Off the Rails

Uncommon Danger by Eric Ambler

Kenton’s career as a journalist depends on his facility with languages, his knowledge of European politics and his quick judgement. Where his judgement sometimes fails him, however, is in his personal life. When he travels to Nuremberg to investigate a story about a top-level meeting of Nazi officials, he inadvertently finds himself on a train bound for Austria after a bad night of gambling. Stranded with no money, Kenton jumps at the chance to earn a fee helping a refugee smuggle securities across the border. Yet he soon discovers that the documents he holds have far more than cash value – and that they could cost him his life …

Ambler is sometimes credited with inventing the modern thriller and with this novel you can see why. As things go from bad to worse for Kenton and his plight gets more complicated as he and we try to work out who is working for whom and what is really going on, the plotting really moves things along really smartly.

It is quite dark stuff at times and the shadow of the forthcoming World War hangs over proceedings too. As with some of his other stories the central character is not only flawed but just not terribly likeable either. But then this is life or death stuff in a series of grim settings. The charming Mr Bond at the casino would not be along for quite a few years yet.

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3.5 out of 5.

Lost in France and London

Spook Street by Mick Herron

 

Twenty years retired from the Intelligence Service, David Cartwright still knows where the skeletons are hidden. But when he forgets that secrets are supposed to stay buried, there’s suddenly a target on his back.

His grandson, River, is a ‘slow horse’, a demoted spy pushing paper at Slough House with other no-hopers. With his grandfather under threat, River ditches desk duty and goes rogue to investigate.

Jackson Lamb, the boss at Slough House, worked with David Cartwright back in the day. He knows better than most that this is no innocent old man. So when River’s panic button raises the alarm at Intelligence Service HQ, Lamb will do whatever he thinks necessary to protect an agent in peril.

 

It’s another excellent and compelling spy thriller in the Slough House series. There are even more twists and turns and serious action for the normally sedentary Slow Horses. Some historic decisions by former spies create a whole host of new and deadly problems for Lamb, Cartwright and their colleagues both in France and London.

Enjoyed this one just as much as the previous ones and really looking forward to the next in the series, not to mention the much anticipated TV programme. 

 

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

With friends like these…

A Conspiracy of Friends by Alexander McCall Smith

 

Corduroy Mansions, Pimlico is an oasis of old-fashioned civilisation, its inhabitants considerate and peace-loving. But beneath the polite exterior seismic change is stirring.

Barbara Ragg makes an eye-popping discovery about her stolid Scottish suitor’s past, while Oedipus Snark – newly appointed and tirelessly self-interested Government Minister – has a close encounter in Switzerland that leaves him a new man all together. Then plucky canine Freddie de la Hay goes missing, and his owner, widower William French, is so shaken by an unexpected declaration of love that he seriously considers making a disappearance himself.

Goodhearted, well-intentioned but often to be found barking up the wrong tree, the residents of Corduroy Mansions remain a thoroughly entertaining example to us all.

 

This is the third novel in the series of the Corduroy Mansions stories from the pen of the quite astoundingly prolific McCall Smith. As noted here before this very much has a similar feel to the much longer Scotland Street series with the author offering a set of intertwined stories of a group of near neighbours who get into all sorts of interesting scrapes and dilemmas.

Two of the narrative threads, featuring loveable hound Freddie de la Hay and objectionable politician Oedipus Snark (crazy name, unpleasant guy), are the best of the stories here and do make it an entertaining read as ever.

 

 

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

 

Best books of 2021

It’s the time for doing the lists of all the best books of the year and, whilst the authoritative list of higher ed books can be found here, it seemed absolutely essential to review all of my most enjoyed reads of the last 12 months.

Of the 51 books I’ve read this year most were decent and some were really very good indeed (although no 5 star ratings in the past 12 months). So here is a review of the reviews…

Best of the Best

The best this year comprise half a dozen really impressive reads

The Mirror and The Light by Hilary Mantel – this was probably the best of all in 2021.

Piranesi by Susannah Clarke

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor 

What a Carve Up! by Jonathan Coe 

Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell 

The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky 

And these are the runners up

Real tigers by Mick Herron

Dance to the Music of Time  – Summer: The second trilogy by Anthony Powell

Dead Lions by Mick Herron 

The Department of Sensitive Crimes by Alexander McCall Smith 

Dance to the Music of Time – Spring: The first Trilogy by Anthony Powell 

Slow horses by Mick Herron 

Seven days in the New Crete by Robert Graves 

Fallen Angel by Chris Brookmyre

Cause for Alarm by Eric Ambler 

The Comedians by Graham Greene 

The Glass Hotel by Hilary St John Mandel 

Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell 

The Pallampur Predicament by Brian Stoddart 

Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid 

Run by Ann Patchett 

A Song for the Dark Times by Ian Rankin 

Mr Wilder and Me by Jonathan Coe 

Milkman by Anna Burns 

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen 

The Trouble with Sunbathers by Magnus Mills 

Grave Tattoo by Val McDermid 

Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor 

Snow by John Banville 

The Lyre of Orpheus by Robertson Davies 

Plenty of good stuff here. Let’s hope for some genuinely 5 star material in 2022.

The Golden Age of the LP

A Fabulous Creation by David Hepworth

The era of the LP began in 1967, with ‘Sgt Pepper’; The Beatles didn’t just collect together a bunch of songs, they Made An Album. Henceforth, everybody else wanted to Make An Album. 

The end came only fifteen years later, coinciding with the release of Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’. By then the Walkman had taken music out of the home and into the streets and the record business had begun trying to reverse-engineer the creative process in order to make big money. Nobody would play music or listen to it in quite the same way ever again.

It was a short but transformative time. Musicians became ‘artists’ and we, the people, patrons of the arts. The LP itself had been a mark of sophistication, a measure of wealth, an instrument of education, a poster saying things you dare not say yourself, a means of attracting the opposite sex, and, for many, the single most desirable object in their lives.

This is the story of that time; it takes us from recording studios where musicians were doing things that had never been done before to the sparsely furnished apartments where their efforts would be received like visitations from a higher power. This is the story of how LPs saved our lives.

It’s a really entertaining thesis from Hepworth who does this kind of thing extremely well, drawing on his huge store of musical knowledge and first hand experience of meeting many artists over the years. Essentially taking us from the first ‘proper’ album, Sgt Pepper, to the massive investment of musical resource required to deliver Thriller and all points in between, he sets out the best (and some of the less than impressive) offerings of the golden age of the LP.

It’s all good clean fun and wonderfully nostalgic for those of us who remember the youthful experience of carrying around albums as real signifiers of our quality musical taste.

What’s up Doc?

Lean Fall Stand by Jon McGregor

When an Antarctic research expedition goes wrong, the consequences are far-reaching – for the men involved and for their families back home.
 
Robert ‘Doc’ Wright, a veteran of Antarctic field work, holds the clues to what happened, but he is no longer able to communicate them. While Anna, his wife, navigates the sharp contours of her new life as a carer, Robert is forced to learn a whole new way to be in the world.
 
Award-winning novelist Jon McGregor returns with a stunning novel that mesmerizingly and tenderly unpicks the notion of heroism and explores the indomitable human impulse to tell our stories – even when words fail us.  A meditation on the line between sacrifice and selfishness this is a story of the undervalued, unrecognised courage it can take just to get through the day.

It’s another terrific read from Jon McGregor who has managed to deliver another extraordinary and distinctive tale. It’s very much a story of two parts, both of which show McGregor’s writing to great effect as we move from the vast emptiness of Antarctica to the microcosm of Doc’s post-incident life back home. The tension of the first part is remarkable and utterly gripping. The detail of the painful step by step recovery for Doc and the sudden curtailment of her normal life for Anna his wife and now fully-time carer is brilliantly presented and often incredibly poignant. Every word counts in what is another exceptionally good novel.

A year of poetic pain

Diary of a Somebody by Brian Bilston

It’s January 1st and Brian Bilston’s life needs to change. His ex-wife has taken up with a new man, a motivational speaker and marketing guru to boot; he seems to constantly disappoint his long-suffering son; and at work he is drowning in a sea of spreadsheets and management jargon.

Brian’s resolution is to write a poem every day; poetry will be his salvation. But there is an obstacle to his happiness in the form of Toby Salt, his arch nemesis in the Poetry Group and rival suitor to Liz, Brian’s new poetic inspiration. When Toby goes missing, Brian is the number one suspect.

Part tender love story, part suburban murder mystery, part coruscating description of a wasted life, and interspersed with some of the funniest poems about the mundane and the profound, Diary of a Somebody is a unique, original and hilarious novel.

Very good fun indeed. Bilston captures the dark despair and the challenges of his difficult year extremely well and sprinkles it all with some entertaining, witty and clever poetry. His doomed domestic existence and the surprising disappearance of his poetic rival provide the core narrative supplemented by his recounting romantic failings. It all owes a big debt to Adrian Mole but manages nevertheless to be fresh, interesting and funny and with poems like this on most days…

…you really can’t go wrong. Good wholesome fun.

That was the week that will be

Seven Days in New Crete by Robert Graves

Edward Venn-Thomas lives in the twentieth century but has been mysteriously transported to the future, and the apparently idyllic society of New Crete, where there is no hunger, no war and no dissatisfaction. However Venn-Thomas is starting to find life among the New Cretans rather dull. He comes to realize that their perfect existence, inspired by the poets and magicians of their strange occultic religion, lacks one fundamental thing – evil. So Venn-Thomas sees it as nothing less than his duty to introduce them to the darker side of life. First published in 1949 and also known as Watch the North Wind Rise, Graves’s novel is a thrilling blend of utopian fantasy, science fiction and mythology.

It’s a real stranger in a strange land scenario with our narrator navigating his way through the futuristic and confusing yet familiar world of New Crete. The first person narrative is reminiscent of another dystopian novel, We and sees our her navigate his way through the various delights of this apparently perfect society. But things begin to fall apart quickly as Venn-Thomas finds ways, not always intentionally, to subvert the idyllic existence of the New Cretans.

Oh, Henry

The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel

‘If you cannot speak truth at a beheading, when can you speak it?’

England, May 1536. Anne Boleyn is dead, decapitated in the space of a heartbeat by a hired French executioner. As her remains are bundled into oblivion, Thomas Cromwell breakfasts with the victors. The blacksmith’s son from Putney emerges from the spring’s bloodbath to continue his climb to power and wealth, while his formidable master, Henry VIII, settles to short-lived happiness with his third queen, Jane Seymour.

Cromwell is a man with only his wits to rely on; he has no great family to back him, no private army. Despite rebellion at home, traitors plotting abroad and the threat of invasion testing Henry’s regime to breaking point, Cromwell’s robust imagination sees a new country in the mirror of the future. But can a nation, or a person, shed the past like a skin? Do the dead continually unbury themselves? What will you do, the Spanish ambassador asks Cromwell, when the king turns on you, as sooner or later he turns on everyone close to him?

The final one in the trilogy and we all know it is not going to end well. It really is a fitting addition to the set and if anything is even better than Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies. The novel covers the last years of Thomas Cromwell, who has come from nowhere to be the most powerful commoner in the kingdom. Whilst there has been some criticism of Mantel’s portrait of Cromwell being perhaps too favourable, what she does capture brilliantly is the sheer breadth of his efforts to keep dozens of plates spinning while the ground is constantly shifting under him. He works very hard indeed for the money but the cost to him and others is huge.

At the end of the day though it is all about the politics, domestic and international, and coping with the perversities of the royal prerogative. For the most part Cromwell navigates the uneven terrain with a deft if often deadly touch but then he who serves at the King’s pleasure may not be sure of his position forever.

As well as being just a compelling narrative the novel is packed with rich period detail and an extensive cast of great characters and really is a fitting end to this wonderful series. Highly recommended.

It’s all about trust

Trust Me by T M Logan

TWO STRANGERS. A CHILD. AND A SPLIT SECOND CHOICE THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING.

The chance encounter

Ellen was just trying to help a stranger. Giving a few minutes respite to a flustered young mother sitting opposite her on the train. A few minutes holding her baby while the woman makes an urgent call.

Five minutes pass.
Ten.

The twist

As the train pulls into a station, Ellen is stunned to see the woman step off the train and rush away down the platform, leaving her baby behind.

Then she discovers a note in the baby’s bag, three desperate lines scrawled hastily on a piece of paper:

Please protect Mia
Don’t trust the police
Don’t trust anyone

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

It’s an entertaining and fast-pace page-turner from Logan who has been mining a rich seam in recent years and has produced another really good whodunnit. Of course you should never trust anyone who has to ask you to do so and there are quite a few people Ellen, our heroine, is naturally therefore reluctant to trust, including those identified in the note. It’s a great premise for a story and the plot intricacies do mean you are kept guessing most of the way through. This more than lives up to Logan’s previous offerings and is recommended as a well-crafted and well executed crime thriller.