Lynn Shepherd – The Pierced Heart

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Book Review, Bram Stoker, Dracula, Gothic Novel, Literary pastiche, Lynn Shepherd, The Pierced Heart

Finally, alluring, disciplined, properly disturbing Gothic. Shepherd does The Undead proud!

I am not, by any means, a fan of the vampire genre, which seems to have drowned in a sea of its own overdone gore.

However………….when a writer whose work I admire happens to write a book which features the pointy teethed, sanguinary creatures, that might well draw me in. The writer, not the genre.

Lynn Shepherd is a writer with a wonderful feel for nineteenth century literary fiction, primarily using classics of that period, as springboards to twist and skew and refocus, into detective novels. Her first, Murder at Mansfield Park, made a brilliant reversal of class and fortune out of Fanny Price, an Austen heroine who seemed far more pliant and submissive than most of Austen’s bright, intelligent women.

Her second, Tom All Alone’s (published in the States as The Solitary House) forayed into Bleak House.

Her third was a slight departure. Her central character, private detective Charles Maddox investigates events in the household of the Shelley/Godwin families. I found this third book more troubling, as she made free with the lives of real people, inventing unpleasantness around them. A Treacherous Likeness Like her second, this had another title in the States, as A Fatal Likeness

With her fourth, she returns to the territory of an original classic text, and writing something which her imagination takes her into a kind of parallel course with.

One of the several versions Johann Heinrich Fuseli painted of his iconic The Nightmare. Wki Commons

Having already stated I do not find the vampire genre appealing, I must also say I avoid ‘pastiches’ like the plague, because generally the original does the whatever so much better. The exception, is where something is written which is substantially different, substantially true to itself, and where acquaintance with the original can only delight and enhance reading of the new work – which, however, could PROPERLY be enjoyed on its own substantial merits, without any prior knowledge of ‘the original.

And, I must say, that knowing Shepherd had used the Bram Stoker novel, and her love of nineteenth century literature, and her understanding of place, time, culture and language of the period, and a kind of ability to inhabit the world of the original, I bought this book (not available as a download) eagerly, knowing I would not be disappointed.

And I wasn’t, I absolutely wasn’t. It becomes the fourth ‘vampire’ book I can read – and re-read – Stoker himself, Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian, Marcus Sedgewick’s rather more scientific imagining A Love Like Blood and now, what Shepherd has done.

Her research into historical events (The Great Exhibition, scientific investigations, thinking, and inventions) not to mention her inhabitation of Stoker’s text, is prodigious – but lightly handled. I was swept up feverishly turning pages, and it was only in the pauses between reading that I thought about that research, that plotting, that characterisation, those little embroiders of the text that are sly nods to the original.

Louis Haghe Painting. Crystal Palace – Queen Victoria Opens the Great Exhibition, 1851. Wiki Commons

Inevitably, there IS gore (well, it is within the subject matter) and, yes, it is rather shocking and horrid, but, she really doesn’t luridly indulge the X-rated aspects. And the violence is also plausible, (sadly) in its manner

It’s quite a short book – 233 pages, and is – magnificent.

What I particularly love, love with Shepherd, is her delectable, precise use of language, her structure is beautifully measured, there is a real craft here, which does remind me so much of the more formal language of nineteenth century literature

I found it hard to believe so great a tempest could be coming, seeing the white mares’tails high in the pearly blue sky and the wide sweep of sea barely rippling in the breeze, but the man had some knowledge that I did not possess, for by sunset the clouds had amassed into great heaving battlements of every colour –red, violet, orange, and green, flaming at the west in the dying sun, and darkening behind us as the storm gathered pace. We could see far ahead in the distance, the lights of the little town my father told me was our destination, and as the wind began to rise the captain rigged the ship as high as he dared, desperate to outrun the storm and make port before nightfall. But there was no time. There was a moment of deathly stillness, when the wind seemed to die in the sails………I could hear sea-birds wailing like lost spirits above our heads

Yes, that is right, it’s the arrival, in an unholy storm, by sea, to Whitby

There are several stories going on here. Charles Maddox, like Jonathan Harker, visits the ‘Dracula character’ in his castle home in the Austro-Hungarian empire. And the bulk of the novel is written through the voice of the omnipotent author, describing Maddox’s thoughts and actions.

1797 Robertson Phantasmagoria Capuchine Chapel Paris. Wiki Commons

There is also a parallel story involving ‘Lucy’ the daughter of a kind of stage magician, performing magical acts, and capitalising on the growing success and fashion for spiritualism, in the wake of the American Fox Sisters. Lucy’s story is told in her journal, and is in the first person (from which you can deduce, Lucy’s is the arrival in the storm)

Fox Sisters, Wiki Commons

There is also the omnipotent authorial voice revealing herself to be the self-conscious writer of this book, occasionally making mentions of scientific and social advances which will come in time. This is not in any way intrusive (well, not to me, anyway) and adds another layer, reminding us that this is a referential piece, springing from an established literary heritage, and that writing itself has a history, and that there are cultural fashions in writing.

Shepherd is playful, and she plays well; I like the way she teased me into actively thinking about what I was reading, even whilst my heart was in my mouth and I was being swept along by the ‘what-next, what-next’ of narrative. I needed to be slowed down, to appreciate the detail

There is an afterword, which also explains how her springboard for this book was not only Bram Stoker’s text, but some real history. And I was pleased to note that no REAL persons were harmed in the telling of this story

There is, also a genuine shocker of a climax. One which is ultimately most satisfying

Curiously, as mentioned, this book is not available as digital download in the UK (though Statesiders can get it in this format) It was also not released as an ARC ahead of publication either for NetGalley, UK, or in Vine, UK. Sadly, I suspect Shepherd and her publishers have kept things very low profile indeed over here, following a rather injudicious comment Shepherd made about another author some time earlier this year or last, which attracted loyal fans of the other author out in droves to negative vote on all her previous works. She is a very fine writer, and I hope will be able to recover the growing appreciation she had had from readers, prior to her foolish outburst.

The Pierced Heart Amazon UK
The Pierced Heart Amazon USA

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Robert Ryan – Dead Man’s Land

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Arthur Conan Doyle, Book Review, Dead Man's Land, Dr Watson, First World War, Literary pastiche, Robert Ryan, Sherlock Holmes

Watson goes it alone in the trenches; Sherlock studies bees’ Holmes!

I enjoyed this enormously – though I did have a couple of rather – ‘hmm, I’m not quite sure of this’ considerations

The most pressing is this: Given the fact that the First War, starting 100 years ago this year STILL seems to have left its shock waves and fault lines deeply embedded in European history – so that still a fairly large percentage of UK citizens may have memories at least of a deceased grandparent, who either had stories to tell of their childhood and how daddy or uncle this or that or the great love never came back, or were even wounded themselves.

It still feels somehow too near to be married with a detecting murder mystery, however well done.

Ryan is very good at being very direct with the horror and the carnage – from both sides of the trenches, the awfulness of that war, the horrific injuries on both sides, are laid out. And I also like his good writing, strong characters, examination of all sorts of issues – attitudes to women’s suffrage, outrageous, stuffy sexism, the class bound society, the organisation of labour, radicalism, cutting edge (literally), medicine. This is a good, pacy, absorbing ‘what happens NEXT……sort of read. Except that I’m still left with a bit of unease over the reality of that awful carnage hooked up with a murder mystery. Particularly one involving Dr John Watson, the erstwhile recounter of all the Sherlock Holmes casebook stories.

Pause for the sound of Sherlockians sucking in their lips with a hiss of disfavour. Possibly.

Brett and Burke as the detective and the doctor

A better and more closely reading Sherlockian than myself will no doubt be able to verify that in one of the final (if not THE final story) when the great man retires to the Sussex Downs to pursue a bee-related hobby, the getting-on-a-bit Watson rejoins the Royal Army Medical Corps and pops over to France to do his doctoring bit and save the lives of wounded men.

In Ryan’s book, Watson becomes detective, and there are many references, and even a story line, around a dreadful falling out between Holmes and Watson who have now not spoken or communicated for some time (the subject of the fall-out being Watson’s enlisting in the first place)

Now, as far as my memory tells me, there never WAS such a hideous falling-out, and the sullying of that friendship by Ryan, unsettled me, as a travesty. Use our beloved fictional characters if you must, but keep them true to their original creator’s vision.

So……I have knocked off a star because of the two areas of unsettled, very different, snags at my sense of ‘not quite ethical literary behaviour’ .

The writing itself, and the characterisations engage, and I thought the structure of the book, using a filmic cutting device, was also effective. Ryan has a couple of story lines going on, one from the German side of the lines, one from the British, with also another cut into some events ‘back home’. Particularly in the battle field threads, he will take the reader to a cliff-hanging moment at a chapter end, but the next chapter will start with events on the other side of the lines, so you, as reader are left with two ‘what will happen nexts’ to keep you turning the pages. There are also several red herrings and teasers tossed into the salad, some of which are delicious and work very well, some of which are not quite as good, as the insertion of real characters whose real outcomes are well known, mean that some of the ‘what will happen next’ fever is reduced because the reader will know the history.

As the two stories from the lines began to coalesce, some coincidences began to seem a little too neat and inevitable, the structure a little too hastily wrapped, and I began to find this more of a story to be sat outside of, rather than strongly and intensely engaging me.

One final plus for this reader was a quartet of strong, well drawn female characters, very much representing the movement away from sweetly passive invisible Victorian womanhood.

Despite my criticisms this a book I would strongly recommend, especially to anyone who has a less queasy sense of what is, and what is not, acceptable in fiction!

Dead Man’s Land Amazon UK
Dead Man’s Land Amazon USA

Adam Langer – The Salinger Contract

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Adam Langer, Book Review, Crime Fiction, Literary pastiche, The Salinger Contract

Adam Langer – Mind Mangler

Oh boy, oh boy, The Salinger Contract is a thoroughly, obsessively, compulsively page turning read, combining the elements of crime fiction, with a blistering, surgically precise picking apart of the publishing industry, small-town academia and, even more deliciously, a tangly, knotted, play with literature itself.

The problem for any reviewer is that to unpick any of this is to spoil a potential reader’s journey. So I won’t!

Just be aware that the central character and narrator is a writer with one book to his credit, a house-husband with a writer’s block, a good marriage and a wife in academia. He has a tenuous friendship with, and admiration for, with another writer, who has been successful but is now on a downward trajectory. Both admire hugely that writer whose book was inspiration, for good and ill, to so many young men (and women) at a certain stage in their lives – Catcher In The Rye. Salinger and other writers, Mailer, Harper Lee stalk the pages.

The literature obsessed are likely to enjoy the author’s mind games with his readers the most, but even if you have never read The Catcher In The Rye, To Kill A Mockingbird or any books by any of the real writers within these pages, this is still likely to be a hugely enjoyable and entertaining read.

Real and imaginary writers stalk through these pages, and the reader will often be hard-pressed to tell the difference, and be sent scrambling for google to search which of the literary legends are the figments of Langer’s fertile imaginings

Given what is trending (Trending! Oh dear, oh dear) on best seller lists at the moment, some of the most fantastical creations seem unfortunately likely to be real. UK readers may particularly welcome (or not) something here. I’m afraid Mr Langer has left me like someone who has been told the most juicy piece of gossip they know they MUSN’T tell (a spoiler) but they really really want to tell someone. Perhaps someone could bring out an ‘I have read The Salinger Contract’ T-shirt, so that if we spot someone wearing this we could go into a huddle and exchange views, theories and best moments!

There is one particular volte-face section where I really thought he was going to lose my interest and I had an ‘oh – is this a clever too far moment – (and I’m still not sure what the answer is) – but he certainly picked up the threads again deftly. It may not, in the end, be quite as fully five star as I hoped, but, near as dammit!

I am now definitely going to visit Langer’s back catalogue.

I received this as an ARC from the publisher, – and what a teasing, tempting, satisfying literary feast it proved to be.

Clever Mr Langer – but, this is really not writing which is purely self-referential and self-congratulatory to those who recognise the allusions – I got some, am sure I missed many – there is that wonderful, page turning, WHAT HAPPENS NEXT which bites the reader hard and won’t let go. A fabulous heist!

The Salinger Contract Amazon UK
The Salinger Contract Amazon UK

Lynn Shepherd – Tom All Alone’s

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Bleak House, Book Review, Charles Dickens, Crime Fiction, Literary pastiche, Lynn Shepherd, Tom All Alone's, Wilkie Collins, Woman in White

Cleverly woven Victorian literary murder mystery

Lynn Shepherd’s eagerly awaited (certainly by me!) second book takes her into a stylish foray of the murky, mucky depths of Victorian society’s sewers, via a clever amalgam of Dickens, particularly Bleak House, Wilkie Collins The Woman in White , Henry Mayhew’s sociological enquiries into Victorian poverty and exploitation London Labour and the London Poor, a gruesome sprinkling of a Jack-the-Ripper foretaste, and all linked together via the omniscient narrator device found in John Fowles’ The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

Shepherd herself pays tribute to all these sources and inspirations in the afterword to her book. Not to mention a sly nod, within the book itself, to her own first work, Murder at Mansfield Park. Indeed, her detective within that book Charles Maddox, is the great uncle to the protagonist in this book – also a Charles Maddox. Dickens himself, and Mayhew, make appearances, as does a tie-in to Shelley.

Lest this all sound too much of a literary self-congratulation, with the avid reader of Victorian literature nodding delightedly at what they recognise, rest assured that what we have here is a cracking good murder mystery in its own right, with Shepherd using her interest in, and passion for, that earlier literature, and indeed for the craft of literature, more – how to tell a story – itself, to add depth, richness and sly, inventive humour. This is a succulent plum pudding of a novel, even though some of its goodies may have the reader wincing at Shepherd’s skill in portraying the gruesome, festering underbelly of Victorian London’s `stinks’

I do believe that whilst reading this without a prior knowledge of Dickens, Collins etc al will still be hugely enjoyable, that readers steeped in Victorian life and literature will gain an added pleasure – not least because of the sly, playful way Shepherd takes our conceptions and preconceptions of characters from Bleak House, subtly changing names in some cases, but leaving us with a memory of their `original’ in order to set up expectations and certainties, which may later be overturned. She pulled rugs from under this reader several times, and I enjoyed being surprised and overturned.

There can be no finer accolade than to say she makes me want to re-read the originals, yet again, in order to follow the route of her imaginative inventions from the original texts. This is ‘Charles Maddox 2’
The prequel Charles Maddox 1 is Murder at Mansfield Park
The Sequel Charles Maddox 3 is A Treacherous Likeness (A Fatal Likeness USA)
Tom All Alone’s Amazon UK
Tom All Alone’s Amazon USA
For some reason this is ALSO sold as The Solitary House in the USA. VERY confusing!

Lynn Shepherd – Murder At Mansfield Park

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Book Review, Crime Fiction, Jane Austen, Literary pastiche, Lynn Shepherd, Murder At Mansfield Park

As through a prism, darkly

Mansfield Park was always a rather less satisfying Austen novel, principally because of the curiously un-Austen like heroine. Fanny Price always seemed like a model for the late Victorian (Dickensian) sweet natured, pedestal dwelling model of selfless, long suffering martyred and hard done by woman, rather than the intelligent, articulate , witty woman of spirit, who also learns, changes and grows in depth that Austen generally places centre stage.

I think many readers must have suspected that Mary Crawford was the real central character, but that somewhere along the line Austen shuffled her out of the way, and pushed a character of secondary interest, Fanny, into the spotlight. It’s as if, in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Bennett, rather than Elizabeth, had been the central character

However, for all the original Fanny’s apparent sweetness, Kingsley Amis professed to see something devious, describing her as

a monster of complacency and pride, who, under a cloak of cringing self-abasement, dominates and gives meaning to the novel.

First-time novelist Lynn Shepherd appears to use this as a springboard, with inventive imagination and a sure mastery of Austen’s style, and a satisfying sense of period and immersion inside the original novel.

She makes a few radical changes, most particularly of wealth and therefore status, and from thence sets in train new relationships and alliances, and a tie-in between Mansfield Park and a murder mystery. Fanny, now blessed with more wealth than anyone else, and therefore a being of status, to be courted, not despised, becomes rather obviously Amis’ monster.

The central character of this novel is the one most readers probably found the natural central character of the original – Mary Crawford, here, with the wit, intelligence and sensitivity to others which she so often showed in the original novel, before Austen seemed to collect herself and start flinging a lot of baser motivations and over emphasis on financial gain towards her. However, what we do have, is the Crawfords, brother and sister, of a lesser status and fewer means than the others, and therefore, more aware of the day-to-day gradations of class and position. All the above stairs characters of the original novel are in place, as they were, but seen as if through a prism which changes how we see them – certain virtues become flaws, certain flaws may be seen as virtues. And, in addition, we are introduced to a cast of below stairs characters at Mansfield Park itself, and the new tensions provoked by the influx of an early nineteenth century detective into the mix.

Shepherd has fun with various characters introducing ideas – as fantasies – of what will be later tools of detection into the mix – someone for example wishing it were possible to identify whose blood is on a garment, and somebody else ridiculing the whole idea that this would ever be possible.

It would insult Shepherd to say she has written a very accomplished pastiche. What she has done, is to immerse herself into an original text, and use that as a springboard into something else (whilst, admittedly using quite a bit of the original text and subverting it to her own devices) I very much look forward to reading what she will do with other classic texts – Bleak House is the next! – Tom All Alone’s

Murder At Mansfield Park Amazon UK
Murder At Mansfield Park Amazon USA