Noah Hawley – Before the Fall

Tags

Before the Fall, Book Review, Noah Hawley

A rich, nuggetty slice of thoughtful thrillery : sensation seeking society in the dock

Noah Hawley does far more than craft a page-turning thriller. He is a writer who makes the reader think about the ethics of the society we live in, how it might be, to inhabit the lives of his creations, and, what choices WE might make, in helping to create the ethics of our world.

I first found him with the troubling The Good Father, a novel written from the perspective of a loving father whose son carries out an assassination on a respected presidential hopeful.

So, when offered Before The Fall, as a digital ARC, I was interested BECAUSE the author was Hawley, and thought the novel itself would be rather more interesting than the blurb suggested . Any book with any kind of sensationalist story, might be written purely as a ratchet tension, or, might ratchet, and have more about it. And, of course, Hawley being Hawley, it does.

The CEO of a populist news channel, who promotes, rather, edgy conspiracy driven, whip up feelings programmes, which are not necessarily blazing with the light of truth, is travelling back from Martha’s Vineyard to New York, with his family, in a commissioned private plane. He is the kind of man who warrants 24 hour private protection. Also on the plane is another member of the superpowerful, superwealthy, from the financial makers and shakers of society, wheeling and dealing, skating close to the edges of the law, and not always holding the moral line. In fact, possibly off centre a lot. On board also, is someone quite different. An artist, possibly a good one, a man with a bit of a bad boy personal past, someone who appeared to show more promise than he ever realised, but, now, on the verge of having found his vision again.

Inexplicably 18 minutes into the flight, the plane plunges off radar and crashes into the ocean. Even more seemingly improbably, two survive; Scott Burroughs, the artist, and the CEO’s youngest child, 4 year old JJ. That survival is almost impossible to credit or imagine, and happens because Burroughs, influenced when a small child by the media star figure of Jack LaLanne, had taken to ‘you can do anything if you really put the work in’ challenging swimming. With busted shoulder, in fog, wreckage and darkness, he takes the heroic path, hearing the child crying out somewhere near him in the ocean and gets the two of them to shore, several miles away.

Jack LaLanne – a role model from simpler times

The high profiles, power and wealth of David Bateman, the TV man, and Ben Kipling, finance supremo, suggest that the crash may have been more than ordinary mechanical failure. So contrasting investigative teams are drawn in. One, searching purely for evidence about aircraft and its safety, the other, part of an investigation into motive, and lawbreaking, not to mention, terrorism.

In these days, conspiracy theories are always of far more interest than rational explanations. Scandal, we all know, sells. So there are also far scummier motivations at work. Bateman’s populist channel has a rabble-rousing, fake-news peddling, soaring ratings presenter, Bill Milligan. So…….whilst some news outlets present more sober, as factual-as-the-can-be-till-we-know-more accounts of what happened, and are pretty sure that Scott Burroughs is a good, old-fashioned hero, others have more of an ear out for the whisper of conspiracy.

Burroughs is by nature a private man, and unwilling anyway to become the fodder of a feeding frenzy of ‘how did it feel?’ ‘how did manage to do that?’ interest, however benevolently curious. This, in part, feeds Milligan’s natural tendency to hone in on any jugular going – invented or not  – blood-letting, sleaze, slime gets massive ratings. Some journalists exploit our seamier desires.

Stylistically, Hawley gives us the inside stories, the in the head viewpoints, of all who were on the aircraft, passengers and crew, all involved in the investigation, and others drawn into the fallout of tragedy.

This is thriller – why did this happen, is there a hidden agenda beyond the obvious – which is wonderfully page-turning, but, all through, it also makes the reader think. How responsible are we, when we consume sleaze stories, for the continuation of sleaze? There are other topics thrown in for good measure, often little more than asides, Hawley casts pearls, and we must hope we are not swine! A classy, thought provoking thriller.

Before the Fall Amazon UK
Before the Fall Amazon USA

Mick Herron – Spook Street

Tags

Book Review, Espionage, Jackson Lamb series, Mick Herron, Slough House Book 4, Spook Street, Spy thriller

Fantastic, breathtaking, audacious and exhausting – but read the series in order for maximum enjoyment

Introducing Slough House and the Slow Horses for those coming to the series via Book 4 I though I strongly suggest, starting with book 1, and getting to this one in sequence:

The series follows a group of Z lister sppoks, and also the high fliers of the A listers of MI5, who run policy and do the high octane stuff. Slough House is where former MI5 personnel, who have fouled up in some way either through character defects or evidence of some kind of incompetence, are put out to paid grass. Someone has to do the boring stuff of videocam checks, and trawl through vehicle licence plates and phone records, and getting the disgraced ‘Slow Horses’ to do this, stops redundancy pay outs and legal cases. Chances are, the Slow Horse will resign due to extreme tedium, hence, no payout, and there will always be others to demote to Horsedom. To a man and woman, the Slow Horses regret their prior high flying status, and hope against hope that some kind of saving the world and defence of the realm activity will come their way, and they might, therefore return to the fold of MI5. In their own way, each of this fascinating group of misfits is more than capable

They are led by a monstrous, Rabelasian (at least in turns of various odoriferous bodily emissions and capacity to indulge alcohol, junk food and tobacco) man, Jackson Lamb. Lamb is the least lamb like creature imaginable. Irascible, bullying, grubby, obnoxious and lethal, sharp as a whole army of lasers and with, despite his lack of obvious appeal, a great loyalty to the band of ‘joes’ he rules and insults. Despite the drudgery of desk work, the Slow Horses are still involved in dangerous activities. Over the course of the books some have died, new characters have come to take their places, and some, there from the start, are still with us, though the danger of their work makes the reader wonder from whence the heartache of losing a strange old friend from an earlier book, will come

Herron brings different Horses into the leaders of each book’s race, and some characters met much earlier might be very very slow horses, waiting their turn to gallop to the death or marginal glory finish.

Central to this book is the aging David Cartwright. Almost ‘First Desk’ during the Cold War, he is now living in quiet retirement in the country, beginning to slide into dementia. An elderly spook, becoming loose lipped and garrulous might have dangerous secrets to unwittingly spill. And there might be several interested in plugging such a leak before it happens.

I must confess to some small disappointment with the previous book in the series, Real Tigers, though not disappointed enough to not want to proceed on to the next.

Dazzle Ship – H.M.S. President

Very happily, Spook Street has gone stratospheric in my estimation. So stratospheric that I had to stop reading at times because Herron had taken me to a place where I hardly dared to advance, because of fear and grief of what might be to come. A writer does something particularly brilliant when they take a reader to a place of ‘in denial’ – I don’t think I can bear to know more, I can’t bear to not know. Suspense, anxiety, on the edge.

All through the series, from the very first page of Slow Horses, Herron has thrown justified shocks, surprises, feints, and reverses at his readers. This one though, has him pretty well surpassing himself, because, of course, we are now invested in each Slow Horse.

As ever I can’t give any information (or very little) on this one, as each reader deserves to read in innocence, in order to get the greatest level of involvement and commitment to each of Herron’s wonderful cast of characters

As in book 3 the main focus from which danger and bad deeds arise is internal – from within the organisation itself, where various individuals struggle for higher status and power over others. Some of the usual suspects are still to be found within MI5, but others are on the rise or fall. Danger of course also lurks without, from those who seek to undermine the system, but some of those within have shady ways of protecting the system, and shadier ways still of protecting their own selves.

The Horses themselves, flawed, flatulent, antisocial and strange as they may be, are still the ones with moral compasses – more than others who stalk these pages, they have a loyalty to each other, however much each of them may violently dislike or despise a fellow Horse

And London itself, as so often, is a major character in this book, in both her grime and her splendour

I am minded, whilst we now have a protracted wait whilst Herron decides how much further to ride his horses, to start a prior series by him, following the fortunes of a private detective, but with, no doubt his trademark signatures of sharp writing, wit, danger, strong characterisation, twisty plot – and surprises a plenty

I received this, as a serendipitous ARC from Amazon Vine. It certainly looked like an example of meaningful targeting as I bought books 1,2, and 3 in the series in extremely rapid succession. Payback time now though…as this one has only recently been published…now all I can do is wait. I hope Herron is writing, writing, writing

Spook Street Amazon UK
Spook Street Amazon USA

Mick Herron – Real Tigers

Tags

Book Review, Espionage, Jackson Lamb series, Mick Herron, Real Tigers, Slough House Book 3, Spy thriller

A little more formulaic than the earlier outings

Being so entranced by Mick Herron’s Slough House series, which I discovered early this year, has had its down-side. Real Tigers, the third of (so far) 4, has been read pretty quickly after reading book 2, which was almost instantaneously dived into after finishing book 1.

Normally, readers will be waiting eagerly for the next to come out, and may well have forgotten an author’s tics or tricks. Not so, this way of reading.

The last time I was feverishly sucked into total immersion by an author, was by Irish writer, Tana French’s Dublin Murder Squad series, a couple of years ago. I read all of French’s long books, – at that time, 5 of them within an intense 6 weeks. And I have to say that French survived this immersion fabulously, as I did not ever feel ‘oh, that routine again’

Where she scores and where Herron just misses, is that French does not stay with the same central cast of characters, who must either develop or recycle themselves into their own predictability. Using the Murder Squad as a pool, or chorus, each of her books features a couple of members of that squad taking a place in the spotlight. She might allow some of the detectives more than one outing, even more than one outing in some kind of central position, but her characters don’t outstay their welcome, and, anyway, are dynamic, shifting, developing.

Whilst Herron, in his wonderfully tense’second team’ espionage books, does keep some kind of unpredictable page turning going, the challenge is, his central players stay the same, and the most archetypal,verge-of-caricature ones, can begin to feel as if they are running through their own grooves, merely driving them a little more predictably. So, in Real Tigers, it is the grossly unregenerate Jackson Lamb – flatulent, autocratic, bullying and disgustingly grubby, who comes off the worst. By book 3, I was well aware that we were heading up to another fart gag, another description of Lamb’s far from fragrant aromatic ambience/ Likewise, sex-obsessed, but permanently sex-denied, geeky Roderick Ho continues to be a butt of some rather similar jokes and put downs.

I suspect I might have enjoyed Real Tigers rather more if I had read it at the time of publication, after waiting eagerly having finished book 2. Dead Lions, at its publication.

Nonetheless, Real Tigers, which has as its central motif the dark doings and power struggles within M15 itself, rather than the dangers posed by external villainry, was a still enjoyable and page turning divertissement, and Herron still gives lots of unpredictable excitement and surprises in the journey. But also, more clichés. There is a prolonged version of a Shoot-Out at the Okay Corral, and I did find it less than credible because I was always aware that I was reading that trope, which went on far too long.

As an aside, I continue to be quite amazed that (as far as I know) Herron has never been sued by the current denizen of the Foreign Office. Set after the 2015 election, but before the referendum, Peter Judd, (PJ) Home Secretary, a devious, bombastic, floppy haired egomaniac with manic ambition, ever prepared to plot and plan and shift with the wind in order to achieve his dream to become PM, is not so much a thinly disguised Boris Johnson, as one completely without disguise!

The most interesting character in this one, and one who has been developing across the books, is Catherine Standish, Jackson Lamb’s PA.

I do recommend this – but also, recommend leaving decent gaps between the books!

Unfortunately though, this book follows reasonably hard on the heels of my last blog review, as though I have read several other titles in the last few weeks, not one of them was any better than ‘okay’ in my estimation, so have been un-reviewed here. The only one which will get blog space is so far in advance of publication that it will do the book no service to be blogged about for a couple of months. So its Herron and Herron!
Real Tigers Amazon UK
Real Tigers Amazon USA

Mick Herron – Dead Lions

Tags

Book Review, Dead Lions, Espionage, MI5, Mick Herron, Spy thriller

“Grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind” (Ode: Intimations of Immortality, Wordsworth)

So………having encountered Mick Herron’s first in his Jackson Lamb series, a bare week or so ago, I was utterly unable to resist downloading and compulsively devouring book 2. And (whispers): it might be even better

In Dead Lions, Mick Herron’s second Slough House/Jackson Lamb series spy thriller, Herron has further sharpened his pencil, turned up the dry wit, turned up the reverses to wrong foot (justifiably) the reader. And he has turned up the shock and the darkness, having softened up the reader by the effortless amusement in the earlier part of the book.

there was something about him, even leaving aside the secondhand clothing, the stained walls, the desperate address. Something off, like that gap between the use by date, and the moment the milk turns

But, be warned, killer punches are coming

Of course I recommend, highly, starting with Book 1,Slow Horses, getting to meet the characters, as different members of the second division of MI5 (or, perhaps even relegated lower than that) will come to the forefront and centre of Herron’s focus, and you will be deepening your knowledge of, and appreciation for, the spooks you meet (old and new) in Dead Lions

However, Herron has constructed his books well, and finds a way to introduce any needed back story and character details for new readers picking up book 2 by chance.

The storyline in this book, published in 2013, has Russia at its centre (and how topical might this be?) But this is a new Russia. Some of the spooks who have been around for a while are still stuck in an old Cold War scenario, where communism and capitalism square up against each other. Russia, as many have noted of late, has moved markedly rightwards, and its interests may no longer be in helping the workers of the world, who have nothing to lose but their chains, to unite.

An old, not very high flying, not very valuable, spook from the days of the fall of the Berlin Wall, sees a face he recognises. This (British) cipher clerk, was too lowly, too incompetent, even to merit deployment to ‘Slough House’ where spooks who have fouled up, get shafted to end their days as pen pushers, CCTV footage perusers, in order for government to avoid redundancy golden handshakes. In the fullness of time, is the thinking, the demoted ones will get fed up, and hand in their notice, saving payouts.

The ex-spook seeing a face from the past decides to trail the man from the other side, he last saw, memorably, at the end of the 80s. And so begins a whole, complex, twisty tangle of information, disinformation, plots, sub-plots, and things which are very much not what they seem.

It is set partly in the epicentre – London, and partly in that most English of English, safe, old fashioned, cosy part of the country, the Cotswolds – though a part of it not quite mainstream tourist destination:

Upshott has no high street, not like those in nearby villages, with their parades of mock-Tudor frontages gracefully declining riverwards….;whose grocery stores offer stem-ginger biscuits and seven kinds of pesto….. Because Upshott doesn’t invite the epithet ‘chocolate boxy’ , so often delivered through gritted teeth. If it resembles any kind of chocolate box, it’s the kind found on the shelf at its only supermarket: coated with dust, its cellophane crackly and yellowing

Some of the characters met in the first book are here again – but some are not. Espionage, even for the Slow Horses of Slough House is a dangerous game. And the more Herron invests the reader in each of the characters he develops, the more, I suspect, will reading subsequent books be a mixture of feverish page turning pleasure – and pain.

Yes. I cried, where I had laughed before.

Book 3 is now downloaded on the eReader, and I have book 4 (the latest) as an ARC Herron is THAT compulsive, THAT good.

Dead Lions won the 2013 CWA Gold Dagger Award, and was a ‘Best Crime Novel of the Year’ for BBC Radio 4’s Front Row, and A Times crime and thriller book of the year. And I wouldn’t argue with any of that

Dead Lions Amazon UK
Dead Lions Amazon USA

Mick Herron – Slow Horses

Tags

Book Review, Espionage, Jackson Lamb series, MI5, Mick Herron, Slow Horses, Spooks, Spy thriller

Borstal for spies; Herron trips, feints and cleverly deceives the reader every step of the way

Mick Herron’s Slow Horses, the first book in a series set in ‘Slough House’ a kind of transfer to the bottom stream for spooks from MI5 who have made mistakes, is stunning. Absolutely stunning.

This is a highly intelligent, tautly written, compulsive page-turner, with a plot as highly charged and twisty turny as any reader could want, wonderfully complex, believable characters, and founded in a reality which seems terrifyingly plausible. It is bloody, violent – and, at times, very very funny.

He was aiming for a carefree delivery, with about as much success as Gordon Brown

I have found my series to compulsively read on – book 4 comes out this year and I’ve been fortunate to have bagged a copy as an ARC, but, 2 and 3 will be read in order first – if I can stop the dizzy spin I’m left in, reading this one.

The unfortunate challenge of writing a review, is that really, there is almost nothing I wish to say about plot – or even the cast of characters, because the best way to read this is to know as little as possible about the journey, other than to make it.

All that might be useful to know, is that the title, ‘Slow Horses’ is a kind of dismissive word play, accorded to the Z lister spooks, fallen from grace, who now work at Slough House. One and all, they were operatives who, for different reasons, had been attracted to the boxing-at-shadows work of MI5, recruited for their spook-needed skills, trained for this, but, in each case somehow failed the grade, dropped a catch, failed to tick the right box. Now, they all do the grunt work associated with counter terrorism, the endless checking of videocams, CCTV, paper trails. And all are resentful and yearn to be back at the high, respected levels of the job.

The only name I will provide is that of Jackson Lamb – as in, this is the first in Herron’s Jackson Lamb series. He heads up the crew of misfits, who have ended up here. Bullying, and shambolic, disliked by his subordinates and superiors, he is none the less as devious, intelligent, astute at pulling wool over eyes and mastering dissimulation as a spook must be.

He resembled, someone had once remarked, Timothy Spall gone to seed (which left open the question of what Timothy Spall not gone to seed might look like)

Having finished this one, I have no real idea where Herron might go with the later books in the series. My instinct is that we will certainly be meeting some of the ‘Slow Horses’ denizens of Slough House – not to mention the MI5 high flier section, – again, and I suspect different characters will, in subsequent books, come into sharper relief, and take place centre stage. In this, the closet parallel I can find is to the magnificent Tana French, who does a similar ‘Greek tragedy chorus’ effect with her Dublin Murder Squad series – each book focuses on different central characters in the squad, some of whom may have made passing appearances earlier, and are now centre stage, and may well pass through again in a later book, as a minor character in someone else’s story. When I first found French, I did a kind of total immersion and read all her books in the space of 6 weeks.

I can see myself heading the same way with Herron.

But, I have to hold back from saying even the most basic about plot, or other central characters beside Lamb because Herron starts the dissimulation and confounds the reader’s expectations right from the start, and you will be best pleased to read as an innocent, without knowing or second guessing in advance.

this particular block seemed ordinary enough in the early morning, with its shared entrance and its buzzer system that blinked continuously. Only the sign promising CCTV coverage hinted at Big Brother’s world, but signs were cheaper than the actual thing. The UK might be the most surveilled society in the world, but that was on the public purse, and building management companies generally preferred the cheaper option of hanging a fake camera

All I will say is that none of the sleights of hand, the cutting between different stories all heading in the same direction, deviously and twistily, is a gratuitous authorial series of tricks, coinicidences too far etc. The territory of the book, after all is one where no one is quite what they seem, because the territory of intelligence, counter-intelligence and their friends and enemies is, of its nature – hidden, deceptive, shadowy.

However…..this book was first published in 2010. There is a remarkably foresighted view of the future, and a thinly disguised character readers will ‘enjoy’ recognising. I guffawed out loud on a silent tube carriage………….Of course, humour gets laced with horror these days.

I wonder what else Herron is predicting in later books in the series, and sincerely hope book 4 (published in 2017) won’t have World War 3 in mid-throes.

Slow Horses Amazon UK
Slow Horses Amazon USA

Robert Harris – Conclave

Tags

Book Review, Conclave, Robert Harris

‘No sane man could possibly want the papacy’ : Listening for the still, small voice

Robert Harris’ prior existence as a political journalist always informs his writing, bringing specific skills to his novels: being concise, not overwriting, clearly giving information and opening out moral arguments in ways which are far from dry and academic; he is an excellent communicator. He is also a creative and imaginative writer, able to imagine into character and create living breathing individuals, with flesh on their bones, not merely ciphers standing for particular viewpoints. He understands the dramatic drive for narrative, and necessity for the unexpected, without sacrificing everything else for narrative drama.

This particular book, based as it is around the election of a new Pope, might seem irrelevant, peculiar, or dull, depending on the reader’s sense of what drama is, and what their view of religious organisations might be. After all, 118 elderly men, the second tier of seniority in the Catholic church, gathered, from all over the world, to elect one of their number as the Supreme Head of their worldwide organisation, where is the drama in that? Where (some might argue) is its importance or relevance?

Cardinals processing towards voting in the Sistine Chapel

For the however-long-it-takes for one of them to get the requisite two-thirds majority winning Pope vote, the cardinals have to remain sequestered from the world, without either communicating with it, or receiving communications from it. And what makes it different from any other elite gathering where an election to a position of power is being sought, is that (in theory at least) the cloistered, reflective series of arcane rituals, the periods of silence, the absence of computers, phones, reading material other than sacred texts, are all designed to help each of them listen for the still, small voice of God to help them make the best choice for their Church itself, their flock, their faith, and the needs of the world.

This is highly dramatic stuff – and it plays right into Harris’ strengths and interests as a writer – many of his books have examined institutions and individuals in positions of power, and the kinds of conflicts and corruptions the powerful may experience, and also, how power might be used responsibly.

The election of a Pope ought, in theory, to come about through the cardinals seeking to know the will of God, and to lay aside ego – but cardinals are human, and like all of us, prone to the variety of human weaknesses and flaws. Harris neither hagiographises nor demonises. Amongst the 118 are those who are consciously striving for virtue – as expected – but there are also those who are rather more consciously surrendered to the worst failings of the power-corrupts mindset. The bulk of his cast of characters though are curate’s (or in this case, cardinal’s) eggs – good in parts, and wanting to be better than they are. Harris acknowledges the seriousness of abuses which some of the clergy indulged in, and others covered up, but he does not make the mistake of pinning vice or collusion on one and all.

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum: Habemus Papam (I announce to you a great joy: We have a Pope!)

Conclave explores the schisms and conflicts in the Church – traditionalists versus modernisers, liberalism, thinking around all the issues arising from sexuality, the role of women in the church, and how the Church positions itself in terms of politics of the left or of the right, in the world at large. Always a consummate political thriller novelist he resides issues within rounded individual psychology. Character is the driver and container for everything, and the individuals who will carry and express particular ideological positions are never just mouthpieces for the expressing of ‘isms’.

The central character in Conclave is a very reliable (third-person) narrator, extremely sympathetically drawn. Cardinal Lomeli is the Dean of the College of Cardinals, the one who must oversee and organise the election. He is a wonderful, ‘doubting Thomas’ character, seriously wrestling at times with his faith and with his human flaws, rigorously self-examining. He is also, by virtue of his role in this election, and his particular character, the one who must investigate the various things-which-are-not-quite-right events. A holy detective and a holy therapist-from-within-the-confessional!

This was shaping up, for two-thirds of the twisty, thrillery, fascinatingly informative journey to be a magnificently 5 star read, with tensions mounting as the various front-runners for the Papacy gained or slipped back from their positions in that race. Around the 200 page mark, Harris released a little clue to indicate a possible further twist. And I must confess this had me catching my breath and muttering ‘ Oh no…….I really hope this doesn’t mean……..’

And unfortunately it did. And that big twist felt a contrivance and I’m sorry Harris did it. There were actually a couple of ‘let’s clash some major issues of the day into this book’ which did not really seem seamless and organic to me, so my overall assessment is 4 star,

A fabulous ride for nearly 200 pages, coming down from the sunlit reading horizons to something a bit less inspired. But still recommended

I received this as a review copy from the publisher, Hutchinson

And thanks to blogbud FictionFan, who encouraged me in the penning of an appealing begging letter to Hutchinson. Read her excellent review here

Conclave Amazon UK
Conclave Amazon USA

Eric Ambler – Cause for Alarm

Tags

1930s setting, Book Review, Cause for Alarm, Eric Ambler, Espionage, Italy

Espionage and armament sales in the slow build up to the Second World War

Eric Ambler’s spy novels do follow a set formula, which sometimes works magnificently, and sometimes leaves a little dissatisfaction. Had I never read any Ambler before, I might have liked this one, one of his great five earlier novels written in the build-up to the Second World War and its early days, with less of a slight niggle. Hugely enjoyable, and in the main tightly written, as always, but lacking the brilliance of my personal favourite, The Mask Of Dimitrios.

Ambler’s politics were of the left, and he was someone who saw the dangers of fascist politics quite early. His espionage novels do not involve sophisticated lantern-jawed heroes , imbued with glamour and steely masculinity, saving the State. Instead, his heroes almost invariably are quite ordinary men who are not professional spies or spy killers, but who unwittingly, unwillingly find themselves in dangerous situations as politics and history unfold around them. He is interested in the ‘little man’ caught up in something he doesn’t understand – someone almost an innocent abroad – and, at times, a fool because he fails to understand that innocence is often dangerous ignorance.

So it is here. Nicholas Marlow is an engineer, recently engaged, and recently made redundant – we are in the pre-war thirties, and jobs not easy to find. Marlow is getting a little desperate as he wants a job in order to marry. And then he discovers one for which he is almost a perfect fit. A British firm, Spartacus, is supplying shell-cases to Italian companies. It is late 1936, and Germany and Italy, two countries with Fascist leaders, have already formed the Berlin-Rome Axis. The British company had a British man in Milan who had been creating and managing the business opportunities for trade with Italian armaments firms, but this man had recently died in a hit-and-run accident.

They are looking for an Italian speaker (tick) who is also an engineer who can talk the tech specs (tick) and if possible, someone who is a salesman. Marlowe is not the latter, but otherwise is perfect, and, as no one applying for the job carries the triple kill, he gets it by virtue of the more important first two requirements. And off he goes to Milan, where things appear to be, almost immediately, shady. There are a couple of dodgy or incompetent personnel working in the Milan office. His predecessor had been living in a palatial accommodation he should not have been able to afford on his salary, and, almost immediately Marlowe is schmoozed by a couple of very different characters, each of whom warns him against the other. There are signposts for the reader, and for Marlow himself, which immediately render one more trustworthy than the other. An oleaginous General, a Yugoslav, and a bluff, stocky man with a prize-fighter’s nose, unruly hair, blue eyes, an energetic manner, an American accent and a Russian name.

              La Scala, Milan in 1932. A scene happens here!

And then Marlow’s is summoned by the police to present his documents. His passport is taken away for inspection, and promptly lost. His mail is also being steamed open and read by person or person’s unknown. A lot of people seem to be interested in an innocent salesman selling armaments

Ambler does not labour the clearly ambiguous situation Marlow finds himself in, or that Spartacus itself is engaged in, but here is where ‘innocence’ and dangerous ignorance begin to come together, and the reader, not to mention Marlow himself, have to think that most actions come with agendas, and we need to consider some kind of morality :

If Spartacus were willing to sell shell-production machinery and someone else were willing to buy it, it was not for me to discuss the rights and wrongs of the business. I was merely an employee. It was not my responsibility. Hallett would probably have had something to say about it, but Hallett was a socialist. Business was business. The thing to do was to mind one’s own

Quite quickly, the innocent abroad is in a position of danger, without any real understanding of why and how

This is a terrific, intelligent page-turner. There are a couple of coincidences and deviations too far : I was not quite sure why the encounter with a mathematician was placed in the mix, it seemed a bit of an unnecessary diversion., though in the foreword, which, as is my won’t, I read afterwards, John Preston (foreword writer in my Penguin Modern Classics edition) argues for it. It’s no spoiler to have mentioned it here, though, I promise!.

Ambler is always worth reading. There are thrills, and, in the main, plausible adventures, not to mention great characters. He is always free from jingoism and there is little endemic anti-Semitism in his writing, something which was regrettably common in many books penned at this time, before later events showed what a bed-rock of racial or group prejudice could lead to.

Cause For Alarm Amazon UK
Cause For Alarm Amazon USA

a 1951 noir film with the same title is unrelated to Ambler’s novel

Robert Harris – Enigma

Tags

Book Review, Enigma, Espionage, Robert Harris, Second World War

Breaking the code in cracking fashion

Robert Harris’ Enigma succeeds on all the counts I had for it – an absorbing, immersive, thriller; one which though a fiction had enough basis in reality for it to appear an authentic possibility; to be educative, informative and clear about the technology without either sending this reader to sleep, refusing to grapple with the nuts and bolts, or employing the implausible devices bad writers use to educate their readers. And, more than this, I wanted the combination of frantic need to turn pages with a wonderfully structured narrative, interesting characters and, above all admirable writing!

Harris delivers all – not to mention twists I didn’t see coming but, once they occurred I rather hit my forehead wondering how I could have NOT suspected and predicted them. Those are the very best twists – not ones which are just rather crude writerly devices, but twists which make complete sense AND are missed by the reader – particularly in a book which in the end is about a top secret mission, so every character in the book is rather in the dark on the whole picture, and those that aren’t in the dark are doing their level best to cover their own tracks! Twisty, turny puzzles and a mounting sense of urgency are the background of the real story and setting – Bletchley Park and the cracking of the Enigma code in World War Two – which Harris constructs his wonderful fiction around

Enigma machine (not decoding machine) Alessandro Nassiri – Museo della Scienza e della Tecnologia “Leonardo da Vinci” source -Wiki.

It is 1943. Alan Turing is not, at this point, in Bletchley Park, but is in America (he assisted in the construction of the famous ‘bombes’ used to crack the codes, for Bell Labs in the States from November 42 to March 43) This ‘absence’ of the known, real figure gives Harris the novelist freedom to keep known and major history in place but have a different cast of characters, without the problems involved in creating untruthful fictions out of real lives.

His central character, Tom Jericho, is a young Cambridge mathematician, one of those recruited as one of the Bletchley code-breakers. Jericho is presently back in Cambridge, having suffered some kind of break-down through overwork during an earlier, intense time at Bletchley. He has been sent back to recuperate.

Jericho, one of Turing’s students, has been instrumental in a major decoding operation. It’s not only the stress of working against deadlines to crack the codes used by German U Boats as they targeted Allied shipping which caused Jericho’s breakdown, but a love affair gone wrong.

                                    German U Boat

Inexplicably to those at Bletchley, the Germans suddenly and dramatically change their known patterns of coding. With America about to send fleets of ships, containing supplies to Britain, and U Boats patrolling the sea lanes, it is essential that the codes are re-broken, and Jericho is summoned back to Bletchley, where he half longs to be and half dreads to be, not least because of the pain of the ending of his love affair.

Harris absolutely winds up, tighter and ever tighter, a feverish atmosphere, – working against a dreadfully ticking clock as the likelihood of U Boats finding the American fleet increases, hour by hour. Britain in blackout, edible food increasingly rationed, and dreadful moral calls always lurking – if codes are cracked, how far and how quickly can the Allies save immediate lives in danger, against the fact that such actions will alert Germany to the fact codes have been cracked and lead to radical changes again. And what caused the sudden previous change anyway? Something is not quite right at Bletchley Park…..

This is a brilliant thriller, and Harris looks at wider considerations than just the urgency of code-cracking during the war. It also has much to reveal about class politics, gender politics and the sometimes uneasy relationship between Britain and America, linked to Britain’s class-conscious society. Many of the people who came to Bletchley or were recruited into the Secret Services were old-guard, boys-club, those who had come from the ‘best’ public school backgrounds, into the ‘best Universities, and were ‘people like us’ But the war also needed people ‘not like us’ who had the requisite skills in cryptanalysis, the kind of mathematical ability and conceptional thinking which this needed, who might have gone to the ‘best’ Universities on those merits. And there might be others, ‘not like us’ at all in fact, alien to the whole old boy network – women – who might also have the kinds of minds for the work.

Hut 6, Bletchley Park, War Years

Bletchley Park recruited many women, and certainly some of them must have been hugely frustrated by being utilised well below their intellectual abilities, confined to less demanding, more lowly (but necessary) clerical tasks, simply due to gender. Some of the women would have had sharper, more astute minds for the work than some of their male section heads. And equally undoubtedly the power differentials between men-in-charge and women in lowlier positions would also have been used and abused.

Harris creates two wonderful leading characters, who come into conflict and into a working accord with each other – Tom Jericho himself and the understandably resentful, bitter, highly intelligent Hester Wallace, the house-mate of his lost love, the impeccably upper-class Claire Romilly. It is quite refreshing to see a complex, layered relationship of trust, distrust, dislike, respect and understanding between a male and female, which has nothing to do with a sexual relationship between them, explored.

By all accounts the less than satisfying sounding film-of-the-book did an unnecessary sex-up. The film maker, or possibly eyes-on-the-bucksters of raising finances, took the decision to create a love-interest between Jericho and Hester, thus negating the more interesting dynamic which understands that not every male/female relationship needs sex as its glue.

A highly recommended, immersive, well-written and intellectually stimulating page-turner. It had me reading far too late into the night, and waking far too early before dawn to pick up again and read further

And, an edit – better late than never, I posted before finding the pingback links to Fiction Fan’s review of the book which made me determined to get and read it, and quickly, and also of the film of the book, which made me equally determined to AVOID viewing! Hopefully I have got my pings in before she notices the missing credits!

Enigma Amazon UK
Enigma Amazon USA

Marcus Sedgwick – Mister Memory

Tags

Book Review, Crime Fiction, Fin-de-Siècle, Marcus Sedgwick, Mister Memory, Paris

“Memory…given to us in order that we may learn, understand and build upon our previous achievements”

I first came to Marcus Sedgwick from a chance find of one of his children’s books, Blood Red, Snow White, in a charity shop. Sedgwick is a magnificent writer, mainly for the YA market, managing a deft balance between page-turning plot, fascinating, complex character, crafted writing, and balancing sometimes complex themes. Blood Red Snow White was typical Sedgewick, based on the real-life story of children’s writer Arthur Ransome, taking in fairy-story and its tropes, and, where Ransome crossed world events, the Russian Revolution, a love story, and espionage.

A couple of years ago, he wrote his first book for adults, the absorbing A Love Like Blood, a very different take on the over-crowded, often drearily repetitive vampire-lit market. Which I normally avoid like the plague, except when a proven, rather lit-ficcy writer strays into the territory. So I was eager to jump at the chance of Mister Memory.

Set in post-Commune Paris, at the tail end of the nineteenth century, this is – with many, many genuinely shocking, genuinely apposite twists, several things : a tale of corruption and sexual scandal in high places; a police procedural, not to mention police cover up; a political thriller; a murder mystery; an exploration of theories of ‘mind medicine’ at the time, and a unpicking of memory itself, its mysterious workings, and philosophical reflections about it.

That’s one of the ways in which powerful men become powerful; they do despicable things, and if they get away with it, then stories are rewritten, facts are ignored. History, as we know, is written by the victor

The story, recounted through 3 viewpoints, is this: ‘Mister Memory’ himself, Marcel Després, a man who can forget nothing he reads or experiences, Inspector Petit, a man with tragedy in his past, and Doctor Morel, elderly ‘Alienist’ at the Salpêtrière hospital for those seen as mentally impaired. The third person narrator/author guides us overall.

 Jean-Martin Charcot demonstrating hysteria in a patient at the Salpetriere. Lithograph after P.A.A. Brouillet, 1887. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Commons, Wiki

Marcel, returning early from his ‘Mister Memory’ cabaret act, finds his flirtatious, sexy cabaret dancer wife in flagrante delicto with one of her many admirers. In jealous rage, he shoots her dead, an immediately gives himself up to the police. Petit, investigating the crime is astonished to discover that, far from going through normal channels of police procedure, trial and sentence, Marcel has instead immediately been whisked away to the Salpêtrière. Motivated by a personal desire to see proper justice done, as he perceives it – the death penalty, or at least transportation to the ‘dry guillotine’ (Devil’s Island) Petit begins an off-the-cuff investigation. Initially he thinks he is carrying out normal procedures, but is inexplicably and heavily warned off the case. Meanwhile, Doctor Morel, a rather dry, unempathic clinician, is fascinated by the opportunities Marcel presents, in terms of scientific understanding of the mind and its processes.

Devil’s Island, made infamous by the true Dreyfus Affair, and even more so by the largely fictional book, Papillon, adapted into a film with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman

I found this a generally very absorbing, and at times, genuinely jaw-dropping in shock and surprise, read (for the right reasons)

I have some reservations, mainly because I felt that Sedgwick, in this one, offered fewer over-arching reflections for me to think about. Though there were a few of these, he generally sews more of them seamlessly into his books.

This was also a little over-long, even at only 326 pages. There were times when the various investigations and unravellings – Petit’s, Dr Morel’s, and Marcus’-through-Dr Morel, lumbered a little. But there were always those jaw-drop moments to absolutely gather and drive renewed forward momentum in my reading.

Not to mention some passages, in the light of present political happenings, which made me wince and wryly shiver:

Do you know what memory is for?……… Most people, if you ask them, will tell you that memory is about the past – it is, after all about remembering things that have happened. But that is not what memory is for. The ability to recall past events is a mere by-product of what memory does for us. It was given to us….in order that we might be able to negotiate the future……That is what memory is about: the future, not the past. The future.

I finished my reading of this on the Hundred Year Anniversary of the battle of the Somme. In sombre mood

I received this as a review copy from Amazon Vine UK. It will be published in the UK on hard and digital on July 14th, but sadly it looks as if Statesiders will only have access to this on the Kindle on that date – hard publication is showing as 2017.

Mister Memory Amazon UK
Mister Memory Amazon USA

Lionel Davidson – Kolymsky Heights

Tags

Book Review, Espionage, Kolymsky Heights, Lionel Davidson, Siberia, Spy story

A stylish, chilly, Siberian set thriller, with dabs of Sci-Fi

Lionel Davidson’s Kolymsky Heights was first published in 1994. As the major political adversaries are Russia on the one hand and the intelligence services of Britain and North America on the other, the book was slightly out of time with itself, as the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90s meant that Russia was not quite such a potent repository for parking all ideas of ‘the foe to be overcome’, a necessary part of any adventure story.

I’m certainly, on the strength of this one, interested in investigating more of Davidson’s books. This one was re-published in 2015, to critical acclaim. Although I can’t quite concur with Philip Pullman who said it was “The best thriller I’ve ever read” , being a devotee of early Greene and Eric Ambler for that accolade, it is certainly, in my mind ‘a tremendous thriller’

Something appears to be going on at a research station deep in Siberia, and surveillance satellites and spy planes have taken some curious photographs. A Soviet scientist who once attended a conference sends an ambiguous and unsigned message to an English academic whom he met at a conference some years earlier. It is not easy to see and understand quite who the real recipient of the ambiguous message should be, nor even where the scientist sent the message from, or how. He has vanished from the scientific community.

British and American intelligence mysteriously converge on the English academic. They are keen to discover who this message is really being sent to.

Enter a classic, unbelievable, with-one-bound-he-was-free hero, Johnny Porter. But the bounding one, possessing any manner of physical and linguistic skills, is nonetheless very far from ‘cartoon’. He is not James Bond, he does not indulge in a string of bed-hoppings with the pulchritudinous, though he does have a great ability to charm people. He is indeed a good man, an intelligent man, – and an extremely reluctant spy. Johnny Porter, also known as Jean-Baptiste Porteur, comes from a tribal Indian background from a particular area of British Columbia. He is an academic, and involved in various progressive causes. He’s also a loner, and a bit of a shape-shifter, in that he can successfully pass himself off as belonging to a number of possible ethnicities, from part Korean to part member of a number of Siberian ethnic groups – Evenk, Chukchee.

Evenk herder and his reindeer – in summer

Pullman’s foreword to my edition is an unusually fine foreword. I read it, as is now my wont, after I finished the book. Too many forewords reveal plot. Pullman doesn’t, though he does let us know why the book is so successful. It is a classic ‘hero quest’ story: an unlikely person, with hidden gifts, sets out on a dangerous adventure. Along the way they will meet surprising companions who will aid them in their dangerous quest. Fairy stories would make the companions magic talking animals, fairy godmothers disguised as poor beggar-women and the like. The dangerous quest (and there is a lot of danger here) in fairy and myth involves something of great and rare value. The quest will transform and extend the seeker. And IF successful the seeker will bring the gift of value back to his or her wider community. And there may very well be a rival quest going on at the same time by those forces who wish to stop the good seeker being successful. This is NOT a fairy-story, but it has the myth/fable structure, meaning ‘helpers’ may be surprising. The quest adventure is a classic kind of story, and can be done well or badly.

Here, it is done very well indeed. One of the real pleasures is that Siberian setting, and the complexities of different ethnicities, languages and cultures within that vast region. Another is the very detailed physical descriptions of how exactly our hero gets to do some of the things he is doing. For those who care about these things these detailed descriptions do not include graphic and gratuitous accounts of violence or sexual encounters. But it is the detailed descriptions of, for example, the building of a particular truck type vehicle which can cope with cross country Siberian travel, which also does give me some reservations. It is a long read, nearly 500 pages, and at times those descriptions, whilst they ground the story in reality, sometimes do hold up the forward pace. Greene and Ambler go for greater tautness, and a shaving of excessive detail. Perhaps they trust, a little more, that the reader acknowledges the genre, and WILL suspend their disbelief if enough, but not too much, reality joins the dots of the one freeing bound!

Nonetheless, recommended!

And, finally, big thanks to the excellent Karen from Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings, who sent me racing to buy this one, after her unstoppably appetite whetting review.

Escapist reading of fine quality is some comfort in these parlous times

Kolymsky Heights Amazon UK
Kolymsky Heights Amazon USA