Jodi Taylor - A Symphony of Echoes

 

 Rating: 5/5

Review:

Thoroughly enjoyable

 

I thoroughly enjoyed A Symphony Of Echoes. It is the second in the St. Mary’s Chronicles and Jodi Taylor really hits her stride here. All the elements we love are here: real wit and genuine humour, excellent historical research, well drawn characters and, of course, Max’s completely engaging narrative voice.

I liked the first book in the series but this seems to me to be a significant improvement. For one thing, the historical missions, to Nineveh and to the court of Mary, Queen of Scots at a pivotal moment in history which will determine whether she or Elizabeth will become queen of England are considerably more interesting that the trips to dinosaurs and pre-history. Plus, the mayhem created by Conor and the threat to St. Mary’s itself continues and is genuinely tense. Max’s character is better rounded here and while the passionate nature of her on/off relationship continues, the ultra-graphic how-many-fingers-went-in-where descriptions are, thankfully, absent – which for me made it all much more convincing and compelling.

A description of this series sounds like something I would normally avoid, but I’m very pleased to say that I’m loving it and I shall continue to visit St. Mary’s with great pleasure. Warmly recommended.

Dorothy L. Sayers - Busman's Honeymoon

 

Rating: 5/5

Review:

An immense pleasure

 

Busman’s Honeymoon remains a very fine novel and a terrific read from the Golden Age. It is the fourth in the sequence featuring both Harriet Vane and Lord Peter Wimsey; it can be read as a stand-alone, but I strongly recommend that you read Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night before this. (It won’t be any hardship whatsoever.)

Here, Peter and Harriet finally get married and there is a delightful epistolary opening from a wide variety of correspondents in which we get the story of the wedding and which shows Sayers’s brilliance as a writer. It then reverts to third person narrative, largely from Harriet’s point of view, in which (of course) a body is discovered at their newly-bought home in Hertfordshire and the solution of the case is intertwined with an examination of their developing relationship.

It is, for the most part, quite brilliantly done. The story is cleverly but fairly plotted and Sayers’s insight into her characters is remarkable, I think. It does have its little flaws; there is some rather annoying quotation-mongering between Peter and the police superintendent, a good deal of untranslated French in places and some of the inevitable snobbery of the period, but, at least 25 years since I last read it, it remains an immense pleasure. Very warmly recommended.

Sarah Winman - A Year Of Marvellous Ways

 

 Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me

I'm afraid I found this book pretty hard going. I wanted to like it, but in the end I didn't find it nearly as profound or beautiful as it thinks it is.

The story is really about the healing of broken lives and spirits. It concerns Francis Drake, a war-damaged ex-soldier in 1947, who returns to England and, by various means, ends up living in an isolated Cornish river inlet with 89-year-old Marvellous Ways, a wise old woman with considerable Second Sight and a Story Of Her Own needing resolution. Their two life histories emerge slowly in the narrative, as do those of two other characters who appear later, as they all strive for healing and hope in the semi-magical landscape and in the wisdom and insight of Marvellous Ways.

This is a perfectly decent basis for a story and character study. I am in sympathy with its message of finding the depth in things, finding the depth in yourself and putting that depth into what you say and do. I have spent a lot of time in Cornwall and in its more secret places, and I think it truly is a healing, almost magical place. All of this should have made me like this book a lot, but I'm sorry to say that I don't think it is well enough done to make it really work.

The book is written in heightened language almost throughout, which may be an appropriate idea but doesn't quite succeed. I began to feel as though I was wading through treacle after a while, with lots of bits like this, for example: "The hamlet was eerily deserted. It was so quiet he could hear the mercury drop in that still air of yesteryear." This sounds very atmospheric and profound, but "hear the mercury drop"? I know it's not to be taken literally, but it's pushing hyper-reality a bit far for me. Or this, later on: "...then a shyness took hold, a shyness so acute that at the height of summer even her shadow refused to go out and play." It's intended to be profound and evocative, but I'm afraid I just found it strained and a bit silly.

I found this a lot, with a great deal of rather mannered Fine Writing but a content which shifts, disperses and often vanishes as you look at it. It isn't helped by Marvellous telling her stories at length in a voice isn't that of a woman born in 1858 and speaking in 1947, but the author's own, modern, Fine Writing, narrative voice, which threw me further out of the story.

I'm sorry to be grumpy about this book. There's more I could say about anachronisms and use of language, but I'll stop. I really thought there was lots of Style here but a good deal less insight than meets the eye, and that the style itself was mannered and, in the end, rather irritating. I know that we are supposed to find books like this Beautiful, Profound And Uplifting, but I didn't, and had to slog my way to the (rather predictable) end. Others may enjoy this more than I did, but personally I can't recommend it.

Peter James - Dead Simple

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me 

 

I’m afraid that Dead Simple wasn’t for me. It’s competently written (but no more than that) and has a potentially interesting plot driver, but I found it unengaging and ultimately silly.

The basic idea is well explained in the publisher’s blurb (and in many hundreds of reviews). It’s a bit implausible but I was prepared to go with it for a decent story...but I didn’t really get one. I found Grace an unlikely and uninteresting protagonist, the plot and prose a bit plodding and some of the developments very unlikely. I stuck with it for a good while, but when it came to a medium using paranormal powers to solve the case I gave up. There really are limits and for me the paranormal as deus ex machina is several steps too far.

Plenty of people have enjoyed this, but I’m afraid I really didn’t.

Michael Rosen - Many Different Kinds Of Love

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

Involving and moving 

I thought Many Different Kinds Of Love was excellent. It’s not just that we all love Michael Rosen and are delighted that he didn’t die of Covid – it really is a very fine, involving an often moving account of his time in hospital, his (continuing) recovery and the aftermath of his illness.

Much of the book is in the form of prose-poems about Michael’s experience. Many are reflective but they are also brilliantly descriptive and capture the essence of extraordinary moments and periods, like this brief one:

“A doctor is standing by my bed

asking me if I would sign a piece of paper

which would allow them to put me to sleep

and pump air into my lungs.

‘Will I wake up?’‘There’s a 50: 50 chance.’

‘If I say no?’I say.

‘Zero.’

And I sign.”

The early part of the book covers a time when Michael was unconscious much of the time and it consists largely of emails from family and others (especially Michael’s wife Emma, a quiet heroine of this story) and a Patient Journal with contributions form those who looked after him in Intensive Care and hovering on the edge of death for weeks. Individually, they are charming and quite touching, but taken as a whole I found the unfailing and genuine care, encouragement and sincere affection from so many people (coming from so many prts of the world) extremely moving. As Michael later says:

“Why did these strangers try so hard

to keep me alive?

It’s a kindness I can hardly grasp.”

Michael’s descriptions and reflections are vivid and thoughtful, and they give an exceptional and, for me, utterly gripping picture of his experience. It isn’t a long book, but it conveyed more than many books several times its length. Everyone should read this; it’s wholly involving and very illuminating account of what Covid really means and the immensity of the human spirit which is standing up to it.

(My thanks to Penguin for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Dorothy L. Sayers - Have His Carcase

 

Rating: 4/5

Review:

Very good, but not Sayers's absolute best

 

It is many years since I last read Have His Carcase; it has held up very well in the intervening decades but it does have it’s flaws, I think.

This effectively follows on from Strong Poison, with Harriet Vane taking a holiday in Devon to recover from her ordeal and to write a new mystery. During a solitary walk she discovers a corpse with his throat cut by a razor, which the police regard as a clear case of suicide. However, she has her doubts and Peter Wimsey soon appears to help to unravel the complex riddle which begins to emerge.

It’s a classic Sayers mystery, full of wit, erudition and immensely enjoyable prose. As always, she paints both her setting and her characters very vividly (and sometimes rather acidly in the case of characters she dislikes) and her structure is ingenious and fairly done, so that when the critical piece falls into place we can see the evidence having been present throughout rather than it being a convenient disclosure at the last minute.

For much of its length, this is a five-star read for me, principally for the sheer pleasure of reading Sayers’s prose, but there are some longeurs. We spend a great deal of time examining possibilities which are then discarded, which became just a little tedious – and to be informed after several hundred pages of this that Wimsey sees that “every theory he had so far formed about the case was utterly and madly wide of the mark” felt somewhat disheartening. There is also a lengthy chapter in which Harriet and Peter crack a tough code in which Sayers takes us through the process in minute and forensic detail. Although I found the general idea very interesting, that level of analysis palled fairly quickly and became a bit like watching someone else solve a sudoku puzzle – not something I like to spend a long time doing.

A little judicious skimming took care of all this very well, but it did rather take the gloss off for me. It’s perhaps not one of Sayers’s absolute best, but it’s still very enjoyable indeed and warmly recommended.

 

Tom Bradby - Triple Cross

 

Rating: 4/5

Review:

A decent spy thriller

 

 Triple Cross, like its two predecessors, is a decent spy thriller but I do have my reservations. I would suggest that you read Secret Service and Double Agent before this one as there is a lot of back story and it will make far better sense.

Having left MI6 ignominiously, Kate Henderson is dragged back into spying to try to identify a mole at the heart of British Intelligence and to prove whether or not the Prime Minister is a Russian agent. This involves a lot of soul searching and examination of her priorities, along with some active espionage work in London, Prague and Moscow and it’s pretty well done in general. There are some good action sequences and a comprehensible plot, so it makes a decent read much of the time.

Tom Bradby writes pretty well and the cliché count is considerably reduced in this instalment, I’m glad to say. I did find some of the travelogue aspects very drawn out (OK, Tom, I get it – you’ve been to Prague and done your research!) and there are a couple of wholly gratuitous sex scenes which I could have done without. I also found that the considerable time devoted to Kate’s personal life became rather tedious, partly because I don’t find Bradby’s characters – including Kate – entirely convincing. I had also suspected the Shocking Denouement for some time before it was revealed.

Nonetheless, this is a very acceptable holiday read and I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because 3 would be churlish and a little unfair.

William McIlvanney - Strange Loyalties

 

 Rating: 4/5

Review:

Good but slightly hard going sometimes

Strange Loyalties is very good, but somewhat different in tone and style from the first two Laidlaw books and for me it wasn’t quite as effective.

Laidlaw is taking a week off to privately investigate the death of his brother, who was killed in a road accident. He doesn’t so much want to prove that it wasn’t an accident as to understand who his brother was and why he behaved so strangely in the months leading up to his death. His enquiries become entangled with a police investigation into gangland crime and rather an involved story gradually unfurls.

 

McIlvanney was a brilliant writer, which is well in evidence here. However, rather than a crime novel with a moral and philosophical bent as the first two are, this is more of a moral and philosophical novel with some crime as a driver. This means that we get a great deal of Laidlaw’s (i.e. McIlvanney’s) philosophical musings which, without the dilution of a crime plot, can get a bit much at times. Here’s a typical paragraph:

“To pretend that subjective conviction is objective truth, without testing it against the constant daily witness of experience, is to abdicate from living seriously. The mind becomes self-governing and the world is left to chaos. That way, you don’t discover truth, you invent it. The invention of truth, no matter how desperately you wish it to be or how sincerely you believe in the benefits it will bring, is the denial of our nature, the first rule of which is the inevitability of doubt. We must doubt not only others but also ourselves.”

Now, that’s really good, not to mention very timely at the moment, but there’s so much of this kind of thing that I could have done with just a bit more novel and a bit less philosophy to make it a more balanced read. This could just be me and it’s still a very good book, but for me it’s not quite in the same league as its predecessors.

Genevieve Cogman - The Invisible Library

 

Rating: 1/5

 

Review:

Not for me

I’m afraid this really wasn’t for me. I tried it because of a recommendation from a friend whose judgement I trust, but this time we simply disagree.

The set-up is well explained in the publisher’s blurb. “Librarians” in the eponymous library, which exists out of time, travel to different parallel worlds to collect books. This is hazardous and involves confrontations with every imaginable mythical creature: dragons, vampires, necromancers and other magicians of all kinds...you name it. Despite the bibliographical context, which should have been a big plus for me, I found it messy, full of cliché and, I’m sorry to say, rather clunkily written. There seemed to be little coherent structure to Cogman’s world(s) and the convenient Language to solve every peril was...well, too convenient to be interesting or exciting.

Frankly, this struck me more like a video game with a rather random sequence of scenes of peril than a well structured and well written novel. I read as much as I could stomach and gave up. I’m sorry to be so critical, but I really didn’t like it.

Jane Casey - The Killing Kind

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

A very enjoyable thriller 

I enjoyed The Killing Kind; it is well written and a much classier psychological thriller than most. In general this is not a genre I’m keen on but I made an exception for Jane Casey whose other work I have liked very much, and I’m glad I did.

It’s a good, if slightly well worn set-up: Ingrid Lewis is a barrister who has been stalked by a former client, the incredibly creepy and threatening John Webster whom she helped to be acquitted of another stalking offence. After a spell in prison, Webster is out and sinister things begin happening which she is convinced are his doing, but there isn’t any evidence to allow the police to act so she has to take things into her own hands…

So far, so familiar. However, Jane Casey is a really good writer who brilliantly conveys the oppressive fear of being stalked and who structures and paces her plot extremely well. Ingrid’s work as a barrister is also excellently portrayed (although it does seem to be rather forgotten in the second half of the book). There are some surprising revelations but the are very neatly and quite plausibly done, avoiding the clumsy Incredible Twists which usually annoy me badly in books of this kind. These aspects make this several cuts above the average and I became completely hooked for a long period.

It’s not perfect; I was happy to allow some implausibilities for the sake of a good story and Casey does manage the inevitable Intelligent Person Doing Very Foolish Things aspects of the story very well, but one or two incidents and the ending did stretch credibility a little too far for me. Nonetheless, I thought this was gripping, extremely well written and very enjoyable. Recommended.

(My thanks to HarperCollins for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Jodi Taylor - Just One Damned Thing After Another

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review: 

Very enjoyable 

 

I enjoyed Just One Damned Thing After Another a lot. I’ve come to this series late after a recommendation and I’ll certainly be reading more.

The plot is very well summarised in the publisher’s blurb – and could have been awful but certainly isn’t. Time-travelling through history wouldn’t normally get me rushing to read a book, but this has an excellent narrative voice in Max (Dr. Madeleine Maxwell) and an excellent balance of wit, intelligence, suspense, imagination and genuine historical interest. Jodi Taylor writes very well, I found myself very invested in Max’s fate and I enjoyed most of the book very much indeed.

It’s not perfect. I could have done without a rather graphic and gratuitous sex scene, some of the come-uppances were a bit over-staged and convenient and so on, but overall I thought it was a great read. I’m looking forward to more.