FFBs - Ludmilla and The Lonely

Two short novels by Paul Gallico can be found in this single volume (1978). Sometimes they have been collected with other Gallico stories, notably The Snow Goose and The Small Miracle.

In his day, Gallico was very popular. The Penguin blurb states his books ‘have achieved exceptionally high sales on both sides of the Atlantic.’ Rather than use the term best-seller, which seems to underplay the author just a little.

Ludmilla (1955) is barely 46 pages – including a good number of delightful black-and-white drawings by Reisie Lonette. It’s re-imagining the folklore surrounding Saint Ludmilla of Liechtenstein – set in 1823. There was a scrawny cow among the herd that pastured in the mountains, and it was referred to as The Weakling because it seemed incapable of producing milk; its owner feared it was destined to be slaughtered when the herd descended to the valley. Alois the herdsman was accompanied by his youngest daughter, Ludmilla, and he instructed the girl to look after the weakling cow while he led the herd higher to richer pasture. Little Ludmilla was adventurous for her age and led the cow into a secret quite magical place… and strange things happened. A parable about belief, and the need to serve and to be loved.

Told in an omniscient voice, the story has all the potential to be overly sentimental, yet isn’t quite. The religion is worn lightly, with humour. One of many stories where Gallico empathises with an animal.

The Lonely (1947) is completely different in subject matter. US airman Jerry Wright is a lieutenant stationed at an airbase in the England at the height of the Second World War. He is young and feels he still has to become a man, like his idol Major Lester Harrison, perhaps. He has a fiancé waiting for him in New York. He is not a virgin – he has been with ladies of the night, but they don’t count. To modern sensibilities, he might not appear to be a likable person; yet he is of that time, when neither he nor his crew knew if they would return from the next mission against Nazi tyranny. ‘One did not want to die, but the chance was ever present, and therefore one lived more sharply, breathed more deeply, caressed the earth more firmly with one’s feet, looked with a more tender and loving eye upon the spring, gree grass, a sunny day, children playing in the street…’ (p155)

Jerry has been given a rest furlough for two weeks by the Flight Surgeon. His idol suggests he should spend the leave with one of the women from the base. But Jerry is reluctant: he doesn’t want to ‘dishonour’ a ‘good girl’, as opposed to the other kind. However, he is drawn to a friend who drinks and dances with him on occasion: Patches – Sgt P Graeme, WAAF. He is unaware that she is already in love with him. He asks her to go with him to Scotland – but is open enough to tell her that it would be with no strings, no attachments. A fun time. She was reluctant, but wanted to grasp even this fleeting time, and expected nothing more, though her heart would break.

Again, it’s ‘tell’ rather than ‘show’, yet Gallico’s style is subversive and soon you’re immersed in the lives of both characters, despite the omniscient voice-over: because he evokes small details that ring true:

‘You could play at being a man, go through the outward motions of a gay and lighthearted adventure, a careless holiday to be put away as an episode of a war-torn world turned upside down, but what if you found that afterward the presence of the girl had entered into your bloodstream, that the touch of her hand on yours, the texture of her skin, the expression of her eyes, the feel and smell of her hair, the sound of her voice, were as necessary to you as the air you breathed and the food that sustained you?’ (p107)

Jerry was brought up to ‘do the right thing’ – but did that mean to eventually return to the States and marry his fiancé – or risk all with Patches?  A romantic dilemma, satisfyingly told.

Gallico has been accused of sentimentality; so what? That’s what gets the heart beating, the tear ducts working. It taps into the human condition and is universal, despite what the literary critics might think.

Paul Gallico died in 1976, aged 78.

FFB - All the Sounds of Fear

The 1973 Panther paperback was the first British publication of this collection by Harlan Ellison. It comprises eight short stories previously published in magazines from 1956 to 1967. Considering that he was twenty-two when the first of these stories was published, it’s not surprising that he garnered much praise – and awards. On the back cover he is described as ‘one of the most explosive talents in science fiction today’, ‘a non-stop controversialist’ and ‘the bête noire of science fiction.’

Harlan Ellison wears his heart on his sleeve; that’s no bad thing: he has a good heart, even at eighty-one. He admits to possessing an abrasive personality, but that has no bearing here; it is his work that matters.

 

In his introduction to this book (1970), Ellison is not hopeful about our planet and human evolution: ‘we have created for ourselves a madhouse of irrationality and despair.’ Surprisingly, perhaps, we’ve survived, after a fashion, some forty-five years since; as for ‘irrationality and despair’, he could have prophetically been thinking about the ravings and cravings found in social media.

Not alone among authors, he believes that writers can make a difference: ‘The creative intellect struggles against this sorry reality… It would seem only the mind of the madman is free… And even so the artist persists… in hopes that cautions may be flung on the wind and somehow still be heard.’ He states that this collection of stories, written over a decade or so, is dominated by the theme of alienation. However, he is a romantic at heart, and still believes ‘we find hope within ourselves.’

Perhaps one of the most anthologised of his stories is the first here, ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’ (1967), which won a Hugo Award. It’s the future and the supercomputer AM feels trapped because though he had sentience, he couldn’t do anything except simply be. In a rage, he had destroyed humankind, save for five who he would torment for all eternity. ‘He was Earth and we were the fruit of that Earth and though he had eaten us, he would never digest us.’ They couldn’t attempt suicide, either; they were to all intents immortal, and damned.

‘The Discarded’ (1959) is from the viewpoint of Bedzyk, one of many incarcerated in a space vessel, ‘a raft adrift in the sea of night’. Everyone on-board was a mutant of some description – not X-Men with superhuman powers, simply possessors of additional limbs, eyes, heads, and therefore outcast. All as a result of a terrible contagion on Earth. Once normality had resumed, those who looked different were outcast, set adrift in space, unwelcome on no inhabited station or planet.

‘Deeper than the Darkness’ (1957) concerns Alf Gunnderson who is released from prison for a special task. He was imprisoned because he accidentally started a forest fire with his mind. Now, however, the authorities wanted to put his ‘gift’ to use, to end a war. Alf was in a quandary: ‘What of the people who hated war, and the people who served because they had been told to serve, and the people who wanted to be left alone? What of the men who went into the fields, while their fellow troops dutifully sharpened their war knives, and cried?

            ‘Was this war one of salvation or liberation or duty as they parroted the phrases of patriotism? Or was this still another of the unending wars for domination, larger holdings, richer worlds. Was this another vast joke of the Universe, where men were sent to their deaths so one type of government, no better than another, could rule?’ A novella about conscience and power.

‘Blind Lightning’ (1956) finds us with old spaceman Kettridge stranded on an inhospitable planet with an enormous ravenous beast that happens to speak telepathically in his language... Quite a moving little parable, about redemption and ‘first contact’.

‘All the Sounds of Fear’ (1962) is an interesting story, first featured in The Saint Detective Magazine. Richard Becker is an extraordinary actor – he seems to not only live the stage part, but to become the character he portrays in every way, no matter what the source, historical or contemporary. Until that dark day when he emulated a character to a murderous degree and was sectioned to be studied by doctors. While in the sanatorium Becker transgresses, becoming each part again, from the most recent to the earliest. A stunning end awaits.

 
‘The Silver Corridor’ (1956) is about egomania, where two  powerful men vie to be proved ‘right’ and the other ‘wrong’ regarding the latest theory. They are thrust into a special corridor that stretches reality to the limits, where they contest in many varied duels to better each other. Of all these stories, this is the weakest, though it has plenty of colour, time-shifts, action and excitement.

‘“Repent, Harlequin!” Said the Ticktockman’ (1965) won Ellison several awards and is believed to be one of the most reprinted short stories in the English language. It is a tongue-in-cheek critique of a dystopian system and in particular of lives being ruled by the clock. In the dystopia depicted, everybody had a schedule to keep; lateness was punishable, ultimately by being switched off – everybody was fitted with a cardioplate that the Timekeeper could make inactive. Unfortunately for the system, Everett C Marm wasn’t punctual and revelled in disturbing the smooth running of the day, causing schedule mayhem while disguised as a harlequin. The mysterious Harlequin became ‘an emotionally disturbed segment of the populace’.

Ellison’s distinctive style is evidenced here, for example: ‘And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes. And so it goes goes goes goes goes tick tock tick tock tick tock and one day we no longer let time serve us, we serve time and we are slaves of the schedule, worshippers of the sun’s passing, bound into a life predicated on restrictions because the system will not function if we don’t keep the schedule tight… Until it becomes more than a minor inconvenience to be late. It becomes a sin. Then a crime. Then a crime punishable by (death).’ In essence, if a person was ten minutes late, then those minutes were deducted from that person’s life-span.

 
The book ends with ‘Bright Eyes’ which is anything but bright, for it is the end of the world. The last survivor – who came before Man – witnesses the utter waste of resources and life. An apocalyptic tale, with bruising and impressive imagery, and no hope.

And of course Ellison ends this collection with ‘no hope’ in the belief stated in his Introduction that his ‘cautions may be flung on the wind and somehow still be heard.’

FFB: A Reed Shaken by the Wind

Gavin Maxwell is best known for his book Ring of Bright Water. In 1956, he decided to write a book about the marshes of Iraq and joined explorer Wilfred Thesiger to tour round various villages in their canoe, a tarada. Maxwell’s book A Reed Shaken by the Wind (1957) relates his experiences during the seven weeks. Thesiger also carried with him a large medicine chest and administered to many ailments, often rectifying ghastly surgery by itinerants. Towards the end of their tour, Maxwell expressed a wish to own an otter as a pet, and Thesiger found him a baby European otter, which unfortunately died after a week. As he was preparing to go home Maxwell received another otter that Thesiger had obtained. This he named Mijbil and it survived and proved to be a previously unknown sub-species which was named after him, Lutrogale perspicillata maxwelli (colloquially, “Maxwell’s Otter”).  His book Ring of Bright Water describes how he raised Mijbil in Camusfearna (Sandaig) on the west coast of Scotland.

The Observer described A Reed Shaken… as ‘a delight when books of travel are written as well as this.’

 

Maxwell’s prose is eloquent and descriptive, laced with humour and poignancy. It was no easy journey through the marshes, either. He was not immune to the depredations of insects. He thought he was merely plagued with fleas, however, he ‘now I realised that I was also lousy, and that two separate armies were fighting for possession of my skin.’

The scenery was remarkable, reeds stretching to the end of the world, it seemed. ‘The earth seemed flat as a plate and stretched away for ever, vast, desolate and pallid: pale bulrush stubble standing in water that reflected a vast pale sky… Wind gusted through the reeds, ruffling the water into flurries of small ripples. A chorus of strange sounds from the stiff withered sedge stumps, groans and whistles, bleats and croaks, and loud crude sounds of flatulence…’

Sounds played an intrusive part, too, whether that was the far-away crying of wild geese, the constant sound of village dogs, or ‘the tumultuous voices of the frogs, turning the marshes into a cauldron of sound,’ unbroken. He would wake to the sound of ‘dogs barking or fighting, or the exuberant quacking of domestic ducks, or the harsh challenge of a cock to the coming day.’

The life of the marsh Arabs has been threatened by civilisation – and some areas have been drained (drainage began as early as the 1960s but accelerated in later decades). And yet one has to wonder at the life they led then: Bilharzia of the marshes was a parasite that ravages the pelvic region of human hosts; they cultivated water buffalo for milk and dung: the latter was gathered by the women only, for it is an unclean task; blood feuds would be settled by the payment of women; water snakes were hated and feared; injuries from the tusks of wild pigs were commonplace. ‘The young girls are often vividly beautiful, with the enormous liquid eyes that have been so often compared to those of a gazelle, a delicate golden skin, and hair that – when not dyed with henna and twisted into an ugly elaboration of many short plaits – is usually arranged in a short fringe over the forehead, fine blue-black, and gently waving…’ Later their faces may be disfigured by scars from the disease known as Baghdad boil. And then their faces are tattooed…

Accommodation and ablutions were not to be envied. The houses were made of reeds, cemented with dung and mud. In one house he slept while ‘swarms of bats flitted among the dim columns above, casting huge upward shadows on the arch-tops.’ And in another village he lay down to sleep ‘with a buffalo at my head, her warm breath stirring my hair…’

Water buffaloes are the marsh-man’s economy and life revolves around them. Maintained for their milk and their dung – they drink the milk sour or as curds or make butter churned by swinging the milk rhythmically in the suspended and dried skin of a sheep or a still-born calf. Dung is used for fuel and water-proofing. Dung fire smoulders with a smoke dense, acrid and suffocating.  Men sit on the leeward side of the fire to avoid streaming eyes.

The buffaloes were well cared for, and ate green reed shoots – hashish, literally grass - at night.

Wild pig was the most common animal in the marshes: ‘… a raging tornado of slashing tusks that rip the flesh like knives and leave white bone open to the sky.’ If the victim fell on his back, he was likely to die if gored – suffering often fatal injury to face, throat and stomach; if he lay on his face, he just might have survived. Many villagers carried scars of past gorings.

 
Celebrations could involve weddings, engagements, dancing, and births. Sometimes celebrations got out of hand, such as letting off a great brass-bound muzzle-loading shot-gun, blasting at the ceiling of the house. ‘The report was followed by a long shower of broken reeds and debris; then, in a moment of dead silence, a large bat fell with a clang on to the coffee pots.’ Later, after more celebrating, the lantern was turned out, ‘and the fire became trodden under by the stamping feet, and the darkness was punctuated only by the flash of the guns, each followed by a spatter of loose fragments from above. When it was all over there were a great many holes in the roof, and everyone got rather wet during the night…’ But the celebrations had been a great success!
 
At the time, Iraqi national service was compulsory. They’d draft dodge by paying a neighbour to borrow a child who is obviously below the requisite age, and this child impersonated the boy called up. The recruiter accepted this; however, when he returned in two years’ time, when another child had been borrowed, sometimes the substitute child was even younger! ‘The official expresses wonder and amazement at the ingenuous Peter Pan, and a dispute begins’… which was resolved with a little money changing hands.
 
A fascinating book in many ways of a time gone by, written with an excellent style: ‘During the slow icy hours between midnight and dawn, hours when the brain may sometimes outrun the plodding of reason and escape from habitual and safe corridors of thought to catch perilous glimpses of truth, some part of me was trying to interpret and give meaning to my presence here in the night and the cold on the bank of a strange river.’
 
No need to ponder the reason for living; simply delve in and wonder at the hardship of the marsh Arabs of Iraq last century.
 
Maxwell died of cancer in 1965, aged 55.
 
Notes:
Maxwell’s book Lords of the Atlas: The Rise and Fall of the House of Glaoua, 1893-1956 (1966) is a fascinating look at the history and politics of Morocco during that period.

Wilfred Thesiger’s book Desert, Marsh and Mountain (1979) is a compilation of his travels and may be of interest to armchair explorers and travellers too.

FFB - Blood Lines

Originally published in 1995, Blood Lines by Ruth Rendell is sub-titled ‘Long and Short Stories’. It contains eleven stories, the title tale being a novella concerning her famous sleuth Inspector Wexford.

 

There is no previous publishing history for any of the tales, so presumably the stories were new for this collection.

‘Blood Lines’ is about a bloody murder of ‘an ideal husband’ with its fair share of suspects. The pleasure is in Rendell’s description, and her handling of Wexford: ‘A sheet of the corrugated iron that roofed it had come loose and clanged up and down rhythmically in the increasing wind. It was a dreary place. No visitor would have difficulty in believing a man had been clubbed to death there. Wexford remembered, with distaste, the little crowd which had gathered outside this gate during the previous week… hoping for happenings.’(p4)

We can forgive the switch of viewpoint to Burden at times, perhaps because we know these characters so well, they’re in our head. It’s more ‘tell’ than ‘show’ but that’s typical of this kind of crime story. An interesting tale in 39 pages.

Much shorter and quite slight are ‘Lizzie’s Lover’ – a dark underdeveloped psychological piece, ‘Shreds and Slivers’ – insanity with a play on words, and ‘The Carer’ – a nosy-parker who got more than she bargained expected.

‘Unacceptable Levels’ – is too short, mostly dialogue, a gem of an idea for murder involving nicotine.

‘In All Honesty’ is a clever treatment showing how even honest people can be destroyed by unfounded suspicion.

‘Burning End’ lays bare the put-upon daughter-in-law who looks after her husband’s mother while he and his brother don’t lift a finger. Tragic, but believable, with an ironic twist.

‘The Man Who Was the God of Love’ concerns Henry, who pretends to be something he is not; if he is found out, then the consequences could be dire. Another similar character is George in ‘Expectations’ who married for money, not love.

‘Clothes’ is about an obsession. Alison was driven to buy clothes. The rush of adrenalin only lasted as long as the actual purchase. Afterwards, she hated herself for giving in to the temptation. [You know, a similar urge regarding the purchase of books? Are they bought to read or just to possess, to fill up shelves? The former, I’m sure.] Sadly, for Alison, she rarely wore her new clothes. Rendell really gets under the skin of poor Alison.

The novella ‘The Strawberry Tree’ is about 82 pages and is for the most part a retrospective by Petra, reliving again her childhood on Majorca forty years ago. This is a cleverly set up intrigue. It would be unfair to reveal too much. There is a brooding menace about the tale, and the descriptive passages put the reader there. And of course her characterisation is excellent; at thirteen, Petra is lacking in confidence while her brother Piers ‘had all the gifts, looks, intellect, charm, simple niceness and, added to these, the generosity of spirit that should come from being favoured by the gods but often does not’(p143).  The story was filmed for TV in the Ruth Rendell Mysteries series starring Lisa Harrow and Simon Ward (1995, the year of publication!).  

 
A mixed bag, then – but worth reading for the Wexford, ‘Clothes’ and the novella.

PS - Considering that 'The Strawberry Tree' must have been under production at the time of publication or just before, it's quite possible that the least satisfying tales were included in order to get the book out, and indeed before they'd had a decent gestation period to evolve. Pure supposition, of course.

FFB – Blood of the Dragon Trees

Sales of Blood of the Dragon Tree have decreased in the last few months, which I find puzzling since it has picked up a good selection of favourable reviews.

They say never believe your own publicity, and that’s true enough. Yet when reviewers use phrases like ‘difficult to put down’, ‘excellent holiday read’, ‘a breathless read’, ‘well-drawn characters’, ‘evocative descriptions’, ‘felt like I had physically and emotionally travelled’, ‘add another layer’, ‘a memorable villainess’, ‘emotive and gripping thriller’, ‘stomach-churning danger’, and ‘a visual feast’ I have to wonder why the book is still not finding a bigger readership. [I write to be read, not to become rich].

This is a problem with any so-called mid-list author – finding a wider audience. Word-of-mouth isn’t working, maybe. And, to be fair, there are thousands of books out there to choose from, so why pick this one?

What’s the book about? It isn’t a fantasy and there are no dragons in it. It’s a romantic crime thriller. The blood and gore is minimal, but it isn’t a cozy crime book either. Certainly, the subject of people smuggling is ever-present in today's news reports, and the book reflects several aspects of this.

Crime on the sunny island of Tenerife. Something to do with dealing in the products from endangered species and people trafficking...

Laura Reid likes her new job on Tenerife, teaching the Spanish twins Maria and Ricardo Chávez. She certainly doesn’t want to get involved with Andrew Kirby and his pal, Jalbala Emcheta, who work for CITES, tracking down illegal traders in endangered species. Yet she’s undeniably drawn to Andrew, which is complicated, as she’s also attracted to Felipe, the brother of her widower host, Don Alonso.

Felipe’s girlfriend Lola is jealous and Laura is forced to take sides – risking her own life – as she and Andrew uncover the criminal network that not only deals in the products from endangered species, but also thrives on people trafficking. The pair are aided by two Spanish lawmen, Lieutenant Vargas of the Guardia Civil and Ruben Salazar, Inspector Jefe del Grupo de Homicidios de las Canarias.

Very soon betrayal and mortal danger lurk in the shadows, along with the dark deeds of kidnapping and clandestine scuba diving…

Here are samples from a selection of reviews, gleaned from Amazon UK, Amazon COM and newspapers:

1) Blood of the Dragon Trees is a fast paced thriller and a book that is difficult to put down… but it is the characters rather than the crime that stand out in this book…

 
2) What a fantastic fast-paced read this is! The plot twists and turns and keeps us guessing… Morton has cleverly illuminated this text with his knowledge of Tenerife and of Spanish. Yet he does not overwhelm the reader with these details. They just allow the story to seem more real…I actually read the book whilst staying on Tenerife. That probably enhanced my enjoyment of the novel - many of the places mentioned I knew from this visit… It certainly made this an excellent holiday read on this beauty-endowed island.
 
3) We are introduced to some colourful characters as the flavour and nature of the island is revealed, and the hint of romance hangs in the air…There is also something deliciously sensuous about the description of Senora Pineda, the cook, vigorously slicing open a fresh wholemeal roll, her pendulous chest and upper arms wobbling with the cutting motion. And when she lops off thin slivers of cucumber and places them on top of the cheese and tomato, why do I think of knives, and blood, and sliced flesh? This is vigorous, dramatic writing, and sends shivers down my spine. Another scene where Laura takes a bath is blissfully described. These gems give pause while the story races on, scene giving way to action-packed scene, where neither the characters nor the reader knows exactly what is happening or why. Despite the danger, with surprisingly little bloodshed, the Dragon Tree wins out, and the cleverly crafted story comes to a surprising but credible close. This is a breathless read - totally satisfying.

4) When Laura Reid, a linguist, comes to work for the Chavez family in Tenerife, she cannot imagine the terrifying twists and turns her life will take… crimes committed by the well-drawn characters on this seemingly peaceful and beautiful island. Lots of pace, a really good yarn and a skilfully painted picture of Tenerife made it an excellent read.

5) Visitors to the Island of Tenerife will recognise the beauty of the island in Morton's evocative descriptions of what the island has to offer to the tourist, but few, if any, will recognise the darker side so vividly portrayed in this novel… It is a fact that immigrants head for the Canary Islands from Africa, but here Morton has added spice to the tragedies that often unfold through people trafficking… Morton takes the story along at a fine pace, and readers of his past novels will not be disappointed in his narrative, his characterisation and careful plotting.

6) Mr. Morton’s skilful descriptions of the environment put the reader there, and his careful delineation and development of the characters lead to a thoroughly enjoyable read. There is romance, action, and danger as the novel carries the reader through more twists and turns than a roller-coaster. The reader journeys with Andrew, Laura, Felipe and others as the thieves, murderers, and kidnappers are hunted down. Morton drops clues for the perceptive reader along the way as to the identity of the mysterious “el Jefe” making Blood of the Dragon Tree a delightful, enriching, informative puzzle wrapped in mystery and intrigue… I felt like I had physically and emotionally travelled hand in hand with the characters through their arduous ordeals.

7) Set in Tenerife, a place I have visited several times, I hoped the author would be able to recreate the setting without giving it the feel of a travelogue. I needn't have worried. His clear knowledge of the place enables him to put the reader on the island without overdoing the settings in the slightest… The action is fast paced and the romantic elements don't slow this down, rather they add another layer to the intrigue. For those who like to try to guess who the bad people are while reading (like me) there are plenty of artfully placed clues and misdirection, which only become obvious towards the end of the novel. The crimes are appalling, the characters well-drawn and credible, and the settings superb. What more can I add, except this: go and buy a copy…

8) This book benefits from an exotic setting that may be new to many (as it was to me). This setting has a very strong bearing on the story line, including quite a few exciting chase scenes. The crimes that drive the plot are interesting and highly relevant to the world today. The characters have good depth, and there's a memorable villainess. There's no small measure of violence, but it's tempered in a rather surprising way. The story also has a strong romantic element.

9) Morton has woven a masterfully written fictional story based on these appalling facts - a thriller and romance rolled into one that draws you in with plenty of suspense and fast paced action. Each chapter ends with a hook leading you eagerly on to the next. The characters and all the location settings on the island are colourfully realised. The author, who clearly knows Tenerife well, gets it absolutely right. Not once did I feel that all the research that must have gone into writing such an emotive and gripping thriller becomes too obvious…

10) …The intense contrast between stomach-churning danger and the relief of rescue is terrific. And it doesn’t just happen once, either, so hang onto your hat. The story never lets up, but somehow finds time to immerse the reader in the beauty and atmosphere of Tenerife.

11) … Without ever falling into the trap of being a tourist guide of Tenerife, Morton's book offers the reader a visual feast, a detailed view of the island, its scenery, its people and its culture. For any Canary aficionados, this is a must… It's a well-constructed love story and thriller with plenty of suspense, false trails and derring-do. The bad people get their comeuppance, the good find the justice they seek, and love conquers all. And there's a final twist in the tail to tantalise the most critical reader. Well written, visually descriptive but fast-paced, this is a must for any holiday anywhere!

My sincere thanks to all the readers who have made the effort to review the book, many at such great length too. Your views are greatly appreciated!

 

 

Blood of the Dragon Trees – paperback and e-book

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

And if you like Blood of the Dragon Trees, you might also like Spanish Eye, 22 cases from Leon Cazador, half-English, half-Spanish private eye, 'in his own words'.

 

Spanish Eye - paperback and e-book

Amazon UK here

Amazon COM here

 

 

 

 

 

FFB - The Ghost

Robert Harris’ best-seller The Ghost (2007) gripped me from beginning to end. And what a beginning: ‘The moment I heard how McAra died I should have walked away. I can see that now.’

Mike McAra was the political friend and ghost writer of Adam Lang, Britain’s former prime minister. Sadly, McAra’s body was washed up on the American coast. So the unnamed narrator gets the job; it pays well, after all. He felt a slight unease about taking over from the dead man: ‘But I suppose that ghosts and ghost writers go naturally together.’

From that foreboding start, we get sucked in to the claustrophobic millionaire’s holiday home in Martha’s Vineyard, where the narrator meets Lang and his wife Ruth, the devoted fixer, Amelia and assorted bodyguards.

 

The style is deceptively easy, laced with humour, and the odd dash of cynicism and irony. The fictitious publishing company who paid the advance is Rhinehart. It ‘consisted of five ancient firms acquired during a vigorous bout of corporate kleptomania in the nineties. Wrenched out of their Dickensian garrets in Bloomsbury, upsized, downsized, rebranded, renamed, reorganised, modernised and merged, they had finally been dumped in Hounslow…’

The book is set very close to 2007, when Al Qaeda terrorist bombings are not only a real threat, but actual occurrences. There are questions being asked about the extraordinary rendition of four British citizens from Pakistan to Guantanamo Bay, and the use of waterboarding to torture prisoners. The ex-PM is accused of committing an illegal international act, namely authorising the abduction of those four men. So he is being hidden away in Martha’s Vineyard in order to complete his memoires. [Echoes resonate even now, as British so-called IS terrorists are vaporised by a drone’s missiles.]

‘Heathrow the next morning looked like one of those bad science fiction movies set in the near future after the security forces have taken over the state. Two armoured personnel carriers were parked outside the terminal. A dozen men with Rambo machine guns and bad haircuts patrolled inside…’(p41)

Harris is a good observer, giving us splendid description and can turn a good phrase. For example: ‘New England is basically Old England on steroids – wider roads, bigger woods, larger spaces; even the sky seemed huge and glossy.’ (p48) Another excellent example: ‘… passed a marker buoy at the entrance to the channel swinging frantically this way and that as if it was trying to free itself from some underwater monster. Its bell tolled in time with the waves like a funeral chime and the spray flew as vile as witch’s spit.’ (p50)

And he’s not without his humour, either: The bar ‘was decorated to look like the kind of place Captain Ahab might fancy dropping into after a hard day at the harpoon. The seats and tables were made out of old barrels. There were antique seine nets …’ (p95)

 
Insightful writing, too. Read this passage – ‘… it’s curious how helicopter news shots impart to even the most innocent activity the dangerous whiff of criminality.’ – and wonder about the heavy-handed police raid on Sir Cliff Richards’ house, which happened several years later than the publication of this book.
 
Writers too will empathise with the narrator, for obvious reasons: ‘Of all human activities, writing is the one for which it is easiest to find excuses not to begin – the desk’s too big, the desk’s too small, there’s too much noise, there’s too much quiet, it’s too hot, it’s too cold…’ (p180)

Those excerpts give you a little flavour, anyway. The Ghost is well written, in turns amusing, witty, thoughtful and incisive concerning the corruption of power. Despite the fact that we know there wasn’t a prime minister called Adam Lang, his wife Ruth etc., the first person narrative manages to suspend disbelief.

 
If you enjoy the drip-feed of tension rising towards paranoia, then you’ll appreciate this skilfully written novel.

Some of the paperback’s review quotes seem adrift. ‘An unputdownable thriller about corrupt power and sex…’ – the sex is minimal and not graphic in the slightest: the door stays closed.

‘Guaranteed to keep you awake and chuckling after dinner.’ – Does the reviewer usually sleep during dinner? It has many amusing asides and one-liners (as hinted at above), but it isn’t a comedy.

‘… satirical thriller…’ – The thriller elements are minimal, and only evident towards the end. It’s more psychological suspense up to that point.

 
‘Truly thrilling.’ – No, it isn’t. It is tense, however, and most convincing, with an excellent twist at the end.

Highly recommended.

FFB: The Casebook of Solar Pons

This is the fourth of six Pinnacle paperback books concerning the private enquiry agent Solar Pons, penned by August Derleth.  This collection was copyright 1965, my Pinnacle paperback published April 1975. There are eleven ‘adventures’, previously published in The Saint Mystery Magazine (extinct) or Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine (still publishing!) in the 1960s.

The Solar Pons creation by Derleth was in response to the absence of any new Sherlock Holmes adventures from the pen of Conan Doyle. His first Pons adventure was published in 1928 (See an earlier blog here). Conan Doyle died in 1930. These pastiches closely resemble the Holmes canon, though are not slavish copies; Pons is his own man, and he has his own chronicler, Lyndon Parker, M.D. This collection also contains a fictional biography of Parker. I find these faux biographies fascinating and indeed have created several for my characters in the Tana Standish psychic spy series! [See also the note at the end.]

 

The adventures in this collection tend to occur in the 1920s or 1930s – no specific dates are provided. An attempt at creating a chronology of the Pons adventures is published in The Reminiscences of Solar Pons (1961). So whereas Holmes was an investigator knocking on the door of the twentieth century, Pons seems to be a twentieth century enquiry agent harking back to the nineteenth, in mannerism and style, and this treatment tends to work.

Derleth delighted in blending fact and fiction. Brief mention is made of Carnacki the ghost finder (an occult detective creation of William Hope Hodgson, 1912; indeed, Derleth published the Carnacki stories in a 1948 collection.) Parker has a liking for Sax Rhomer’s Fu Manchu stories. And Pons’ foil, Scotland Yard Inspector Seymour Jamison, makes use of a pathologist, the famous Bernard Spilsbury. Other familiar characters who crop up are Pons’ long-suffering landlady, Mrs Johnson, Pons’ brother Bancroft who works in the Foreign Office, and Constable Meeker.

The story titles emulate those of the Holmes canon: ‘The Adventure of…’ the Sussex Archers, the Haunted Library, the Fatal Glance, the Intarsia Box, the Spurious Tamerlane, the China Cottage, the Ascot Scandal, the Crouching Dog, the Missing Huntsman, the Whispering Knights, the Amateur Philologist, the Innkeeper’s Clerk.

Parker’s writing style is in the same vein as the estimable Dr Watson. And at times, his description leaps off the page: ‘It came with startling suddenness when the hounds gave tongue. An instant later the cry “Gone away!” rang forth, and the field plunged forward. The hounds boiled out over the moor, their music ringing wild on the wind. From Huntsman to field and back among the other members the cry was passed that a dog-fox had been viewed, the hounds were hot on his scent.’ – ‘The Adventure of the Missing Huntsman’

Mysterious deaths in closed rooms, savage death at the claws of a beast, identity switching, people who are not what they seem – Derleth runs the gamut of twists and turns in these clever sleuthing short tales. If you have never read Solar Pons and hanker after Sherlock Holmes, then treat yourself, read a Solar Pons story or two; they’ll bring a smile of recognition together with great pleasure. Nobody else has written such a sustained sequence of Holmes pastiches. They’re a delight.

Note: If you’re interested in biographies of fictional characters, try Imaginary People, a who’s who of modern fictional characters (1987) by David Pringle. Then there are these books, too: The Life and Times of Horatio Hornblower by C. Northcote Parkinson (1970), Biggles, the authorised Biography (1978) and James Bond: the authorised biography of 007 (1973), both by John Pearson, Tarzan Alive: a definitive biography of Lord Greystoke (1972) and Doc Savage: his apocalyptic life both (1973) by Philip José Farmer.

FFB - Post Mortem

In 1994, when I read this first outing (1990) of Chief Medical Examiner of Richmond, Virginia, Dr Kay Scarpetta, I couldn’t have known that there would be 23 books in the series (and still counting), the latest being Depraved Heart (2015).

Scarpetta is also a lawyer and a consultant for the FBI. The books are littered with all sorts of fascinating behind the scenes forensic activity, anticipating the successful TV series C.S.I. by ten years. So if you’re into such things as analyzing photos, evidence samples, and the study of the time of death, you’ll enjoy a lot of the detail that goes into the development of Scarpetta’s investigations. As the series progresses, Scarpetta builds up a number of intriguing relationships: her niece Lucy, an FBI intern , Benton Wesley a FBI colleague and romantic interest, and Pete Marino a detective, among others.

Post Mortem concerns a serial killer who is on the loose, three women having been brutalised and strangled in their bedrooms, the deaths particularly gruesome. While Detective Marino comes across as a bit of a slob, there grows between him and Scarpetta a mutual respect as they begin to hunt down the killer. The wealth of detail about the pathologist’s research is never heavy-handed, the supplemental characters are interesting, and Scarpetta’s humanity well matches Marino’s cynicism. To compound matters, she has to combat male chauvinism and, worse, somebody has broken into her office computer system and she is being blamed for leaks to the press!

Suspenseful and well written. By now of course Cornwell is a legend among crime writers. This is where it all began.

PS – I never knew she was a descendant of abolitionist and writer Harriet Beecher Stowe (source: Wikipedia).

FFB - Perfect Cover

It seemed that Perfect Cover, co-authored by Linda Chase and Joyce St George, published in 1994, promised to be the first in a series, but that didn’t happen.

The events in this book are inspired by actual experiences and cases that Joyce St. George encountered during her six years as the first female special investigator for the Special State Prosecutor, an arm of the NY State Attorney General’s office: to investigate and prosecute cases of corruption and brutality within the criminal justice system of New York city. An interesting mix of third and first person narratives is deployed so we can get inside other characters’ heads as well as that of tough sexy half-Puerto Rican Tina Paris.

Tina is trying to nail a nasty piece of work, police officer Calvert, while a nameless psycho picks up young women and plays Russian roulette with a revolver while raping them… Inevitably, a woman is killed.

The in-depth description of Tina’s work undercover, the frustrations of police duty, the prevarications of witnesses frightened for their lives, and the dedication of many NY cops, add to a fast-paced story where many threads come together in a suspense-filled denouement.

 

FFB - Good Omens

Good Omens was co-written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and originally published in 1990. It may seem apt to post this review since Sir Terry Pratchett has recently died. I reviewed this in 1990 when it came out in paperback:

‘I’ve enjoyed Gaiman’s writing for DC Comics, and of course love Pratchett’s Discworld books, and pleasure of pleasures, the combination works well.

‘It’s an Omen spoof, where the anti-Christ child ends up with the wrong parents. Aziraphale is the sort-of good angel (and part-time rare-book dealer who teams up with the sort-of bad Crowley (‘an angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards’). They get together to prevent the imminent Armageddon (next Saturday, apparently) because they like the status quo just as it is.

‘There are many amusing scenes, from the absent-minded evil nuns at the baby hospital to the Four Apocalyptic Horsepersons vying with some Hell’s Angels no less. The humans are an even stranger lot, which is to be expected, I suppose.

‘It’s daft, lovely, full of compassion and cleverly done Just Williamesque kids whose logic is priceless. If William Brown had ever been considered the son of the devil by all those poor folk who suffered in his books, then they’d be surprised at how his alter ego (Adam, the anti-Christ!) turns out.’

This was Gaiman’s debut as a novelist, though he had already gained a large readership through the medium of comics. Since then of course he has written seven books, some collaborations and won several awards.