When I read that The Illusions is a historical novel (it’s set at the end of the 19th century) that combines a story about stage magicians with supernatural elements about people playing with actual magic, I couldn’t resist it. That’s the central idea in my own novella Dark Magic although that’s one of my contemporary books. I wanted to know how another author had tackled the same issues. In fact, Hyder’s story is more similar to mine than I had expected. It pits some regular stage magicians against an evil dark magician, in the same way that mine pits a company of stage magicians against a company dabbling with Black Magic. There’s an additional twist in The Illusions, as some of the stage magicians have real magical powers as well, although they do not reveal these to their friends.
All that said, The Illusions has very little in common with Dark Magic. For a start, Dark Magic is a novella while The Illusions is very long. I had an e-book, so I can’t say how many pages there were but it seemed to take a while to read. It also has quite a large cast of characters. As the story goes on you learn which of these characters are important and which are secondary and the relationships between the important characters become clear. At the start of the book, though, the characters are introduced one by one and it is not at all obvious what they have to do with each other.
The first person we meet is Arter Evans but he dies quite early on. The character who matters is his assistant, Cecily Marsden, always known as Cec. Cec appears soon after Arter, but the opening paragraphs are entirely from Arter’s viewpoint and this makes it difficult to immediately relate to Cec – a difficulty increased by introducing her in terms of what she has learned of magic, rather than how she feels about it.
No matter. A few pages later, Arter is dead and Cec flees to “the one person in all of Bristol that might be able to help”. So we meet Skarratt. There’s a hint that Cec does not like Skarratt. She’s right not to – he’s a thoroughly unpleasant piece of work – but we do not know why she dislikes him so much or, indeed, why he is the one person who might be able to help.
No matter (again), for we leave Cec and are introduced to Eadie. She is picking at a loose thread on her dress. She is, we are told, nervous.
I am not one to insist that it is always a crime to ‘tell’ rather than to show, but it would be nice to occasionally see things internalised. If we were in Eadie’s head we would see that she was nervous. We would not have to be told that she picked up a loose thread “nervously”, nor that she is “reassuring herself” that she does not need to be frightened.
Perhaps there simply isn’t time to get into Eadie’s head, for we are about meet another character, George Perris. They are both there for a séance. Eadie intends to expose such seances for the frauds they are. (I never quite worked out how but I may just not have been paying attention.) Perris’s approach is more direct. He breaks up the séance, causing real distress to the sitters. Eadie is angered by this and berates Perris but, already, she can’t miss that he is “one of the most handsome men she’s ever seen”.
Somewhere in the roomful of characters at the séance there is another significant person in the story, but don’t try to work it out because now we are in Paris at a performance by Valentin, who is seeing visions of a woman called Olivia who…
You see why I was frustrated at this point.
Once the characters have come together and we know the relationships between them, everything makes a great deal more sense. The plot is quite complicated but revolves around a feud between Skarratt on the one hand and Valentin and George on the other. Valentin and George are putting on a magic show intended to cement George’s reputation as the greatest magician in England, while Skarratt is set to wreck it largely out of spite and jealousy. Fortunately for George both Valentin and Cec possess real magical powers with which they are able to foil at least some of Skarratt’s evil plans.
The story draws in the early days of moving pictures (Eadie is developing new techniques, though we learn little of the technology), and a complicated series of relationships as the characters (except the loathsome Skarratt, of course) sort themselves into romantic couples.
The descriptions of tricks from the Golden Age of magic are fascinating, though I fear the author is often as misdirected as the audience. The thing about magicians is that they often seem to do things that appear impossible. This doesn’t mean that they actually do impossible things, but some of the descriptions of the tricks here clearly are impossible. This means that the distinction between the tricks that are being done by expert magicians are difficult to distinguish from those which are being done by expert magicians who are also possessed of genuine magical powers. That, I think, weakens a central element of the idea behind the book. By the end (no spoilers) stuff is happening that is clearly absolutely impossible. In fact, so impossible that you would think even the audience would notice. But perhaps they, like us, are lulled into a false sense that it’s all just a magic show by the number of impossible tricks they have witnessed from regular magicians. It’s still odd that Valentin is prepared to do some of these tricks given that he is supposed not to be letting his friends know about his magic powers. Never mind: it’s a dramatic ending to the book.
The failure to show us how the characters feel, rather than just to tell us what they are feeling, meant that they never really came alive for me. As a result, I found my interest slipping. On the other hand, I was drawn back in by the plot, which zips along. I had the impression that it was written more for younger readers who may be less worried by the rather two dimensional characters and more interested in the plotting, which is fair enough. If that’s you (or a young friend) you may well enjoy this book.
Dark Magic
If you like the idea of seeing real magic and stage magic mixed together, but in a more contemporary context, you might consider reading Dark Magic. All the stage magic in the book is true to life (I’ve spent far too long hanging round with magicians) and the ‘real’ magic is gloriously over-the-top. Reading The Illusions, I did feel that there was an absence of real jeopardy. With all this magic and evil flying about, nobody seems to get really hurt. (There’s one broken limb but it heals rapidly and with remarkably little pain.) For me, a book with ‘real’ magic and a villain like Skarratt really wants to have some seriously unpleasant things happening. Be warned: Dark Magic does do horrible things to its equivalent of Skarratt. On the other hand, it is often laugh-out-loud funny (or so reviewers tell me). I’m not sure that The Illusions wouldn’t benefit from more humour, come to think of it.
Anyway, if stage magic and dark forces are your thing, why not read them both?
Dark Magic is available on Kindle and in paperback. The Kindle edition costs just £1.99.
Another Tuesday, another review of a book by Deborah Swift.
One of the things that really impresses me about Swift’s writing is her ability to move, apparently effortlessly, between different historical settings. Last week I was reviewing her 17th century Italian renaissance novel, The Fortune Keeper, and this week we are in World War II. Life in London during the Blitz is wonderfully evocative, with trips to a Lyons Corner House where you eat Shepherd’s Pies that are mainly potato and beetroot is everywhere. Normal life continues between air raid warnings. It’s spot on.
I can hardly mention the plot. It starts with Nancy being betrayed by her fiancé practically on the eve of their wedding. She flees her quiet life in Scotland to move to London where she gets a job in the offices where her brother works. When she applies, she has no idea that she will be a decoder with the Special Operations Executive – part of the lifeline supporting field agents in occupied Europe.
She soon finds herself falling for a young man who has arrived to shake up the way the SOE codes its messages. So far, so clichéd (and the opening pages with the cad in Scotland did leave me worrying that the book might all be a bit of a cliché). But suddenly the plot kicks into gear with twists and turns that continue throughout the book. Infuriatingly, as a reviewer, I can’t say anything about any of them because any clue as to what is coming will spoil the story. (The title is a spoiler in itself, which annoyed me. I bet that was the publisher’s choice and not the author’s.)
What I can say is that the romantic betrayal that the story starts with is just the first of many betrayals we are going to discover. This is a story about loyalty and betrayal: betrayal because of cowardice or betrayal because you have to sacrifice your friends for your country. It reminds us that not that long ago London was full of people with secrets, determined that no one should ever learn what they were doing for their country – or for the enemy.
Swift writes about the experience of agents in the field and how they can (or more often can’t) survive in a world where German troops are everywhere and where nobody can be trusted. There are scenes of considerable violence. I complained in a review of another Deborah Swift book that she couldn’t write a fight scene, but the fight scenes here are terrific – and she is not afraid to depict the horror of killing with bare hands or whatever tools are available. One agent kills someone by hitting them with a spade and the reality of that killing and how it feels to murder someone so up close and personal is chillingly spelled out.
Whatever you do, don’t get attached to anyone. The body count is high and the human costs of Occupation are graphically captured. Usually you can reassure yourself that it will all come well at the end, but I kept turning the pages worrying about who would die next.
The book ends without the irritating cliff hanger that too many authors put at the end of the first book in what is clearly going to be a series. (OK, someone survives. But I’m not telling you who.) The fact that there will be a Book Two leaves the end of The Silk Code mildly anticlimactic. There is still a war. There will be more deaths. But briefly, until the next book starts, we are allowed an interlude of something almost like peace.
This is a brilliant book, one of Swift’s best. I can’t wait for the next one.
While you’re waiting for The Silk Code to publish, why not pass the time with Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras? It’s set almost a century and a half earlier but Britain is again at war and spies and counter-spies are still vital to the country’s military success. The story of the Lines of Torres Vedras (like the activities of the Special Operations Executive) is true but Burke’s adventures (like Nancy’s) are fictional. Both books, though, feature espionage and counter-espionage, political back-stabbing, and occasional bloody violence. You may well enjoy them both.
Unlike The Silk Code, you can buy Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras today on Kindle or in paperback.
I’ve got a new book out this week: Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras. By now I’m getting a bit tired of talking about it (though I’ve forced myself to put a paragraph or two at the end of this post). I’d like to talk about a book by someone else. It’s particularly good to be able to talk about a book I’ve really enjoyed. So here we are with The Fortune Keeper, the third of Swift’s Italian Renaissance series.
The story starts with Giulia Tofana, introduced in The Poison Keeper, still living in the Jewish ghetto in Venice with her lover Fabio. Things have changed, though. She has had two children who both died and she and Fabio have adopted Mia, a young girl now on the cusp of womanhood. The new setup marks a sharp change of gear from the previous story, The Silkworm Keeper. According to a historical note at the end of the book, this was driven largely by the need to adapt the story to take account of new information about Giulia Tofana that has turned up since the first in the trilogy, The Poison Keeper, was written. Whatever the reason, it’s worked out very well. The Poison Keeper is a brilliant book, but keeping the plot going for a second in the series was a stretch and I wasn’t sure that a third would work. The reset that the new research has made necessary means that The Fortune Keeper is able to draw a deep breath and, to a degree, start again, bringing new life to the series.
Not that we are starting from scratch. Several characters and incidents from the previous books feature crucially in the plot. Although The Fortune Keeper works as a standalone novel it would benefit a lot from a brief summary of the key points of the earlier books to guide any new readers.
So what does The Fortune Keeper offer? Firstly, a wonderful view of Renaissance Venice. I don’t know a lot about Venetian history but I found Swift’s Venice completely convincing. It’s rich but decadent. The palaces are already crumbling; the tides regularly flood houses and businesses. It’s a city where corruption runs deep. There are gamblers and whores everywhere (though Swift resists the temptation to titillate with sex). We are in the Renaissance, so Mia is able to go to lectures on astronomy. There are new and better telescopes, but they are as often used to produce more precise horoscopes than to research the heavens. Some people are pointing out that the earth moves round the sun but the Inquisition are busy and awful penalties await those who dismiss the Church’s cosmology too openly.
We follow Mia through marketplaces, into silk workshops, on visits to an old astrologer and on and off gondolas and the Venetian equivalent of buses, traghettos, larger vessels that run to timetables. Life is governed by those traghetto timetables and the state of the tides and, as Giulia and her family live in the Jewish ghetto, by the times that the ghetto gates are locked.
There’s a little about the Jews, tolerated because they were the city’s bankers but not really trusted. (Apparently the Venetians were 300 years ahead of the Nazis when it came to making Jews wear yellow badges on their coats.) We learn, too, about the guild system among gondoliers, but this isn’t an essay on Venetian society. It’s a thriller and a romance, starting slow but building up to a dramatic and bloody climax. And, like all the best thrillers, it has a wonderful villain. The man is a fraud, a swindler and a serial killer – but he does have style.
The climax is, perhaps, a little rushed. It’s a bit like those movies where people move in the shadows, shots ring out, the villain collapses and the hero stands over him as the credits roll. Personally, I prefer the Lee Child approach to violent denouements. I want the hero to feint with his left and lead with his right and only as he lies helpless (some blackguard probably hit him from behind) does he draw the pistol concealed in his boot and bring the villain down. Maybe that’s just me but I think that if you are doing the big fight scene, go all in or go home.
Since I wrote this, I’ve read Swift’s latest, The Silk Code, where the fight scenes match anything Lee Child has done, so I’ve no idea why this one didn’t work for me. It’s quite a minor quibble in any case. The important thing is that mysteries are solved. Some relationships are cleared up (no spoilers), others not. Life moves on. As do Mia and Guilia. It will be interesting to see where Ms Swift takes them next.
Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras
I can’t get completely free of Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras. It’s published on Friday and it’s already available on pre-order at mybook.to/TorresVedras. It’s the seventh book about James Burke. (I did a quick run-through of the others on my blog on Friday, if you need to keep up.) It’s set in Lisbon in 1810 where James Burke is hunting down French agents who are trying to discover the secret of the Lines of Torres Vedras. What are the Lines? And what is their secret?
Read the book to find out: £3.99 on Kindle and £7.99 (special launch offer price) in paperback.
My book reviews are usually quite long. (The last one I did ended up being an extended discussion of the life and times of Henrietta Howard.) Lately, though, I’ve read a few books that I’d like to share my enthusiasm for without going on at length. So here are three short reviews.
(Anyone would think that since I finished writing Eat the Poor I’ve been on a writing break and able to catch up on my reading.)
The Shepherd’s Life: James Rebanks
This is the third book review I’ve written recently that starts, “ I don’t generally enjoy memoirs but…” Perhaps it’s a sign of age that I am beginning to get more into this genre. In any case, I loved The Shepherd’s Life. It’s a memoir of a life spent as a hill sheep farmer in the Lake District and it sums up a place and a way of life that deserves to be more celebrated.
Recently my son, having got married and bought a house more conveniently located than a remote part of mid-Wales, decided to sell up the house in sheep country that had passed through three generations of our family. Three generations, according to James Rebanks, is the time it takes to be accepted in a hill farming community. Being English and living most of the time in England, it was only when people said how sorry they were to hear we were leaving that I realised we were, up to point, accepted into that remote community and I miss it more than I can say. Reading this book took me back to misty mornings and hills where sheep wandered apparently randomly.
We had seen life there only as visitors. We had never been up at a winter’s dawn, working with dogs to check the sheep, soaked to the skin and desperate to finish before dark. But I have talked to farmers about the price they get in a bad year when every lamb sold represents an actual financial loss. It’s not a romantic life. It’s hard and economically ruinous. (Rebanks points out that almost all the farmers he knows have a second job to keep the farms afloat. My neighbours had so many, I honestly lost count.) Yet the families stay. I was talking to someone who had a relative who sold up. That person had just vanished from society. You never leave.
Being English, we left. This is a book that reminds me what we’ve let slip away.
Hill farmers have been here for hundreds – maybe thousands – of years. That link with the land is a vital part of what makes a nation. The French, with their near obsession with ‘patrie’ understand this. In Britain that link is being lost. Rebanks explains why it matters. It’s not just a lovely book, but an important one.
Gooseberry: Michael Gallagher
This is the first of Michael Gallagher’s series of stories about boy detective Octavius Guy. Octavius is a minor character in Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone. Other characters from Collins’ book also turn up in Gooseberry. It’s a very long time since I read The Moonstone and I’ve forgotten most of them except for the butler, Betteredge, with his obsession with Robinson Crusoe. It was fun meeting him again and I imagine fans of The Moonstone will enjoy the joke.
You don’t need to have read The Moonstone to enjoy Gooseberry, though. It’s a wonderful romp through the Victorian underworld with a lovely sense of period. There are one or two fantastical elements: Gallagher admits that the Thames Tunnel was never remotely as described and since it’s easily enough visited today that seems an unnecessary invention, but it does allow the plot to bowl along. I’m not going to carp. It’s a great book and I had fun reading it.
Where There’s Doubt: Terry Tyler
I’ve read several of Terry Tyler’s books and always enjoyed her easy writing style and ability to produce convincing characters. With Where There’s Doubt she has upped her game.
There’s been a lot of publicity about Romance Fraudsters lately, particularly Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler, so Terry’s latest is timely. It may even be a useful warning to women who are swept off their feet by men with conveniently vague past lives.
The book starts slowly and reads like so many romances as Kate, a smart cookie with a sweet centre, meets her new man, Nico. We all know, from the blurb and publicity, that Nico is no good, so I did have my doubts as the romance grows. Kate, it turns out, has recently inherited a lot of money. Is Nico after this? You bet he is. All of us reading know he is, but we are wading further and further into Mills & Boon slush. Can this con sustain a whole book?
Suddenly we switch from Kate’s point of view to Nico’s. (His name’s not Nico, of course.) Now we see just what a creep the guy is and how complex the fraud he is building up to. And now it’s not slow (or like Mills & Boon) at all.
I can’t say anything else because of spoilers. The plot twists and turns with some genuine surprises that make perfect sense once they are revealed but which I never saw coming. We see how different victims of Nico’s crimes respond differently. Some are made stronger, other collapse. The victims’ stories are as fascinating as the main plot. We meet good people and bad – those we want to see come to a terrible end and those we have a sneaking sympathy for. (Making a villain simultaneously evil and vulnerable is a very difficult thing to do and one which Terry pulls off very well.)
The end is not the neat and tidy finish that you might expect, but it is very satisfying.
I can’t say any more. I really don’t want to spoil it. But I do hope you read it. It’s very, very good.
I used to be a huge fan of Lindsay Davis’s Falco stories – a model of how to write historical crime fiction. Falco eventually grew a little too middle aged to keep on with his criminal investigations and the torch was passed to his daughter, Albia.
The Ides of April is the first of the Flavia Albia books. It was published in 2013 but I have only just got around to reading it. It’s certainly encouraged me to read more in the future.
The Ides of April is clearly written as the first in a series. Although there are frequent references to her father and you will probably enjoy the book more if you have read Falco in the past, it definitely starts from scratch. We have not only a new detective (though still working from Falco’s old office) but a new Emperor. Vespasian and Titus (both of whom featured a lot in the Falco series) are dead and Domitian is running the country. Davis is clearly not a fan of Domitian and this means there is a dark political background to the story.
The change in the politics of Rome and all the new characters that come with a new series means that much of the early part of the book is given over to establishing the characters and the background, which makes it a little slow, especially for people who already know some of it from the overlap with Falco. Eventually, though, the story – Albia’s attempts to track down a serial killer who is murdering apparently at random – gets properly under way and gallops along very satisfactorily.
There are quite a lot of characters and all are clearly drawn and easy to keep track of when they are around, but I did find myself getting lost from time to time when they were being referred to while they were not present. There are lots of nephews and nieces and lovers and ex-wives and freed slaves who are essentially part of these rambling extended families and all have two names and may be referred to by either. At one point there is a discussion of how somebody had called on someone’s father about someone’s uncle (I’m being vague as to details) and I had to read it several times to work out who was talking about whom. Eventually, though, even with characters who take on hidden identities, we work out who is who and the plot is clear. Perhaps a little too clear: once all the red herrings are discarded the big silver herring is a bit obvious. In fairness all the people involved do accept that they have been remarkably obtuse and the story is much more than just a murder mystery. The sense of time and place is (as I’d expect after the Falco series) brilliant and there are some interesting characters I expect to meet again in future books.
Is it as good as Falco at his best? Of course not: Falco at his best was already established with his family and his friends and we all knew the Rome he lived in by then. Albia is starting over and it will take a while for her to be as sure-footed as her father, but I think she’ll get there. Definitely a series worth sticking with.
