GREAT READS FOR APRIL 2017

Carry Me, by Peter Behrens

  

          Hermann ‘Billy’ Lange narrates this beautiful story, the story of his life as he lived it, and the secrets he must reveal as it reaches its end. 

            As lives go, his started off well:  his German father Heinrich ‘Buck’ Lange and his Irish wife EilÍn reside at ‘Sanssouci’ on the Isle of Wight;  Buck is the Protestant yachting captain for Hermann von Weinbrenner, a rich German Jewish businessman who is proud of his membership of the Cowes yacht club (the second Jew to be admitted;  the first was Lord Rothschild) and proud of the victories of his yachts piloted by Buck.  He is equally proud of his friendship with Buck, regarding him as part of his family, and offers him permanent accommodation at ‘Sanssouci’, his summer home, as part of his contract.

            Life couldn’t be better for Buck and EilÍn, for their beloved son is born there in 1909 and Baron von Weinbrenner and his wife stand as godparents.  The baby has been named Hermann after his godfather, but Billy is the name that sticks, along with his earliest memories of his father using his binoculars to watch rival yachts sailing on the English channel;  there is very little that Buck does not know about winds, tides, and the various craft he compares to his employer’s. 

            And his knowledge proves to be his downfall:  the First World War starts in 1914:  the Lange’s idyll at Sanssouci is over, the Baron and his family return to Germany and Buck’s employment is not only terminated, but he is arrested by the local authorities as a spy ‘because he was constantly watching the English channel through binoculars’.  He is imprisoned for the duration of the war, and then deported back to Germany – good riddance!

            In the meantime, EilÍn and Billy endure a hell of their own:  the Irish aren’t regarded much higher than Germans (it is common knowledge that the Irish favour the Hun and will stop at nothing to hurt and kill Our Boys, particularly after the Easter Uprising!) but despite increasing poverty they try to stay in London so that they may visit Buck whenever they are allowed, until they are finally forced to return to Ireland and the charity of the family that EilÍn had hoped never to see again.

            For Billy this is a definite improvement - anything would be an improvement on the taunting and bullying he endured at school in London – ‘Herm the Germ’, ‘the nasty basty Hun’.  And that was on a good day!  For Billy at least, Ireland is a blessed, peaceful haven, a time to rebuild his spirits until the end of the war, when his father is released and sent back to Germany – to the employ once again at the estate of the Baron von Weinbrenner, his true friend.

            Tumultuous times reign in Germany with the defeat of the Volk;  people are starving and crippling reparations must be paid;  inflation is rampant and the wildly disparate political factions are perfect spawning grounds for the rise of Nazism and Herr Hitler.  Jews, the traditional scapegoats of the ages, are beginning to worry.

            Billy completes his education, sustained by a friendship with Karin, the Baron’s daughter, who introduces him to the children’s books of classic German author Karl May, and the seemingly mythical place of ‘El Llano Estacado’, the Staked Plain’ of May’s Apache hero Winnitou:  ‘that’s where we should go, Billy, riding forever!’.  El Llano Estacado becomes their metaphor for freedom – of choice, of will, of place.

   As they grow older, Billy’s friendship for Karin turns to love;  he will do anything to save her from the fate that is inevitable for her if she stays in Hitler’s Germany;  sadly, Karin sees leaving as the coward’s way out.

            It has been too long since I have read prose so lucid, so direct and compelling.  Canadian author Mr Behrens writes with grace and candour of terrible world events that even now most of us would rather forget, and Billy’s struggle to find courage to speak up when he would rather hide ‘until things return to normal’ is a lesson in cowardice for us all.  SIX STARS!!

The Wonder, by Emma Donoghue

  

        English nurse Elizabeth (Lib) Wright has just returned from the horrors of the Crimean War, trained at Scutari by the redoubtable Florence Nightingale herself.  The year is 1859 and after her baptism of fire nursing wounded and dying soldiers she feels that she has now seen everything:  human behaviour and all its extremes holds no further secrets for her.  She is shockproof.

            Until she is sent to a tiny hamlet in Ireland at the request of a committee of eminent gentlemen who wish to investigate reports of a miracle, a holy child who  seemingly has not eaten for months, but in every way appears hale and hearty:  Lib’s duty over the course of a fortnight is to observe for twelve hours every day that The Wonder is either a fraud with a secret supply of food hidden somewhere, or a true child of God, worthy of beatification at the very least.  Lib’s companion nurse for the other twelve hours that Lib must eat and sleep is a Catholic nun, Sister Michael, a lady who hides behind her wimple and offers little unless she must;  they are both overseen by Doctor Mc Brearty, the local physician – bluff, cheerful, and as time goes on, spectacularly short of interest in the wellbeing of the Miracle Child, Anna O’Donnell.

            Upon meeting Anna, Lib is astonished at the poverty that she and her family endure;  father Malachy digs peat out of the bogs for fuel to use and to sell but the family barely subsists, as appears to be the norm for most of the locals;  the potato crop hasn’t ‘come in’ yet.  It is ‘the hungry season.’  Despite this, Anna’s mother briskly accepts donations from sundry travellers who visit them in the hope of seeing The Wonder – perhaps she could even rub a hand over the old lady’s sore knee?  Or say a blessing?

            Lib is appalled and stops all the visitations, even though Anna’s mother turns every penny of the donations over to the local priest – they may be poor but they’ll not profit from money meant for God!  And Lib’s Anglican upbringing has not prepared her for the fatalistic, fervid Hellfire and Damnation style of Irish Catholicism, especially the many stops during the day for various prayers – and the incantations recited so that ‘the Little Folk’ (the fairies) be kept happy is almost too much for her to swallow:  this is another world, a world completely alien to a rational, level-headed and efficient woman who believes in what she sees, not in prayers and superstition.

            Still, Lib must do her duty and her job and as the days pass, Anna and her sweet, resigned disposition grows on Lib, particularly as she sees a marked deterioration in Anna’s physical state:  incongruously, the only confidante to whom she can unburden herself is a young journalist from the Irish Times, sent to cover the story of the ‘fasting girl’.  Drastic action must be taken to stop this poor child dying, but what?  How?  Anna’s parents are no help;  they are overcome with religious fervour – even though their child will die, they will have given birth to a saint, which will open the doors to heaven for themselves in time to come.  How can this young life be saved, and is Lib battle-hardened enough to do it?

            Ms Donoghue is an accomplished novelist;  I loved her 2010 best-seller ‘Room’ (see review below) which has enjoyed equal success as a movie, and once again she presents the reader with a story that grips the imagination while remaining always grounded in irrefutable fact.  FIVE STARS

Room, by Emma Donoghue

     Jack lives in room with Ma.  He sleeps in Wardrobe, plays with Paper Snake and eats food off Table.  He has to be very quiet at night when the beeps sound at Door;  it means that Old Nick will come to Ma.  Jack is supposed to be asleep and not meant to listen to any conversation between Old Nick and Ma but he knows that this man is someone to be afraid of, and that he once hurt Ma’s wrist so badly that it doesn’t work properly anymore.  But!  It is Jack’s 5^th birthday today, and Ma has made him a cake, his very first one, just like ‘in the TV’;  yesterday he was only four, but today he is five, and anything can happen.  And does.  So begins Emma Donoghue’s gripping story of a young student kidnapped and held hostage for seven years, the birth of a son to her captor, and their eventual escape from him, all told in Jack’s words.  What a singular feat of great writing, to describe the thoughts of a young child whose only reality is a 12x12ft room;  who has never experienced rain, or hot sun;  who has never heard the sound of a car engine, except ‘in the TV’, who has never spoken to anyone else but his beloved Ma, let alone played with another child.

        Ms Donoghue’s portrayal of Jack’s isolation is profound and very moving – and brilliant, especially as he struggles to understand and make sense of his new-found freedom – as does Ma:  her attempts to reintegrate herself into society and family bring catastrophic results.  This story will stay with me for a long time.  I found (as the blurb on the cover suggested) that I HAD to read it until it was finished, and anything else I read hereafter has a lot of measuring up to do!  This novel has just been selected as one of  the New York Times’  10 best books of the year, and shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize:  rightly so.   FIVE STARS.

The Refugees, by Viet Thanh Nguyen

    

        Before Mr Nguyen won the 2016 Pulitzer prize for fiction with his brilliant novel ‘The Sympathizer’ (see review below) he wrote short stories over a period of twenty years which have now been published in a single volume called ‘The Refugees’.

            Eight vastly different tales are offered for the reader to savour like courses of the finest gourmet cuisine, but they are all linked irrevocably to the refugee experience, the terror accompanying flight, the limbo of refugee half-way camps, and the upheaval and confusing integration into an alien society.  Not everyone is successful, as in the first story, ‘Black-Eyed Women’, where the exodus from Vietnam was so horrific for one family that the events of that nightmare journey must never be spoken of again – until the ghost of the son who gave his life for his sister turns up at the window of the family apartment.  He is very wet, he informs them, because he ‘had to swim all the way’.

            ‘I’d Love You to Want Me’ deals with an illness we all fear, Dementia:  Professor Khanh, a respected Oceanographer in their old life in Vietnam has recently been diagnosed.  Since their resettlement in the U.S.A., he has been teaching Vietnamese at a local community college, but won’t be able to continue.  His wife Mrs Khanh is much younger than he;  she works part-time in the local library and enjoys the social contact, and resents her eldest son’s suggestion that she should give up her job to take care of her increasingly vague husband.  Matters are made worse when the Professor starts calling her by the wrong name – not once, but increasingly often, and as his mind deteriorates, it is clear that she never has been the main object of his affection and desire.  For theirs was an arranged marriage, and he was so much older than she, so much more life lived.  What to do, what to do?

            ‘If it weren’t for his daughter and his wife, James Carver would never have ventured into Vietnam, a country about which he knew nothing except what it looked like from forty thousand feet’.  For Carver flew B 52’s during the Vietnam war;  the closest he got to it (until now) was Okinawa on leave where he met his Japanese wife Michiko.  ‘The Americans’ packs a huge punch for the reader, as well as James Carver when he learns that his daughter has decided to stay in Vietnam to teach peasant kids how to read, instead of coming back to the States to live the American Dream that he tried so hard to create for her.  She feels more at home in Vietnam, she tells him, provoking utter disbelief from her parents – until she informs them that in America she ALWAYS felt out of place, the child of a Japanese woman – and a black man.  Doesn’t her father know how that feels?  And he does, but would die before admitting how hard it was for him to realise his dreams of becoming a pilot because of his origins and, unlike his daughter, he has never found a place where he feels truly ‘at home’.

            Mr Nguyen has beguiled us yet again with imagery so clean and clear that we are with the protagonists of each story for better or ill;  we all know people like them, for their problems and hopes are universal:  to be content, and to live in peace.  The lifelong dream.  FIVE STARS.

The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen.

  

          The fall of Saigon:  Ho Chi Minh’s victorious Northern troops are battering the city and the defeated Southern army and their hangers-on are using everything at their disposal to bribe their way to safety with their American allies.  Instrumental in the successful escape of a powerful Southern Vietnamese General and his family is his Aide, a Captain trained by the CIA as an interrogation officer, formidably intelligent and utterly trustworthy, American educated and indispensable in the execution of everything, including those who have earned the General’s displeasure.

            The Captain is young, personable and idealistic:  he is also a spy for the Other Side, feeding the General’s secrets back to his childhood friend Man.  He believes in the Revolution and wants it to succeed;  it’s time Vietnam people lived in freedom and independence, freed from the yolk of French Colonialism and the spurious and self-serving ‘friendship’ of the United States, the biggest Colonialist and Capitalist State of them all.  Man has ordered the Captain to escape with the General, so that the new government of a united Vietnam will have its own intelligence on what the despised refugees in America are up to, and the Captain’s indispensable servility is the perfect cover.

            Mr Nguyen has the Captain narrate his tale and it soon becomes clear that he is writing a confession for shadowy captors;  nevertheless his confession is as suspenseful as a thriller, containing equal parts of tragedy and comedy throughout its length. Characters leap off the page to threaten and beguile the reader, especially the Captain’s other childhood friend Bon:  Man, Bon and the Captain made a pact when they were young boys, swearing eternal friendship and loyalty to each other and sealing the oath with a bloody, scarring handshake. The lengths to which Bon will go to protect and defend his friends are indeed death-defying, not least because he considers his life over anyway.  His wife and little son were shot to death in the escape from Saigon.  He is now just going through the motions.  If he died tomorrow, who cares?  Certainly not him, so with suicidal bonhomie, he volunteers to return to Vietnam to mount a counter-revolution organised by the Captain’s boss. 

            The Captain is horrified.  He cannot let his true friend go back to certain death on the General’s half-crazed orders (and against the express instructions of Man).  He tells the General that he will go too, so that he may rescue his friend from his own death wish, fully expecting the General to excuse them both because of the Captain’s indispensability;  unfortunately, the General has decided otherwise.  The Captain has committed the unpardonable sin of courting Lana, the General’s daughter – ‘if it had been anyone else that would have been fine’, but the Captain’s ancestry is flung in his face:  you are Eurasian, a bastard.  I cannot have my daughter associate with ‘someone of your kind’. The Captain is crushed, once again, by the terrible fact that his beloved mother was seduced as a young girl by a French Catholic priest.  It has mattered little how many academic or military honours he has achieved throughout his life:  his origins will always be shameful.  Returning to Vietnam and almost certain death now seems the only option, made harder by the bitter realisation that the side for whom he spied so zealously regards him as a traitor, and treats him as such.

            Mr Nguyen has been awarded the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for fiction for this masterly work, plus a host of other glittering prizes.  It is hard to believe that this is his first novel, for he displays a complete mastery of sentence and imagery that much more established writers would die for.  He makes the reader think again about that terrible, failed Asian war, and its effects still being felt more than forty years later.  SIX STARS!             

Christmas treats 2010

by Julia Kuttner

Room, by Emma Donoghue

Jack lives in room with Ma.  He sleeps in Wardrobe, plays with Paper Snake and eats food off Table.  He has to be very quiet at night when the beeps sound at Door;  it means that Old Nick will come to Ma.  Jack is supposed to be asleep and not meant to listen to any conversation between Old Nick and Ma but he knows that this man is someone to be afraid of, and that he once hurt Ma’s wrist so badly that it doesn’t work properly anymore.  But!  It is Jack’s 5^th birthday today, and Ma has made him a cake, his very first one, just like ‘in the TV’;  yesterday he was only four, but today he is five, and anything can happen.  And does.  So begins Emma Donoghue’s gripping story of a young student kidnapped and held hostage for seven years, the birth of a son to her captor, and their eventual escape from him, all told in Jack’s words.  What a singular feat of great writing, to describe the thoughts of a young child whose only reality is a 12x12ft room;  who has never experienced rain, or hot sun;  who has never heard the sound of a car engine, except ‘in the TV’, who has never spoken to anyone else but his beloved Ma, let alone played with another child.  Ms Donoghue’s portrayal of Jack’s isolation is profound and very moving – and brilliant, especially as he struggles to understand and make sense of his new-found freedom – as does Ma:  her attempts to reintegrate herself into society and family bring catastrophic results.  This story will stay with me for a long time.  I found (as the blurb on the cover suggested) that I HAD to read it until it was finished, and anything else I read hereafter has a lot of measuring up to do!  This novel has just been selected as one of  the New York Times’  10 best books of the year, and shortlisted for this year’s Man Booker Prize:  rightly so.  ‘The Finkler Question’ was the eventual Booker winner;  I look forward to reading it, but ‘Room’ will be a very hard act to follow.  FIVE STARS.

Traitor, by Stephen Daisley

This is a novel about friendship, sure and true and everlasting, born in the carnage of battle and strengthened by terrible subsequent adversity.  There are no happy endings in ‘Traitor’ for its theme is an exploration of what is traitorous:  the betrayal of friendship or of one’s country?  David Monroe is a New Zealand soldier at Gallipoli;  he has already been mentioned in dispatches for his bravery at Chunuk Bair, but his life is changed forever by his meeting in the heat of bombardment with a Turkish Officer, a Doctor who is frantically trying to save the life of an Australian Digger – his enemy.  They are all victims of the next explosion;  the Australian dies and David, badly wounded by shrapnel, ends up being guard to the Turk Mahmoud, who has lost his foot and most of the fingers of one hand.  They bond with each other to the extent that David tries to help Mahmoud to escape, with disastrous results, especially for himself:  he is now regarded as a deserter and a traitor and undergoes terrible punishment, especially from men he formerly regarded as friends – they have no time for ‘conchies’.  He demonstrates his courage again and again as a stretcher bearer on the battlefields of France and Belgium, where he has been sent after his prison sentence, but he is never forgiven, then or after the war;  people don’t care to associate with him for consorting with the enemy, a murderer of ‘our boys at the front’. 

This is Mr. Daisley’s debut novel and it is a searing, powerful evocation of a time when ‘King and Country’ meant everything to those at home and to those young men who went to fight – until they encountered the dreadful theatre of war, experiencing first-hand the great divide between patriotism and the bloody reality of destruction.  It is a story of love in many forms, parental love – in David’s case, the lack of it – the love of mateship, romantic love and the love of the land.  Mr. Daisley has crafted a superb and poignant story with unforgettable characters, and a wonderfully accurate portrayal of a life and times now barely remembered in this new century.   His prose is beautiful and elegiac – and utterly compelling.  Highly recommended.

Wait for me!, by Deborah Devonshire

Deborah, Duchess of Devonshire, was the last child and youngest daughter of David Mitford, second Baron Redesdale and his wife Sydney.  Born in 1920, she was part of a family famous for its eccentricity – Sydney, known as Muv to her offspring, didn’t believe in sending girls off to school and educated them herself until they reached the age of eight;  then they were entrusted to a succession of governesses, some of whom were less than leading lights educationally speaking.  Lord Redesdale, called Farv, was unlucky in his financial investments (there were a succession of moves to smaller houses as the family fortunes waned) and delighted in being entirely unpredictable in his behavior, especially when his daughters brought friends home.  He was heard often to say  that he had only read one book, Jack London’s ‘White Fang’, and it was so excellent that it quite spoiled him for anything else, and he hadn’t read another  since!  This handsome pair produced a son and six daughters, all famed for their beauty, charm and intelligence:  Nancy achieved international prominence with her comic novels ( many of the characters based transparently on her family) and historical biographies, and Jessica’s essays, reviews and best-selling exposé of the funeral industry ‘The American Way of Death established her reputation as a writer of excellent satire, but it was the sisters’ politics which fascinated and enraged 30’s and 40’s society.  Diana, the most beautiful of the girls, married at the age of 18 the heir to the Guinness fortune, produced two sons then left him  after four years of marriage to become the mistress of Sir Oswald Mosely, leader of the British Fascists and great  admirer of Hitler;  she embraced her new lover’s politics as ardently as she loved him and when Mosely’s wife died, Diana and he were married in Berlin, in Hitler’s Drawing Room.  The fifth Mitford daughter, Unity, had already  spent a considerable time in Germany, a complete convert to the Nazi ideal,with the hope of eventually meeting Herr Hitler whom she patently adored:  miraculously for her, the meeting took place and a very close and worshipful friendship was formed with the Fuehrer.  Jessica, in the meantime, had embraced Communism with typical Mitford fervor and harshly decried her sisters’ extreme politics, though her own were just as radical for the times – in short, these were all singular women whose restless energy, joie de vivre and a self-confidence born of being high- aristocracy enabled them to make their mark indelibly on 20^th. Century manners and mores.

In this charming memoir, Deborah (Debo) follows in her family’s wake, crying ‘Wait for me!’  As the youngest some of the cataclysmic events occurring to her sisters flew over her head, but as time went on, she understood more and became closer to her sisters as they proceeded through their lives and loves at a breakneck pace;  in fact, Debo (if one reads  between the lines) had some amorous adventures herself:  dropped names glitter like sequins on every page, not least a friendship with President Kennedy.  As we now know, he was friends with a lot of women, and while Debo may not have been a ‘friend’ in the biblical sense (one hopes!) it is telling that Jackie Kennedy gets nary a mention:  ‘Jack’ occupies a lot of pages! 

In spite of  the sisters’ disparate political views – Debo has always been staunchly and loudly conservative – what impressed me most about this lovely, witty backward look into a family history is the great love that they all had for each other;  personal and political differences notwithstanding :  could one possibly ask for more?  Highly recommended.     

MORE GREAT READS FOR AUGUST, 2016

A Rising Man, by Abir Mukherjee

            Now.  Here’s a Whodunit with a difference – the setting, for a start:  the great British-established capital of Bengal, Calcutta, in 1919;  a time when the sun had not yet set on the great British Empire, but the twilight is lowering as  objections and unrest fomented by that seemingly innocuous little lawyer Mohandas Ghandi are starting to be felt.

            Into this gathering disquiet arrives First World War veteran Captain Samuel Wyndham, recruited from Scotland Yard by Commissioner Lord Taggart, head of the Imperial Police Force in Bengal.  Taggart hopes that Wyndham’s superior Detective skills will expose those shadowy beings who are bent on sabotage, sedition and terrorist acts in a bid to drive the British from India, and the situation is worsened by the discovery of the body of a burra sahib, a British civil servant of high standing lying in the gutter outside a Calcutta brothel with his throat cut.

            A speedy solving of the crime is required ASAP, especially to demonstrate to ‘those natives’ that British Law and Order reigns supreme, and is executed with accurate and unswerving efficiency:  Wyndham is expected to find the perpetrator post-haste, despite less than stellar backup from his new colleagues, a white sub-inspector called Digby, already sulking because he feels Wyndham’s job should be his;  and a ‘native’ Sergeant, Surendranath Banerjee, called ‘Surrender-not’ because it is easier to say.  Digby is also scathing of the reason Banerjee has a position in the police force, stating contemptuously in the Sergeant’s presence:  ‘Sergeant Banerjee, is, apparently, one of the finest new additions to His Majesty’s Imperial Police Force and the first Indian to post in the top three in the entrance examinations.  He and his ilk’, continues Digby, ‘are the fruits of this government’s policy of increasing the number of natives in every branch of the administration, God help us.’

            Which Wyndham finds is a telling example of the Raj’s opinion of the people it rules.  After having survived the cauldron of trench warfare, his feelings towards the ‘natives’ are ambivalent;  besides, he has secret shortcomings of his own to conquer and sorrows that refuse to stay buried.  He hopes he can survive his past experiences and present alien surroundings, not least because the deeper he probes into the burra sahib’s murder, the more obstacles are thrown in his way, as in a spectacular lack of co-operation from his supposed colleagues in British Military intelligence, a severe beating administered by thugs employed by same, and an almost successful attempt on his own life – by whom?

            Mr Mukherjee writes with great verve and humour.  His characters for the most part ring true, but he can’t resist going for the florid and torrid approach when he reveals the identity of The Murderer:  the Villain has centre stage for more time than is strictly necessary to explain How, Why and Where hedunit;  in fact I think the only reason he didn’t twirl his moustaches at the end was an oversight by the author.  But!

This is Mr Mukherjee’s debut novel, and the first of a series.  I am sure it will succeed because of the time in which it is set, and Mr Mukherjee’s intelligent and reasoned analysis of events exposing the jingoistic approach of the Raj, perpetuated in literature and deed by all those burra sahibs, those ‘Rising Men’ whose rule created the reason for their expulsion.  FOUR STARS.

Outfoxed, by David Rosenfelt.

           

            David Rosenfelt’s Andy Carpenter novels are heaps of fun and enormously popular;  the author’s  humour and great love of dogs permeate every page and there isn’t a continuing character that the reader doesn’t enjoy meeting again, from Andy’s two staunch friends Pete and Vince, loyally keeping him company at Charlie’s Bar whilst he watches the Baseball – loyal and staunch because he always pays the bill – for  Andy is the one with the money, thanks to an enormous trust fund, so it’s only fair that he front up with the cash - friendship has its price, after all; to Willy and Sondra Miller, who help him run the rescue shelter for dogs that is beloved to all their hearts, and his office lady Edna, who considers it a personal affront if he expects her to do any work;  not to mention the great loves of his life, his wife Laurie and adopted son Ricky, and The Best Dog in the Whole World, Tara.

            This is a tried and true, very successful formula for Mr Rosenfelt (see 2013 review below), and I’ve enjoyed each book enormously – till now.

            It pains me to say it, but he seems to have lost his mojo with this latest addition to Andy’s adventures.   The baddies are two-dimensional, provoking yawns instead of suspense and/or horror (now, I feel really disloyal typing that – maybe I felt that way because it was late at night when I read it!) and even some of the regular characters seem to be operating at half-speed, possibly because there is very little that is new in the plotting.

            Because of his trust fund, Andy doesn’t have to earn his daily bread;  the only time he takes on his role of defense lawyer is when a prospective client hasn’t a chance of escaping a long gaol term;  then it is up to Andy’s undoubted expertise to convince the judge and jury of his client’s innocence, in this case a rich technology company owner, Brian Atkins, who is nearing the end of a three-year sentence for embezzlement when he escapes from his minimum security prison, supposedly to murder his wife and his cheating business partner.  Andy’s investigations reveal that the evidence against Brian for embezzlement is trumped-up in an effort to cover up dirty dealings by Brian’s business partners, and there is more than a whiff of Mob involvement.  The plot should have been thickening satisfyingly by this time, especially when it is plainly evident that Brian could not have killed his wife and partner;  sadly, I had reached the stage of thinking ‘Well, Andy, is there any reason for me to stay awake to the end?’, for even when the real killer is revealed, despite not suspecting that dastardly bloke even for an instant, I still couldn’t generate the necessary enthusiasm and thoughts of ‘Woo Hoo – bring on the next Carpenter/Man’s Best Friend story!

            Having said that (most disloyally), I will still look forward to Andy’s next adventure – I just hope it has more oomph than this one.  THREE STARS.

Leader of the pack, by David Rosenfelt

Mr Rosenfelt is a very funny man.  He is also a dog-lover, and in each of his novels about Andy Carpenter, sometime defense lawyer (Andy  is a wealthy man;  he can please himself when he works –why did I never have this choice!),  Andy’s high regard for Man’s Best Friend is such that he clearly trusts dogs more than people, and rightly so:  dogs never let their best friends down, nor do they betray them.  Ever.

In fact, the boot is frequently on the other foot.  Fortunately, Andy and his friend Willie Miller run an animal shelter, caring for and re-homing stray dogs. He has his own beloved dog at the home he shares with his wife Laurie, and life would be very satisfactory if it were not for the bad guys he is forced to meet in the course of his work – and some of them are very bad indeed.

This is the tenth Andy Carpenter thriller, and Mr Rosenfelt’s books are rescued from being formulaic by the credible plots, GREAT characters – Andy’s long-time friends are a delight – and sound research.  He writes about what he knows – and he knows a lot.

In this latest novel, Andy is disquieted by the fact that, six years ago, he lost a case in which his client Joe DeSimone was imprisoned by a jury for a double murder:  he is convinced of Joe’s innocence and it rankles terribly that Joe is in jail for life – purely because he has the misfortune to be the son of one of the big New Jersey Mafia bosses.  Andy feels that the sins of the father have been visited upon the innocent son, but it is not until new information reveals itself from an entirely unexpected source that he can start gathering enough evidence to petition for a new trial.  And you’ll never guess whodunit in a month of Sundays!  Well, I didn’t anyway.  Yep, there is a very satisfying little twist to the plot here, guaranteed to fool all but the Superhuman among us:  Mr. Rosenfelt’s writing is pure entertainment right to the last page – even his page of acknowledgements is unique.  He states that he had stopped thanking various friends several books back because he had been accused of name-dropping, but had decided to resume his ‘thankyou’ page because ‘like it or not, I move among the stars, and I’m not afraid to admit it’.

Here are a selection of names dropped:

Barack Obama, David, Butch and Hopalong Cassidy, Kim Jung Il, the entire Jung Il family, Daniel and Jenny Craig, Albert Schweitzer, Anne and Barney Frank, Harrison and Betty Ford, Vladimir Putin, Aretha and Benjamin Franklin, Charlie Sheen, Charlie Chan, Hannibal and Sally Lechter (Oh, sorry, I couldn’t resist, that’s one of mine!) Bruce, Spike and Robert E. Lee,  Neil and Hope Diamond.

The man’s incorrigible!  And mighty good fun.  FIVE STARS

                 

FIRST GREAT READS FOR JULY, 2017

A Game of Ghosts, by John Connolly

         Charlie Parker’s back!  But I have to say that his battles against evil with his redoubtable friends Louis and Angel are proceeding at a very pedestrian pace in this particular episode:  Charlie is still pursuing his usual ghostly enemies, but for this story at least, they are a pretty tame lot, murderous though they may be. They are descendants of the Capstead Martyrs, an 1850’s sect who made a pact with the terrible Angel Belial that, if they kept on killing (i.e. blood sacrifices) they would never have to answer for their crimes in the next world - which is so terrifying that if we mere mortals had any inkling of its existence we would try to stay alive forever!

            Be that as it may.  Charlie is instructed by laconic FBI Agent Edgar Ross, his sometime employer, to search for private investigator Jaykob Eklund who has not contacted Ross for two weeks.  Eklund was on the trail of the Capstead descendants;  he also had evidence of ghostly presences connected to them, a theory the hard-bitten Ross dismisses:  from previous experience however, Charlie knows differently.

            As is the norm in a Charlie Parker book (see reviews below), there are a treasure trove of minor characters, all beautifully drawn and some completely unforgettable, like The Collector, a murderous avenger who collects a souvenir from each of his victims;  (we say farewell to him in this volume, and I stress again:  you really need to read the previous stories) and Mother, widow of a shadowy super gangster, who is determined to wind up all his criminal enterprises – to the dismay and fury of her son Philip, who has the ambition but not the skill to continue operations.  Compared to them, not to mention that mismatched pair of killers, Angel and Louis, the Capstead descendants are third rate, and their eventual come-uppance hardly raised an eyebrow, let alone my heart-rate.

            Fortunately, Charlie Parker’s daughters alive and dead, provided more goose pimples:  Sam the living daughter, has daily conversations with her dead sister Jennifer;  they have appointed themselves guardians of Charlie and Co. and have developed formidable powers between them in an effort to keep their father safe, as Sam’s mother Rachel discovers when she decides to place restrictions on Sam’s access to Charlie:  everything hits the fan, and Rachel is persuaded to change her mind by the reactions of her living daughter – and the dead one.

            So.  Still plenty of reasons to look forward to the next book, but I hope that Mr Connolly, that master of supernatural suspense, is back on song next time – in this book, all the I’s are dotted and T’s crossed;  answers are given to outstanding plot questions, but in such a perfunctory manner that the reader could be forgiven for thinking that Mr Connolly rushed to finish everything off so that he could indulge himself in something more interesting.  FOUR STARS      

A Time of Torment, by John Connolly

The State of West Virginia hides a reclusive sect within one of the smallest counties within its bounds, Plassey County.  Everyone in the adjoining villages surrounding The Cut, as it is known, are careful not to recognise – or God forbid – antagonise the Cut dwellers;  it is common knowledge that bad things happen to them if they do.  People disappear, and if they don’t, their bodies are found burnt and desecrated.  The people of the Cut keep to themselves, and their neighbours are happy to leave them alone.  It is rumoured that their small sect worships an alien God, a God of blood and retribution, a God that no normal Christian could countenance:  the Dead King.

Enter private investigator Charlie Parker, no stranger to battling the forces of evil, and recently terribly injured in his efforts to vanquish his enemies.  He comes to Plassey County to find his client, a man just released from prison after serving a trumped-up sentence for child molestation.  His only request of Charlie is to look into the disappearance of two women who were dear to him while he was inside;  women who didn’t believe that he was guilty of the heinous crimes of which he was accused.  He also tells Charlie that if he disappears, then he has been kidnapped, probably by The Cut, and his life will be over.  Charlie and his two murderous sidekicks Louis and Angel, are ready as always to ferret out the truth and find out where the bodies are hidden, not to mention adding a few corpses of their own to the growing pile.

Last, but certainly never least, Charlie’s two daughters, one living and one dead watch over him with varying degrees of anxiety – at least on the part of Jennifer, the little daughter murdered many years before.  (You really DO have to read these books from the beginning!)  Samantha, daughter # 2, seems to have more confidence in her father’s ability to successfully fight the Dead King;  she has quite exceptional powers of her own, which have yet to be tested.

John Connolly has always described his Charlie Parker tales as ‘odd little books’:  maybe they are for some but for legions of his fans around the world, odd is good!  (see 2014 review below)  His characters are always, without exception, well-drawn and credible and each story is wonderfully plotted with just the right mix of horror and humour – and always, ALWAYS beautifully written.  It won’t be a spoiler to say that the people of The Cut are eventually defeated, but horror and dread is still just around the next corner for Charlie and his mighty friends.  FIVE STARS.

A Song of Shadows, by John Connolly

In ‘The Wolf in Winter’, John Connolly’s last opus an attempt was made on the life of Charlie Parker, dark hero of most of Mr Connolly’s books.  He was grievously wounded, but with a choice he made whilst hovering between life and death, and the spiritual support (literally) of his murdered daughter (it pays to have read the preceding books), Charlie decides to give life one more chance.  With the devoted assistance of Louis and Angel, hired killers par excellence he rents a house in a little village on the Maine coast, there to try to regain his former strength and dexterity.

It is a long, painful road back to recovery.  Charlie is not used to the weakness and agony his many injuries cause him but he is determined to get better:  he made the decision to live, now that is exactly what he plans to do.

He is delighted to have a visit from his daughter Samantha, his child by his ex-lover Rachel, and it gives him pleasure to have found a playmate for her;  his beach side neighbour, Ruth Winter has a little girl Amanda who, despite health problems that keep her away from school a lot, welcomes Sam’s company:  from a social perspective life is good.

Until a body is found on a nearby beach, and it is eventually established that it wasn’t a drowning or a suicide, but murder;  at the same time a family has been found murdered in their burning house and the Maine police are swamped with crimes for which they are badly under-resourced.  Tragically, these crimes pale into insignificance when Ruth Winter is cruelly murdered on the night of Sam and Amanda’s playdate, but the most uncanny event for Charlie Parker is that his daughter wakes him to tell him that a man is trying to enter Ms Winter’s home.  How could she know?

Charlie is injured trying to apprehend the murderer on the dunes and it seems that finally his own life is about to end – until Sam (who was under strict instructions to stay in her bedroom) appears at his side to confront the killer – who succumbs to burial under a massive fall of sand, an occurrence that hasn’t happened for decades at that part of the beach .To say that Sam is no ordinary little girl is an understatement.

It is time for Charlie, with the assistance of Louis and Angel, to return to what he is best at:  investigating murder and stamping out evil – if he can, and the deeper he delves into Ruth’s killing, unspeakable old crimes and pure evil finally reveal themselves, for Ruth, a Jew, was killed so that she would not disclose anything she may have inadverdently learned about old Nazis:  Nazi war criminals who entered the United States from Argentina under assumed identities, several of whom settled in Maine.  None wish to be exposed and sent back to Germany, and they will go to any lengths, including multiple murders, to stay where they are.

Charlie Parker is a different person now, after his close brush with death.  There is an implacability, a hardness and resolve about him that cause his loyal friends much disquiet but they are determined – as always – to support him to the hilt in his efforts to purge evil.  Charlie is unfazed by the fact that the battle may be uneven;  what nearly stops his heart is the knowledge that his daughter Sam is just as committed as he to stamp out the enemies of the world, and he is fully aware that she is in just as much danger.

As always, Mr Connolly leaves his readers in terrible suspense right to the last page -  which only poses more questions and enables this beautifully written series to continue.  What a master he is, and what a pleasure it is to read a Charlie Parker book.  FIVE STARS

Don’t Let Go, by Michel Bussi

          French Author Michel Bussi (according to the book blurbs) is the second highest-selling author in France, but it is only recently that his novels been translated into English starting with the superb thriller ‘After the Crash’ (see ecstatic 2015 review below), and followed by ‘Black Water Lilies’ – such a disappointment to me that I did not waste my time writing a review for such a mediocre offering;  after limping to the end of it I decided reluctantly that Mr Bussi was a One Hit Wonder -   until now.

            When ‘Don’t Let Go’ became available, the memory of ‘After the Crash’ convinced me to give Mr Bussi another try, and while his latest work is still below the very high bar he set for himself originally, it’s still a classy, highly readable thriller, proving that when he’s not distracted from his day job (a Professor of Geography:  where does he find the time!) he can write suspense novels par excellence.

            The Mascarene Island of Réunion is a French possession in the Indian Ocean and prides itself on being the perfect tourist destination;  it has everything required for R & R – perfect weather and beaches, palm trees, five-star accommodation, an oversupply of bars and night clubs – and a wondrous, frightening number of active volcanoes.  No matter if the local population lives in varying degrees of minimum-wage poverty and squalor;  tourism is the premier industry  and those with Euros to spend must be kept ignorant of poverty, squalor – and the crime that accompanies it - at all costs.

            Therefore, it comes as an enormous shock to the local police force when the beautiful wife of a tourist couple goes missing from the top-class hotel in which they were staying.  She left behind her husband and six year old daughter, saying she was going to change after her swim;  then she was not seen again.  She was reported missing by her distraught husband, but subsequent enquiries reveal that he had also gone back to their room, and was eventually seen by several hotel employees wheeling a laundry cart downstairs and outside to his rental car:  rumours rebound from one end of the island to the other:  tourist Martial Bellion has killed his wife Liane after a domestic (lots of locals could identify with that) and tried to shield himself by reporting her missing, BUT.  Now he has disappeared, too, along with his little daughter Josapha.  A manhunt is launched – this man is dangerous, a killer, for two more murders are discovered in the course of the police search.  All the evidence, circumstantial though it may be, fits:  Martial is a crazed murderer and his little daughter will probably be next, if she hasn’t been despatched already.

            Mr Bussi writes very convincingly and well of island life and politics;  he is a good researcher and brings to life in his no-nonsense prose the various levels of strata in the lives of the haves and have-nots.  And it eventually comes as no surprise to find that handsome tourist Martial has several shameful secrets, secrets that don’t show up well in the light of day:  is he as guilty as the police think?  And if not, then who is?

            I am happy to say that I didn’t know Whodunit until Mr Bussi chose to let me.  He is definitely back on song with ‘Don’t Let Go’;  his characters are always engaging, especially the local police chief and her Second-in-Command and, apart from an unnecessary touch of melodrama when the real killer is revealed, he has done much to restore the respect I lost for him after staggering through ‘Black Water Lilies.’  FOUR STARS 

              

After the Crash, by Michel Bussi

On December 23^rd, 1980, an Airbus 5403 flying from Istanbul to Paris crashes during a terrible storm in the Jura mountains bordering Switzerland and France.  All are killed, except for a three-month-old girl, found half-frozen in the snow but otherwise unharmed – a miracle baby, a child who survived impossible odds, and the precious darling of her surviving family in France.

            But which family?

            According to the passenger list, two baby girls were travelling with their parents;  Lyse-Rose, 3 month old daughter of the son of a fabulously rich family, the de Carvilles, returning from running subsidiaries of the family business in Turkey, and Emilie, a baby of the same age whose parents, Pascal and Stephanie Vitral had been given a trip to Turkey by Pascal’s parents who had won it themselves but couldn’t make the trip;  instead they looked after Marc, Emilie’s elder brother aged two, so that his parents could have a lovely holiday.

            The Vitral grandparents are unashamedly working class people who make ends meet by running a food van in Dieppe and the surrounding area.  They are salt-of-the-earth good citizens with sound principles – and a strong conviction that the surviving miracle baby is their granddaughter, and they are willing to fight to the end of their slim resources to prove it.  Léonce de Carville, grandfather of Lyse-Rose, is also as convinced that the little girl belongs to his family, the difference being that he has enormous wealth and power at his disposal, not to mention the services of Crédule Grand-Duc, a private detective in his employ charged with investigating fully the origins of the surviving child, and establishing beyond doubt that she is a de Carville –  for Léonce is so used to controlling the lives and fates of others that he cannot bear to have uncertainties in his own life, let alone lose a fight.

            So begins one of the most compulsive page-turners I have read this year.  French author Mr Bussi gathers up readers and flings them forward on a truly thrilling, mysterious ride spanning eighteen years, and not once (and I’m usually very good at figuring out whodunit well before the book’s end) was I able to see who resorted to murder, and why:  each chapter was never what it seemed.

            Mr Bussi’s style is competent and workmanlike;  no pretty word pictures here except for the character of Lyse-Rose’s emotionally damaged elder sister Malvina:  his prose turns purple and melodramatic to the point of turning her into a Witchy-poo from a fairy tale, but this does little to detract from the overall impact of this high-octane thriller.  I hope he is hard at work on another one.  SIX STARS!!

Great Reads fpr October 2010

The long song, by Andrea Levy

Everyone has read of the evils of slavery in America and the war that was fought between the States to emancipate its victims, but less has been written about the equal injustice perpetrated by the British Empire, who transported slaves from Africa to harvest the huge sugar plantations they established in the Caribbean.  Andrea Levy in her third novel, takes us back to the times of her forebears in early 19^thcentury Jamaica, a time of complete dominance by the white planters, a time of regarding their slaves as livestock, to be traded, sold or disposed of any way they saw fit – until that same ‘livestock’ rose up in bloody revolt, leading eventually to King William 1V declaring an end to the British Slave Trade.  This is Ms Levy’s first excursion into history;  previously she has written tellingly and well of contemporary race relations in Britain;  now she explores the rich and violent path of her ancestors in Jamaica, treating us to a life as seen through the eyes of Miss July, a house slave in the Big House of the Amity Plantation.  At the end of her life, Miss July is writing her memoir at the behest of her son, and what a story it is, full of humour, cruelty, deprivation and great sorrow, for Miss July has been used badly – and has badly used people in return.  Regardless, she is sly (she tells lies!), funny and utterly irrepressible;  she is an unforgettable singer of ‘The Long Song’, as she calls her memoir:  long may her music sound.

The lion and Wildfire, by Nelson de Mille

 It’s always a pleasure to recommend a book by Nelson de Mille - he is a consummate master of the perfect airport and beach read;   his books are page-turners par excellence.  He can get a little long-winded sometimes, but he’s ALLOWED.  He produces so much high quality suspense in his writing that he can be forgiven for occasionally flagging in pace or getting bogged down with more detail than his readers  think they  need.  In his latest book ‘The Lion’, sequel to ‘The Lion’s Game’ and the previous ‘Wild Fire’, Mr. de Mille has no problems at all with the tempo as he  again treats us to his danger-prone and irreverent protagonist John Corey, Special Contract Agent (after various misadventures with the NYPD) for the FBI.  John’s a bit of a maverick;  bad guys seem to walk into his innocent fists often;  he has been known to say ‘Who, me?’ when various villains fall unconscious (or even dead) at his feet:  in short he treads a very fine line between permissible force and police brutality – not to mention insubordination - but he’s just the man to have onside against the most feared Islamic terrorist of them all, The Lion, back again to wreak death and destruction on long- suffering post 9/11 New York.  Mr. de Mille is known for his impeccable and thorough research – at no time do we feel that we must suspend belief in the plot and its fascinating characters  – until Mr. Corey ‘inadverdently’ causes another villain to bite the dust.  And our Hero proves that he is indeed a well-rounded personality,  for his daily existence has elements of the mundane from time to time.  Normal life intervenes when his wife suggests that they go wine-tasting at the weekend:  in his mind he replies ‘Wine tasting?  WINE TASTING? What kind of crap idea is that?!’  In reality he says’ Darling, what a great idea, let’s do it.’  Proof, if we ever needed it, that Mr. de Mille is intimately familiar with real life situations as well as death-defying suspense.  What a good writer he is, and how well he deserves his huge readership.

The invisible bridge, by Julie Orringer   

This is a wonderful story.  It has been a rare privilege to read such rich and beautiful prose, to be swept up and carried along by the relentless tide of history -  even though we know the terrible outcome, for Ms. Orringer has written a novel of the Holocaust.  This is a risky subject on which to write as everyone knows  of the heinous crimes of the second world war, the extermination of millions of Jews, and the sheer tragedy visited upon families and generations yet to come, but the author succeeds admirably because of the strength and believability of her characters.  The novel starts in 1937, when Hungarian student Andras Levi wins a scholarship to attend the Ecole Speciale, a venerable school of Architecture in Paris.  His life and that of his brothers Tibor and Matyas are chronicled;  their hopes, dreams and ambitions;  their love affairs and eventual marriages;  then the agonizing privations they suffer as part of Hungary’s Jewish ‘Labour Force’, cannon fodder as the expendable front line of Hungary’s Army fighting for Germany against the Allies.  The war years are predictably horrendous, not only for the unimaginable loss of beloved family, but the destruction of entire cities and lifestyles, bombed out of existence.  How could anything ever be resurrected from such annihilation?   Despite the seriousness of the subject, Ms. Orringer has not written a tragedy;  rather it is a compelling story of Life in all its guises; heart-wrenching, comic, dramatic, powerful, triumphant and moving – which is what life can be for all of us .  FIVE STARS.

The adamantine palace and King of the crags, by Stephen Deas   

Here be dragons – lots of them!  For lovers of fantasy fiction, Stephen Deas is the new Flavour of the Month, and for those of us who previously decried such nonsense (like myself) – well, we’ll all have to eat our words, for Mr. Deas has effortlessly captured our attention, hearts and minds with the sheer brio and excitement of his story-telling, and he won’t release us until he finishes the series – however long that may be.  Not that I mind, for he can tell A Story-and-a-Half:  The Realms are a loose federation of Kingdoms who depend on their dragons for their power;  bred, guarded and nurtured by their keepers, they are ridden by the aristocracy, used for hunting and warfare and kept docile by the Alchemists with a mysterious potion added to their food;  without it they would return to their natural state, uncontrollable and terrifying, able to destroy armies and turn cities to ash – and one of them has escaped.  The leadership of the Realms is also ready for change:  enter Prince Jehal, power-hungry and unscrupulous, ready to murder if he has to – and he does, reaping unexpected and unwanted consequences.  In fact the Prince, nasty as he is, gains the reader’s sneaky sympathy by the end of the second book of the series – what WAS he thinking?  Couldn’t he see the danger coming?  The fool better smarten up his act in Book 3!  And so on.  In other words, a complete entertainment, totally addictive with great characters – and those dragons.  Oh, those dragons:  I’d love one for a pet, if I had a place big enough to keep it (and several dairy herds to feed it).  Perhaps I could do a deal to rent the Waitomo caves?

Great reads for November 2010

ONE GOOD DOG, by Susan Wilson

I have been reading a lot of very mediocre stuff lately;  consequently it was a pleasure, a DELIGHT, to come across this lovely story by Susan Wilson.  This is her sixth novel and the first I have read – it’s strongly reminiscent of Garth Stein’s wonderful ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ in that part of the story is narrated by the Good Dog of the title, but there the similarity ends, for Chance is very different to Stein’s Enzo;  in fact he fancies himself as a bit of a dude, an ex-fighting dog and a mighty street warrior with pit-bull ancestry  – until he ends up in the pound on Death Row.  He is rescued, albeit reluctantly, by Adam March, who because of a careless promise he made, needs to find a dog as a substitute pet for a homeless man he doles out lunch to everyday  at a shelter for indigents.  Adam, by his own standards has hit the bottom of the barrel, too:  he is a former top executive of a huge corporation who loses everything –carefully sculpted wife, spoilt daughter, several homes, the bulk of his money and social status – when he strikes his P.A in a fit of uncontrollable rage. He is sentenced by a spectacularly unsympathetic judge to a year’s community service at the shelter.  ‘You’re an arrogant bastard who needs to learn some humility’, says the judge, and this is what this book is about:  learning to be humble, learning to redeem oneself, learning to make real friends, and learning to love again.  It’s definitely a feel-good novel and in the hands of a lesser author these themes would seem chintzy and old-hat, but Ms Wilson’s considerable writing talents chronicle Chance and Adam’s experiences together in entirely credible fashion.  FIVE STARS.

THE EYE OF THE RED TSAR, by Sam Eastland

Meet Finnish-born Inspector Pekkala,  the latest hero  in a long line of thrillers about  flawed but brilliant detectives – but here’s the difference:  Pekkala was formerly Tsar Nicholas the second’s most singular and trusted detective, dubbed ‘The Emerald Eye’ and given carte blanche in his investigations – until the revolution and fall of the Romanovs.  Pekkala’s fall from favour is equally steep;  he makes an unfortunate impression on Comrade Joseph Stalin and ends up barely surviving for the next decade in the gulags of Siberia  - until Stalin requires his unique talents for investigation.  He promises Pekkala his freedom if he will track down and deliver the murdered Tsar’s fabled gold reserves – for the Glory of the Revolution and the good of the Great People of the Soviet Union, naturally!  A number of books have already chronicled the Romanovs’ last months before they were shot to death at the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg in 1918, most notably ‘The House of Special Purpose’ by John Boyne, and ‘The Kitchen Boy’ by  Robert Alexander;  both books show better craftsmanship, but what Sam Eastland lacks in technique he makes up for with sound facts and solid research, fast-paced action, plenty of suspense and believable characterization – the basic requirements for all successful thrillers.  This is his debut novel:  I look forward to # 2.

WENCH, by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

Despite its Bodice-Ripper title, Ms Perkins-Valdez’s debut novel is anything but – rather, it is the second damning account of slavery that I have read this year; more subtle, perhaps, than Andrea Levy’s ‘The Long Song’ (recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) but having the same horrific impact:  how can people who purport to be civilized visit so much inhumanity on their fellow men?

‘Wench’ is first set in 1852 at Tawawa House, a fashionable resort in Ohio, popular with Southern gentlemen who take the waters every year, go hunting and fishing – but leave their wives behind, bringing instead female slaves who service their every need.  Four of these women become friends and look forward to the annual renewal of contact;  their individual histories  graphically demonstrate blatant cruelty or the same evil disguised as kind and loving treatment:  Lizzie’s master professes to love her;  she is his ‘true wife’ and has given him two children of whom he is particularly proud, especially as his white wife is barren, but he refuses her only wish that he give the children their freedom:  they are his lawful property, and as such he is entitled to sell them if he wishes.  Mawu belongs to Mr. Tip, whom she hates and bravely stands up to at every opportunity – she even makes an escape attempt, only to be brought back by the slavecatchers, stripped naked and whipped by Mr. Tip while the other slaves are forced to watch ‘as a warning’.  He then sodomises her and her humiliation is complete.  Reenie is owned by ‘Sir’, her late father - and Master’s son:  he uses her whenever he pleases, then ‘loans’ her to the resort manager.  Each woman must deal with her own tragedies as best they can;  sometimes they make the right choices but for all but one of these good women, slavery is the only option:  they dare not leave their children.  Their only hope that life may some day be different is that the first rumours of Abolition have started to surface;  indeed, Ohio, where they ‘vacation’ every year with their masters is a Free State – could this mean that more and more people are willing to protest against the appalling outrage of slavery?  Emancipation does not come until the South has fought a bloody and unsuccessful Civil War in defense of its slave-based economy;  meantime, the ‘wenches’ must remain strong in the face of their thralldom, and resolute in the hope that the next generation will know a better life.  Ms. Perkins-Valdez has produced a superb story, moving and beautifully written.  FIVE STARS                                                                                           

FEVER DREAM, by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

I hardly dare introduce yet another Brilliant but Flawed super-detective to readers, but Aloysius X. L. Pendergast is such a singular invention of the above authors that, after reading the latest in a long line of Pendergast adventures, I feel I must give this SuperHero some publicity.  Pendergast is an FBI Special Agent, but that is the least of his talents:  he has two PHD’s (only two? you say); he’s a master psychologist and manipulator of the human psyche;   he has an exhaustive knowledge and appreciation of the arts and literature;  he is an accomplished forensic scientist;  he is immensely wealthy, the last survivor of  a Brilliant but Flawed family of old New Orleans aristocracy ;  he is a driver with Formula One capabilities;  he is a martial arts expert;   he has ‘preternaturally fast’ (a favourite Preston/Child adjective) reflexes, and he is a crack shot – naturally. In fact, what Pendergast doesn’t know about weaponry – about ANYTHING – isn’t worth knowing!  Lastly, he is tall and thin, pale as death (he always dresses in immaculate black suits which give him the appearance of a wealthy undertaker) and he has a disconcerting, silvery stare.  Bet you haven’t met anyone like that in the Supermarket lately.  Oh, I nearly forgot to mention (and how could I have forgotten such a villain!) Diogenes Pendergast, Aloysius’s equally Brilliant but Well and Truly Flawed criminally insane brother:  he has chosen the paths of evil, due to a terrible childhood incident which drove him to madness.

 ‘Fever Dream’ is the ninth Pendergast novel, and, incredible as all his adventures may be, Pendergast and his associates ruthlessly command the cowering reader’s attention from beginning to end:  there’s enough blood and gore to float a boat;  corpses litter the series’ pages like old bones;  Pendergast’s powers of deduction are repeatedly flaunted and effortlessly honed á la Holmes and Watson by using his dimmer associates as sounding-boards;  in fact, it all sounds like utter silliness -  BUT…..  Messrs.Preston and Child’s scholarship and research are irrefutable (they are themselves Academics) , Pendergast is made human by exhibiting some very irritating  failings, and the various supporting characters are well-drawn and credible.  Well, SOMEONE has to be, don’t they?  In the forthcoming book # 10, we are told, our hero journeys to a shooting lodge in Scotland, intent on some R & R with a dear friend who turns out to be exactly the opposite – will he prevail?  Will he survive?  Well, what do YOU think?   In short (which I haven’t been),  the action’s torrid, the prose is florid, but all these books are serious fun -  trash of the very highest quality.