In last week’s blog post I mentioned that my most popular posts were often book reviews. I actually tried to write fewer book reviews last year because I didn’t expect them to be particularly well read. Here are the books I reviewed with links to the original blog posts for people who might be interested.
A short review of the latest Sharpe novel with comparisons with my own Burke and the Pimpernel Affair and Burke at Waterloo, which have some overlaps in plot. If you were imprisoned in a French fortress, who would you rather have saving you: Sharpe or Burke?
The fourth of Horst’s Norwegian thrillers that I’ve reviewed. Not as good as the first three about his policeman hero, Wisting, but good enough if you’ve enjoyed the other three.
I remember lots of excitement about this book when it came out. Does anyone remember it now? Not the Great American Novel that some reviewers seemed to have thought it was. It may well be the Great American Novel That Defines 2022 though.
What do you do when your famous detective character (Falco) has been going so long that he’s no longer a credible action hero? Why, you have his daughter take over the family business. The Ides of April is the first in Lindsay Davis’s new series featuring Flavia Albia. It came out in 2013 but I only just got around to it. Sorry about that.
If you’ve read any of my blogs featuring Marble Hill House, you may understand why I found this book so fascinating. If you don’t know anything about Marble Hill House, reading this book might make you want to learn more.
I’m a fan of Val Poore’s blog, Rivergirl, so her story about how she came to be living on a classic Dutch barge fascinated me. Give it a go and you might end up a fan of the blog too.
The fifth book in Vanner’s ‘Dawlish Chronicles’ series features an early submarine, the ‘Fenian Ram’, a submarine designed by the pioneer of submarine warfare, John Holland. The adventures are largely fictitious but the technology is very real.
I’ve not included Tales of Empire in my eleven book reviews because it’s hardly an unbiased review. I published this book which is a very short collection of stories, one by me and three by other authors. Have a look about at what I say about the other three and then buy it. It’s only 99p.
OOPS!
Somehow (probably because it was so recent that I didn’t really think of it as being last year) I completely forgot to include Sisters at the Edge of the World, Ailish Sinclair’s stunning novel of Bronze Age Scotland. Almost impossible to categorise, I can only say that it is brilliant. Read it.
The Night Man is the fourth of Horst’s Norwegian thrillers I’ve read. All feature William Wisting. He’s introduced with a first name now, which is barely mentioned in the previous books. We’ve recognised him in the past as a policeman, popular with colleagues and a good father to his adult daughter, but now, perhaps, we will get to know him better as a man.
The murder at the centre of this story is a particularly gruesome one and the opening, with a woman finding a dead girl’s head looming through an early morning mist, is classic Scandi noir. There is little in the way of clues, and the police procedural elements of the story are well constructed. We see Wisting leading his team as they identify the body and trace the events that have led to her death. Wisting has always been presented as a competent policeman but I felt that in this story we saw more about his leadership qualities and how he pulled the team together. Bits of it, I thought, could almost be used in training courses for managers.
The story is long and quite complicated but, in essence, straightforward. Refugee children are being kidnapped by a drugs gang which uses them to run narcotics across the border from Sweden. The murder victim is a girl who, for no fault of her own, has failed to deliver the drugs.
The story could hardly sustain a full-length novel on its own, but we meet Wisting’s journalist daughter, Line, again. Although she is now working in Oslo, coincidence brings her to visit her father just as the murder story breaks. As in the previous books, she finds herself investigating the murder as well. Desperate to get the story ahead of competing news organisations, she uses her own contacts in the criminal class and her experience with uncovering links on the internet to move toward solving the murder. Her father’s approach and hers lead them to the same conclusions at almost the same time. Line’s interference, though, does mean that, yet again, her life is threatened by the crooks she is hunting. This is becoming a recurring theme in these novels and, given that Line is clearly an intelligent and able young woman, I can’t see why she never seems to learn from these mistakes. The ‘damsel in distress’ trope is common in these sorts of books (it’s not as if I never use it myself) but here it is beginning to come over as a tad formulaic. Even so, the prose is fluid and the requisite level of tension is maintained and Horst definitely spins a good yarn.
The story is strengthened by the development of Wisting and Line as characters. Wisting is allowed to start a tentative relationship with a civilian while we see Line struggling to succeed in a hugely competitive job whilst trying to build her own personal life.
The book is, I feel, weakened by occasional moralistic inserts. One character lectures Wisting at length about the problems faced by young refugees and there is a lot of criticism of Norway’s immigration policy. Wisting follows one witness to Afghanistan. This seemed slightly implausible but it was used as a way to comment on the awfulness of life in Afghanistan and the efforts being made by Norwegian police and troops to improve things there. There are also what seemed like mini-essays on the evils of the drugs trade.
I’m all in favour of authors using their stories to carry a political message but this is always more effective if the political message is well integrated into the. In this case the messages read like rather clumsy product placement. This is particularly unfortunate in the case of the Norwegian involvement in Afghanistan where, in the light of subsequent events, I think that every country which was there is taking a long, hard, critical look at what was achieved and at what cost.
Is the book worth reading? If you’ve never read any of Horst’s books before, this would be an odd one to start with. If you have been following Wisting’s progress and enjoying the books so far, you will probably enjoy this one, although maybe not quite as much as some of the earlier volumes. I felt this book marked difficult points in a series when the author wants to introduce new ideas and new characters and this means a sort of gear change, which is not necessarily that smooth. Even so, Horst has set things up well for another sequel and I look forward to seeing that.
It’s easy to be rude about genre fiction. People say that they don’t want books to be neatly classified. But genre fiction is easy to read. We know where we are. It’s easy to review. We can (mostly) recognise the core elements of a “good” book of historical fiction or a “good” romance. (Cute meet; obstacle to their love; obstacle overcome; HEA.) Above all (as far as writers are concerned), it’s easy (or at least easier) to sell. Perhaps that’s why Ailish Sinclair has, despite a track record of successful historical fiction, decided that Sisters at the Edge of the World should be self-published. And if ever there was an argument for the failure of the traditional publishing system, its apparent inability to accommodate books like Sisters at the Edge of the World is it.
Given her previous work, it more or less goes without saying that Sinclair’s prose is a pleasure to read. Even so, I did not find this an easy book to love: not at first, anyway. It’s not exactly a fantasy, though it’s set in a world where magic is a real and everyday part of life. It gives the impression of being historically accurate but, given that it covers a place and a period where the historical record is, at best, sketchy, it’s not quite what I would think of as a conventional historical novel. Is it a romance? Well, there’s a boy and a girl but, if they’d had Facebook in the Bronze Age, their relationship status would best be described as ‘complicated’.
As I kept reading I stopped worrying about what sort of story I was being presented with. I was just carried along with the life of Morragh, the girl who talks to the Mother-god and who is a spiritual leader of her people. The people came alive for me too: their daily lives, their sometimes complicated and uncomfortable relationships, and the ill-defined but all-pervasive spiritual beliefs that linked them and the world they lived in.
The coming of the Romans and the attack on their tribe by Agricola and his legions brings violence and death to their community – violence and death that might, just might, have been avoided if, at heart, the peace-loving worshippers of the Mother-god didn’t secretly like the idea of a good fight. And when that fight comes, Ailish Sinclair pulls no punches. It’s truly horrible, somehow even worse because Morragh (who has flashes of visions of the future) has already told us how it would be. Except it’s worse.
Life goes on after the battle, but I’m not saying anything about it because Spoilers. But the end, like the rest of the book, combines the supernatural and the mundane to open up wholly unpredictable situations. Does it end well? You’ll have to read it to find out.
If you, like me, are not at all certain that this is a book for you, keep going. Very soon you will join (judging from the reviews I’ve seen) the crowds of readers for whom this book is, in every sense, magical.
It’s still October and I want to keep blogging about books with a spooky supernatural theme, but I’ve only written three. This week, then, I’d like to turn to another brilliant writer of Urban Fantasy – Ben Aaronovitch.
A friend asked me if I had read Ben Aaronovitch’s Rivers of London. When I told him that I hadn’t, he said that Something Wicked reminded him of Aaronovitch’s book so I had a look at it on Amazon. What I saw made me very pleased I could honestly say I’d never read it, because there was definitely more than a passing similarity in the opening pages and I didn’t want people to say that I had copied his approach. It’s a humorous urban fantasy which combines a police procedural with things that you would never expect to see in Dixon of Dock Green. (Younger readers: ask your parents. Or Google it.)
When I read the whole book I thought it was wonderful. There are definite similarities to Something Wicked. Perhaps Aaronovitch’s familiarity with the supernatural (the story does suggest quite a lot of research) means that he read Something Wicked and then moved back through time to write Rivers of London. (Not an entirely original thought: I recommend Morley Roberts’ story The Anticipator.)
Like Something Wicked the story starts with the discovery of a body that has been the victim of an unusual murder. In this case it has been decapitated. There follows a lot of detail of police procedure but the appearance, fairly early on, of a ghost as a witness to the crime suggests that things are going to get very weird very quickly. While my detective finds himself working alongside Chief Inspector Pole, a vampire from the mysterious Section S, our hero here, Chief Inspector Nightingale, is a wizard working for Economic and Specialist Crime. Pole and Nightingale share a preference for working alone from their homes and both seem to take an unhealthy interest in mortuaries, but while Pole’s brief sticks to the vampiric, Nightingale covers all the ghosties and ghoulies London has to offer – and Aaronovitch’s research has turned up more strange things than Nightingale can shake his mysteriously powerful silver-topped cane at. To be honest I got a bit lost in the ghosts, the genii locorum, demons, revenants and assorted other phantasmagoria. It’s a complex plot (and the first of a long series) but it makes sense as you read along, though I must admit to waking up at 4.00 am worrying at some of the details. It doesn’t matter, really. Our narrator is a probationary constable whose natural curiosity and somewhat eclectic skill set was unappreciated by the Metropolitan Police generally but fits right in with Chief Inspector Nightingale. He’s a beautifully rounded character, whose constant amazement at the world he finds himself in massively helps us suspend our disbelief. “Of course he’s being possessed by a revenant,” I found myself saying. “Good heavens, man, isn’t it obvious?” And obvious it somehow became, however barking mad the characters, the plotline and the twisted logic. It’s helped by a wonderful sense of place, with lots of details of London geography that pin it firmly to reality (though how he managed to put Teddington Lock downstream of Richmond I have no idea – a careless copy editor, I suspect).
Above all the book is funny – often laugh-out-loud funny. It’s a wonderful mix of horror and humour and glorious British eccentricity at its best. I do recommend it.
Antoine Vanner writes naval adventures set in the late 19th century as sail was giving way to steam. I was thinking of him last week as I visited (again) HMS Warrior, the first British iron-clad steel hulled ship which carried a full set of sail and a powerful engine.
HMS Warrior
Given his interest, it’s not surprising that the fifth book in his ‘Dawlish Chronicles’ series (named for the hero, Nicholas Dawlish) features an early submarine. Britannia’s Shark, set in 1881, is a largely fictional account of the adventures of ‘the Fenian Ram’, a submarine designed by the Irishman, John Holland. In Vanner’s story the ram ends up destroyed but the real Fenian Ram still exists and is on display at the Paterson Museum in New Jersey.
Vanner’s interest in naval technology means that there is a lot of technical detail in the book, fascinating enough to encourage me to visit the Submarine Museum in Gosport to have a look at the Royal Navy’s oldest submarine, the Holland I (named for the same John Holland).
Holland I
There are a couple of tiny details I’m not absolutely sure of but you certainly get a good basic understanding of how the thing worked and of how terrifying it must have been to sail in. Technical details alone, though, will not fill a novel and Vanner throws in a story that resembles a James Bond film in skipping from location to location with increasingly dramatic (and increasingly bloody) set pieces in each. Whether he is being hi-jacked by pirates off the coast of Greece, fighting Irish nationalists in New York or battling alongside rebel forces in Cuba, Dawlish combines the pluck of a traditional 19th century hero with a willingness to get down and dirty that would not disgrace Bond himself. The result is a book that is high on adventure and excitement if occasionally pushing the limits of credibility. Despite this, Vanner incorporates a lot of real history into his story. As is so often the case, the historically accurate details are often the most incredible. For example Holland – yes, the man the Royal Navy named its first submarine after – was a passionate believer in an Irish Free State and no friend of the British.
The account of the slave revolts in Cuba (the Spanish kept slaves there until 1886) is astonishing to a modern reader and a useful reminder that Britain rejected slavery relatively early.
In summary, this is a great story of historical adventure with a lot of technical and political detail wrapped inside the candy coating of daring deeds and thrilling escapades.
Sharpe’s Assassin is presented as a story about Sharpe freeing a spy from a fortress and then hunting down some rogue Bonapartists who would assassinate the victorious Duke of Wellington. It has enough similarities to Burke and the Pimpernel Affair (freeing a spy from a fortress) and Burke at Waterloo (hunting down rogue Bonapartists who would assassinate the Duke) to make it a ‘must-read’ as far as I was concerned.
So how do Sharpe’s exploits compare with Burke’s?
Cornwell’s creation is first and foremost a soldier and Sharpe’s adventures follow him through Wellington’s military successes from India to Waterloo. His fans love the military detail in the stories and the scenes of action, whether Sharpe is brawling with an individual or part of an army engaged in a historic battle. This story is set after Waterloo, so the possibilities for military set-pieces are limited. Even so, Sharpe’s approach to saving the spy from the fortress focuses on a brute-force military approach. Burke and Sharpe both use cunning to infiltrate the fortress, but where Burke’s approach is designed to slip out quietly with as little fighting as possible (though things don’t work out exactly as planned), Sharpe, having won past the first gate, goes for a straightforward military assault. It means Cornwell inventing an action where there wasn’t one but it does mean Sharpe can get in a small battle early in the book. Sharpe is, after all, not about subtlety. The story has him working alongside a rather foppish spy who is all about subtlety but is all-too-easily fooled by the Bonapartists. Fortunately he has Sharpe watching his back and cheerfully blasting away at the French at every opportunity.
There’s an attempt at blowing up a dinner being held by the victorious British (very similar to one of the attempts in Burke at Waterloo) and Sharpe, like Burke, foils it. Like Burke, he fails to stop the villains escaping, setting things up for the final conflict which, again, involves lots of troops in a firefight with some artillery and the odd Congreve rocket to liven things up. Burke would, I suspect, find the outcome messy, but Sharpe ends up seeing off the Frenchies and disrupting their evil plans. The Duke is saved and peace finally comes to Paris.
By the end of the book, Sharpe is living peacefully in Normandy with his lady love. Burke gets no such happy ending. The real James Burke continued to spy for Britain long after 1815 and there is no sign of an end to war for him. I suspect we may see more of Sharpe in time, too. I wonder if he will ever decide that there are problems not best solved by bloody violence. Probably not. The world needs men like Sharpe as well as men like Burke. Long may they both thrive.
The books
Amazon provides a platform that is happy to host both a famous author like Bernard Cornwell and a significantly less famous one like me. Sharpe’s Assassin is available on Kindle at £4.99 or in paperback at £4.50 (it’s on offer). It’s an interesting pricing policy and explains why traditional publishers claim that e-books aren’t doing that well. It’s because they deliberately over-price them. The paperback is a bargain though.
My own tiny publishing effort can’t afford to subsidise paperbacks so I’m afraidBurke and the Pimpernel Affairand Burke at Waterloo will both set you back £8.99. (Printing isn’t getting any cheaper.) On the other hand, I do pass on the savings that come with e-publication, so the Kindles cost just £3.99.
At these prices, why not sort out your Napoleonic spy escapade needs for the rest of the month and buy all three?
