Precipice, by Robert Harris.

 

            ‘The Shot That Was Heard Around the World’:  Gavrilo Princip, a young Serbian Nationalist and leader of a rebel group assassinates the heir to the Austro/Hungarian Empire and his wife, thus starting the First World War. Austria’s traditional ally Germany rallies its forces and attacks Belgium and France and their treaty partner Britain reluctantly starts recruiting troops for the war that everyone thinks will be ‘over by Christmas’.

            Meantime, Britain’s Liberal Prime Minister Herbert Asquith is enjoying a great wave of popularity for his strong leadership and cabinet, not least First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill and Secretary for War Lord Kitchener, surely an unbeatable combination. 

            And Asquith is also enjoying – and is happily enslaved by – a passionate affair with 26 year-old Venetia Stanley, a much younger socialite of aristocratic birth with which he shares secret communications from his overseas ambassadors;  Venetia and her common-sense approach to huge military problems helps him to have a more clear-eyed view, especially about other members of his cabinet.  She has become indispensable to him in life and in love.- the only problem being his cavalier treatment of the decrypted telegrams and documents that he shows her on their many drives around London – he does insist on several occasions on screwing up these official state secrets and throwing them out the car window.

            Which is hardly a good look as people, in the first great flush of patriotism, hand the telegrams and state secrets into Scotland Yard, and a discreet investigation is obliged to begin, revealing that the affair is common knowledge among the Great and the Good, in fact it’s nearly last week’s news amongst the aristocracy – except for Margot, Asquith’s strident, social-climber wife:  she has also known about his affairs, but this is the first time he has been so impossibly, uncontrollably smitten.  This whole thing must stop!

            Meantime, the War rages on;  casualty lists are horrific, especially since Germany has started using Poison gas, and a new offensive touted by Winston against the Dardanelles is proving to have the opposite desired effect:  Gallipolli has been an exercise in supreme carnage.  Asquith must pull himself together, Vanessa must marry someone – not quite anyone, for she is an aristocrat, but Asquith’s government musn’t fall:  everything depends on sound leadership to beat the Hun, and distractions like socialites can’t be allowed:  in short, Asquith has to show a bit of Stiff Upper Lip – which he does, at the eleventh hour.

            Robert Harris has written superbly of this fraught time, using all the correspondence from Asquith to his darling Venetia, plus many of the decrypted messages and telegrams which are still in existence, and he has endowed all main players in the drama exciting new life, especially demonstrating that Love doesn’t always Conquer All – sometimes it can produce the opposite effect!  FIVE STARS.      

 

THE BEST OF THE BEST, THE CRÈME DE LA CRÈME 

THE FIRST FOURTEEN OF THE GREATEST READS OF THE YEAR 2020, FOR ALL GREAT READERS!

1.    The Testaments, byMargaret Atwood.

2.    The Butterfly Girl, by Rene Denfeld.

3.    The Overstory, byRichard Powers.

4.    American Dirt, by JeanineCummins.

5.    Saving Missy, byBeth Morrey.

6.    The Mirror and theLight, by Hilary Mantel.

7.    Broken, by Don Winslow.

8.    The Dickens Boy, byTom Keneally.

9.    The Last Crossing,by Brian McGilloway

10.          Call Your Daughter Home, by Deb Spera

11.          The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donohue

12.          The Thursday Murder Club, by Richard Osman

13.          Like a House on Fire, by Caroline Hulse

14.          The Sound of Stars (YA), by Alechia Dow

 I thank you all for your interest throughout the year - isn't it great to have great stories at our fingertips.  In spite of Covid and its attendant worries, we are still able to enjoy the best escapism of all.  Season's greetings everyone, and let us hope that 2021 will be a vast improvement on crappy old 2020 - we all should have a refund on this year!  Lots of love to all.  

 

The Pull of the Stars, by Emma Donoghue.

 

  

          Influenza - ‘The Pull of the Stars’:  Italians believed that the influence of the constellations could indeed make them sick, and in November, 1918, the whole world is slave to Influenza.  As if an earth-shattering world war hadn’t caused enough suffering, the Flu, the Grippe – call it what you will, had invaded every home, especially those of the poor.

            Emma Donoghue’s latest novel was started in November, 2018, the centenary of the disease that wiped out between 3 and 6% of the human race, and was rushed into print to coincide with the latest threat to humanity:  COVID 19.  It describes the events of just three days in the maternity/fever ward of a catholic hospital in Dublin, severely understaffed as more nurses and doctors succumb to the illness, leading to ‘promotions in the field’ of staffers who have previously kept strictly to their allotted tasks.  Such a worker is Nurse Julia Power, suddenly in charge of three patients, all of whom are infected, and all in danger of going into labour as a symptom of the disease.

            The Night Nurse, a nun, arranges an assistant from the Mother House, a catholic orphanage just around the corner, and Bridie Murphy enters Julia’s life:  semi-literate, half-starved, and the owner of mysterious scars, she is still a breath of fresh, clean air in the ward, heartbreakingly willing to please, a natural nurse and the possessor of a memory that forgets nothing, good or bad:  together, she and Julia quickly weld themselves into an inseparable team – even the sadness Julia has waiting at home in the shape of her mute brother (wounded in the war, in his spirit.  He no longer talks.) can dim the satisfaction of a job well done.

            Until Day Three dawns, and with it the re-arrest at the hospital of Dr Kathleen Lynn, a Sinn Feiner and dangerous rebel, released early to attend to the appalling numbers of flu sufferers;  her second incarceration coincides with new exhortations from the Government pasted on city walls:  EAT AN ONION A DAY.  LIE DOWN FOR A FORTNIGHT.  ‘WOULD THEY BE DEAD IF THEY’D STAYED IN BED?’ Julia is living in a nightmare which continues with no respite throughout the day:  young lives cease without warning – youth is no insurance against this disease, especially with poverty and malnutrition as a base:  the stars are pulling strongly indeed.

            Ms Donoghue, acclaimed author of ‘Room’ and ‘Akin’ to name just two of her great stories, recreates superbly the terror and fear of a century ago when our world was held hostage to an unknown, all-powerful enemy, an illness that we didn’t know how to vanquish:  she draws the obvious parallels to the corona virus, but surely – surely – we can beat it this time around – can we? -  can’t we?  SIX STARS!!

 

                     

The Testaments, by Margaret Atwood.

            It has been thirty five years since Margaret Atwood’s brilliant Dystopian novel ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ was published, a tiresomely lengthy time for her myriad fans to wait for answers to What Happened Next to the Handmaid Offred and her precious children:  now, our curiosity has been satisfied by Ms Atwood at her most sublime:  ‘The Testaments’ has it all - a gripping plot, magnificent characters, and a heroine who was forced into villainy but redeems herself utterly:  Vengeance, Thy Name is …..  nope, no spoilers in THIS blog!

            This book was worth waiting 35 years for, especially after the wonderful TV series. It centres on Offred’s daughters – Agnes Jemima, who started life in freedom as Hannah before a calamitous Civil War transformed the United States into Gilead, and Baby Nicole, Offred’s child of bondage in the new totalitarian society, planned to be given to ‘pretend’ parents, Fred and Serena Waterford to raise. 

Agnes remains in unhappy thrall to her Gilead parents;  her loving first ‘mother’ Tabitha has died and her ‘father’ Commander Kyle wastes no time in taking another wife, who wants Agnes out of the house, and the best way to achieve that is – marriage.  Marriage to the elderly but immensely powerful Commander Judd, who enjoys a worrying propensity for very young wives, all of whom eventually become sickly and die.

            Agnes’s fate appears to be sealed, until in desperation she applies to Aunt Lydia, one of the Founders, to be an Aunt, a so-called guardian of the various classes of women in Giladean society.  It is not an ideal fate;  she will never have children, the sacred destiny of all Gilead women, but at least she will still be alive.

            By contrast, her unknown little sister Baby Nicole has been abducted from her pious family and spirited off to Canada, where she becomes Daisy and grows up with foster parents, unaware of her origins and in an atmosphere of freedom unimaginable to any Gilead inhabitant – until her foster parents are cruelly murdered by those over the border who have never stopped looking for Baby Nicole.  It’s time for Daisy to grow up, and return to Gilead – not as Baby Nicole but as Jade, a homeless street kid who wants God in her life:  she has had a crash course as a spy and is expected to bring back vital information from an important inside source to American revolutionary groups in Canada – if she can pull it off.

            Ms Atwood pulls it off in spades.  This is an astonishing, masterly sequel to her most famous and beloved novel, and is a fitting testament to today’s 21^st century ‘democracy’.  SIX STARS.  

    

             

Less, by Andrew Sean Greer

            Arthur Less is a novelist who has gained minor fame, first for being the lover (when he was young and beautiful) of a much older Pulitzer-Prize winning poet (Arthur was entrusted by the poet’s wife to teach the illustrious man how to swim, a fateful decision), then for his own literary efforts, which are hardly in the same league.  Still, he has made a reputation of sorts for himself in San Francisco, including (oh, the irony) of taking on a much younger lover:  now, as Arthur approaches his fiftieth birthday, young lover Freddy is about to marry someone else -  for Less has refused to give more.  He cannot bear the thought of being an old, infirm burden in the future to someone who means everything to him.  Nope, time to pull the plug – and as for going to the wedding (yes, Less has received an invitation;  the ceremony is in the wine country somewhere) he has hit upon the perfect excuse not to attend:  he has a number of invitations to attend various literary events in different parts of the world, including a 5 week tenure at a Berlin University.  He will accept them all!  Arthur Less will not even be in the country when his darling ties the knot.  Perfect.

            Except, of course, that it isn’t.  Fretting is Less’s middle name;  he worries constantly about things that have occurred, could occur and may never occur, and true to form, glitches and hitches occur with gay abandon at every stage of his odyssey:  the card entry to his flat several floors up in a Berlin apartment building refuses to work (of course it does!), necessitating in a death-defying climb up several balconies to gain entry;  a heinously expensive luxury camel trip into the Moroccan desert laid every other member of the party low with a mysterious illness – except Arthur.  Why wasn’t HE sick?  His beautiful and beloved blue suit is destroyed by a stray dog (truly!) in India, and last but certainly not least, in his research for writing a classy foodie review of a rare Japanese cuisine, he is trapped in a 400 year-old restaurant – because the door to the room in which he is dining is stuck.  Because it is 400 years old.

            But all these distractions (and I listed only a few) have done nothing to take his mind off the fact that Freddy is now married and enjoying an idyllic honeymoon in the Paradise of Tahiti with his new husband.  Arthur can imagine almost to the minute what they will be doing and when;  all his attempts to distract himself from the horrible reality of being without Freddy have come to nothing.  He must face his future without his love.

            Fittingly, Andrew Sean Greer was awarded the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for this superlative little love story.  He proves himself over and over as the master of metaphor, and shows us that comedy is as essential to the human condition as its opposite.  I feel very blessed to have read this lovely book, and I’ll go travelling with Arthur any old time.  Less is definitely more!  SEVEN STARS, SO THERE!!!  

           

Michael Murpurgo Month

IT’S MICHAEL MORPURGO MONTH!

Welcome to the Children’s section of Te Takere’s Library blog, which is expanding to include the wonderful selection of fiction available for the children of the Horowhenua.  There are so many cool titles for kids here thanks to our great buyer librarians that they definitely deserve their very own section:  just as adults can access fiction choices on this blog, now, thanks to JD’s website expertise, children will also have the same ability to pick and choose.

First up as a five-star recommendation is  ‘The Elephant in the Garden’by British children’s author Michael Morpurgo.  He needs no introduction;  his stories have delighted, enthralled and moved kids of all ages, and he is always careful to get his facts right – his writing is always objective and his research impeccable.  Many of his books are set in times of war, written without specific blame for one side or the other;  rather, their stories demonstrate the futility and heartbreak of conflict and its terrible consequences – but they always have happy and hopeful endings, for no child should finish a book and feel sad. 

The following books reviewed are most suitable for ages 10 years and up.  (And really keen and clever eight year-olds!)

An Elephant in the Garden, by Michael Morpurgo.

            Karl’s mum is a nurse who works in a Rest Home.  She enjoys her work;  even though a lot of her patients are very old and nearing the end of their lives, they are all still interesting and unique people who deserve her care and respect.  Such a person is Elizabeth, who is 82 years old and swears that when she was sixteen, an elephant lived in her garden! 

            Karl’s mum rolls her eyes at this;  it is a favourite chant of Elizabeth’s and the old lady wants to tell Karl all about it – she has taken a great fancy to him, for sometimes he has to come to the rest home when mum works in the school holidays, and he likes to sit with her.  She says he reminds her of her little brother Karli, and Karl is very flattered, and even more so when he and his mum when her shift has ended, finally have the time to sit next to Elizabeth’s bed and hear her wonderful, terrible, unbelievable story:  an elephant really did stay in Elizabeth’s garden, an elephant called Marlene.

            It is February of 1945.  In the city of Dresden in Germany people are feeling lucky but scared:  so far the British bombers have left their city alone but the people know that this enchanted time cannot last;  the war is coming to an end and Germany is on its knees – the Russians are approaching from the East and the Americans are moving in from the West.  Everyone is making plans to flee, including Elizabeth’s mother, who works at the local Zoo.  Elizabeth’s Papa is a prisoner of war in Russia, and her Mutti hopes to find shelter at her sister’s farm in the country outside Dresden if bombs start to fall.  Mutti hopes also to rescue her very favourite animal from the Zoo, a young 4-year-old elephant named for sultry movie star Marlene Dietrich;  Mutti was there at her birth and can’t bear the thought that she will be shot along with all the other zoo animals if the bombers come.  Well, Marlene can come along with Mutti, Elizabeth and Karli, so there!  Mutti has lost so much already;  she’s not leaving Marlene behind if they have to become refugees.  The decision is made.

            And it happens more quickly and brutally than they can imagine;  the bombers do come, turning the beautiful city into a fireball;  tens of thousands of people die and the bombing of Dresden becomes known as one of the Second World War’s worst atrocities – but miraculously, Elizabeth, Mutti, Karli and Marlene escape the horror and eventually join the miles of refugees leaving the ruins of their lives, homes and dreams behind. 

            On their long, hazardous trip to safety they meet many people, some dangerous and some so kind and generous that they put their own lives at risk to help each other, but all of them fascinated and cheered by refugee Marlene, the last creature anyone would expect to see on their exhausting life-and-death march:  Marlene is a beacon for hope and happiness in a blighted world, a talisman to prove that people’s luck can always change for the better, and who better to write of this than Michael Morpurgo.  FIVE STARS.

Shadow, by Michael Morpurgo                        Junior Fiction

This is the third book I have read by Mr Morpurgo and he impresses me as much as ever:  in each book is a lesson for children,  couched lovingly in an adventure which is always based on fact -  both the lesson and fact being that war anywhere in the world is The Great Destroyer, a vain conflict that decimates populations and ruins countries, and wars fought in the name of religion are the worst of all, for religious fanatics are always absolute in their belief that their cause is just, righteous – and the only way to live.  Everyone must follow the Way, or die.

Aman and his mother are living in a cave in Afghanistan.  They have been driven from their home by the Taliban who murdered Aman’s father for not being properly respectful, and they lead a hand-to-mouth existence. When a shivering, wounded, filthy little dog arrives at the mouth of their cave one night Aman’s mother tries to drive it away – they don’t have enough food for themselves, let alone a mangy animal! 

But the dog won’t leave.  She stays just out of the range of missiles lobbed at her and gradually Aman comes to admire her determination to be friends.  He sneaks food to her, bathes her wounds and a true friendship is formed, and it is the dog  Aman names Shadow who eventually leads them away from the danger of the Taliban, and after a series of frightening adventures, to the safety of a British Army base hundreds of miles from where they started – for Shadow is really Polly, a very special dog indeed, trained to sniff out IED’s – Improvised Explosive Devices – and the troops, particularly her owner Sergeant Brodie are overjoyed to see her again:  she went missing after a skirmish and they thought she had died – it is truly miraculous that she has found her way back to the base, bringing two refugees with her.

There are many facets to this lovely story, not least being the plight of refugees, not only in their own country, but the uncertainties they face of a new existence in their country of choice, in this case Britain, for Aman’s mother has a brother to sponsor them on their arrival.  Aman attends school for six years, making many friends before he and his mother are finally refused residential status, then sent to a detention camp before deportation to Afghanistan.  Mr Morpurgo pulls no punches: he writes baldly of the lack of humane treatment for refugees caught in the limbo of red tape and disinterest at immigration removal centres;  once again this fact is shamefully stranger than fiction but fortunately for young readers (and me!) Aman’s story ends happily.  Friends old and new rally to help him, including Shadow, and once again Mr Morpurgo has written a heartwarming story for us all to enjoy.  FIVE STARS.

Little Manfred, by Michael Morpurgo             Children’s fiction

To most children, Michael Morpurgo needs no introduction;  he has a great body of quality work for young people which covers many different subjects, and his book ‘War Horse’ about a young man’s wonderful relationship with his horse during the 1914-18 war was filmed to much acclaim by Steven Spielberg.  Now, he visits another war, World War II, to examine once again, through the eyes of the very young and the elderly, the horrors and tragedies of a global conflict, searing and traumatic for all those who fought and a source of unforgettable memories and regrets for those who survived.

It is 1966.  England has just won the World Soccer Cup, defeating Germany 4-2;  the country is ecstatic!  On their Suffolk farm, Charley and her mother cannot understand what the fuss is about;  neither of them share Dad and Alex’s worshipful enthusiasm of the Beautiful Game and really couldn’t care less WHO won.  Needless to say little brother Alex thinks his sister is just being a big GIRL.  She doesn’t know what’s good.  Instead, Charley and her mum would rather that Dad would do as he said he would, and fix mum’s old childhood toy, a small wooden Dachsund called Little Manfred, which he stood on and broke – and always said he’d repair but never did.  For some reason that she never reveals, Little Manfred is very important to mum, and she is very upset that her old toy is missing a wheel.

It is not until the children visit the beach not far from their farm that many little mysteries are solved:  they meet two elderly men, an Englishman and a German, sightseers who have returned so that one of them can see once more where he was a prisoner of war, working on the very farm that Charley and Alex’s mum lived with her parents twenty years before, and where she still lives with her husband and family. 

Walter, the German, was rescued by Marty, the Englishman when his ship, the mighty battleship ‘Bismarck’ was sunk by the British navy in a huge sea battle;  Marty’s ship, HMS ‘Dorsetshire’ picked up some of the survivors from the water but nearly 2000 men drowned, abandoned to their fate because there were rumours that U-Boats with torpedoes were in the area.

Walter’s best friend Manfred and he formed a bond with Marty, who showed them kindness in many ways , but the steadfast friendship of Manfred and Walter sustained them throughout their imprisonment, and the kindness shown to them by the farming family they were sent to made their lives more bearable;  in fact Manfred became so close to their little girl that he made her a wooden toy, a Dachsund, so that she could remember them when they returned to Germany.

Twenty years later, the toy is still with her, broken but not discarded, a symbol of love, friendship and understanding that transcended fear and hatred in the midst of war. 

What a lovely story this is, simply told but full of wisdom and life lessons that we could all live by, young and old alike.  Little Manfred was truly the gift that kept on giving.  FIVE STARS.

WarHorse, by Michael Morpurgo

Children’s author Michael Morpurgo is one of the most prolific and gifted storytellers in print.  He writes on a multitude of different subjects, and for children of all ages.  (Including me!)

‘WarHorse’, his classic tale of the First World War, was published in 1982 and subsequently dramatized on the stage and in a fine movie directed by Stephen Spielberg. 

The story of Joey, a rich red bay with four white socks and a white ‘cross’ on his forehead is told by Joey himself, three parts thoroughbred and one part farmhorse, from the time he is bought by Farmer Endicott in a drunken bid to spite someone he hated, to the time he is sold as a cavalry horse to an army captain in 1914, because the farmer needed the money - ‘ a man’s got to live’- despite the fact that his son Albert loved Joey and had trained him to pull a plough and earn his keep:  Endicott’s betrayal is so underhand and shocking that Albert vows to join the army as soon as he is old enough so that he can find Joey and bring him back to England and the safety of his former life.  It is a promise he keeps, joining the Veterinary force at age 17, still in time to witness first-hand the bloodbath on the battlefields of Northern France:  boys become men overnight – and horses share strange allegiances and frightening adventures, as Joey relates with vigour and poignancy.

This is a wonderful story – beautiful and terrible, an object lesson for all in the brutality and futility of war and how it deprived millions on both sides of everything they held dear, in the end accomplishing very little.  How fortunate, though, that we have writers of the calibre of Mr Morpurgo who are unafraid to write of such things for children, for children are our future, and should know of the terrible mistakes their forbears made.  FIVE STARS

The Fox and the Ghost King by Michael Morpurgo

            The fans of Leicester City football club (and it’s really well supported) are the most loyal ever;  they call themselves The Foxes, and believe that even though their team is pretty rubbish at the moment, a miracle can always happen and who knows?  They could even go all the way in the Premier League!  Yeah, right.  And pigs might fly, too. 

            BUT!  The fans have noticed that (strange as it may be) every now and then, a family of REAL foxes turn up at the football ground to watch the game.  (WHAAAAAT?!)  And every time they do, Leicester city wins.   It’s true, the team’s real live fox mascots seem to bring them luck – why, if those little critters keep turning up enough times, Leicester City might even get to the final!

            And according to one of the little fox cubs who tells the story (which he must have repeated to Michael Morpurgo), him, his brother and his dad were out fossicking for really good things to eat one night after being to the football grounds;  they trekked home through a big carpark that was being excavated by archaeologists looking for Medieval remains, and all those heaps of soil proved irresistible – full of bugs, worms and other creepy crawlies that round off a meal of pizza and pie crusts and chips from the big game very well:  what a good time they were having – until a ghostly voice interrupted their fun and commanded them to dig deeper so that his ghostly remains might be discovered.

 Well.

Dad fox was not intimidated by the voice, even though the voice announced in booming tones that he was a King and expected instant obedience:  the voice wanted something, and while Dad fox was happy to help, he wasn’t going to work for nothing.  The King, who announced he was Richard the Third, wanted his remains to be discovered so that his spirit could finally rest in peace;  if the foxes could dig down far enough, the archaeologists would dig down too and eventually find him.  Dad fox and the two cubs didn’t mind obliging (the kids really liked digging!) but if the Ghost King was really who he said he was and was really as powerful as he reckoned he was , then surely he could arrange for Leicester City football team to get into the Premier League final.

            The deal is struck:  Dad and the kids start digging a hole so deep that it would be impossible for any archaeologist worth his spade to miss finding King Richard – and when the King is found, Leicester gives him a State Funeral and a proud resting place in Leicester Abbey, much more fitting than being buried under a car park!  And the Ghost King keeps his part of the bargain, too – Leicester City achieve the impossible and don’t just get into the final:  THEY WIN IT! 

            As always, Mr Morpurgo has woven gold out of extraordinary events – he never fails to enthrall.  Go the Foxes!  Suitable for really keen soccer fans  aged eight and up.  FOUR STARS 

               

             

    

MORE GREAT READS FOR OCTOBER, 2016

The Jealous Kind, by James Lee Burke

          I have long been one of James Lee Burke’s staunchest fans;  consequently it comes as a big shock to the system to read his latest book and find it lacking in a lot of the attributes that make him so hugely popular worldwide with enormous numbers of thriller readers. 

            The above title is classed as a Hackberry Holland novel, Burke’s doughty Texan sheriff and his Texas Ranger ancestor of the same name (see previous reviews below) but its 1952 setting has characters who bear only a fleeting connection to the first Hackberry;  his grandson Aaron Holland Broussard is the main protagonist here but there is very little reference to his forebears.

            And that’s a shame, for ‘House of the Rising Sun’, the first Hackberry’s post World War One adventures was almost unsurpassable in plot, characterisation, imagery and suspense;  it is undeniably a hard act to follow, but Mr Burke’s fans never doubt that he will always pull another top quality story effortlessly from his cowboy hat. 

            Not this time.  Aaron Holland Broussard is seventeen years old and appears to have a death wish:  on a visit to a Galveston drive-in he intervenes in an argument  between ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in Houston’, Valerie Epstein (also seventeen) and her current boyfriend Grady Harrelson.  He sets in motion events and consequences which he never intended, for Grady’s father is enormously rich and has Mob connections.  Grady does not like to be humiliated by Aaron’s death-wish smart mouth in front of his hangers-on and Valerie, and a feud of mammoth proportions is born when Valerie publicly tells him to get lost and elects to go home alone.  To make matters worse, a romance, classic first love, trembles into life between Aaron and Valerie, oblivious of the dangers that threaten its growing strength;  they are so attuned to each other that they can’t imagine a  solo life in the future.  Nothing will part them – not even threats and attacks from a murderous Mafia chieftain and his brain-damaged son:  normal people would quail at the mere thought of attention from the Mafia, but Aaron is impervious to such danger, for he has ‘spells’ which turn him into a berserker, dispensing terrible, near-fatal beatings to those who light his fuse.

            Needless to say, even more threats are made, involving his parents and household pets:  he has to mount a counter-attack!  Fair enough, but let us remember that he is just a high school student;  he hasn’t even been drafted to Korea yet.  What does he know?  Well, a lot more than your average seventeen year old, the feasibility of which worries me more than a little, especially when he and Valerie beard the Mafia chieftain and his overweight minions in their den, have a huge slanging match with them – then walk away, still breathing. 

Nevertheless, Mr Burke engineers a satisfying if predictable climax;  the baddies are all eliminated with deaths deserving of their crimes;  then he informs us of each character’s fate in an Epilogue so perfunctory that they are cut off at the knees, appearing to bore him so much that their future is told in paragraphs.

That said, Mr Burke still pushes his story along at a satisfying pace;  the reader still wants to find out What Happens Next, but this time there are too many side-tracks and dead-ends in the plot, too many characters half-developed then dispensed with, to rate ‘The Jealous Kind’ more than FOUR STARS.

House of the Rising Sun, by James Lee Burke

I first doffed my hat to Mr Burke’s literary excellence when I read ‘Feast Day of Fools’ (see 2012 review below); now he delights us yet again with another rip-roaring tale of Hackberry Holland, Texas Lawman and singular hero of impossible situations, but this story travels back in time to the early years of the 20^th century and the War to End All Wars:  Mr Burke writes of Hackberry Holland’s grandfather of the same name, a man with more demons than a fellow rightly needs, but (when he’s not killing no-good varmints and giving lesser baddies a good whuppin’) he is a man of honour, according to his own reasoning;  a champion of the weaker sex and those of colour – until he goes on a bender:  Marshal Holland and booze should never mix, for when they do all principles are forgotten and he becomes no better than those he despises.

The action begins in 1916 when Hackberry travels to Mexico in search of

His son Ishmael, an Army officer who leads a troop of coloured soldiers.  Hackberry has let down his son and the boy’s mother, Ruby Dansen in such a way that he feels he will never be able to make amends, but he has to make the attempt even if he is shunned for his efforts.  He doesn’t find his son, but finds trouble, lots of it;  in fact so much that he has to kill a Mexican General, plus several soldiers who are visiting a brothel run by a mysterious and beautiful (naturally) woman called Beatrice DeMolay.  The Madam has helped his son escape;  now Hackberry is happily indebted to her, but makes a formidable enemy when he blows up a hearse (yes, truly) packed with weaponry owned by an Austrian gunrunner called Arnold Beckman – but not before he searches the hearse and finds a mysterious artefact hidden within it.

            Arnold wants his artefact back and is seriously ticked off about the loss of the weaponry;  he is also a sadist and murderer who, if he ever got his homicidal hands on any member of the Holland family would subject them to a long and torturous death.  In the hands of any other writer, Arnold would be an arch villain from a fruity Victorian melodrama, but Mr Burke invests him with a chilling liveliness that makes the hairs rise on the back of the neck, and dialogue so scintillating that it is a pleasure to read what Arnold is going to say next.

            And Arnold Beckman is not the only smiling monster in Mr Burke’s arsenal of Hackberry’s enemies:  Maggie Bassett, prostitute and sometime lover of Butch Cassidy, famed gunslinger of the Hole-in-the-Wall gang has a very big bone to pick with Marshal Holland.  On one occasion when Hackberry was Under the Influence, she swears they married – which may have happened, but Maggie was an inconstant wife and left him pretty quickly – until he wanted a divorce so that he could marry Ruby Dansen, the mother of his child.  (Are you still with me?  There’s no such thing as a simple plot here.)

            In short, Hackberry’s problems are legion.  Absolutely EVERYONE wants him dead, except the reader, and what a pleasure it is to see how Mr Burke manages to extricate Our Hero time and time again from nostril-deep ordure, each close call accompanied by unique humour provided by colourful minor characters, all of whom save Hackberry’s bacon more than once.

            And once again, Mr Burke writes achingly beautiful prose to describe the country he loves;  he evokes superbly a time long gone but his peerless imagery enables the reader to be there, amongst the poverty and beauty and cruelty of a lawless land.  This is the thinking man’s Western.  FIVE STARS

           

Feast Day of Fools, by James Lee Burke

So.  I have to ask myself the question:  what rock have I been hiding under all these years that I could remain uninterested in a superlative writer who has now completed thirty thrillers?  Because I thought he was probably the same as all the other formulaic writers, that’s why.  Well, shame on me.

James Lee Burke’s literary reputation is so secure that he hardly needs an endorsement from a Library blog in New Zealand, but that won’t stop me from singing his praises all the same.  I’m just vexed at myself for not reading his books sooner.  Fortunately, ‘Feast Day of Fools’ despite being the latest in a series of stories about Texas sheriff Hackberry Holland  (yep, that’s truly his name),  is easily read as a stand-alone novel, for Mr Burke’s skill is such that he can bring the first-time reader (me!) up to speed with action from previous books,  introducing it so seamlessly that I never felt mad as I usually do, for approaching the series from the wrong end.

Sheriff Holland is an old man now, nursing much sorrow and many regrets, but still functioning superbly as the guardian of the law in a small West Texas town close to the Mexican border.  He has a loyal staff consisting of  deputies Pam Tibbs, whose devotion is a thin disguise for the great love she feels for him; and  R.C. Givens, whose frail-looking physique belies his resourcefulness and intelligence -  and let us not forget switchboard operator Maydeen Stolz, whose vulgarity offends the Sheriff daily.

Crime in the area is usually connected with the Wetbacks, those hapless Mexicans who cross the Rio Grande, then pay ‘Coyotes’, unscrupulous guides, to help them find menial work in Texas.  They are illegal aliens, willing to do anything to make a living, for compared to their miserable lives in Mexico the United States is still the Promised Land.  However, when the remains of a tortured man are found by a local alcoholic and reported to the sheriff, a chain of events is started that leads not just to wets and coyotes, but to defence contractors and organised crime, an ex-C.I.A operative and the shadowy pursuers of them all, the F.B.I.

Oh, everyone gets a mention in Mr Burke’s complicated plot and there are baddies of truly Olympian proportions, but Hackberry’s true nemesis from previous encounters is Preacher Jack Collins, a messianic, scripture-quoting killer whose favourite weapon is a machine gun.  Preacher Jack is a one-stop-shop of high intelligence, hatred, malice and forward planning, and he and the sheriff have unfinished business to conduct:  every now and then Jack rings Hackberry to remind him, to keep him on the back foot – and these little exchanges are gems.  Mr Burke writes scintillating, witty dialogue, so good that despite the fact that some of the characters reach caricature proportions, they are continually redeemed by their folksy, down to earth humour and logic. 

Sadly, logic is jettisoned in the last chapter of this otherwise fine story:  after a gun battle that should have left no-one alive, Hackberry and his allies march off into the desert and imminent rescue, even though they are all leaking gallons of blood and shouldn’t be able to walk a single step.  That’s stretching the reader’s credulity to snapping point!

But let us not forget Mr Burke’s wonderful descriptions of the natural world around him:  he populates his stark and beautiful landscapes with roiling purple clouds, fiery sunsets and the vastness of desert spaces.  Until I read this book I didn’t know a butte from a banana or a mesa from my elbow but I’m happy to say that I NOW HAVE THE PICTURE, thanks to Mr. Burke’s marvellous imagery.  He has the singular ability to make the reader examine crime in all its guises, too -  not just the who-done-it variety, but the greater crimes that start wars, the terrible crimes that wars unleash, and the criminals who set it all in motion.  FIVE STARS

The Brotherhood of the Wheel, by R. S. Belcher

           Hot Damn!  Now, here’s something different:  Jimmie Aussapile is a trucker who drives a big rig wherever on the vast American highway system he is directed to take his cargo of freight;  he is good at his job, has a loving family and a great music system in his cab:  life is going great for Jimmie when this story opens, for his adored wife is about to give birth to their son – what more can a man desire?

            Naturally, the seasoned thriller reader knows there has to be a hitch, and that is the fact that Jimmie is a member of The Brethren, a powerful modern version of the Knights Templar, founded in the twelfth century to protect and defend travellers and merchants on the roads of the Holy Land.  The same rings true in the 21^st century – Jimmy and his fellow Brethren (truckers, bikers, police, cab-drivers, state troopers et al) are sworn to uphold the same traditions a thousand years later.  The highways and byways are still as dangerous as ever for the innocent, in fact more so:  there has been an upsurge in children and teenagers reported missing, all last seen, then disappearing completely near main roads and highways.

            Events take a supernatural turn when Jimmie stops to pick up a young girl hitchhiking on the highway in the dead of night:  she says ‘she just wants to get home’, and even though her home is nowhere near his destination he knows he must take her there.  It is also very clear to him that she is already dead.  Her ghostly appearance is a request for him to investigate all the disappearances, and to stop and vanquish the evil creature behind these awful crimes.

            How can he refuse?  In florid and torrid prose, Mr Belcher sets the opening scenes in sometimes tedious detail (do we have to know what everyone is wearing right down to their shoelaces?), and his vast knowledge of country music is illustrated in the choice of music and artist in diners, restaurants and trucker’s cabs every few pages.  Okay.  I get the picture, BUT!  When all the preliminaries have finally been dispensed with, Mr Belcher has assembled a courageous and doughty band of Road Knights, beginning with Heck Sinclair, taken on as jimmie’s Squire, a biker and marine burn-out with a short fuse and powers of which he is only half-aware (and very afraid of!);  Lovina Marcou, a Louisiana State Police investigator on her last warning for investigating child disappearances in a less than procedural manner;  and Dr. Max Leher, called in as backup from another secret branch of the Knights Templar:  together they are a formidable and frightening team, the only ones capable of wiping out the gathering evil that threatens modern civilisation.

            And while the reader has a ‘yeah, right!’ moment at least once every chapter, Mr Belcher charms and cajoles us all into finishing this tall tale with his great dialogue (some of it laugh-out-loud funny), even better minor characters (Elvis makes an appearance, young and beautiful again and ready to access his Hellish contacts for Jimmie), and strong plotting obviously leading to a sequel – and I’ll be waiting:  ‘The Brotherhood of the Wheel’ and its members are heaps of scary fun!  FOUR STARS, C’mon?

.