December 2011 books

Let's start with Sarah Wheeler's biography of Cherry - a life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard. This is a stunning book that fills in a lot of gaps in his own book of The Worst Journey. Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower: a voyage to war is an excellent account of the voyage across the Atlantic to New Plymouth, the founding of the settlement, relations with the Indian tribes there and how things went awry. Gripping. The last Non-Fiction I read this month was Harriet Anne Jacobs' Incidents in the life of a slave. It took her a long time to escape to freedom and is filled with her fear of recapture.

Historical fiction this month includes Edward Marston's The Repentant Rake, a murder set in Restoration London and two set in early white Australia by Kate Grenville: The Secret River and The Lieutenant. Both books explore the relations between Aborigines and the convict settlers, a consideration of Australia that is too often ignored.

I enjoyed reading Joanne Harris's Blackberry Juice concerning the relationship between a young boy and an old man and how the latter influenced the former. Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicles is an extraordinary book. It's long, but the trouble is that once you've got beyond page two, you don't want to put it down, much to the irritation of your other half. And what happened during World War II keeps on coming back and being mirrored in the present.

Ken McClure's Pestilence was the only sci-fi I read this month. I did enjoy it, even though this is not my favourite genre.In the thriller/murder-mystery line I read a few. Alex O'Connell's Lost in Shadows is about gruesome gangland murders. Darcia Helle's Enemies and Playmates is both a romance and a murder-mystery as is Eve Gaddy's Too close for comfort. Tess Gerritsen's Freaks was my final murder of the month. They were all pretty well written and definitely enjoyable. I don't think it was obvious who the killer was in any of them, so the author's did their job well.

I always tell myself to leave the romances to one side, but each month I fail. They are all easy reads and most are page-turners, as well. So that explains why I tend to read them: light relief, I suppose. So to start with there was Lisa Mondello's  All I want for Christmas ... is you. Then Maureen Child's entertaining Wedding at King's convenience. Ruth Ann Nordin's A Chance in Time is a rather good romance set in the wild west before the 1848 Gold Rush. Linda S Clare's The Fence my Father built is pretty good. There is a really wierd family involved and war with a greedy landowner.

November 2011 book reviews

Green River Killer; a true detective story

Jeff Jensen and Jonathan Case

Dark Horse Books, 2011; 242

ISBN: 978-1-59582-560-5

In 1982 five women were found near Green River. They had all been strangled and most were naked. All were thought to be prostitutes. There were distinctive sexual activity associated with them all. By 1985 the number of victims had risen to twelve. Detective Ted Jensen was certain that they had all been killed by one man. He had served in the Navy for years and was married in the 1960s when he was required to work undercover on troublesome university campuses, identifying core ‘troublemakers’. Then he joined the Seattle Police Department as a detective in 1980.  Green River was more or less his first case.

            No killer was ever identified and so the case was reduced in importance, though Jensen was allowed to continue collecting information that might be useful. Over the following twenty years he accumulates 10,000 pieces of information that are eventually digitised.

            Eventually, in 2005, Gary Ridgeway admits to the killings. After preliminary interviews, they create a bunker in the police headquarters where Ridgeway is kept under lock and key. Jensen, by now, has retired from the police force yet is kept on for his knowledge of the Green River killings. He is involved in the extensive interviews with Ridgeway that take place over a total of 188 days.

            To start with Ridgeway would admit to killing certain women. The number steadily rose to about 48. But there was key information he was withholding in the interviews that really would identify him as the killer. Eventually, after being promised that he would only get a life sentence and not the death sentence, he admits that in every case he had had sex with each woman he killed. Sometimes several times. This was the key information the police were looking for. They now had the Green River killer.

            I’m not sure that the form of a graphic book is the best way to tell this fascinating story. I think a conventional text would have allowed for a more detailed account of this extraordinary tale. So much is missed. I’m sure that Ted Jensen told his son Jeff, the author of the text, so much more over the years. The graphics by Jonathan Case are good, but they don’t add anything to the tale being told.

 

Yours to Keep

Shannon Stacey

Carina Press, 2011;

ASIN: B004XVSVQW

Sean Kowalski returns home from completing his service in the army which included tours in Afghanistan. After a welcome from his family he arranges with his brother Kevin to stay in an apartment above his bar. Hardly has he moved in and put his kitbag down than an attractive girl knocks at his door. She announces herself as Emma Shaw, his temporary fiancée. He is shocked. It turns out that his sister, Lisa, and Emma are friends and that, in order to solve a problem, Emma has to have a fiancé.

She lives by herself in a large house owned by her grandmother. Her parents died when she was young and Cat, her grandmother, brought her up in this house. Later, she moved to Florida leaving Emma behind to run her landscaping business from the house. Emma is afraid that Cat wants to sell the house because it is too big for her. So when Cat says she is coming to stay with her for a month, she decided to find someone to act as her fiancé and live in the house with her. She hopes that this will stop any ideas of selling the house.

When her grandmother arrives, she and Sean meet her. And are awkward together. Cat notices this but says nothing as she is introduced to Emma’s fiancé. Sean and Emma share her bedroom but not the bed. They don’t know things about each other that they should have done had they known each other for as long as Emma says they have.  At a family BBQ Cat and Sean’s mother have a conversation in which they agree to conceal the fact that they both know that the engagement is a false one.

Over the period of the month they work together on her landscaping. Sean turns out to be very good at certain aspects of the hard work they have to do. Working together helps them begin to learn about each other.

By the end of the month, what had been a fiction becomes a reality. Cat hands over ownership of the house to Emma as she had intended doing all along. At the same time she has met a man her own age who might be suitable as a future partner.

This is a well written book that keeps you reading until you reach the end, when you wish it were twice as long.

 

Under Total Eclipse we will tremble like birds without song

Lee Vidor

Shakespeare-X Publications; 2^nd edition, 2011;

ASIN: B005IPR7WI

The focus of this book is the activities of the French Resistance in and around Cherbourg between 1941 and the D-Day landings of 6 June 1944. It demonstrates the commitment of men and women to undermining the German occupation. The book explores the continuous battle of wits between them and the local militia and German army/Gestapo. Jews are rounded up and sent to Auschwitz by train, which allows the author to spend a few pages describing the selection, the gas chambers and the crematoria in that death camp. He also spends a few pages describing the massacre of 30,000 Jews at Babi Yar at Kiev. One is a Cherbourg woman who makes her way back to Cherbourg by sleeping with every man who could help her travel back. Once back in Cherbourg she commits suicide after a short time.

            I’m not sure quite what the intentions of the author were in writing this book. Despite all the pretentious quotes and acknowledgements at the beginning that imply we are about to read a book full of new perspectives or details on World War II. In fact, so far as I can see, there is nothing new between the first and last pages. It is entirely derivative. More to the point, having said the novel is closely linked to factual events of the War, there is no bibliography or  further reading suggestions giving the interested reader an opportunity to explore the subject further.

            If you want to read an original publication on World War II why not read The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell, Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman, Anatole Kuznetzov’s Babi Yar,  Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem of the same name (incorporated in Shostakovitch’s Thirteen Symphony). I would have thought that Antony Beevor’s Stalingrad or Berlin 1945 would be most useful as well. There are so many good fictional and non-fictional accounts of World War II, the resistance in France and the Holocaust that I would recommend you read any of them before you read this book.

November 2011 Books

OK. Lets get down to business. I'll start as usual with the Non-Fiction. I don't know why I do this. Perhaps because it relates to the real world rather than to some fantasy created by a novelist or poet. Start with reality and then drift off through normal fiction and sci-fi into the wider realms of fantasy.

First off, I read Mark Stevens's Broadmoor Revealed which is an account of the creation and operation of this secure asylum for the criminally insane. Stevens has only been able to use documents from before 1900 for his research. He starts by describing how the place came into being and its design and construction. Then something on the running of the place. And then he describes a number of the inmates in some detail. It's an interesting book that leaves you wanting to know more, much more. Then there was Jeff Jeven and Jonathan Cape's biography of Jeven's father told as a graphic book, Green River Killer. I thought the story they had to tell was fascinating, but was definitely not impressed by doing it through graphics. All the interesting nuances that could have been used are lost. Peterson Anderson's book of 204 photos in World War II Photo Stories was OK to look through, but I felt it could have done with more narrative linking the photo stories. But, then, that's me. Max Arthur's Fighters against Fascism is about the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939) and Englishmen who fought on the Republican side. Too often we forget this war which the Germans and Italians especially used to test out their battle theories before using them for real in the Second World War.

And, finally, an utterly incredible book. It's old. But that doesn't make any difference. It's Apsley Cherry-Garrard's The Worst Journey in the World about Scott's 1910-12 expedition to the Antarctic. One element of the work there was to collect Emperor Penguin eggs so the embryology could be studied to test a theory about the evolution of birds. They could only be collected in the depths of winter in incredibly low temperatures. So low, indeed that Chery-Garrard's teeth cracked. It's a really moving book, especially the account of how they realised that Scott must have died and then, when they found how close he was to the next depot, they all felt guilty about not having made an attempt to put another depot a few miles further on.

So now it's fiction's turn. Andrey Platonov's The Foundation Pit is an interesting story set in Soviet Russia which is also a criticism of collectivisation. How he got away with publishing it, I don't know. Lovely story. Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood is an extraordinary love story set in Japan. You don't want it to stop, even though it has a firm finish beyond which it cannot really go. The translation into English is utterly superb. Lee Vidor's Under Total Eclipse We Will Tremble Like Birds has an interesting title and a disclaimer saying that the Holocaust really happened. But, I'm afraid, it goes pretty fast downhill after that. If a student of mine had handed an essay in that was written like this book, I would have handed it straight back and told them to go away and re-write it.

In the way of historical fiction I've only read Julian Rathbone's The Last English King. It is a fascinating story following one man from his Anglo-Saxon village, his career as a bodyguard and fighter for King Harold and then, having fought at Hastings, his further adventures as a pilgrim to Jerusalem. The story goes back and forth between the pilgrim and his companion s and past events in England. It's well structured, well researched and well written.


Thrillers have been quite a heavy portion of my literary diet this month. Three Philip Kerr novels about his excellent Berlin based detective Bernie Gunther, A German Requiem,March Violets and The Pale Criminal. These range from Berlin in the later 1930s to after World War II. If you didn't know your Berlin before opening one of these books, you will by the time you put it down. There is extraordinary topographic detail demonstrating Kerr's superb research. David Downing's Zoo Station is also set in Nazi Germany and is about how an Englishman married to a German woman spies for the Nazis, Soviet Russia and the UK simultaneously. This, too, has excellent topographic research on Berlin and its environs. Sara Blaedel's Call me Princess is about a demented rapist. The police follow clues suggesting it's one man, but to their horror, it turns out to be someone very close at hand. Victorine E Lieske's Not what she seems combines romance with murder - or should that be the other way round? Good read, though.

And, finally, romance. Sarah Morgan's Bought: Destitute yet defiant is a pretty good read. As too is Patricia Watters' Colby's Child set in the wild west of the USA in the  gold rush years. You will be pleased to know that the hero turns his back on gold for the heroine. And then there were Richard Crawford's Soul Mates, Shannon Stacey's Yours to keep, Janice Cantore's Accused and Bonnie Nadzam's Lamb. As you can tell, I enjoy reading these romances, but so many of them are formulaic that they tend to run together in a jumble in my memory. The trouble is that I've been suckered by Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte and most romances I read follow in her footsteps.

Octob er 2011 Books

OK. I’ve had a spell on holiday in southern Spain. In Andalucia – you know: Seville, Granada, Cordoba and Malaga way. If you haven’t been, you really should visit the Alhambra in Granada. Book online well in advance of your travel date, otherwise you may not be able to get in. Let’s get going with the Non-Fiction books that I’ve read this month. First off, I followed up last month’s Donne biography by reading Felicia Wright McDuffie’s To our bodies turn we then which explores in great detail aspects of his poetry and prose. It’s an eye opener. Then came the heartbreaking tale of how Zana Muhsen failed to rescue her sister from the Yemen in A promise to Nadia. John Man’s Xanadu is mainly a biography of Marco Polo, but is at least as much as about what China, Tibet and Mongolia were like when he was there. Fascinating. Linda Leaming’s Married to Bhutan is a love story with that country and its people. It makes fascinating reading. Stephen Hawkin and Leonard Mlodinow wrote The Grand Design which, as you might expect is about cosmology and the universe. It may need revision if those neutrinos have managed to travel from The Large Hadron Collider to Milan faster than the speed of light. But then a lot else will need to be rewritten as well. Haruki Murakami wrote about his marathon running habits in What I think about when I talk about running. And, finally, the mind blowingly stunning book edited by David M Wilson of The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott. The Lost Photographs of Captain Scott David M Wilson Little, Brown & Co., 2011; iv + 94 ISBN: 978-0-316-17320-1 This is the story of an incredible survival. When he saw how useful photographs might be in reporting on the 1901 – 1904 Discovery Antarctic expedition, Captain Robert Scott appointed Dr Herbert Ponting as the expedition’s photographer for the 1910 – 1913 Terra Nova expedition. The intention was for Ponting to record all the work – scientific and exploration – that the members of the team were involved in. When Scott saw the early results he asked Ponting to teach him photography. This was in the old, slow days of plate cameras and guessed exposures. Ponting also taught each of the leaders of the separate teams at Scott’s request. In those days the Royal Navy required its cartographers to sketch the landscape they were mapping. This applied to the Antarctic as to anywhere else. The difficulty here was that sketchers needed to do their work with bare hands in severely sub-zero temperatures, risking frost bite. So it was a slowish procedure. On one page in this book the sketches and photographs of one landscape are directly compared, to the benefit of photography. Scott may have been new to photography but he was a quick learner. To start with, his photographs are beautifully composed. Perhaps unintentionally, they also demonstrate the vastness of the hostile Antarctic environment compared to the frailty of human beings and all their equipment, dogs and ponies included. Scott photographed the early stages of the South Pole journey. They used ponies to climb the Beardmore Glacier. One photograph of the team spread out in a long line, with each man walking beside a pony hauling a sledge, suggests the individual’s isolation at times. Another photo of a sledge piled high with equipment, pulled by three men at the traces and a fourth man pushing tells us of the immensity of the task the Polar team undertook. In one sense, it is a pity the camera was sent back from the top of Beardmore because it was too heavy. But in another sense I don’t want to see the record of these incredibly brave men getting progressively weaker as they struggled back from the Pole having found that Amundsen had got their first. Once the expedition got back to England Frank Debenham pooled all the photographs. Later he passed them over to Ponting. He died intestate and insolvent. Somehow a set of contact prints of Scott’s photographs survived to be auctioned in 2001. The author of this book – a great-nephew of the Dr Edward Wilson, a member of the team that died – with the agreement of the owner of the photographs has compiled this incredible and beautiful reminder of that expedition. So now for fiction’s turn. Marilyn Chin wrote Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen, a surreal collection of 41 linked stories about the adventures of a pair of Chinese twins whose grandmother owned a restaurant in California. Jody Hedlund’s The Preacher’s Bridge is a fictionalised biography of John Bunyan (author of The Pilgrim’s Progress) and his wife. Now for murder-mysteries and thrillers. Edward Marston’s The Amarous Nightingale is set in Restoration London. The setting is described in excellent and clear detail. The solution to the problem of finding the killer is a surprise, which is a good thing in a murder novel, I think. Dana Stabenow’s Fire and Ice is a murder set in Alaska which could be set anywhere in the world: it focuses so tightly on solving the murder that the setting is largely irrelevant. Arnaldur Indridason’s Jar City is set in Iceland and takes you deep into the heart of that society before exposing the killer. Tshombe Kelly’s killer can only be found through Sarah’s Diary. And is somewhat elusive. And, at last, romances. Sandra D Bricker’s Always the baker, never the bride has the talented pastry chef taken from the shop she works in to a new employment and, ultimately, to be her employer’s wife. Ciana Stone’s All in time combines romance with science-fiction, which is not always the best of combinations, but works this time. Sylvia Day’s Catching Caroline is a pair of slightly gruesome stories involving romance and vampires. Colleen Gleason’s Lavender Vows on the other hand, restores your faith in the romance novel. Christine Courtenay’s Trade Winds is a good story. My last romance of the month was Bella Andre’s page-turning From this moment on.

September 2011 Books

To start with I must apologise for being so late in posting this month’s blog. Two things have got in the way. The birth of a granddaughter. And the need to clear things out of the way before starting to write the 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo). I’ve tried to do this in the past, but have never managed to complete the requisite 50,000 words. I’m determined this year. I’ve sorted out the beginning and end and roughly what needs to take place between them. You are allowed to do that before November starts according to www.NaNoWriMo.org . But you may not write one word of the novel itself.

However, back to September. Having recovered from travelling round New Zealand in a campervan for three and a half weeks in August, I started reading again with a vengeance.

I’ll start with the Non-Fiction. Douglas Palmer’s Seven million years was all about the evolution of Homo sapiens from his ape forebears to the present form of the species. It’s a fascinating book with plenty of good illustrations. After that I read Vook’s rather simple How to Draw People. But then, I need that sort of guidebook. And followed it up with Life in Cape Town by various denizens of the city. This gave a lot less than it offered.

To make up for that, however, I read Dorothy Wordsworth’s Grasmere and Alfroxden Journals edited by Pamela Woof. William Wordsworth the poet should have an acknowledgement to his sister Dorothy not only on the back of the Title page, but also at the top of just about every poem he wrote. Her eyes saw things first and he then wrote about them. Apologies to all Wordsworth fans out there. But just read the journals and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve always loved John Donne’s poetry and have even read some of his sermons when they’ve been included in collections of his works. David L Edwards’s biography of him, John Donne, man of flesh and spirit made me want to read every one of his sermons as well as re-read all his poetry. It’s a wonderful portrait of the man and his age. In the second half of the 19th century Mikhail Bulgakov, qualified as a doctor and spent the first year of his qualified life deep in the Russian countryside. He recorded this experience in A Country Doctor’s Notebook.

William Fiennes’ brilliant autobiographical The Music Room is a superb and entertaining read, giving the reader the chance to see what life was like for a child living in a castle that was visited by the public. A book that is not necessarily to everyone’s taste is St Cuthbert, History, Cult and his community to AD 1200. It explores through a series of detailed and highly academic papers near enough everything related to the late 7th century saint, from his death right up to the establishment of the monastic community in Durham. It’s well worth reading a chapter at a time.

The last of my non-fiction books is about forced marriage. In Sold Zana Muhsen tells the story of how her Yemeni father in Britain sold her and her sister to Yemeni families as brides and her desperate struggle to escape from there. It brings tears to your eyes and anger to your heart.

Now for Fiction. Ann H Gebhart’s The Outsider is about a shaker community in 18th century America and how it struggles to force a girl/young woman to stay in it rather than join with the local doctor who she has fallen in love with. In the end she gets her man, but not without adventures. Vicento Blasco Ibanez’s The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is the extraordinary story of a Brazilian family with connections to both Germany and France with the result that two brothers end up fighting on opposite sides during the First World War. JR Tomlin’s Freedom Sword is all about the 12th century history of Scotland when the Scots fought the English King Edward I was trying to occupy it as his own territory.

Freedom Sword
J R Tomlin

Smashwords, 2011; iii + 272
ISBN:

This is an historical novel set at a time of crisis in late 13th century Scotland. King Alexander has died without an heir and so the English king Edward has been asked to judge between two contenders for the throne. His choice is John Balliol.
The story starts in 1296 with Balliol’s Scottish army trying to stop an English advance. Andrew de Moray and his father are in a unit trapped by the English. They are wounded and taken captive. Balliol, in another action, is also taken captive but he is made to renounce the Scottish throne in favour of King Edward.
The Scottish prisoners are shackled and made to march south under heavy guard. When they reach Chester, King Edward orders Lord Lacey to keep Andrew de Moray prisoner on his behalf. He is locked in a dungeon where there is no light and is only given water and food in small quantities at irregular intervals. In the dark he manages to work a stone loose from the wall. When the guard next comes in, Andrew kills him with the stone, steals his clothes and manages to escape with a horse. He heads east rather than the north his captors expect him to go. In the end he reaches Elgin where his uncle is dean of the Cathedral. The monks treat a wound and help get him back to health. Then the English arrive and Andrew is smuggled out of the Cathedral to a leprosarium which the English soldiery will never dare to enter.
He makes his way back to his father’s lands which have been over run by the English. He hides in a cave with friends. With help from his uncle and some Elgin lay brothers they ambush an English supply train and capture an important English pennant which they can misuse to confound other English troops they come across. Then they take his father’s castle of Avoch from the English and use it as a base to recruit and train an army of peasants leavened with a few proper knights. They stockpile arms for this gathering army.
Over time, Andrew’s forces steadily re-conquer the principal castles of NE Scotland from the English. While all this has been going on in NE Scotland, William Wallace has been similarly active against the English in SW Scotland. Andrew and Wallace meet and coordinate their activities. At Stirling, on 11th September 1297, the Scottish army defeated the English. But the hero of this book, Andrew de Moray, is so badly wounded that he dies.
The Appendices to this novel are useful and very helpful. The map on page 294 shows the effectiveness of a well-designed and simple map. It is a model I wish more cartographers would follow.



Niccolo Ammaniti’s Me and You is the sad story of a brother and half-sister in Italy.

Me and You
Niccolo Ammaniti
Translated by Kylee Doust

Canongate, 2010; v + 156
ISBN: g978-0-85786-197-9

The main part of this novel is set in Rome in 2000. It is framed by two short sections set in Guidale del Friuli in 2010.
The narrative starts with Lorenzo in Guidale del Friuli holding a piece of paper his half-sister Olivia gave him on 24th February 2000 when he was 14 and she 23.
In 2000 Lorenzo is a troubled child who lives entirely in his own dream world. He is alienated from all the other pupils at school and has been from a very young age. His parents, very worried by this, have sent him to psychiatrists top unravel his problems. But it hasn’t worked. It’s just that, at secondary school, he can hide his alienation more effectively.
You can imagine his mother’s joy when he tells her he’s been invited by a school ‘friend’ (real) to go skiing with her family for a week. She can’t do enough for him. However, the skiing trip – while real – doesn’t involve him as he’s invented the invitation. Instead, he plans on spending the week in the family’s store room in their apartment block’s basement. He has a bed, TV, radio and food and drink supplies. His mother phones any number of times asking to speak to his friend’s mother. Only every time he says she’s otherwise occupied. After a couple of days his mother starts to get a bit suspicious.
In the middle of the night Lorenzo is woken by his sister Olivia breaking into the store room. She is high on drugs she has bought after having sex in a car park with a man for money. She lies on a couch and sleeps to start with. Lorenzo feeds her. The truth is that she is a drug addict who has decided to go cold turkey after the experience with the man in the car park. After two terrible days she tells Lorenzo to get some sleeping tablets so she can sleep through the withdrawal symptoms. He manages to get some from his grandmother’s bag. But he is unable to get back into the basement without being seen for ages. By then, Olivia has ransacked the furniture and clothes stored in the room and found something that will serve as a sleeping pill. When she has recovered from the withdrawal symptoms, Lorenzo persuades her to pretend to be his friend’s mother the next time his mother phones. That keeps her happy for the rest of the skiing week.
Lorenzo and Olivia talk at length about their families because they haven’t seen each other for years. She really hates their father which is the main reason he has seen her so rarely. Eventually they go to sleep. When Lorenzo wakes Olivia has gone. She leaves him a sheet of paper saying that she can’t cope with goodbyes. She also promises him that she will never take drugs again.
The novel ends in 2010 in Guidale del Friuli where he has an appointment. He is taken to the morgue to identify Olivia who has died in a bar from a drug overdose.

This is a well written (or should that be well translated?) novel that keeps you reading right to the end. I just wish I knew more about what happened to Lorenzo in the ten years between the two dates of the action. Will we ever learn more?

Vassily Grossman’s Forever Flowing is a strange soviet novel in which the bulk of the text is given over to criticising, if not damning, the whole of the soviet social and economic structure. It’s a fascinating book and a good follow up to Life and Fate, for those who’ve read it.

Donna McDonald’s Dating a Cougar is a good romance to read in the autumn evenings. Sylvia Day’s Catching Caroline is two short stories about vampire love. It’s very definitely a good and entertaining read. Myne Whitman’s A heart to mend is another good modern romance as is Lucy Kevin’s Sparks Fly. Justine Elyot’s Erotic Amusements is a good story mainly about corruption and human exploitation.

Erotic Amusements
Justine Elyot

Carina Press, 2011; vi + 192
ASIN: B005CRQ41S

The focus of this novel is corruption, how deeply embedded it can become in a small seaside town called Goldsands and how the innocent can be drawn in.
Flipp is a pretty girl without a family, background or references whop is employed by Charles Cordwainer to man the kiosk in an amusement arcade. He has numerous businesses in the town, knows everyone who is anyone, and has designs on developing a Site of Special Scientific Interest. Flipp meets Rocky when he comes to the arcade. He does all sorts of odd jobs for Cordwainer and warns Flipp about him and tells her to get another job. They enjoy each other’s company and end up falling in love.
In another part of the town, Michelle and her husband once owned a B & B which Cordwainer has now bought. She runs it during the day for him but is required to do other services for him at night. He calls her Miss Object when she is tied down to a table and caned in front of town worthies meeting in a room above the amusement arcade. They all also have sex with her afterwards. Cordwainer then gives Michelle to Councillor Trewin for him to treat her as he wishes.
Michelle meets a journalist on the local paper and, after discovering that he has already discovered a lot about the corruption in Goldsands gives him some detailed information about Charles Cordwainer. His editor refuses to touch it without concrete evidence to back up what he says. Michelle eventually provides this and the story is published, much to the discomfort of Cordwainer.
Rocky and Flipp, warned about the article, go into hiding in a campsite. Michelle also goes there to hide. However, the man Rocky has asked to provide a boat for them to go to France with, has told Cordwainer. So when they go to escape in the boat, Cordwainer’s men as well as the police are there to catch them. Cordwainer is shot but not killed. Rocky is wounded. And Flipp finds herself taken by a metropolitan policeman who had her in his abusive care for three years before she managed to escape.
Finally, all comes good. Rocky and Flipp get together for good. Laura disowns her father when the truth about his involvement with Cordwainer’s sex group emerges as well as his ownership of Michelle. And the Met officer gets his just deserts.
I really enjoyed this well-written book. It is no ordinary romance. With all its twists and turns, the story you hooked from page one and never lets go until the last page.

Joely Sue Burkhart’s Golden is a short novel inspired by a Chinese original that keeps your attention from beginning to end.

Golden
Joely Sue Burkhart

Carina Press, 2011; iv + 68
ISBN: 978-14268-9214-1

Two ideas lie at the centre of this novella set in China: friendship and loyalty. It starts with a woman with amber eyes who, from the age of about 8, had been trained to please the Emperor in whatever way he chose. When she first came to court he had gifted her to his oldest son as a wife. Her husband preferred other women to her right from the start of their marriage and so there were no children.
The woman at the centre of this story had a mentor called General Wan. Before she came to court he had trained her to the highest level in sword and bow and in court etiquette. He had also provided her with some secret knowledge about the emperor. Before the emperor reached the throne, he and his close friend, General Wan, had been fighting a war. On one occasion they won a battle but lost many of their own men. The Emperor was grief stricken by this. In the end he took out his rage on a woman by beating her severely with a leather strap and then having violent sex with her. His conscience made him reward her generously. At the same time, he sent General Wan to govern at the edges of the empire.
The woman, who ended up as wife of the oldest son, had also been trained to withstand considerable pain. After a time she learned to gain pleasure from it.
She came to his attention in the court because of her kindness to her servants. He asked her to come and talk to him once a week because she was clever and this entertained him. Their relationship slowly develops and they start to have sex. She then suggests he beat her. And things go on from there. Meanwhile, her husband has become incandescently jealous of her. He believes she is being unfaithful to him and that she won’t reveal who her partner is. He takes her down to the punishment courtyard and orders his men to savagely whip her until she reveals her partner. The Emperor intervenes, but not before she has been badly injured.
The empress and her son, the current heir, as well as her husband plot to kill the woman. Luckily for her, she is able to use the weapon training she received as a girl and ends up alive while her enemies are all dead. The Emperor ends up marrying her.
This lovely story is based on a Tang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907) tale. The Tang period is the Golden Age of Chinese poetry and a high point for short story fiction. If this story is anything to go by, let’s have lots more of them rewritten in English.

I really enjoyed Janet Mullany’s Tell me more about the trouble a radio presenter gets into as a result of phone conversations when she is on air.

Tell me more
Janet Mullany

Spice, 2011; vi + 339
ISBN: 978-0-373-60558-3

This is the story of Jo Hutchinson who presents a late night programme of classical music on the local radio station. The story starts with her parting from her ex-boyfriend and meeting Patrick who is to become the tenant of part of her house.
At the radio station she has regular quiet phone conversations with a Mr D while the music is playing. These start out innocently enough, discussing the music. But over time they become more intimate and, ultimately, end up with mutual masturbation over the phone lines. She agrees to meet Mr D and is drawn into a complicated love life involving orgies, mutual stimulation and voyeurism. She sort of enjoys all this and signs a contract with an innocent sounding Association which is the cover name for a sophisticated sex club.
Then she and Patrick spend a weekend skiing and fall in love. She tells Mr D that she wants to leave the Association. He reminds her that to do so is problematic as she will have to pay £10,000.
She and Patrick attend a formal dinner organised by the Association. Everyone wears a mask. What Jo and Patrick don’t know is that they are the entertainment for the evening. They retire to bed in the room they have been given and have uninhibited sex. The others watch through two-way mirrors. Patrick discovers this and storms out. Jo thinks she has lost him forever and is extremely upset not only about this but also because she thinks Mr D and the Association have lied to her.
After a misunderstanding, Patrick storms up to the radio station while Jo is on air. They have a furious row which involves some explicit sexual content. This is accidentally broadcast.
At home, Jo gets a legalistic letter from the Association demanding £10,000 if she leaves. She manages to get Patrick to help her respond to it. He writes an appropriately worded response and demands a meeting to discuss the matter. As a result, the Association lets Jo leave without having to pay their penalty.
Jo’s friend Kimberley leaves the radio station to work raising money for a local shelter. She asks Jo to join them to deal with the media and marketing. Which she does. Jo doesn’t realise that Patrick helps them out with free legal advice. Then she goes home, strips naked, lies on her bed and phones Patrick, starting a new phone conversation like the one she had with Mr D …….

The story is told in good, literate English. Descriptions of buildings and the landscape are excellent, as it the scene setting. The multitude of twists and turns lead you all over the place. And, best of all, it is only at the end that you realise that the nice Mr D of the beginning is actually pretty evil. Patrick, on the other hand, …..


Claude Lambert’s On Pets and Men is a very entertaining collection of very short stories which focus on animals. H G ‘Buzz’ Bernard’s Eyewall is very definitely a different kettle of fish. It’s a real adventure story/thriller with a bit of romance on the side.

Eyewall
H W ‘Buzz’ Bernard

Bell Bridge Books, 2011; vi + 232
ISBN: 978-1611940015

If you didn’t know the detailed mechanics of a hurricane before opening this book, you certainly will by the time you close it. The story tracks the crew of a Hercules C-130 that is sent to fly through a Category 1 Hurricane in order to collect meteorological data. The pilot – a reservist who loves nothing more than flying - is on his last flight because his wife has forced him into resigning. The flight should be completely routine and he should be home in time for his daughter’s birthday. However, a meteorologist at a local TV station has noticed some anomalies on satellite photos and realises that the hurricane is going to be much more powerful than currently predicted and that its landfall will be on the Georgia coast rather than where originally suggested. He goes on air to warn about the coming threat and suggests evacuation in areas not currently under compulsory evacuation orders. The station owner is furious at this and sacks him on the spot. He and a female colleague leave the station and talk about what he’s seen.
Data fed to the hurricane centre from the Hercules show that the TV prediction of a Category 5 Hurricane and its revised landfall are correct. The plane gets trapped inside the eye of the hurricane after it loses the tip of a wing and then two out of its four engines fail. The meteorologists are recalled to the TV station after having been promised reinstatement and increased salaries.
As a result of the earlier broadcast people along the Georgia coast and the very low lying island of St Simon have already started evacuating inland. One family on the island is waiting for the oldest daughter to return from a date, only she has got trapped. They set off in their car, rescue her and then discover that the sea has surged and cut off all causeways to the mainland. Trapped themselves, they go to the highest point on the island, the airfield. In the howling wind and rain they are very surprised to see a Hercules landing on the runway. It’s the only chance the pilot has to save his crew. They rescue the family. Then they see a man and woman holding a baby. The pilot and co-pilot go out into the hurricane to rescue them. In the end the co-pilot is killed and the pilot injured, though the baby is saved.
There are happy endings for the co-pilot and the on-board meteorologist and the two weather forecasters on the TV station who also force the owner to formally reinstate them and increase their salaries.
The way this book is organised in time sections helps make the whole story gallop along. It is, in any case, an excellent thriller with romance thrown in for good measure.

I only read a few murder-mysteries and thrillers this month. I can’t think what is coming over me! To start with, Sheila Quigley’s Living on a prayer is a captivating police-procedural in which a fake religious group is investigated and found seriously wanting. It involves grooming young teenagers, sex and murder. All the fears of a parent. Philip Kerr’s A Quiet Flame follows the further career of Bernie Gunther’s career solving crimes and murders in the Third Reich. I am, I’m afraid addicted to this series of books, largely because I love Gunther’s way of thinking and doing things. And last of all, Martha Perry’s Hide in Plain Sight a clever suspense combined with romance.

August 2011 books

OK. So I'm late with August's books. I'm sorry about this, but I was in NZ touring that wonderful country in a campervan. It's the only way. Luxury it ain't, but the freedom to stop and look at things makes up for it.

To start with Non-fiction. David Miles's The Tribes of Britain is a superb book that is especially good on prehistory, Roman and Anglo-Saxon/Norman Britain. It makes you stop and think quite hard. I suppose I ought to include Lonely Planet's guide to New Zealand. Well-thumbed and dripping with scraps of paper collected as we went round the country. And an excellent book of road maps. Can't get anywhere without either of the latter.

So now for Historical Fiction. Philippa Gregory's The White Queen is yet another excellent exploration of the place of women in English society; how a woman from a non-noble background became Edward IV's queen. She has explored the place of women in Tudor England and is now focussing on the preceding century. CJ Samon's Heartstone continues the career of his hunchback lawyer with his side kick, Barak, and friend, moorish physician, Guy. Susanna Gregory wrote A Murder on London Bridge in which events take place in London during the Restoration. In Edward Marston's The King's Evil has two religious opponents solving yet more murders. To jump to the Twentieth Century, CJ Sansom's A Winter in Madrid is focussed on the Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939)and makes the reader think about the intentions of some of the major participants on both sides.

I'm not quite sure where to place Lee Langley's Butterfly's Shadow. The author has continued the story of the opera Madame Butterfly. If you remember the heroine commits suicide at the end of the opera. In this book, a friend manages to rescue her before she dies. She continues to live in Nagasaki and becomes a successful business woman. The child that Pinkerton took away with him when he returned to America grows up not knowing about her until after his father's death when his stepmother tells him about Butterfly, with whom she has been in secret correspondence for all these years. The child is in the US Army during World War II and, because he is fluent in Japanese, is seconded as a translator to Tokyo. On a day off he goes to Nagasaki to see if he can find his mother. Her good friend takes him to his mother's house and shows him round. When he asks about her, the friend shows him a shadow on a wall and says that is all that survives of her from the A-Bomb blast. His stepmother is greatly distressed when he decides not to return to America because he has met a Chinese-American girl, also a translator, is now a property owner as his mother's heir and hates the Americans because of the way they treated the USA-resident Japanese during the war.

Another twentieth century historical fiction is Simon Montefiore's Sashenka which follows the fate of a family from the Russian Revolution into the modern post-communist era. While Sashenka and her husband were executed by the KGB, their two children survived and, at the end of the book, are finally put in contact with each other. It's a brilliant book which draws heavily on historical evidence.

I only read a couple of normal fiction - if there is such a thing. Emma Donogue's Room. Is a staggering book about how a mother and her five year old son create a world of their own while living in the cellar of a house. She was trapped by a man who keeps her in pretty dismal conditions. In the end she and her son are rescued, but the psychologists are completely flummoxed by the world the child describes. He has no knowledge of the world outside the basement and is confused by what exists outside it. Andrew O'Hagan's Be Near Me is the story of a Roman Catholic priest in a deprived area who tries to understand the problems of the young people in his parish. Unfortunately he gets rather too close to them and, in the end is accused of abusing them in his innocence. And he is an innocent. And then, last of all, comes Scarlett Thomas's Our Tragic Universe. And Lynne Andrew's romance From this day forth.

The last books are a murder-mystery and two medical sci-fi novels. The murder mystery Sandra Brennan's Lot's return to Salem centres on a series of murders that have taken place in an area used for a huge motorbike rally. But it's not the bikers who dominate the novel who are the killers. The ending is much more surprising than that. I read two Thomas Hoover novels this month: Syndrome and Life Blood. He does like his future extensions of current medical ideas. The novels are great fun to read.

And, while I read no poetry on my travels, I did read Anton Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya.

July 2011 books

It's been a pretty good month for reading. Quite a lot of  non-fiction. I started with Mary Kingsley's classic explorer's account of West Africa in 1893, Travels in West Africa. I followed this up with EAW Budge's edition of the ancient Egyptian The Book of the Dead. After that came Frederick Martin's rather old  The Life of John Clare. But Julie Summer's Stranger in the House made up for that. It explores the problems families had at the end of World War II when soldiers returned following demob or, importantly, from German or Japanese POW camps. Some parts almost reduce you to tears when you find out what the families had to deal with, without any support. The last of this group of books was Michael Charry's biography of the master conductor George Szell:

George Szell: a life of music

Michael Charry

University of Illinois Press, Urbana; 2011; xxii + 434

The focus of this book is the rise of the Cleveland Orchestra from a second rate one to a world-renowned orchestra between 1946 and 1970, the years George Szell was in charge. OK. We learn about how Szell, born in 1897, was a prodigy, how he studied composition, music theory and the piano in Vienna at the age of 6. He was 11 on his debut as pianist/composer. At the age of 15 he had a ten year composition contract with Universal Editions. He had his conducting debut a mere two years later and was an assistant conductor to Richard Strauss between 1915 and 1917. In fact, Strauss thought highly of him and unsuccessfully tried to get him appointed his assistant in Vienna when he was appointed chief conductor there. In 1920 Szell married Olga Band who he divorced six years later. He spent most of the years between 1920 and 1939 conducting orchestras in Berlin, Prague and Holland. In 1937 and 1938 he toured Australia, conducting Australian orchestras.  He married his second wife, Helene Schultz Teltsch in 1939. In that year they went to New York. He taught composition and advanced theory at the Mannes School of Music (which is where the author of this biography teaches). He was a guest conductor for various orchestras between 1941 and 1946 as well as having a contract as principal conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1946 he was appointed Musical Director of the Cleveland Orchestra and remained with it until his death 24 years later in 1970.

            We learn quite a lot about how Szell developed musically up to about 1939. It would have been interesting to learn more about the relationship between Szell and Richard Strauss because they seem to have admired one another and worked well together. His marriage to Olga Band is scarcely touched upon in the biography. We are not told why. Is it because there is a dearth of papers, letters or diaries for that period. Or was it done by Charry out of respect for Szell’s second wife, Helene?  There is certainly a lot of documentary evidence for his tours of Australia which is used extensively in the book. And some of it – in particular, Szell’s opinion of Australian orchestras; and vice versa - makes quite amusing reading.

            The real trouble with this biography starts once Szell and Helene get to New York in 1939. Behind a lot of the musical information lies the hint of a struggle to live in a new country. But we are left to guess at what their life was like. He taught at the Mannes School. But we don’t know what his colleagues or students thought of him, both as a man and as a teacher. What sort of social life did they have? What sort of communication did they have with friends and relatives left behind in Europe? In fact, we learn scarcely anything about George Szell’s own family. I can’t even remember there being a mention of brothers or sisters! And his two wives exist in the same limbo, except that Helene had had a previous marriage with two sons who were left behind in Europe. And only one of the sons survived to come to America in 1945. There is a whole story there. Only you won’t find it in this biography.  To be honest, the reader really wants to know about the women the subject of the biography marries. Who were they? Their interests? Family? Background? And we get none of this. There are almost certainly letters and diaries hidden away in the Szell archive which would open our eyes. What about Szell’s relationship with his stepson? Nothing.

            From 1946 right up to Szell’s death in 1970, the biography is truly a biography of the Cleveland Orchestra. The reader learns just about nothing about his private life, except for blunt statements about going on holiday after Charry has provided pages of detailed descriptions of most of the concerts Szell conducted during the preceding season. While I haven’t counted, there must be hundreds of concert programmes listed with selections from press reviews from time to time. Szell raised the Cleveland Orchestra from a second rate orchestra to a world-beater. And yet we learn relatively little about how he actually did it, except that in the first couple of years he encouraged certain players to leave and encouraged others to join. He taught the orchestra members to listen to what everyone else in the orchestra was doing at all times, which was one of the characteristics of the Cleveland under his  baton. Where did he learn this? Or was it his own idea? There is quite a bit of Orchestra politics from time to time. I wondered whether this was all necessary.

            If you are looking for a biography that tells you something about the social man, his friends and family with stories about episodes in his life, then this not the book for you, I’m afraid. I even wonder how much it tells you about him as a musician. Except that he was incredibly hard working all his life.

I suppose Joseph Frank’s 5-volume biography about Dostoevsky’s life and works has set an incredibly high standard for learning about the lives of prominent people. He gives the reader a chapter describing a period of Dostoevsky’s life; the following chapter discusses his work in the same period. By doing this he is able to link life and work intimately. This method keeps the reader engaged from start to finish. And I think a similar approach to George Szell’s life would have provided the reader with a rounded picture of the man.

As for fiction, if I start with historical novels, they span many years. The earliest was Susanna Gregory's A Masterly Murder which had Matthew Bartholomew solving the usual mayhem of late 14th century Cambridge. A great jump to the 18th century led to Christopher Waklin's The Devil's Mask set in Bristol:

The Devil’s mask

Christopher Wakling

Faber and Faber, London; 2011; vi + 312

ISBN: 978-0-571-23922-1

This superb novel is about the lengths people will go to in order to conceal their wrongdoings. At its heart is the cargo of the ship Belsize which has just docked in Bristol port.

            Inigo Bright qualified as an attorney to work in Bristol just six months before the story starts. He belongs to a merchant family; his three brothers work for his father’s company. His father definitely looks down on Inigo for abandoning the family business. Sometimes the company funds whole ships and sometimes only buys a share in a ship. This is the case in the most recent voyage of the Belsize. While the action is focussed on the Belsize and its investors, it takes place all over Bristol and, briefly, in Bath. The shareholders in the last voyage were only interested in making a profit and didn’t care how it was done.

            Adam Carthy the lawyer who Inigo works for, has been asked to audit the Dock accounts to establish which ships and companies have failed to pay their customs dues over the past few years. Very quickly, Inigo becomes aware that there was something not right about the Belsize’s last voyage. At the same time mutilated bodies of three black people are found still with manacles attached to them. This is surprising as slavery was abolished some time ago in Britain. Then a black seaman – Blue – steps in to help Inigo. He was on the last voyage of the Belsize and tells him that some slaves were carried in a concealed deck. At this point Carthy is kidnapped and Inigo is warned off any further investigation. Soon after that, Inigo and Blue go to Bath to interview one of the ship’s officers. Only they are taken and kept in prison by a corrupt Bristol judge.

            Eventually the truth emerges about the illegal slavery, but Inigo is stripped of hiss right to work as an attorney in Bristol. Carthy’s kidnapper turns out to have been his own father who also kept one of the illegally imported slaves in the same dungeon under his house.

            This is a good story, well told. I keeps your attention right to the very end as the twists and turns are surprising. A humorous, and recurrent theme in the novel is the problem Inigo has in controlling his unruly hair.

At the opposite end of the country, in Northumberland, the problems of keeping secret the dangerous herb garden of an apothecary and his daughter leads to all sorts of problems in the household. That is from Maryrose Wood's The Poison Diaries. There is a link to the poison garden at Alnwick Castle which the present Duchess of Northumberland has developed.  Rosalind Brackenbury's brilliant Becoming George Sand moves effortlessly between modern Edinburgh and 19th century France.

Becoming George Sand

Rosalind Brackenbury

Mariner Books, NY; 2009; xii + 296

ISBN: 978-0-547-37054-5

The first thing to say about this novel is that it is smoothly written.  There are no spare words. Nor are there any inappropriate words to interrupt the flow of the story. In fact, the text is beautiful. The story flows effortlessly from beginning to end and carries the reader with it. The sheer quality of writing makes me want to find other books Rosalind Brackenbury has written.

            This is the story of an academic couple who live in Edinburgh and teach at the university there. He is a scientist with a particular interest in the flora and fauna of the Mediterranean. She teaches French. They live in a large house with their two children. So far, so good. So normal.

            Maria has always been interested in George Sand. On one visit to Paris she bought her diaries. Well, five of the six volumes. In an Edinburgh bookshop she buys another book and orders the letters between Sand and Flaubert. While her book is being wrapped, a handsome young man walks in. They chat briefly and decide to go for a coffee. He is a scientist researching the human immunity system. This meeting leads to an affair. Meeting and making love in her spare room in the afternoons before the children get back from school. She sort of wonders how the affair between George Sand and Chopin began. Was it as innocently as hers? Isn’t this how many affairs begin? A chance meeting?

            Maria reads the account of the affair between Sand and Chopin and how they go to stay on Majorca for a time in the hope that Chopin’s TB will improve. In those days you caught the returning cattle boat from Barcelona to Majorca. There they rent a house that is completely unsuitable for any of them. They move up to live in rooms in an abandoned monastery. Chopin pines for a decent piano to help him compose. After some months they return to Sand’s country house. By then the affair was over sexually but they remained close friends and companions.

            Meanwhile, back in Edinburgh, Maria and her husband decide to go to Majorca for a fortnight. She wants to track George Sand and Chopin’s movements there. He wants to begin his part of a collaborative research project. At the end of the holiday, he tells Maria that he knows she is having an affair.

            When they return to Edinburgh he leaves the house for an apartment he has found. He also goes to see a clinical psychologist. The children are stunned by the separation, but soon get used to having separate lives with each of their parents. Maria’s affair stumbles to an end. She now concentrates on reading and researching her book on George Sand. The children resume their normal lives. Who said that children are soft, sensitive beings? Some say all they need for a full life is food, TV and a computer. Oh, and a mobile phone. Over time the children bring increasing numbers of their friends to the house. Maria never knows who is in or out. Just that there is a heap of coats and shoes at the front door. When she cooks, she feeds everyone who is in the house at that time. It is the picture of a relaxed, happy household.

            In the summer a friend in France who is a novelist and her translator, invites her to stay for a couple of weeks at her cottage in the country. The advantage of it is that George Sand’s own country house is not far away and so she will have known the countryside there. The attraction is obvious. She gets her husband to stay in the house with the children while she is away. She has a wonderful time exploring the area and being with her friends. She is, however, aware that something is wrong with her friend. A few months later, she is called to Paris to see her friend who is in hospital, terminally ill. She visits her briefly because that is all her friend can cope with. She and her friend’s husband start to sort through her papers because they have been named her literary executors. They find papers and books either completed or almost completed and plan how to arrange publication.

            When she returns from Paris her husband has cooked a special meal for her. They eat and talk and realise that they still belong together. Once the children have gone to bed, they, too, go to bed. He leaves in the early hours before the children wake. They have to plan their recombination carefully. I loved this book and wished it had been twice as long.

 The last historical novel I read this month was Javier Cercas's Soldiers of Salamis which explored aspects of the brutal Spanish Civil War (1936 - 1939).

I indulged the softer parts of myself by reading a few romances this month. I can say without a doubt that I enjoyed them all. First came Linda Goodnight's A very special delivery,then Michelle Reid's Mias Scandal and, finally, Liz Fielding's The Bride's Baby.

OK. Now for the grizzly end of the business: the murder-mysteries and thrillers. I do love a bit of blood and guts, to be honest. But not too often or too much. They are all set in the 20th century. I really enjoyed John F Dobbyn's Black Diamond not only because it is well-written, but because it draws attention to the link between American-Irish and the more extreme, underground, elements of the IRA in Ireland today.  Philip Kerr's The One from the Other follows his German hero from post-war Germany to Argentina after his identity has been compromised by a war-criminal. Mark Terry's The Valley of Shadows is about extreme Islamist attacks on the USA on the eve of a Presidential election.

The Valley of Shadows

Mark Terry

Oceanview Publishing, Florida; 2011; viii + 296

ISBN: 978-1-933515-94-6

This is a novel in which the development of the characters is sacrificed to the incredibly fast-paced action. At times it almost seems to read as a screen play rather than a novel. The subject is an Al-Qaeda attack on the USA on or immediately before the day of a Presidential election.

            The story starts in Islamabad in Pakistan when a joint FBI/Pakistan team surround and take an apartment. In the fire-fight four Islamic martyrs are killed and fifth wounded. The sixth man – Kalakar –who was supposed to be there, escaped after receiving a warning text message. Laptops in the apartment contain deliberately misleading information, apart from the booby-trapped one which explodes and kills an FBI agent when he picks it up. The question of who gave the warning to Kalakar is posed in this opening chapter but is not answered until the very end of the novel. Somehow this is central to the story, and it would have been helpful in tying the story more firmly to Pakistan if there had been intermittent references to it.

            In the USA a team from FBI/Home Security and other security forces has just completed a dummy exercise dealing with threatened terrorist attacks. Suddenly they get a report of a bomb going off in Dallas and are mobilised to work in small teams. Early the next morning a suicide bomber walks in to Chicago Airport when there are very few people about and detonates his vest. He is the only casualty. By this time the security teams are reaching their locations around the country. The one the novel follows has been assigned to California, in particular, Los Angeles.

            The team traces through the LA underworld and picks up clues about various individuals who might be dealing in bombs and small nuclear devices. They leave a trail of bodies behind them. They realise, however, that the imam of a particular mosque is communicating with radical elements in the Muslim community. These include the Vice Consul of Pakistan whose offices are on the floor above that of an Entertainment Lawyers’ office. The lawyers are predominantly Pakistani.

            To cut to the final chase, Kalakar has been armed through the imam including a Stinger ground-to-air missile. He stays with an acquaintance who is an air traffic controller at LA airport. He has persuaded him to tell him the flight path and best place for visual contact with the ice-Presidential jet that will fly in on the day before elections. John Seddiqi fails to do as he was told. Kalakar kidnaps his child and tells him to repeat the exercise the day following when the Governor’s plane is due. If he fails again, his daughter will be killed.

            FBI have managed to identify Kalakar and are chasing him as hard as possible but are never quite close enough. In the end, on election day, Kalakar meets John’s wife, who he kills; the daughter escapes while he struggles to arm and launch the missile. As he is aiming it, two agents arrive and open fire. Seriously wounded as he is, Kalakar does manage to launch the missile before expiring. The airplane pilot is warned and, having been a fighter pilot knows what to do, takes successful evasive action.

            Meanwhile, in Washington four suicide bombs have gone off in the airport with devastating effects. I can’t quite see thee point of this episode. There is nothing leading up to it. Nor is there any aftermath. It just happens out of the bl;ue and then it’s back to the real story.

            The true conclusion is that two prominent generals in Pakistan, one with the President’s ear, are identified as the overall organisers of the attacks on the USA. Justice is meted out without recourse to the law courts.

            OK. It’s an Al-Qaeda novel. The link with Pakistan is good. The shenanigans in LA are a bit over the top. But at least the slowly building romance between the two key FBNI players is conventional. As in a James Bond 007 movie.

 I loved L J Sellers's The sex club not just because it is well plotted, but because it addresses up-to-date ethical questions.

The Sex Club

LJ Sellers

Spellbinder Press, USA; 2007 – 2010; vi + 304 pp

eISBN: 978-0-9795182-0-1

This is a delightfully complex novel. At its heart is extremism and terrorism. By a Christian group. There are three inter-connected strands that run through it. The first is the conflict between a group of people who work for Planned Parenthood and who give advice to teenagers on sex, STDs and abortion. They are strongly opposed in everything they do by a powerful Christian group, mainly drawn from the First Baptist Church.  A second strand involves Ruth, a member of the protest group, who is so radical that she is prepared to bomb for her beliefs. The third strand is teenage rebellion which belongs to a group of teenagers who belong to TeenTalk a youth group attached to the First Baptist Church. And a fourth strand, that runs intermittently through the novel is the slow-growing love/attraction between Kera, a worker at Planned Parenthood and Detective Wade Jackson, a detective leading the team investigating deaths that are linked back to the other three strands.

            Kera from Planned Parenthood treats Jessie for genital warts and suggests she think about forms of contraception. Next day, after Planned Parenthood has been bombed and a client has lost her life, Jessie is found murdered in a dumpster. Her parents are shocked to discover that she has been having sex with more than one man and that she is pregnant. They thought she was a pure Christian girl. Before the police investigation is really fully under way, Planned Parenthood workers receive anonymous letters denouncing what they do.

            Kera decides to visit the local school that Jessie went to and to see if she can talk to the most sexually vulnerable group. The headteacher says they don’t do sex education, leaving all that stuff to parents. As Kera leaves the school, one of Jessie’s friends asks to talk to her. They briefly chat in Kera’s car and swap numbers. Next day that girl is found dead.

            Detective Wade Jackson decides that the two murders are connected because both girls have been smothered and have relatively recently had sex.

            Running in parallel with all this is the normal First Baptist Church activities involving adults. Long meetings with other groups some distance away. Bible Study groups, etc. Ruth is caught up in the middle of all this. She was the person who made and planted the first pipe bomb at Planned Parenthood. Having heard from her daughter about Kera and her interests in the dead girls she plants a car bomb on her car. While she is a church meeting, she goes outside and, by phone, detonates the bomb. Little does she know that her daughter and a friend have gone round to Kera’s to kill her because they believe she knows all about their sexual activities. Kera has just managed to escape their clutches and run out of the house  when the car bomb goes off and one of the teenagers is killed.

            The solutions to the three murders are pretty neat and very definitely surprising. So I can’t spoil them for the reader. Suffice it to say, this is a good read. The text is well-written and fast moving. And, in  an action book, the characters are really well drawn. Go read it. And then read the following three Jackson murder-mysteries. Does he really get to marry Kera in the fourth novel? I hope so.

Maxie Mezcal's Concrete Underground is a pretty weird murder-mystery, but Leslie DuBois's Ain't no sunshine draws you in. Raymond Benson's The Black Stiletto draws you in, entangles you in its threads and spits you out at the end slightly confused but very satisfied.

The Black Stiletto: the first diary - 1958

Raymond Benson

Oceanview Publishing, Florida; 2011; xii + 268

ISBN: 978-1-60809-020-4

This novel starts in a fairly unpromising way.  A son wonders what point there is in visiting his nursing-home-bound, Alzheimered mother. She’s a complete mystery to him, even though he is successful in his own life. Then he has a meeting with his uncle who hands him some keys and confirmation about where to look in his mother’s house that has been up for sale for the past two years. He has held this on his sister’s instructions until he decided it was time to hand it on to her son. He has no idea what lies behind the instructions or what the keys will lead to. He is just a dumb lawyer.

            So the son goes to his mother’s house. There he finds a cleverly concealed small room in the basement. It contains some black leather suits, masks, capes, a whole collection of diaries that start in 1958, comic books, newspaper cuttings and books. And they are all about a murderous woman who called herself The Black Stiletto.

            He starts to read the 1958 diary, hence the sub-title of the book. He learns that his mother’s father died when she was young, that her mother re-married and that, when Judy Cooper was 13, her stepfather raped her. She left home and made it to New York, having stolen her stepfather’s wages. She finds a boxing gym run by a man called Freddie, an ex-boxer. She asks him to teach her to box, but he refuses. In the end they come to a deal. She cleans the gym while the men are using it; he will teach her boxing in the evenings. And she can have a room in his apartment above the gym.  He will never allow her to box his male clientele. She is a quick learner and becomes proficient in this sport. He then introduces her to a Japanese martial arts master who teaches her karate. She progresses from utter novice to black belt. She is still uncertain that she can deal with everything she might faced in the street and asks Freddie to introduce her to a man who can teach her how to fight with a knife. Freddie disapproves, but does find her an Italian named individual. Unfortunately, he is a member of a mafia mob. He insists on Judy living with him while he teaches her. They fall in love. One New Year’s Eve they attend his mafia boss’s party as guests. Then, during the following year he goes missing. Killed by the boss. The next New Year’s Eve party she gatecrashes the party and kills the boss and one of the pair of twins who are his close body guards. The other chases Judy and nearly catches her. But he is caught by the police who want him for a series of crimes that result in a 52-year sentence. Judy has begun to make a name for herself as The Black Stiletto who protects innocent members of the public from street robbers and thugs. She continues acting in this vein. And leaves messages with the papers every now and again. But we never learn why she gives up being The Black Stiletto.

            The novel takes place 52 years after she first became The Black Stiletto. The twin who was sentenced to 52 years in prison is released from Sing Sing. He immediately sets out to find and kill Judy. But the old mafia network is no longer there. He has to track down separate members of the mob who lead him to her house. But there is no one there. And the house has obviously been standing empty for some time. And then tracks her down to the nursing home. She surprises everyone there, even though she has not spoken a word for two years nor sshown any signs of appreciating anything in the world about her for the same length of time.

            I enjoyed this book. It is well plotted and has many surprising turns in it. It is set to be the first in a series of adventures by The Black Stiletto, I hope.

I have to admit to reading some sci-fi this month. I am still trying to come to terms with David Nickle's Eutopia.

I feel very guilty about reading no poetry this month - unless you count The Book of the Dead, which I don't. So that is an omission I shall have to make good next month.