Ethel Lina White - Fear Stalks The Village

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Enjoyable after a slow start 

 

 I enjoyed this crime classic from 1932, although the beginning was a bit of a struggle.

The story is set in an apparently “perfect” English village, in which wealthy people keep immaculate houses, live blameless, impeccably tasteful lives and have diligent, contented servants. The anonymous letters begin to be received, threatening to expose “scandalous” secrets from people’s pasts, and the life of the village, and the peace of mind of its inhabitants is slowly undermined as suspicion and fear grow and death follows. Eventually, Ignatius Brown, a wealthy city-dweller, amateur sleuth and friend of the Rector, is invited to the village to try to solve the problem.

The start was pretty stodgy, with a clumsy device of a visiting writer having everybody pointed out and explained to her, then making up a “joky” list of scandals for each of the inhabitants...and never being seen again. I also found Ethel Lina White’s laying on the “perfection” with a trowel got a bit much; I know she was trying to paint and then undermine a picture of middle-class self-satisafction, but it was overdone for me and I found it hard to identify with. I also found her personification of Fear rather a crude, unconvincing device.

However, once things began to happen and Ignacius’s investigations began, I enjoyed the book very much. White wrote very well and there are some very shrewd barbs and insights into an “ideal” place where anything remotely unpleasant, unsightly or innovative are seen as intolerable – or deliberately not seen at all. There are some witty scenes and one or two rather touching ones, and some thoughtful characterisation, all of which I enjoyed very much. The denouement and explanation may seem a little full of very dated psychological ideas to the modern reader, but I was happy to take that in my stride.

So, after an unpromising start, this turned out to be a well-written mystery and an interesting view of the period. 3.5 stars rounded up, and recommended.

Julian Barnes - Elizabeth Finch

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not really a novel 

 

Elizabeth Finch turned into something of a tedious slog for me.

The book begins with a portrait of an inspirational teacher and scholar, the eponymous “EF”. When Neil, the narrator, is left all EF’s papers in her will, he tries to form a view of her and to “honour” her by producing a dissertation on Julian The Apostate, whom EF plainly found fascinating. This “essay” makes up the middle third of the book and is an undiluted scholarly treatise. The framing sections begin by introducing EF very well, but deliberately leave her as an enigma so the character really becomes a mouthpiece for some recondite quotations and a lot of Julian Barnes’s aphorisms.

As a dissertation it’s well written and plainly very well researched, with some reflections on the unreliability of history, the sometimes crushing dominance of Christianity on European thought since Julian’s time, theological and philosophical discussions and so on. However, if that’s what I’d wanted, I’d have read a scholarly work on Julian. I’m all for intellectual rigour and serious thought and ideas in novels, but I do want them to be novels. This dresses itself up as one, but it isn’t really. I had the distinct feeling (as I sometimes have before in Julian Barnes’s work) that he crossed the line from intellectual depth to plain showing off, and that the character of EF is often just a vehicle for that.

A friend of mine has said that she finds Barnes’s novels “self-important for no good reason”. I think that’s at least partly the case here. He plainly wanted to write a book about Julian but hasn’t been successful in turning that desire into a novel. I’m sure that many critics will rave over the book’s brilliance but it didn’t do much for me.

(My thanks to Jonathan Cape for an ARC via NetGalley.)

Georges Simenon - Maigret Stonewalled (The Late M. Gallet)

 

Rating: 2/5

Review:

Not one of Simenon's best

 

 I know this is sacrilege, but I didn’t enjoy this Maigret book.

The problem is partly to do with the translation; I should make clear that I read the old Penguin translation from 1963 by Margaret Marshall (published as Maigret Stonewalled). The new translation may well be better. This one I showing its age badly; it is stodgy and stale-feeling, with an absurd number of wholly inappropriate and unnecessary exclamation marks! All over the place! If you see what I mean! It did the book no favours, but I wasn’t really convinced by the book itself, either.

Maigret is out of Paris in a small town in Sancerre, investigating alone the puzzling death of M. Gallet, a man who seems to have led a double life. There is a well-painted sense of oppressive heat, but the characters and setting don’t have the depth which I associate with Simenon’s later books. The explanation of Gallet’s death springs out of a hat rather, and I found it very contrived.

In a better translation this is probably a better book (and certainly would be in the original French) but I still don’t think it’s that good. Simenon has written much better books than this and I can’t really recommend it.

Sophie Hannah - The Couple At The Table

 

Rating: 3/5

Review:

A little unsatisfying

 

I quite enjoyed The Couple At The Table, but I found the first half slow going, with lots of names and complex positionings of people and places to remember. It picked up half way through and made a decent Golden-Age-style mystery, but I found it a bit unsatisfactory overall.

The book is in many ways a modern take on a classic Country House Mystery, with a seemingly impossible puzzle at its core. Several couples, including Waterhouse an Zailer are on holiday at an exclusive resort when one of them is murdered. The evidence shows that the one person who was with the victim couldn’t have killed her, the others were together the whole time elsewhere and it’s not possible that anyone else could have got in. It’s an ingenious set-up, although I began to suspect at least part of the solution fairly early on. As more information gradually comes to light later and DC Waterhouse doggedly and obsessively pursues the enquiry, complex backstories begin to emerge and eventually there is a Poirot-esque “One of you in this room is the murderer” denouement.

I’ve only read a few of Sophie Hannah’s stand-alones before this and I’m new to this series. It probably doesn’t help that I don’t know any of the characters and their pasts, but I did find this hard going to begin with. Also, in Hannah’s others I’ve read, she has some witty and trenchant things to say about character and places; this is almost exclusively a puzzle plot with a little quirkiness and background thrown in from Waterhouse and Zailer, which interests me rather less.

I think fans of ingenious mysteries will enjoy this far more than I did. Personally, I wasn’t really engaged. Sophie Hannah is a very good writer and storyteller, so it wasn’t bad by any means, but I did find it just a tad unsatisfying.

(My thanks to Hodder & Stoughton for an ARC via NetGalley.)

 

Clara Benson - A Case Of Blackmail In Belgravia

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Very enjoyable hokum 

I enjoyed A Case Of Blackmail In Belgravia very much. It is the first Clara Benson I have read and I’m rather impressed.

The plot is an enjoyable load of old hokum, of course. A group of half a dozen or so socialites in the 1920s go for a dinner together, at which one of them is poisoned. Freddie Pilkington-Soames is a junior reporter for The Clarion and becomes embroiled in the investigation when his mother, who was at the dinner, falls under suspicion. He then buzzes about the place, discovers that the victim was an odious blackmailer and eventually, of course, reveals the true identity of the killer.

It is a lot of light-hearted fun with a distinctly Wodehousian feel to it – and there’s a touch of Galahad Threepwood about Freddie, too. It says much for Clara Benson’s skill as a writer that she manages to pull this off very well. She strikes an excellent tone; quite light and amusing but with some proper Golden-Age mystery content, too. Her characters are well drawn and, while a bit stereotypical, remain well this side of caricature. Freddie’s mother in particular is an infuriating delight; her self-orientated view of the world as a place where inconveniences like rules and laws aren’t meant for people like her and where others will just take care of any difficulties she may create is rather recognisable in a number of prominent people today.

I identified the culprit pretty early on, but I didn’t mind a bit because it was a pleasure to read. Great literature it ain’t, but it’s great fun and a very enjoyable read. Recommended.

James Runcie - The Great Passion

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Good but not perfect

I thought The Great Passion was very good in many ways, but it did drag a little in places.

Set mainly in 1727, this is the story of Stefan Silbermann, a young boy soprano whose mother has recently died, who is sent away to school in Leipzig with Johann Sebastian Bach. Narrated by Stefan himself, we hear of his grief at his loss, his loneliness at school and the bullying he receives, not least because of his red hair and his musical excellence. Eventually taken in by the Bach family, there follows a study especially of Bach and his wife Ann Magdalena; of Bach’s deep, unshakeable faith and his expression of it through music, and the family’s response to a grief of their own. There is also a fine background of life in Lutheran Leipzig and a good deal of theological discussion (which Anna Magdalena calls Bach’ sermonising), culminating in the composition and performance of the masterpiece that is the St. Matthew Passion.

Much of the first part of the book is excellent. Stefan’s situation and state of mind are humanely and convincingly drawn. The juxtaposition of both the joy and struggle of becoming a real musician with the harshness of much of the rest of life is very effective and James Runcie writes very insightfully about the music itself. There is a touching infatuation by Stefan with one of Bach’s daughters (which may be a play on the book’s title). There were some longeurs in the middle, though; Bach’s sermonising did get a bit much at times and I felt that while Runcie knows a great deal about the cantatas which Bach wrote for each Sunday service and gave a good account of what each set text really meant, they did turn into a bit of a procession. So much so that when we arrived at the sublime Ich Habe Genug, including a moving account of why it was chosen for one of the singers, what should have been a profound moment just felt a bit flat.

That said, I thought the account of the composition, preparation and performance of the Passion itself was excellent. I am no Bach expert, but I have loved his music for decades and know a bit about it; this seemed to me to be a very knowledgeable, moving and heartfelt exploration of one of music’s greatest achievements.

So, I thought this was good but not perfect. I think you need to have an interest in music, including in the details of performance, and in the history of religious thought; I do (especially in the former); I enjoyed the book and I can recommend it.

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

Catherine Aird - The Religious Body

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review: Very enjoyable 

 

I thoroughly enjoyed The Religious Body. I have somehow managed to miss Catherine Aird for the last 50-odd years; this, the first in a long series, was a recommendation and I’m very glad I have found her now.

We are introduced to Inspector C.D Sloan and his slightly slow sidekick, PC Crosby, as they investigate the death of a nun in her convent. As a mystery, it’s OK but not that brilliant. The climax and explanations were rather disappointing, I thought, but I really liked the slightly sardonic tone and Aird’s creation of the setting and characters. She plainly knows a good deal about life in a convent, but spares us the pages – pages and pages – of interminable detail we’d get from P.D. James, for example, just to show off how much she knows. It is very skilfully and readably sketched in as background and I found it excellent. Similarly with her characters; Aird has the ability to create a convincing portrait with a few well-chosen lines and through their dialogue and behaviour rather than laboured exposition, and I enjoyed the characters very much. Sloan himself is an engaging protagonist with a nice line in dry wit, his Superintendent is slightly comic but nobody’s fool, and others ar equally well portrayed – especially the Reverend Mother.

I found this a great read, slightly let down by the ending but still very enjoyable. I can recommend it warmly and I’m looking forward to more in the series.

Liz Mistry - Blood Games

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me

I’m afraid I couldn’t get on with Blood Games at all. I found it overblown, difficult to read and although it deals with important issues, it didn’t engage me at all.

The book opens with DS Nikki Parekh, in a dreadful emotional state after the death of her mother and under threat from her father, having a near-breakdown at a murder scene and, within a couple of chapters, being Taken Off The Case. We are normally spared this monumental cliché of the genre until at least half way through a book. Add to this a pantomimically useless and self-regarding replacement DI, a similarly pantomimically useless but ambitious fellow DS who is “Nikki’s nemesis” (yes, that phrase is actually used) and I began to struggle badly. In addition, I found the prose rather too peppered with stale usage and downright cliché in places. Someone “stands out like a sore thumb”, for example. Seriously?

The issues of youth knife crime, racism and so on which Liz Mistry deals with are important and timely, and I was looking forward to the setting in Bradford, but I’m afraid the presentation of them here just didn’t work for me. I battled on for quite a while, but I just couldn’t be doing with it and gave up in the end. I’m sorry to be so critical; others have plainly enjoyed this far more than I did, but I really wasn’t for me.

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

R. Austin Freeman - The Red Thumb Mark

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Very enjoyable 

 

I enjoyed The Red Thumb Mark a lot. First published in 1907 it does show its age in many ways, but the language and style engaged me and in places amused me greatly, so I found it a very enjoyable read.

Dr. Thorndyke was a very early fictional practitioner of forensic science. Readers were somewhat familiar with some forensic practices through Holmes, of course, but Thorndyke is far more systematic and Austin Freeman is careful to be thorough and accurate in his descriptions of the practice as it was then. To the modern reader, this can make the narrative somewhat slow and stodgy in places, but I didn’t mind that at all; somehow a long, detailed description of the process of taking fingerprints in Edwardian times, although familiar, still held my attention. The plot here is pretty basic, with a villain who is blindingly obvious from quite early on and a romantic arc which would be at home in any Richard Curtis film (or Jane Austen novel, for that matter), but it is the style which appealed to me.

The book is narrated by Thorndyle’s friend and assistant, Dr. Jervis, who bears more than superficial resemblance to Dr. Watson in his role and in his obtuseness. On the first page, he is walking through the Inns Of Court and admiring the scene when “...the empty frame of the portico became occupied by a figure, and one so appropriate, in its wig and obsolete habiliments, to the old-world surroundings that it seemed to complete the picture, and I lingered idly to look at it,” which gives a good flavour of the style. I loved that – especially “obsolete habiliments” – and went on to enjoy the whole book. It can be rather rich fare sometimes, but if you like that little extract I think you’ll like the book.

I shall need a break and a few palate-cleansers before reading another Thorndyke mystery, but I shall definitely be back for more and I can recommend this.

Kathy Acker - Blood And Guts In High School

 

Rating: 4/5

 

Review:

Partly brilliant, partly unreadable 

 

 This is an extraordinary book which, frankly, I’m struggling to describe, never mind review or even rate.  Parts of it are brilliant, parts of it are unreadable nonsense.  It’s a fractured, provocative mess which nonetheless has the ghost of a narrative running through it and which says some important angry, and powerful things about sexism and the treatment of women, capitalism, selfishness, the Olympian self-regard and self-obsession of The Great Artist and so on.  The trouble is that it’s such a disjointed, chaotic shambles that it’s not always easy to keep track of exactly what important things are being said.

The story (if it is a story) is of Janey whom we meet aged ten while living with her father in Mexico and having a violent sexual relationship with him.  Parts of the book are narrated by Janey herself (in a voice more like a 25-year-old than a 10-year-old), others are in the third person, tenses change at random, there are sections of blank verse, parts are written as scenes from a play...like I say, chaotic – and deliberately so.  In disjointed episodes, Janey goes to New York, joins a gang, drops out, gets a job, is kidnapped as a slave and prostitute, gets cancer, goes to Tunisia where she meets and has an affair with Jean Genet (Janey/Genet – get it?), has obsessive fantasies about Jimmy Carter...you get the idea.

Throughout all this, she is obsessed with sex, which is usually violent.  There is a lot of extremely explicit language and a number of extremely explicit drawings, and there is no doubt that Kathy Acker set out to shock and disturb.  Janey says at one point, “Writers create what they do out of their own frighful agony and blood and mushed-up guts and horrible mixed up insides.”  Well, that’s certainly what this feels like, and perhaps this is a portrait of the mind a young woman having grown up with severe sexual abuse.  Among the agony and mushed-up guts there are also gems of angry insight like “Nouveau-Riche Woman (to the rebels): You rebels are so fashionable.  You dress in the most cunningly torn rags.  Where can I buy rags just like yours?”, and in a long, semi-coherent passage of near-nonsense there may be a tiny gem of simple reality like “My thoughts hurt me all the time.  They are the truth.”

This certainly isn’t for the faint of heart and it’s something I might have expected to hate – but I didn’t.  I had to skim parts, but it has left a very powerful impression, I’m very glad to have read it and I can recommend giving it a try.

C.S. Forester - Brown On Resolution

 

Rating: 5/5

 

Review:

A little masterpiece

 

I think Brown On Resolution is a little masterpiece. Not everyone will agree because it is a mixture of character study, a bit of social history and war story so it doesn’t readily fit a genre. Also, it’s getting on for 100 years old now so some of the prose may seem a bit dated to some modern ears, but I think it reads very well. It is beautifully crafted, it’s a superb piece of storytelling and it has left a mark on me for well over 40 years since I first read it. To me, it seems to have aged very well.

This is the story of Albert Brown, but it begins with his mother. Forester gives us in some detail her circumstances in the late 19^th Century, the affair which leads to Brown’s birth and the origin of her devotion to the Navy. All this is relevant to Brown’s character and subsequent actions, and although the story doesn’t really switch to him until nearly half way through the book, I found it fascinating social history and a rather penetrating character analysis.

The latter part of the book sees Brown in the Navy during the First World War, eventually on the waterless and deserted Resolution Island in the Galapagos, where a German cruiser has taken refuge to repair damage. It becomes the story of one man doing his duty against the enemy no matter what the cost, and of the profound consequences seemingly small actions may have. This is a theme which occurred more than once in Forester’s subsequent books – especially Hornblower – and he paints the picture brilliantly. He also has a profound understanding of tactics and of how terrain, weather and so on may play a vital role in determining what is and is not feasible.

The book is only about 150 pages long, but says more and had more impact on me than amny books of twice the length and more. Brown On Resolution is well worth a try; not everyone will like it but if you do find it’s for you, you’ll never forget it.

Rory Clements - Corpus

 

Rating: 2/5

 

Review:

Not for me 

 

I struggled with Corpus and eventually gave up. It’s not a really bad book, but I just found it slow, cumbersome and rather turgid, I’m afraid.

Set in 1936 in the midst of the Abdication Crisis and the growing threat from Nazi Germany, Tom Wilde is an Irish-American history don at an unspecified Cambridge college, who becomes involved in investigating the death of a friend of his neighbour and hence drawn into some serious intrigue involving Communists, Fascist sympathisers plotting against the government and so on. It’s an interesting setting which could have worked well, but I never got involved and after a couple of hundred pages decided that I wasn’t sufficiently interested to slog my way through the rest.

It’s well enough written in many ways, but there is an awful lot of ponderous historical detail which was sometimes so basic and clumsily presented that I felt rather patronised. Similarly with the geography of Cambridge; it’s a city which I know and love, but do we really need to be told constantly that characters turned right from this street to that one and then...etc? There’s a lot of extraneous detail which doesn’t add to the atmosphere or setting but really slows down the narrative. Characters tend to be rather thin stereotypes of either extreme communists or odious fascists, whereas most people at the time were neither – the exception, of course, being Wilde who is wise, thoughtful and well-balanced.

Even Wilde’s Great Wisdom is pretty facile at times; for example,two history undergraduates are given a seminar whose message is “Examine the evidence, don’t go on your or other people’s prejudices and preconceptions,” which comes as a profound lesson to them. Seriously? Would history students good enough to have won a place at one of the world’s finest academic institutions really find the most basic principle of being an historian a Great Revelation? It didn’t ring true in the slightest, and I found this in a lot of other places where scenes and dialogue just didn’t convince.

Enough. I’m in a minority here; most people liked Corpus a lot, but it wasn’t for me and I can’t recommend it.

C.S. Forester - Sink The Bismarck

 

 Rating: 4/5

Review:

Fascinating and gripping

 

This is a brief and very gripping semi-fictionalised account of the six-day hunt for the Bismarck and its ultimate sinking in 1942.

C.S. Forester was a masterly storyteller and he makes this short (100-page) account extremely readable and, for me, wholly involving. The physical and strategic challenges and the immensely high stakes are very well portrayed, as is the nail-bitingly tight timescale to find and engage the Bismarck, all helpfully illustrated with charts showing the various ships’ positions.

Forester imagines a few characters who epitomise the people involved; the naval ratings, those at British naval HQ, the people affected by the Bismarck’s disastrous destruction of H.M.S. Hood and so on. He also puts words into the mouths of real people, like Admiral Lutjens and Captain Lindemann aboard the Bismarck. He does both very well, although there are moments when characters explain things to each other a little clunkily and which might have been better done by the narrator. Nonetheless, this is a terrific read, I think, and a clear, stark account of one of the decisive events of the Second World War. Warmly recommended.

Mary Gentle - Grunts

 

Rating: 3/5

 

Review:

Good but not brilliant 

 

Grunts is not my usual sort of reading but friend recommended it. I liked some of it very much, but I found it was over-long and it all got a bit much.

It’s a sort of satire on the Tolkien genre of good, wise peoples against a Dark Lord and his foul orcs, told from the point of view of the orcs. Mary Gentle subverts the genre very amusingly in places, having a pair of hobbits as murderous, thieving con-men (con-hobbits?), an abominably vain and conceited High Elf-lord and so on, and the conceit of the orcs robbing a dragon-horde which is composed of Kalashikovs, RPGs and the like is funny and well done. She also depicts very graphic violence and sex, both of which are, of course, only coyly hinted at in high language in Tolkien, throwing a rather scathing light on the High Deeds usually depicted in the genre.

There was enough to keep me going here for a couple of hundred pages, but it did begin to pall a bit and I thought the book could have done with some firm trimming. I think that the difficulty with this sort of satire is that the story itself needs to be not only a parody of the usual fantasy, but gripping in itself and for me this one wasn’t really.

For me, Grunts is good but not brilliant. I’m glad I’ve tried Mary Gentle and I may give Ash a go at some point, but I can only give this a rather qualified recommendation.