Elizabeth Peters - The Mummy Case

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Great fun

This is terrific fun. Elizabeth Peters writes extremely well and her mock-Victorian adventure is amusing and rather gripping. Set in the mid-1890s, Egyptologists Amelia Peabody, her husband Emerson and their disturbingly but amusingly precocious young son Ramses set out for Egypt, where they become embroiled in a mystery involving the theft of antiquities, murder and a Sinister Master Criminal.

The plot is slightly silly but involving enough, and anyway it’s not the point here. The pleasure of the book is in Peters’s writing, which is a very entertaining parody of a Rider Haggard-style ripping yarn. Narrated in the first person by Amelia, we see her fabulous self-delusion but also her genuine intelligence and passion for Egyptian antiquities. Peters herself was an Egyptologist so the archaeological background is accurate and rather interesting, the prose is a joy and the whole thing is thoroughly enjoyable.

Not a classic of detective fiction, but a Jolly Good Read and I’ll be trying more of this series for sure.

Ivo van Vulpen - How To Find A Higgs Boson

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Enjoyable and rewarding

I enjoyed How To Find A Higgs Boson. It was a bit slow to get going for me, but the later chapters were excellent.

Ivo van Vulpen is a working physicist who was a part of the team at CERN which confirmed the existence of the Higgs boson, so he knows what he’s talking about. He also writes well (and has chosen a good translator in David McKay) so the book is both accurate and readable. I did find the early chapters a little discursive and off the point, delving into the history of physics, back to Faraday’s work on electromagnetic induction. Some of this is necessary for context, of course, but there have been a great many excellent books on all this and I could have done with a slightly more truncated and tightly focused approach.

Around half way, though, things got really interesting with van Vulpen’s excellent descriptions of the intricate, complex processes involved in the CERN project and also his obvious love for and pride in the whole enterprise. Perhaps a few pages on how the results are analysed statistically to a level which could be considered proof isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this section fascinating throughout, and also the final chapter on what we still don’t understand and how physicists are trying to tackle these difficult questions.

I have some knowledge of physics which certainly helped, but I think this would be suitable for a non-scientist who is willing to put in a bit of brainwork. Van Vulpen keeps the mathematics to a minimum and the rewards are well worth the effort. It’s a readable, enjoyable and rewarding book which I can recommend.

(My thanks to Yale University Press for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Carol O'Connell - Mallory's Oracle

Rating: 3/5

Review:
Not a great Mallory book

I’ve read several of the later books in this series and thought they were terrific. This one, the opener, didn’t work so well for me.

Carol O’Connell’s excellent prose style is already there, but I found the narrative a bit cumbersome and opaque. The plot is scattered with characters and is pretty hard to follow in places, and even by the end I wasn’t sure exactly what had happened in some places. More importantly, Mallory worked brilliantly for me in the later books as a fully formed character – beautiful, extremely intelligent and bordering on psychopathic. In Mallory’s Oracle we get a lengthy explanation of her origins and the development of her character which I found a little laboured.

On the whole I’m glad I didn’t start with this; I might not have read more and I would have missed out on some excellent books. I’ll be catching up on the rest of my unread books in the series, but this wasn’t a favourite by any means.

Janet Evanovich - Twisted Twenty-Six

Rating: 5/5

Review:
As good as ever

Twisted Twenty-Six is a Stephanie Plum book and it’s as good as ever. That’s probably all that need be said, but to elaborate slightly:

The plot is, as always, silly but exciting and enjoyable. This time, Grandma Mazur has got herself involved with the mob, who believe that she has some very precious keys and are determined to get them back. Stephanie only totals one car, but otherwise all the things we know and love are present and correct: she has the hots for both Morelli and Ranger, both of whom have reciprocal hots. Lula is magnificently outrageous, as is Grandma Mazur in a completely different way, and there are regular laugh-out-loud moments.

Twisted Twenty-Six is, in short, exciting, funny and hugely enjoyable. Of course it is; you don’t need my recommendation – just read it and give yourself a treat.

Anthony Berkeley - The Poisoned Chocolates Case

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Hugely enjoyable

This is a hugely enjoyable Golden Age mystery, in which Anthony Berkeley both produces an excellent puzzle and satirizes the very form he is using.

The set-up is that a group of six well-to-do amateur sleuths in 1930s London – authors, a barrister and so on – who have crime as a hobby, all attempt to solve a murder which Has The Police Baffled. The entire book is composed of an exposition of the crime and then the six attempts to identify the murderer, each one resembling the scene at the end of a story in which the Great Detective gathers the suspects together to reveal their own brilliance and (often almost incidentally to that) the identity of the murderer. It’s beautifully done, with witty, elegant prose and some wry skewering of both personalities and that style of crime story. I found touches of Dorothy L. Sayers and Margery Allingham in the prose and characterisation, which is very high praise.

Although it is perhaps just a little laboured in places, I thought this was a real treat. Warmly recommended.

Alexander Starritt - We Germans

Rating: 4/5

Review:
Engrossing and thoughtful

We Germans is a thoughtful and involving book from an unusual and revealing perspective. It is in the form of a letter from a German veteran of the Eastern Front in the Second World War, responding to his British grandson’s questions about the war. He concentrates on a period of just a few days in autumn 1944 when the long, ruinous retreat from Russia has turned into an undignified, exhausted, straggling scramble to evade the pursuing Russian forces. There are reminiscences and digressions which create a context and also some interventions from the grandson, but this is chiefly a stark, human portrait of defeat, the realisation that he has been fighting for something fundamentally wrong and his attempt to resolve and come to terms with his part in what has happened.

I found it readable and gripping, and also quite profound in places. The handful of main characters are convincing and human, as is their interaction with each other. There are some scenes of real horror and Alexander Starritt evokes very well the revulsion but also, after nearly four years of fighting, the jaded acceptance of his narrator. His analysis of the lack of guilt but sense of genuine shame is very shrewd, I think, as is his discussion of whether having fought for Germany under the Nazis automatically makes one an evil person. These are complex and nuanced questions which are too often seen as simple binary moral issues and I think Starritt brings a wider, thoughtful perspective to the questions.

I did find the interventions from the grandson a distraction and rather a clumsy, unnecessary device – although his thoughts on dealing with his mixed heritage are interesting and worthwhile. In spite of this, I found We Germans a very engrossing read which has left me wiser than I was, I think. Slightly flawed, but still very good and recommended.

(My thanks to John Murray for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Hank Green - An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Thoughtful and involving

I thought An Absolutely Remarkable Thing was excellent. This was something of a surprise because I am, shall we say, cautious about novels featuring aliens. However, although non-terrestrial entities are the driver of the book, it is chiefly about internet fame and its effects and also about the way in which major or unexpected events can both unite and divide people as opinions polarize on the internet.

Narrated in the first person by April May, a 23-year-old designer in New York who discovers what seems to be a new work of art on the sidewalk at about 3.00am one morning. She posts a video about it on the internet and as it becomes clear that this is a highly significant global event, she becomes extremely famous (and wealthy) very quickly. What follows is a brilliantly readable account of developments and particularly the effect on April, her attempts to create and control her internet persona in order to do good and bring harmony, and a very shrewd analysis of the darker conspiracy theorists who, with a variety of motives spread fear and division.

It all sounds pretty familiar stuff, but I found April’s voice very refreshing, it’s plausible and excellently paced so I wanted to keep reading and Hank Green’s take on both fame and the tribalism which can take over debate is thoughtful, penetrating and has real resonance with some recent political events. The ending leaves much unresolved and looks as though it’s setting up at least one sequel. Personally, I rather like the inconclusiveness, but I’ll read the next part for sure.

Rather against my expectations, I can recommend this very warmly.

Tim Dorsey - Clownfish Blues

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Another Serge treat

Clownfish Blues is another hugely enjoyable episode in the Serge Storms saga. The plot this time (as though it matters) involves lottery scams and faked TV “news” in which, needless to say, Serge and Coleman brilliantly and hilariously dispose of the scumbags and various Bad Guys while, of course, manically pursuing Florida’s diverse history. For example, Serge insists on visiting Sopchoppy:

“This place is so remote and tiny, yet has all kinds of bonus feaures as both the self-proclaimed ‘music capital of North Florida’ and ‘earthworm harvesting capital’ of the whole state. That is a bold range of culture.”

With Tim Dorsey’s enthusiastic research and compelling, madcap storytelling and a welcome return of a couple of characters from Shark Skin Suite, this is another very funny and involving read. Very warmly recommended.