Review of Heirs of the Body, Carola Dunn

Cosy detective series set in the 1920s, with journalist and amateur detective the Hon Daisy Fletcher (daughter of the late Duke of ) assisting her police-detective husband in his cases. In this novel, Daisy and her husband must identify the next heir to the Dukedom before all the rival claimants are murdered.

Chosen because: I'm a sucker for detective stories set in the 1920s, and the village library has a large collection  

Sometimes you just want to curl up with a cosy read and enjoy yourself with a nice murder, and that's just what the Daisy Dalrymple series does. Which is no doubt why the Cambridgeshire library system seems to keep them on permanent circulation around all the village libraries.

The Hon Daisy Fletcher (nee Dalrymple) and her husband, Scotland Yard detective Alec Fletcher, are at a more than usually tense house party at Daisy's cousin Lord Dalrymple's country pile. With the current Duke childless, the heir to the Dukedom is in doubt. So, in the way of detective stories, the Duke decides to invite all the possible rival heirs to stay while the mystery is unravelled. They're a mixed lot, including a French hotel-keeper, a South-African diamond merchant, a Jamaican sailor and a schoolboy from Trinidad. Who is the rightful heir? And who is trying to bump off his rivals, via a series of failed attempts on their lives?

I'm not entirely sure there was much of a mystery to be solved in this particular novel, and certainly very little chance for the astute reader to spot the clues and uncover the solution before our heroine. In fact, the best way to identify the murderer was by eliminating everyone who seemed like a nice chap, and seeing who was left. But then when you want a cosy read, that's a perfectly satisfactory conclusion.

To be honest, in the hotly contested 'detective novels set in the 1920s and featuring at least one aristocratic amateur detective' stakes, I don't think they're anywhere near as well-written or have as good a sense of time and place as the Dandy Gilver series (to be reviewed shortly). But on the other hand, there are a heck of a lot more of them and they don't have the overwhelming irritation factor of David Roberts' 'Lord Edward Brown' series (which I find so irritating that I might not review them at all).

So if you're in the mood for something cosy, then settle down into Daisy Dalrymple and have fun.

Review of The Machine's Child - Kage Baker

The mysteries of the Cambridge Library's book ordering decisions have reached a new high this week, with The Machine's Child. This excellent book is - I discovered on page 12 or so - seventh in a series of at least ten closely inter-woven novels. Cambridge Library has none of the others, although it does have a book of short stories by the same author. Not much help.

The result was rather like reading some of the middle chapters of a book, without ever reading how the characters got to their present predicament, or how they're going to get out of the even worse predicament that they eventually reach (trapped in a virtual Victorian library filled with improving reading). So it's a real tribute to the excellence of Kage Baker as a novelist that she effortlessly scooped up the naive reader, set out the plot so far without allowing the pace to sag, and got on with the next chapter of the adventure.

Any attempt of mine to sum up the plot is going to struggle. However, in a nutshell, an all-powerful time-travelling corporation is up to no good, and Alec and his Artificial Intelligence companion are out to stop them. In a previous novel, Alec's lover, Mendoza the botanist, was kidnapped by the Company, and Alec must try to rescue her. This is only slightly hampered by Alec being a construction of the Company for their own sinister ends, and by his body being alternately possessed by an Elizabethan martyr and a Victorian colonialist. And did I mention that they're all on a time-travelling pirate ship that runs into Robert Louis Stevenson?
 

I'm not sure that I could actually recommend starting at this point in the saga - not least, because the plot has got pretty far fetched by this point and I would have liked to have been led up through the improbabilities gradually. On the other hand, great plotting and great writing by Kage Baker mean that I'll definitely look out for more. I might even suggest that Cambridge Library buys the first book in the series...

Review of The Ghost and Mrs Jeffries by Emily Brightwell

A Victorian housekeeper and her merry band of servants set out to help their hapless master, an Inspector of Police, solve yet another baffling crime.

Chosen because: found in a charity bookshop

Apparently there are no less than 31 books now in the 'Mrs Jeffries' detective series, so I'm astounded that I haven't come across them before. Cosy and unchallenging, they seem like a natural fit for our village library. On the other hand, this one was dull enough that perhaps some quality control has kicked in to the crime shelves... 

The premise is quite fun - Inspector Witherspoon of Scotland Yard is a lovely man, but an utterly incompetent detective. Luckily, he has his housekeeper Mrs Jeffries and the rest of the servants to uncover the mysteries for him, all the time without letting him know that they are doing the work.

I can imagine that in Book 1 of the series, that premise was enough to keep the plot and characters running along nicely. This one is Book 3 in the series, and to me at least, while the premise is still amusing, the novel itself sagged terribly.

The detective plot is weak, and relies on a bizarre coincidence that no-one could have foreseen.  On the other hand, since I'd lost interest in the plot by that point, I hardly cared that the reader hadn't had a chance to unravel the mystery. Anyway, the unsympathetic characters had done the murder, and the sympathetic ones were innocent, so that was all all right.

A pet hate of mine is unconvincing historical novels, and lets just say that this is a very unconvincing set of people for 1887. There's very little effort to make any of the characters anything other than a 21st century person in a frilly Victorian outfit - the wealthy American woman constantly hobnobbing with her butler, and toting him round as if he were a handbag, is particularly odd. Yes, it can be difficult to make people from another century appealing to the reader, with their totally different set of values and judgements, but it would have been nice to see the author try.

However, given that there are another 28 books in the series all finding eager readers, I'm obviously in a minority on this one. My copy is going back to the charity shop.

Review of the Kinsey Millhone 'Alphabet' series, by Sue Grafton

When the police can't help, California private eye Kinsey Millhone tackles her clients' problems with wry honesty and a touch of humour. Well written, well plotted and with engaging characters you want to spend time with.

Chosen because: I've been reading this series so long I can't remember

Starting at 'A is for Alibi', and working via 'E is for Evidence' and 'J is for Judgement' through to 'V is for Vendetta', it's almost obligatory to describe Sue Grafton's 'alphabet' series in a series of alphabetical jokes. But I'll skip all the guff about 'S for Suspense' and 'W for Wit', and get straight onto the review.


'A is for Alibi' first introduced Kinsey Millhone, a private detective in the small Californian town of Santa Theresa. Santa Theresa and the Californian landscape is almost a character in itself, described lovingly and in detail as Kinsey makes her way from clue to clue. We see the growing down-town shopping area, the wealthy homes of Horton's Ravine, the windswept beach, and the run down suburbs with their dusty mom and pop stores. If anything, some of the books seem a chance for Sue Grafton to introduce new landscapes - California's deserts and their trailer communities feature in one, while 'N is for Noose' involves no nooses, but a fascinating portrait of a remote town in the mountains.

One of the great things about the series, and which isn't always the case in crime fiction, is that there is almost always a genuine mystery to be unravelled. We are presented with a series of clues, and Kinsey doggedly follows them up, until the whole plot shakes itself out and into place. Kinsey herself is a woman I enjoy spending time with - honest and determined, unshakingly loyal to her friends, and with a compulsion to lie in the interests of uncovering the truth. Set in the 1980s, when the first was written, the lack of mobile phones and the Internet give Kinsey a more challenging and isolated role than the same private detective might have today. The novels themselves balance pace and thoughtfulness - the sadness of crime and failed human relationships is clear, at the same time as Kinsey revels in the thrill of uncovering cheats and scammers.

So far, we're all the way through to 'V is for Vendetta',  and Sue Grafton is apparently planning to take the series through to Z and then stop. The more recent novels have alternated between the first person narrative and a third person narrative describing events that Kinsey herself hasn't witnessed. Personally, I enjoy this rather less, largely because Kinsey herself, and Kinsey's voice, are what I really enjoy. However, the mysteries are still good, and Grafton has been able to stretch herself into some intriguing new topics, including false memories and the mob.

The only remaining mystery is surely what will 'Z' be for? 'Z is for Zebra'? 'Zoo'? 'Zanzibar'? All Sue Grafton's fans will be waiting with interest.

Review of Bubbles Unbound, by Sarah Strohmeyer (2002)

A screwball detective comedy about a middle-aged hairdresser whose plans to improve her life go awry. Featuring mysterious handsome strangers, poisoned mascara and Slim-Fast, a dead cheerleader and an all-powerful local employer.

Chosen because:  Found on a shelf in a hotel in Thailand

One minute it's a dead secret hidden in a crumbling Victorian manor-house, the next it's a middle-aged New Jersey hairdresser with ambitions for self-improvement. You can't say that the world of detective fiction is limited in scope.

Bubbles Yablonsky is the said New Jersey hairdresser, and more than conscious that she needs to provide her teenage daughter with a role model. So she returns to education, struggling through course after course at the local community college, until she finds her niche as a freelance journalist for the local paper. What starts as reporting on the minutiae of local life rapidly turns into a murder investigation that could help her hit the big time.

Bubbles is a heroine very much in the mode of Stephanie Plum, Janet Evanowitz's kooky and unquashable bail-bondsman. There's the same fast-paced action, the quirky elderly relatives, the troubles and opportunities of small town New Jersey life. In fact, Sarah Strohmeyer mentions in the acknowledgements that Bubbles was dreamt up at Evanowitz's kitchen table. But while Stephanie Plum is light-hearted comedy from start to finish, Stohmeyer's book is a slightly more uneasy blend of the serious and the screwball. Bubbles has real dilemmas that Stephanie never sees - a hamster doesn't need it's owner to set it a good example. And so she goes back to education, keeps up her job in the salon where she has responsibilities and commitments, and thinks carefully about sleeping with the handsome love-god who appears on her doorstep. I like the idea - frankly, Stephanie Plum's endless faffing between the two impossibly good-looking men in her life is starting to annoy me - but in practice, I felt that the serious and the comic sides of the plot didn't quite fit together. The local steelwork's irresponsible business practices was particularly awkward in this respect, ranging between being matter for gross-out jokes and for the tragic death of Bubbles' father. Frankly, I think that Strohmeyer might have been more at home writing a more openly political crime thriller, in the style of Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski novels.

Having said all that, if you like Stephanie Plum (and I do), it's well worth trying out Bubbles Yablonsky.

Review of The Dead Secret, Wilkie Collins

A decaying manor-house holds a secret that will ruin its new owners lives. Or not. Only plodding through to the novel's end will reveal the truth. 

Chosen because: I'm a big fan of his other (better) work

It's a bit difficult to review The Dead Secret, just because it is so dull. I'm a big fan of Wilkie Collins, or at least his best known novels The Moonstone and The Woman in White (see my previous review), but The Dead Secret had me yawning and flipping over the pages to reach the inevitable, tedious, ending.

For those of you who haven't come across Collins before, he is a Victorian writer and close friend of Charles Dickens, and one of the founding fathers of the detective story genre. The Moonstone is, in many ways, one of the first and the tricksiest of crime novels - with a twist in the tale long before anyone else had even thought that the genre might become overly predictable.

The Dead Secret is the predecessor to The Woman in White, and the most striking thing about it is how much Collins' writing improves from one novel to the next.

The story is set in a desolate Cornish manor house, and begins with a death-bed and the concealing of a sinister secret. Cut to twenty or so years later, and the secret is uncovered, mainly due to the efforts to conceal it.

The characters spend a great deal of time discussing exactly how they ought to go about finding the secret, which while no doubt realistic, is dull. There's only so much time you can spend reading about two people writing to another person to ask whether he has any ideas about finding out which room in a house is which.

Reviewers at the time criticised Collins' deliberate decision to reveal the secret to the reader at an early point, but I doubt whether concealing from us would have increased the suspense, mainly because it is such a damp squib when it is revealed to the characters. We're told that the secret could destroy a happy marriage, but the characters seem to shrug it off with an 'oh well, these things happen'. We're then told that, even more dramatically, it could lead to the wealthy couple having to curtail their expenditure for a while, and then they don't need to bother. Contrast this with the genuinely villainous plots of The Woman in White, and it's clear that at some point Collins realised that a suspense novel needs... well, a bit more suspense.
  
Having said that, it does have some good set piece moments, which look forward to Collins' later work - particularly the scenes in and around the mysterious 'Myrtle Room' which hides the secret.

Plus the characters are extremely dull. Sarah Leeson, a clear fore-runner to poor Anne Catherick in The Woman in White and Rosanna Spearman in The Moonstone, is tediously rather than intriguingly disturbed. The supposedly charmingly sparky yet tender heroine is, in my opinion at least, irritating (but then so is Rachel in The Moonstone). And the noble blind husband is wet.

Of interest to literary scholars only. Or to people who want to reassure themselves that writing one duff novel does not mean that the next few won't be fantastic.

Review of The Library Paradox by Catherine Shaw (2006)

A Victorian female detective sets out to investigate the impossible murder of a Professor in a locked room. Set at the height of the Dreyfus affair, the novel takes us into the heart of the Jewish community in 19th century London, tackling anti-semitism and xenophobia.

Chosen because: a Christmas present from my mystery-loving aunt

Well, once again (following Colin Cotterrill's The Woman who Wouldn't Die) I'm thrown into the middle of a series, with a set of characters who (presumably) all know each other and each others' little foibles, while I'm left trying to work out who's who, and, more importantly, try to work up the empathy for them.

This last couple of weeks, I've been reading four different crime novels (The Woman who Wouldn't Die, The Cadaver Game, A Lesson in Secrets, and The Library Paradox), all part of a series, all with a historical twist, and its been an incentive to consider the role of character in the readers' enjoyment of the novel. With two of the novels, The Cadaver Game and A Lesson in Secrets, I'd already read several other books in the series. With the other two, I was coming fresh into the story half-way through. How much of my enjoyment of The Cadaver Game was the result of meeting again characters who I'm familiar with? How much of my difficulty with The Library Paradox was the result of being thrown into the fourth or fifth novel in the series?

I was left thinking of Donald Maas's thoughts (in his excellent book Writing the Breakout Novel) on the crucial importance of the reader's empathy with a central character, and his discussions of what makes us identify a character. My problem with Vanessa Weatherburn, the heroine of this novel, was that I never particularly got to like her. For no good reason. She seemed a nice enough person, but there was never that moment in the opening chapter when she grabbed at me and made me think, 'yes, this one, I'm rooting for this one'. I certainly never got as far as liking (or even being able to quite remember who was who) her three young student companions, Amy, Emily and Jonathan, which meant that when one of them fell into mortal danger towards the novel's climax, I was fairly unmoved.

Vanessa Weatherburn meets all the criteria for a heroine I should empathise with - an intelligent, educated Victorian woman, who is willing to throw off the shackles of convention to take up an alternative career as a detective. She even lives in Cambridge, my own home town, in a house which I can picture exactly. And yet... I was left ungripped.

So what does an author have to do to make me want to cheer for their heroes, right or wrong, from the beginning to the end of the novel? What makes us put a small part of our soul into someone else's imagination? It's something that I, as a would-be writer myself, need to keep thinking about. But one of my writing buddies, reading over an early draft of my novel, suggested that it was the small incidents that can touch - and the small words. My heroine left her cold, while her side-kick, she said, had her from the very first moment that he gently smoothed the straps over a dead boy's shoulder.  

I was repeatedly left thinking that I should be enjoying the novel more. For me, without a deeper empathy with the characters, I felt rather as though I was listening to a BBC Radio 4 documentary about attitudes towards Jews in England and France in the late 19th century - and if I'd wanted to read about that, I would have gone back to the source and re-read Amy Levy's Reuben Sachs, or Zola's J'Accuse.

Having said that, I really did enjoy the elements of the novel set deep in the immigrant Jewish community in London's East End. Shaw brought the atmosphere, the sights and smells and people, to life in a way that I was longing for in the rest of the novel's settings. But in many ways, for me, the most memorable part of the whle novel was a re-telling of a short story by Yiddish writer Isaac Peretz. 

Review of Herland, Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1915)

A group of Edwardian explorers follow in the footsteps of Conan-Doyle's The Lost World and find something even more extraordinary than living dinosaurs - a functioning society made up entirely of women. 

Chosen because: on a 'blind date with a book' event, Cambridge City Library.

Preamps the only Edwardian novel which culminates with a woman kneeing her husband in the balls while the reader cheers her on, Herland is a science fiction novel with a difference. Written in 1915 by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, best known for her gripping short story 'The Yellow Wallpaper', this novel takes a serio-comic look at contemporary attitudes to women.

Intrigued by rumours of a mysterious kingdom of women, three young Edwardian explorers follow in the footsteps of Conan-Doyle's famous trio, by flying their fragile plane up into an inaccessible mountain valley. Like the well -educated men they are, they know that such a thing is both biologically and socially impossible.When they see well built roads, and well engineered buildings, they know at once that there are some men somewhere in the society. How could women possibly design and build such structures eithout fallings out and cat fights? And yet, of course, this is indeed a Utopia entirely of women.

The novel rapidly turns into a series of discussions between the men, trying to justify the contemporary British and American ways of life, and the women, who repeatedly puncture their pretentions and pull apart their arguments. There are intriguing discussions of the importance of population control (the women choose to give up their ability to have babies in order to balance the population) and the role of education and upbringing (in this soicety, mothers do not necessarily bring up their children). The views of the women, which we might guess are similar to those of Gilman herself, are challenging, and can be read both in the historical context and in terms of Gilmans own troubled life experienced, particularly of motherhood (a short biography of the author is included in the edition that I read).

To be honest, the plot does flag about half way through (there's only so many discussions about how great the world would be with no men and no sex that I could take), with the exception of the excellent kneeing in the balls episode. However, for anyone interested in early 20th century writing, and pnarticulaty in gender roles in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, this is a must. It's also great to read something other than 'The Yellow Wallpaper' by this talented writer. And if you haven't read 'The Yellow Wallpaper', then go out and read it now.

Special kudos to Cambridge City Library for introducing me to this novel via their 'blind date with a book' event - in which readers were invited to take out a brown paper wrapped book, with only a brief description to guide your choice. The fun was of course in getting it home and unwrapping it. A great chance to pick a book without the normal structures of author, title and cover art.

Review of Arcanum, by Simon Morden (2014)

Chosen because: arrived in the village library

I'm not sure if this counts as a science fiction novel, but I enjoyed it so much that I'm reviewing it anyway. Because you have to love a novel in which a group of heroic librarians, dubious booksellers and assorted hangers-on, including hunters, princes and Jews, use their wits and research capacity to overcome disaster.

The kingdom of Carinthia exists in the Alps, about 800 years after the Roman empire was brought down by the rampaging Goths and their overwhelming magicians. Because this is a Medieval world in which, at the beginning, magic is all-powerful. With the aid of the mages of the White Tower, the Carinthians live without the aid of science or engineering, in houses lit by magic, with ploughs steered by spells, and wagons guided by runes. Until one day, the lights go out and the magic disappears...

Meanwhile, in the Jewish quarter of the town, magic is held as non-kosher, and the Jews have worked out their own technologies. It's down to the Jews, or at least, to one particular Jew, Sophia Morgenstern, daughter of a dodgy bookseller, to help the young Prince Felix and his subjects adjust to their new world. Unfortunately, the rival city states of Bavaria and Wien, not to mention the Dwarves, have their own plans for the tiny kingdom.

Simon Morden is apparently a rocket scientist in real life, which is no doubt what makes him so gleeful as his characters work out fundamental scientific principles - with a particular nod to the importance of gravity - all the time battling to keep Carinthia running. If this makes the novel sound overly worthy, it shouldn't. It's a tribute to the joys of libraries, of research, of finding things out for yourself, just as much as it is a discussion of the competing demands of rulership, and plain fantasy about the end of magic in a Medieval world.

Heartily recommended, particularly for fans of Lois Bujold McMaster and Diana Wynne-Jones.

Review of Bellwether, by Connie Willis

A comic portrayal of a team of scientists struggling to continue their research despite hopeless bureaucracy, diminishing funding and romantic entanglements - not to mention the difficulties of getting a decent cup of iced tea.
 
Chosen: bought after being introduced to her novels via a friend

I'm not sure whether you can call this a science fiction novel in the mainstream sense - no aliens, no far-flung planets, no adventures, even - but it's certainly fiction about science.

Connie Willis is a hard writer to categorise. Her novels range from the very funny To Say Nothing of the Dog, a time-travelling romantic comedy, to much more serious but gripping looks at history, such as the duology Blackout and All Clear.

Bellwether is set in a reseach lab in fashionable Boulder, Colorado, where sociologist Sandy is trying to track down the underlying source of trends and fads of all kinds. Meanwhile, her colleague Bennett is struggling to find the funding he needs for his research into chaos theory, and Management is trying out yet another management strategy du jour.

It's much quieter and lighter than her other books, and as such was a bit of a disappointment to me when I first read it - it certainly doesn't have either the pace of Blackout / All Clear or the screwball comedy of To Say Nothing of the Dog. But it's one that I've come back to repeatedly.  Engaging characters, a very neatly worked-out plot (no suprise, as TSNotD is structured in the style of a classic 30's murder mystery), and most of all, an author who clearly has a topic she wants to explore. The increasingly bizarre fashions followed by the characters (particularly the duct-tape) are a recurring comic touch. And its a nice reminder that middle-aged scientists and sociologists are every bit as driven by trends as their younger, more obviously fashionable juniors.

It's quite an achievement to combine a discussion of scientific breakthroughs, the problems of blindly following the fashion, and romantic comedy. Well worth reading, if only to see how lucky you are not to work at HiTek labs with fashion conscious Flip as your personal assistant.

One minor but important point. Connie Willis is totally wrong about bread pudding in this novel - it is delicious and Sandy's on-off boyfriend is quite right to change his mind about it.

Where are all the women?

The mystery that we are supposed to be wondering about in Dan Simmons' Hyperion is the approaching end of the world, the nature of the all-powerful, unknowable Shrike, and the 7 pilgrims' quest to prevent Doomsday.

What I am actually wondering about is, 'where are all the women?'.

So far, across a planetary federation of what seems to be thousands if not tens of thousands of planets, we have been introduced to no fewer than four women. The first was a native who kindly nursed a passing missionary / anthropologist and so merited an entry in his diary. One was a nurse who smoothed a soldier's fevered brow and was exploded by aliens ten seconds later, leaving the solider to get on with the serious manly duty of stealing spaceships. The third turned out not to be a woman at all, but - after several pages of lovingly detailed descriptions of her naked body - a monster. (I know, that happens to me a lot too. You go for a coffee with a woman you happen to meet, and lo and behold, she turns out to be a monster with retractable spikes spinning out of her vulva. You can't go back to that cafe again.) We do still have one woman to be fully introduced to, so lets hope for the best.*

The best thing is that at one point, the missionary / anthropologist wonders how the tribe he is studying manages to reproduce themselves, given their total taboos around bodies. I think he should be wondering how his own galaxy-wide civilization has managed to keep going, given that there are apparently 3 women and 1 female-looking monster to reproduce the entire next generation. In fact, the Shrike needn't bother to kill anyone off - it can just wait for nature to take its course.

It's striking just how different men and women's writing can be. A friend's novel, set in the religious turmoil of the 16th century, includes powerful dukes, noblemen and soliders, but also the whole host of sisters, grandmothers, sisters-in-law, aunts, nuns, women just getting on with the shopping - in short, the type of mix of genders and ages that she and I see in real life. Lois McMaster Bujold, whose work I'm a great fan of, is another writer who thinks about the gender realities of life in the future, and tackles the mystery of the general lack of women in the future head on. Which leaves me wondering - do most men science fiction writers simply live in a woman free world?

* There is also a one week old baby girl on the pilgramage, but she mainly seems to play the portable role of a handbag or other arm decoration. Certainly she behaves like no other baby I've ever heard of.

'Structure in stories' - week 2 of a course from by the Cambridge Storytellers

Week two of the story-telling course, in the wonderfully atmospheric space of Cambridge's Michaelhouse Church and Arts Centre - big enough to give you a real feeling of performance, and yet intimate enough for us to work in pairs and small groups without any difficulty.

Cambridge Storytellers are a wonderful group of people, talented storytellers all, who come together to celebrate, practise and encourage this wonderful art. Folk tales, new stories, retellings of people's lives - all sorts of shapes and stories are told at the monthly Story Circle.

And now, in the darkest part of the year, they're organising a series of story-telling classes, taking novice story-tellers through on a journey

I was first inspired to join the classes after hearing Marion Leeper recount an elderly Cambridge man's memories, in story form, at a local history celebration in a graveyard (I have some wild nights out). I then tried my hand at a bit of storytelling in the Story Circle (sharing a wonderful old Viking tale, translated by my old friend Ralph O'Connor), and am now working on the craft during the story-telling course.

This week's class focused on structure. We looked at the idea of the 3 part structure - beginning, middle and end - identifiying the structures of first various folk tales and myths, and then the stories that we'd all brought. It was felt-tip and paper time, and we drew out our stories as cartoons, ready to analyse the structure without getting caught up in the language.

I'd 'brought along' two stories - one, a set of reminiscences of a local woman that I'm shaping into a story, and second, a fully worked out tale by the great 19th century Yiddish writer Isaac Peretz. The Yiddish tale fitted perfectly into the 3-part structure, but I soon realised that part of the problem with my local-history story is that it doesn't have a proper end. One task for the week is going to be finding an end! On the other hand, Marion had also suggested that the three parts themselves, particularly the middle, Marian said, can in turn be divided into three parts. I was glad to realise that the middle of my tale already separates nicely into three parts.

We next looked at tracking the characters' ups and downs, drawing graphs across the story outline with their changes of fortune. If we had two contrasting protagonists, Marion suggested, the graphs might form mirror images of each other - the hero's triumph is the villain's downfall, and vice versa. Again, I realised one of the issues with my local-history story - a real lack of change of fortune. After a bad start, my main character currently seems to continue on a fairly even keel for the rest of the story, which isn't keeping the listeners' attention, although the individual incidents are good. Definitely something to think about and work on, before next week's class on 'creating a setting'. 

To find out more, see http://www.cambridgestorytellers.com/

Review of Colin Cotterill, The Woman who Wouldn't Die, a Dr Siri mystery

Chosen: from the circulating selection in the village library

Similar to: the Number One Ladies' Detective Agency, the Daisy Dalrymple mysteries


I came in to the Dr Siri series about half-way through, or possibly towards the end, so at least half of my description of the novel's setting is probably going to be wrong. Set in Laos in the 1970s, a country still under a military / communist rule, Dr Siri is Laos's only coroner, although he seems to have been sacked under mysterious circumstances relating to another novel. (This is the downside to picking up books from the local library, which never seems to take into account the fact that many people like to begin at the start of a series, and then move on one by one. Our library seems to specialise in having only the middle part of a trilogy, and a random selection of novels throughout a series.) Dr Siri is called in by the authorities to validate the claims of a medium, who is claiming to be able to track down the bodies of those who have died in the country's long and bloody struggle for independence. Meanwhile, Dr Siri's wife is being pursued by a sinister figure from her young days as a freedom fighter. Is the medium telling the truth about her mysterious abilities? And can she guide Dr Siri in the use of his own psychic powers? (It turns out that psychic powers in a coroner are less use than you might imagine.)

It's a remarkably cosy novel,  despite the ostensible subject matter of Laos's fight for independence from the French. Filled with extraordinarily nice characters, all of whom spend their time being nice to each other, you're left in no doubt that nothing unpleasant will happen to any of the main characters, even if the author has to pull in an extraordinary and previously almost unmentioned deus ex machina to do so.

Good comfort reading for a winter's evening, but I was left oddly without a sense of place. Compared to Magdalen Nabb's novel 'Death in Springtime' about poverty among Sardinian shepherds*, this left me without a sense of place, and without any real feeling for what makes Laos unique. It could very easily have been set in an English village, and very little would need to be changed. Still, the library has a few more of Cotterill's novels, and I'll probably pick them up for light entertainment.

*And far, far more gripping than this suggests


Update - after a discussion with colleagues in the office, I realise that at least I'm now rather better informed about Laos 20th century history than I previously was, which has to up the star rating of this book somewhat.

Review of The Cadaver Game, Kate Ellis (2012)

One of the Wesley Peterson Murder Mysteries

A team of archaeologists digging up a buried picnic as part of an art installation find their activities unexpectedy linked to a series of murders in a small Devon town.  


Chosen because: available in the village library



You'd think the police force of Devon would have seen sense and banned all archaeological investigations by now. Because every time that Neil Watson of the Devon County Archaeological Service leads a dig in any kind of archaeological site - Viking longships, iron age forts, or here, as part of an art installation - his friend DI Wesley Peterson of the local police force is sure to be notified about a murder. And the two are just guaranteed to be related in some unexpected but sinister way. We must be onto the 20th book in the series by now, and the archaeology and the murder are linked every time.

On the other hand, the unlikely historic coincidences are just part of the fun of this series of detective stories, where the archaeology gets as much time as the modern-day murders. They aren't gory, but at the same time, Ellis never forgets the potential sadness of police work, and the impact that it can have on the police involved.

In The Cadaver Game, a local landowner has had the unsavory idea of recreating an 18th century game of man hunting, inspired by an old diary. Unfortunately, it ends in death for two of the young human 'foxes', who are found naked at the bottom of the cliff. One of them is the cousin of a young officer in Wesley's squad, who struggles to come to terms with her death. Meanwhile, another woman is found dead in a surburban house. And Neil Watson - under the influence of large amounts of cash - is taking part in an art installation which involves his archaeology students digging up a buried picnic. Could any of it possibly be linked? Yes, of course it all is.

It's a great advert for having likeable characters in a novel series, and plenty of them. Ellis's books are just packed full of nice people - detectives and archaeologists - none of whom are in the least bit gritty or brooding. They're about as far away from Scandi-noir brooding heroes - or even Inspector Morse - as you can get. You might actually want to go to the pub with them, if you didn't mind hearing quite a lot about the problems of county archaeological funding. Gerry, the widowed senior policeman, might seem to have the potential for a bit of brooding, but gets over it by eating a lot of fish and chips, going to the pub, arguing with his teenagers and generally getting on with life.

Well worth reading for a cosy evening in with a bit of bite to it. Plus the fun of wondering why Neil and Wesley never seem to comment that once again, their two jobs have become mysteriously interlinked.

Review of Tea from an Empty Cup by Pat Cadigan (1998)

A complex crime novel set in a world where virtual reality has become more attractive than real life, and where identity is endlessly alterable.

Chosen by: discovered on the science fiction shelf on a Mill Road charity bookshop

Set in some unspecified time in the future, Tea from an Empty Cup follows the story of  detective Lieutentant Konstantin, whose latest case involves the murder of a virtual reality addict. Just as the gamer 'dies' within the game, his throat is cut in real life. This turns out to be only the start of a series of disappearances and deaths, and Konstantin makes the decision to take on the dead man's virtual avatar in order to investigate the case. At the same time, young Yuki is looking for her missing boyfriend, and also, you've guessed it, takes on his virutal persona to track down his movements.

There's also a bizarre sub-plot about Japan having been overwhelmed by a tsunami, and the inhabitants' attempts to recreate their lost Japan in the virtual world.

It's an intriguing premise, but for me, the novel really failed to grip. The main flaw was that the plot was simply too confusing - with two women on different missions both taking on a character in the virtual world, the result was that I could never remember which was which, who they were pretending to be, and who they were looking for. In a twist about three quarters of the way through something even more confusing happens, but by that point I was pretty much failing to follow the plot, and so cant remember what it was. I certainly wasn't able to develop any relationship or empathy with either of the main characters, and was left unmoved by their cyber-fates.

First published in 1998, the novel is perhaps most interesting today as a relatively early take on the potential implications of virtual reality, and video gaming  (the author was for a conencted with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at the University of Warwick). However, for me, the overly complex plot and the under-defined characters let it down.

Review of Plan for Chaos, John Wyndham (2009)

A photojournalist in 1950s New York is appalled to discover that a series of women, each one looking identical to his fiance, are being killed. He's even more appalled when the deaths turn out to be merely part of a convoluted Nazi plot to take over the US, led by his aunt.

Chosen because: seen in the science fiction section of Waterstone bookshop, Oxford


When I saw a 'new' John Wynham novel on the shelves of the science fiction section at Waterstones in Oxford, I had to buy it straight away. Wynham's classic novels - The Day of the Triffids, The Midwich Cuckoos, and all the rest of them - were some of the first science fiction that I ever read, and I put one of his short stories down as responsible for my current profession (it's the one in which a Soviet botanist dies in mysterious circumstances on the Moon, for those of you that know it).

Plan for Chaos was in fact apparently one of his earlier novels, one that he was working on at the time of The Day of the Triffids, and which he put to one side without re-drafting when The Day of the Triffids was accepted for publication.

The story line is frankly rather silly - the type of thing that Clive Cussler would be using for a Dirk Pitt adventure if he hadn't already done Nazis to death. A top-ranking Nazi has escaped at the end of the war, and developed a new technology for IVF and human embryo growth (in a very similar way to Huxley's Brave New World). She uses it to grow a master race of identical young Nazis, all of whom are genetically her children, who are going about taking over the world in a mysterious and roundabout way.

Our hero, a young photographer for a New York newspaper, is appalled to see a photograph of a dead woman who is identical to his fiance (and cousin) Frieda. He's even more appalled when he discovers that a whole string of women, all of them identical to Frieda and each other, are being found dead across New York. Then Frieda disappears...

Its fair enough to begin by saying that it's not great. Wyndham has hit the problem that (as I speedily discovered in writing my first novel) people locked up in a prison for chapters on end are not especially thrilling. Even when the people holding the hero and heroine prisoner are Nazi clones in an underground bunker, you can still get very fed up of people stuck in one place.

I'm always particularly interested by the speculative and predictive aspects of Wyndham's novels - the social effects of rising sea levels in The Kraken Wakes, the political effects of increased life spans in Trouble with Lichen - and this one doesn't have the same intellectual punch. Some of the ideas haven't aged particularly well - in particular, the horror of the hero and heroine at the idea of IVF per se seems rather unnecessary today - and having been primed by Lois McMaster Bujold's Ethan of Athos, I was extremely dubious about who had actually looked after all these clones in their early years.

The result is a novel which is most interesting as a comparison with Wyndham's other writing, in order to see what he gets right so often elsewhere, rather than as a good read in itself.