallels between the past and the book’s present are mainly quite subtle – whether that’s a love-bite on Cassius’s neck, a piece of broken pottery in Tacita’s hand, or the convoluted relationships of the characters.

Perhaps there was too much gratuitous swearing. Despite that, the characters’ emotions and the (admittedly all-too brief) slices of ancient Rome are well realised. The writing style is good and Paver’s descriptions put you in many a scene.

And there’s a satisfying end.

 

SINGLE & SINGLE - Book review

John le Carré’s novel Single & Single was published in 1999 and deals with the world of finance after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the USSR, though of course it’s much more than that!

It begins in the present (1998) with Mr Wisner, a lawyer who worked for the finance company the House of Single & Single, facing the gun-toting Alix Hoban in Turkey. Wisner is aware that Hoban is affiliated to the Single firm and cannot understand why he is being held at gunpoint. It’s no spoiler to record that Wisner is shot dead (since it’s in the blurb!) A bit of a mystery.

Another mystery is in the form of Oliver Hawthorne. He’s is a peripatetic magic man, a conjuror, but there seems something unusual about his identity and past. He is wanted urgently by his bank manager (they had them in 1998, apparently).

Other mysteries include a Russian freighter being arrested and boarded in the Black Sea. And the disappearance of the Head of Single & Single, ‘Tiger’ Single, father of Oliver.

Mysterious Nat Brock is called in to investigate Mr Wisner’s purported suicide. He is not what he seems, a British Customs Officer...

Four years earlier, Oliver absconded from the firm of Single & Single when he discovered that his father was involved in financial chicanery with the Russian underworld, including money laundering and the dubious sale of Russian blood transfusions to America: ‘Human Blood is a Commodity – US Federal Trade Commission, 1966’) His conscience wouldn’t permit him to continue in the business, so he, ‘the idealist, the walk-in of all time’ contacts Brock...

Brock uses Oliver undercover and debriefs him when he can. ‘He had a priestly tone for these occasions. It went with a deep-felt sense of caring. When you take on a joe, you take on his problems, he would preach to his newcomers. You’re not Machiavelli, you’re not James Bond, you’re the over-worked welfare officer who’s got to hold everybody’s life together or somebody will run amok’ (p203).

‘Wasn’t that awful for you? Discovering your own dad was a crook and all?’ (p187). Reading this, I was reminded of Le Carré’s earlier masterpiece, A Perfect Spy, whose titular character, Rick Pym, was based on Le Carré’s own father, Ronald Cornwell. There’s the same love-hate relationship between father and son, and the exposure of flawed character.

Even though married with an estranged wife, Heather, and daughter, Oliver is not averse to carrying on an affair or two. His love-life might be described as ‘complicated’. ‘How is she, darling?’ Katrina cut in, with the special concern that mistresses evince for lovers’ wives’ (p213). Judging from the most recent revelations about his own affairs, the author definitely knew what he was talking about...

Oliver has returned from hiding to discover the whereabouts of his father. Not only for himself, but also to help Brock. It's a story of betrayal and redemption.

There are plenty of telling phrases and paragraphs one comes to expect from Le Carré, such as:

‘His eyes were water-pale and empty, and it was the emptiness that scared her: the knowledge that whatever amount of kindness anyone poured into them it was wasted. He could be watching his own mother dying, he wouldn’t look any different, she thought’ (p287). And: ‘Tractors sticking like slugs to their smear-trails’ (p322). And also: ‘White stubble grew where his brown hair had been, and it had spread over his cheeks and jaw in a downy silver dust’ (p3223).

And there are many varied characters to engage the reader’s attention throughout, not least Brock himself, his wing-woman Aggie, the beautiful but fragile wife of Hoban who is attracted to Oliver, the Russian dealers Mirsky and Yevgeny.

Considerable exposition is thrown into Chapter Seven, with lengthy unrealistic speech paragraphs, which slows down the narrative and causes the eyelids to drop...

Le Carré nearly always tends to play with the tenses. For this book, the narrative is past historic when detailing what is happening ‘now; for the flashbacks, he employs the present tense to depict past events and conversations!

The ending is tense and full of suspense (though not as good as The Night Manager in that regard) but I found it a little rushed. On the whole, however, it was a satisfying read.

UNCOMMON DANGER - Book review

Eric Ambler’s second thriller Uncommon Danger was published in 1937 (though my Fontana paperback shows the copyright as 1941...). 

The story begins with a Prologue at a board meeting of the Pan-Eurasian Petroleum Company in London. There are concerns about the renewal of oil concessions in Roumania. Bessarabia has been a contested area between Russia and Roumania since the Great War, mainly due its vital oil fields. ‘The party’s policy is a familiar one – anti-Semitism, a corporate state, an alliance with Germany, and the “saving of Roumania from the Jewish and Communist menace”’ (p123). The company chairman has a solution – it involved recruiting a certain Colonel Robinson to set things straight. ‘It was the power of Business, not the deliberations of statesmen that shaped the destinies of nations’ (p87).

Russian double-agent Borovansky has stolen Russian plans for a possible attack on Bessarabia, which, if made public, will generate anti-Russian feeling in Roumania and bring the Fascist Iron Guard to power who will then make an alliance with Nazi Germany. Incognito, Borovansky boards a train...

Meanwhile, Russian spies Andreas Zaleshoff and his sister Tamara are tipped off and commission a Spaniard, Ortega, to pursue Borovansky on the train, follow him to his hotel in Austria, and get the plans back.

Freelance journalist Desmond Kenton has had a bad run of luck gambling and boards the same train on his way to find a pal in Vienna who might supply him with funds. He meets a Mr Sachs. Kenton’s money troubles seem resolved when Mr Sachs asks him to deliver some papers across the Austrian border, paying handsomely – and then Kenton’s troubles begin!

An amateur hero out of his depth, Kenton discovers a dead body, is hunted as the murderer, and joins up with the two Russian spies in an attempt to obtain the incriminating plans/photos and clear his name.

In the process, Kenton is captured by Colonel Robinson (in actual fact assassin-for-hire Saridza). ‘You see, your business man desires the end, but dislikes the means... That is why Saridza is necessary... there is always dirty work to be done... and he and his kind are there to do it, with large fees in their pockets and the most evasive instructions imaginable’ (p121).

Boldly, Kenton tells Saridza, ‘It’s not just a struggle between Fascism and Communism, or between any other “-isms”. It’s between the free human spirit and the stupid, fumbling, brutish forces of the primeval swamp – and that, Colonel, means you and your kind’ (p84)

It’s a fast-paced adventure with Zaleshoff and his sister Tamara providing mystery and tension, while the villains are truly villainous.

Another excellent Fontana paperback cover

THE REAL ODESSA - Book review

Uki Goñi’s  2022 book is sub-titled ‘How Nazi War Criminals Escaped Europe’ and is an updated version of a book of the same title published in 2002. He has been relentless in delving into old archives in Argentina and Europe, and even the CIA. This testament reveals the people ‘co-mingling in a common cause: a bitter and shared hatred of communism that united the unlikely combination of capitalists, fascists and Catholics into the project known by Nazi sympathisers as the ‘Reich migratory route’.

While it is probably common knowledge that a number of war criminals escaped to Argentina, I for one was surprised at how many succeeded and escaped censure, later dying of old age. There were literally thousands who got away with mass murder.

In the 1970s, Goñi’s newspaper office was inundated with concerned citizens: ‘Daily, mothers of the victims would come in to report their tragedies. Men in green uniforms had broken into their homes in the middle of the night and taken their children from their beds to an unknown destination. They were never to be seen again’ (pxxxii).

Before the war, all nationalities were welcome to Argentina as immigrants. That changed in July 1938:  Directive 11 was sent out to all consuls, ordering them to deny visas to Jews trying to reach Argentina. The order only fell into disuse in the mid-1950s and was only repealed in 2005.

Goñi states: ‘I realised that the problem was not the bad guys: the problem was the good guys who out of fear or affinity protected them (the war criminals)’ (pxli)

During the war the Argentine embassy in Madrid served as a transit point for Nazi arms purchased by Argentina. It had the secret support of Franco’s regime, which provided cover for the overland transport of guns and munitions through occupied France to Spanish ports and their conveyance from there in Spanish ships to Argentina’ (p5).

Franco’s Spain was not quite as neutral as it appeared. ‘During the last days of the war neutral Spain became the main safe haven for fugitive Nazis and their French and Belgian collaborators...’ (p65). Spain and Italy aided and abetted by functionaries of the Vatican. Virtually every false passport of the Nazi criminals had the religion stated as ‘Catholic’. In fact, a good number of Jewish passports declared the same religion...

A good number of those who escaped did so with funds, some of which was doubtless passed on to them by Swiss banks. Funds pilfered from their countless victims. The sequestered money was meant to finance a post-war Fourth Reich (p248). Using their ill-gotten gains, many Nazi immigrants contributed to Perón’s election campaign in 1946. Perón dreamed of turning Argentina into a military-industrial power and utilising the many escapees’ expertise in munitions and aircraft-design and build...  (p138). The argument went that if Argentina didn’t get the German technicians then the Soviets would (not to mention the Americans and British) (p151). There were many reasons for this: one was that Perón and his Nazi pals believed a Third World War was imminent – against the Russians, probably in 1948.

Moral blindness: the Vatican and Allied intelligence conspired to look the other way regarding the whereabouts of the majority of Nazi war criminals – because they were anti-Communist, against International Marxism...

Goñi provides several biographies of escapees. It is remarkable how many Nazi war criminals were held in prisoner of war camps yet managed not only to escape but also to identify and use appropriate ‘ratlines’ to get them to Argentina.

Compulsive and gripping, these revelations, even at this time, are still deeply shocking.

DANE DARE #3: OPERATION SATURN - Book review

 

This is the third deluxe collector’s facsimile edition of Operation Saturn featured in the Eagle comic from February 1953 to May 1954.

Certainly, Dan Dare wasn’t the first comic-strip space hero: there were Buck Rogers (1929) and Flash Gordon (1934) among others...

It’s the year 2001. A number of Earth’s spaceships are being attacked by robotic remote-controlled projectiles – nicknamed ‘black cats’. Apparently, they originate from Saturn. [The ‘black cats’ reminded me of a similar invasion of a swarm of small metal ships in the movie Star Trek Beyond (2016)].

Dare, Digby and their pals take Dr Blasco on the special starship Valiant to investigate. It transpires that Blasco is in league with the high lords of Saturnia: they intend to invade Earth and Blasco will be a puppet ruler! Dan and Digby escape while the rest of the crew are captured by Blasco and his agents...

However, landing safely on the planet, Dan and Digby befriend one of the alien natives, Nikki, a short blue guy, who proves a valuable guide and introduction to Tharl, the leader of a planned rebellion. Indeed, the evil Vora who rules at present is in for a shock... 

Yet again Dan encounters colourful creatures, some deadly, others serving as vehicles, and there are plenty of alien cities and buildings in glorious colour too.

We’re in pre-Star Trek territory where a teleporter is a tele-sender; the video is a teleblower; at one point Dan is tortured by the zesto-ray that ‘causes intense pain throughout the nerve centres without leaving marks (p97). Of course Dan does not reveal anything about the rebels; so Blasco and Vora decide to torture Professor Jocelyn Peabody instead...!

It’s action all the way. Perhaps still too wordy, but enjoyable all the same.

There is also an 8-page adventure from the 1953 Eagle Annual.

MERCY - Book review - ADULT CONTENT

David Lindsey’s ‘sexually charged thriller’ Mercy was published in 1990 and runs to 673 pages and covers a harrowing series of murders in seven days.

Houston, Texas. Homicide detective Carmen Palma is dedicated and tenacious. She needs to be in a homicide department packed with men. Her older and vastly experienced fellow detective partner Birley is coming to the end of his career; he’s supportive and trustworthy. They’re both called out for the murder of Dorothy Ann Samerov – a grisly corpse with sexual overtones. It’s highly likely that this could be the second murder committed by a serial killer: the first was only a week ago: Sandra Moser.

Both deaths involved sadomasochism. The book title is the safe word used by a participant – called out to stop the pain when it gets too much. Each subject might have a different agreed safe word. Though in the case of Sandra, the safe word was ignored, and she became the first victim...

It soon becomes obvious that there’s an underground network of wealthy Houston women living secret double lives. Some of them are connected to the psychotherapist Broussard, yet he has a solid alibi...

FBI Profiler Sander Grant is called in to assist Palma, and he proves to be a fascinating character, almost as strong as Palma herself.

This is a police procedural that leaves little to the imagination in either gore or sex.

The high page-count can be partly attributed to the detail Lindsey provides in the description of every item of clothing, every tree, and the car routes taken by Palma in her investigations. It’s immersive narrative, often employed in non-fiction work such as David Simon’s ground-breaking Homicide.

Apart from the in-depth treatment of psychology of serial killers, psychosexual villains and psychiatry in general, Lindsey has a gripping often humane style, as these two examples might indicate:

‘Life was gradually taken away what it had gradually given. It was the nature of things, but few people understood their tentative ownership of their gifts until they saw them being taken away from someone they loved. If you were lucky life allowed you that, a preview of the way it was going to be’ (p219).

‘We only know people to the extent they want us to know them’ (p252).

And despite the graphic murder and sex scenes, his other visuals are also effective too:

‘rain glittering through the beans of her headlights like shattered glass falling out of the black sky’ (p331).

 However, if you think you’ll be offended by the subject matter, then avoid. 

The book was adapted into a movie with the same title in 2000.

ALL OUR TOMORROWS - Book review

Ted Allbeury’s 1982 novel All Our Tomorrows is another addition to the long list of alternate future histories. This one is about a take-over of Britain by the USSR in the latter part of the 1980s. It’s a time when the EU was the more benign EEC and Woolworths were still on the high streets. And of course the all-pervasive Internet and social media had not yet taken hold.

It’s not his usual spy story, but rather an angry assessment of the state of the nation at that time, beginning with a quotation from Lenin: ‘British Communism should... learn to support the Labour Party leaders by their votes “as the rope supports the hanged man”.’ (p6)

Britain is talking about pulling out of the EEC (the debilitating tentacles of the EU had not been foreseen then). The situation in the country was dire: ‘We let things drift. We let criminals get away with it... Rioting, looting, hooliganism, were excused as being caused by racialism... We are scared of being labelled Fascists or reactionaries. It’s nice to be soft. And liked. And in the end it could get you votes’ (p18).

‘It was obvious, even to the public, that the law of the land could no longer be enforced’ (p96). The country was becoming ungovernable. A State of Emergency was declared, ostensibly due to mounting inflation and high unemployment. Strikes were illegal. Freedoms were constrained – and this was accepted...

French President Becque sees the situation and approaches Soviet President Orlov, suggesting that without Britain as an ally and a base, the US could never supply NATO in a war. If the British government asked the Soviet Union for help and in return became neutral territory... The Russian advisers could bring Britain full employment and law and order would be restored... Cooper, the British PM is faced with a dilemma, posed by the Soviets: ‘A choice to avoid a war you can’t win. You haven’t got the arms, the men or the planes. And you haven’t got the will to fight’ (p93).

So, aware that his country’s problems seem insurmountable; the PM signs a treaty of neutrality, inviting the Soviet Union to assist in bringing law and order to Britain – ‘bring back stability’ (p97).

Stability meant the country would be subject to Soviet law.

Change. ‘Let me tell you of some of those changes... Politicians have not served this country well. They have been divisive not constructive, seeking privileges for themselves and their sponsors. Therefore there will be no political parties in this country for the next five years’ (p109).

Before the take-over, the royal family was spirited away to Canada. The Queen made a broadcast which could only offer hope despite ‘men of evil intent exploited our traditional tolerance and freedom for their own ends... Old friends deserted us, some went so far as to hasten our downfall...’ (p139) [She didn’t mention the French!] The text of her speech reads as if it actually had been her speaking.

It seems that as the Soviet yolk pressed down upon the people, they became accepting of the new conditions: ‘We daren’t say what we think; nobody can criticise the system and survive’ (p198).

However, there was resistance. SAS Colonel Harry Andrews and his men Joe Langley and Jamie Boyle have built up a veritable army of spies, activists, saboteurs and fighters throughout the country. Harry’s plea to the populace, subject to harsh and brutal reprisals from the occupying troops, was clear: ‘Be strong. Not just for today but tomorrow and all our tomorrows’ (p267).

And, as it happens, the US hasn’t given up on occupied Britain. President Wheeler has the ear of Colonel Andrews also.  The struggle can bear fruit... though perhaps nothing would ever be the same again.

A thought-provoking book with surprising relevance to the situation today. 

THE BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE

Laurie R King’s first Mary Russell novel The Beekeeper’s Apprentice was published in 1994. Since then she has gone on to publish at least another 18 books in the series.

After the fashion of many Sherlock Holmes books, the author purports to have been in receipt of a number of manuscripts and other fascinating items. The writer of these manuscripts (M.R.H.) states that Holmes was real flesh-and-blood – ‘my Holmes is not the Holmes of Watson... my perspective, my brush technique, my use of colour and shade, are all entirely different from him. The subject is essentially the same; it is the eyes and the hands of the artist that change’ (page xvii).

In 1915 the young fifteen-year-old Mary Russell is reading a book on the Sussex Downs when she literally trips over Sherlock Holmes. [The book blurb gives the date as 1914, which is incorrect!]

‘... it was an engrossing book, and it was very rare to come across another person in that particular part of the world in that war year... In my seven weeks of peripatetic reading amongst the sheep (which tended to move out of my way) and the gorse bushes (to which I had painfully developed an instinctive awareness) I had never before stepped on a person’ (p5).

Holmes is studying bees and has quite a few hives to look after behind his cottage, his retreat, which is administered by Mrs Hudson.

The narrative is first-person by Mary, and it’s a joy to read. The voice and character of Mary and Holmes are captured perfectly.

This first interaction on the Downs soon conveys to each that their intellects mesh remarkably well. We meet the ‘real’ Mrs Hudson and Dr Watson and Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. Holmes takes Mary under his wing, training her in his techniques and methods of disguise, even arranging for her to undertake Oriental self-defence. The years pass as she studies at Oxford, spending her holidays at the Sussex cottage to learn from her mentor.

The tone varies from serious, to intellectual, to humorous: ‘My first task was to make a move towards reuniting Watson with his trousers’ (p205) – a sentence you’d never find in the Conan Doyle cannon!

Before long, Mary – who Holmes always refers to as ‘Russell’ – joins the Great Detective on his investigations. Considerable danger is afoot, it seems; and the main perpetrator is as cunning as the late adversary Moriarty. As time goes by, despite the age difference the pair become close.

This book has heart, humour, depth of description that sets the reader in the scene, and a main character who greatly appeals.

A splendid beginning to a series. Next: A Monstrous Regiment of Women (1995).

Note: This cover is pretty poor. The later A&B cover and its successors are much better.

HOLY ISLAND - Book review

LJ Ross’s debut novel Holy Island was published in 2015, and since then she has published another twenty-one DCI Ryan mysteries, as well as books in other (shorter) series. Prolific, averaging two books a year. Holy Island has garnered over 50,000 reviews on Amazon, most being favourable.

The DCI Ryan books centre round the north-east of England, an area rich in history, castles, landmarks and beautiful scenery. Living in the area and knowing it, the book added an added interest for me – and legions of north-easterners.

It’s December, close to Christmas, on Holy Island, and the weather is cold and bleak – and a young islander called Lucy Mathieson is found murdered, her naked corpse left like a sick sacrifice in the ancient Priory.

As it happens, DCI Maxwell Charles Finley-Ryan is on leave on the island following a traumatic case that brought him close to a breakdown. As the murder has suggestions of a pagan sacrifice, Dr Anna Taylor is brought in from Durham to assist Ryan.

The narrative is omniscient, so within a scene the reader jumps from one character’s thoughts to another. While this technique is frowned upon by many, it’s a legitimate way of conveying tension between characters and involving the reader. The main thing is that at no point does the ‘head-jumping’ cause confusion.

This was a page-turner and a quick read, with several apt metaphors, and enough varied characters to hold the interest. It does not fall into the cosy crime bracket. The interaction between Ryan and his team works very well. In classic style, the relationship between Ryan and Anna begins with antagonism from both sides, yet they gradually appreciate the strengths and knowledge of the other, and perhaps inevitably their situation turns romantic. There are a number of suspects to keep you guessing; and two more murders occur before the case is resolved.  The Epilogue provides quite a shock, signifying that the ripples from this case may taint Ryan’s life later on...

A remarkably successful first novel.  I’m certainly inclined to read the next book in the series, Sycamore Gap.

EMPRESS - Book review

Prolific author Graham Masterton’s historical saga Empress was published in 1988. 

Beginning in the early 1890s, the book concerns the life and loves of Lucy Darling, a Texan girl who dreams of riches and castles. She helps her father Jack in the town’s general store, with few prospects of escaping this humdrum existence. Her childhood friend Jamie Cullen harbours unrequited love for her. ‘Handsome and gentle, but strong, too; and unselfish. She was conscious that she might not love him forever: that if he didn’t agree to stay with her now, she might not give him a second chance. Life was too exciting for second chances’ (p107). [She would rue that thought about second chances some years later...]

Her Uncle Casper, a spendthrift adventurer, visits the store, though he is not particularly welcome by her father. Yet Casper brings exotic stories about his failed business ventures that intrigue Lucy. Yet, before long she comes to hate Casper. ‘Hatred can cool; envy can be assuaged; but guilt never forgets, and guilt never forgives, and guilt eats the spirit like fire consumes flesh’ (p111). This is a striking allusion to the fate of Casper, which is a traumatic tragedy. The result is that Lucy finds herself inheriting undreamed-of wealth, which enables her to escape with her father to elite drawing-rooms of New York, where she soon becomes a success, despite her strange Texan manner of speaking. Though not everyone was enamoured of her: ‘Mrs Harris at the back of the crowd with a face like a prairie cyclone’ (p137) Indeed, Mrs Harris, being outshone by Lucy, didn’t take kindly to the teenager: ‘... and glared at Lucy with an expression that could have crushed glass’ (p142).

And into the mix arrives British MP Henry Carson who is swept off his feet by the impetuous Lucy. ‘Henry was so direct about his interest in her, and she had never come across such candour before, especially when it came to courting. Bob Wonderly had at least tried to offer her a pound of liver, by way of foreplay’ (p157). Henry was an inveterate traveller, and in his spare time wrote, though his book royalties were not much more than £34 the previous year – join the club, Henry, though that sum in the 1890s is a lot more in today’s money... Henry harbours a secret which he is reluctant to divulge; and she soon learned that ‘his greed for public duty was beyond her understanding’ (p409).

Masterton has created an engaging, wilful, selfish and strong character in Lucy.

There are humorous and sad moments, and three notable quite graphic sexual encounters: ‘He must have the highest collar I ever clapped eyes on’ (p128) ‘Life became one glittering carousel of shining carriages and chandeliers, and men whose collars were so high they had to stare at the ceiling all evening’ (p178).

There is plenty of conflict between the main characters and certain subsidiary people. There are some twists in the tale, and a surprise or two at the end. A satisfying read.

I read this book while undergoing chemotherapy and was amused to read about a journey that Lucy took along the Saline Rive (p343) when I was actually being infused with saline solution!

Editorial comments:

I don’t know whose decision it was to begin the book with a short sequence showing Lucy in India and then skipping to her younger days in Texas (possibly an editor?). But that short sequence ruins much of the subsequent anguish she suffers prior to finally getting to India; in effect it is a spoiler. Roughly the last 200 pages (of 648) are set in India – which is described with colour, feeling and loving detail.

‘... thought to herself...’ (p145) – This is used more than once and is tautological – ‘thought’ would do. You can’t think to anyone else, after all.

The above reference to high collars is repeated – amusing the first time, granted.

THERE IS A HAPPY LAND - Book review

Keith Waterhouse’s excellent debut novel There is a Happy Land was published in1957 and is narrated by an unnamed boy (‘Told her my name’ (p21)) of almost eleven years of age in the year before the Second World War.  As Waterhouse was born in 1929 there may be elements of autobiography in thisshort novel, perceiving the world from that childhood period: ‘Braithwaites’ (house) had been empty for ages. They had a telegraph pole in their garden. They were dirty. They had to have the bug-van when they removed’ (p16).

The boy lives with ‘my Aunty Bettie’ as both his parents are dead. His best friend is Ted – until they have a final falling-out. The interplay where they don’t speak and avoid eye-contact and befriend others is spot-on.

He befriends newcomer Marion Longbottom. ‘She knew a lot, did Marion. It was her that told me that if you swallow chewing gum, well it gets all tangled up round your heart, and if you swallow orange pips, well you get oranges growing out of your ears’ (p31).

The book title is from a song a lad sings: ‘There is a happy land, far far away/Where they have jam and bread three times a day./Just one big fam-i-lee,/Eggs and bacon they don’t see...’ (p38).

Waterhouse captures the mindset of childhood perfectly: ‘My heart always started bumping when people whispered at each other’ (p51).

Some of the older boys and girls would go off to the fields. ‘Suddenly I felt hot and sweaty and miserable and sick. All the whispers I didn’t understand, heard in the school lavatories and from the big lads, late at night at the top of our street, came back to my mind’ (p84).

He went to the fairground and won some coins. ‘I had five-pence now. I held the pennies tight until they were hot in my hand. I put my hand to my face and it smelled of copper. I was going to lick one and then I remembered Marion telling me that if you do, you get cancer’ (p100).

There is bullying and senseless fighting and annoying spitefulness. ‘... he used to get behind me and try to tread my heels heels down’ (p127).

For the narrator it is not a happy land, but it’s the best he has, despite being involved in a tragedy near the poignant end.