January 16, 2025

This cleverly crafted novel has two timelines. In the first, we follow the fortunes of Alice Arden, nee Brigandine. She is married to Thomas Arden, a Kentish merchant, and we are in the fourth and fifth decades of the sixteenth century, in the dying days of the rule of Henry VIII, and the brief reign of his son, the boy King, Edward VI. A young Warwickshire man, Will Shakspere*, who works as a glove maker in his father’s business, is the second subject. We are in the same century, but in its final two decades. On the throne is the daughter of Ann Boleyn, Elizabeth.

*I have retained the spelling of the surname used in the novel, rather than the modern alternative.

Alice has been married off to Thomas Arden, an unscrupulous merchant who, for all his cut and thrust in the business world, has absolutely no interest in Alice as a sexual partner. Her dismay is compounded by the fact that, before her marriage, she had an intense physical relationship with a local tailor, Tom Mosby. Thomas and Alice have moved to the town of Faversham, where Thomas has been made Mayor. When Mosby turns up and seeks to renew his relationship with Alice, she is drawn into a maelstrom of desire and wrong decisions that will have fatal consequences.

The dissolution of the monasteries, in the later years of the reign of Henry VIII, might be viewed as an act of cultural vandalism today, but for the secular world at the time, it provided endless business opportunities. The monasteries had huge land holdings and when Henry’s Treasury put these acres up for sale, merchants and investors sensed an unmissable business opportunity. Inevitably, rivals clashed, and two such were Thomas Arden and Sir Anthony Aucher. It is no exaggeration to say that they were sworn enemies.

As this rivalry blew hotter and hotter, Arden and his wife had come to an astonishing domestic arrangement. Tom Mosby had reappeared, and had sought out his former lover, Alice. Arden was still dependent on the patronage of Sir Edward North, Alice’s stepfather. Arden reluctantly allowed Alice and Mosby to carry on their passionate affair, metaphorically under his nose, but literally under his roof.

Years on from the events in Faversham, Will Shakspere is increasingly frustrated with his lot. He and his wife Ann and their three children rely on Will’s wage from his father’s glove business. Will is not a great craftsman. Profits are made by making the maximum pairs of gloves from any given hide, and Will botches more often than he succeeds. In a desperate attempt to provide meat for his table and leather for his workshop, Will tries to poach a deer from Charlecote Park, but he is caught by Sir Thomas Lucy’s gamekeepers, and is forced to flee Stratford to avoid serious punishment. He scrapes out a living in London as a bit-part actor, trying his best to send money home to Anne and his children.

The book’s title resonates throughout its pages, but in different ways. It was the dense forest that covered much of what is now the West Midlands in Roman times. It was the family name of Shakspere’s mother. They had once been noble, but had fallen from favour long ago. And of, course, it became Alice’s married name when she and Thomas were wed.

Will eventually makes his mark as a playwright in London, but before works such as The Taming of the Shrew made him rich and famous, he dramatises the events in Faversham fifty years earlier. However, as it contains obvious references to families who are still rich and powerful, it is never performed properly.

Aeschylean tragedy, used by Shakspere in such works as Hamlet, Othello and Macbeth, is based on the idea of men and women brought down not because they were inherently evil, but because of poor decisions, ambition, vanity, and human traits like jealousy. Thomas Hardy’s Mayor of Casterbridge is one such and, like him, Thomas Arden comes to grief when he offends one too many local officials and merchants, and loses all his power and authority. Alice Arden, another tragic figure, makes the mistake of trusting her lover, Tom Mosby, and becomes sucked in to a plot to kill her husband. It goes disastrously wrong and, within hours of the deed, she is arrested, thrown into jail, tried and burnt at the stake, but not before she is subject to an astonishingly vile act of revenge by the local authorities. Decades later, Shakspere learns of this and, now a celebrated and wealthy man, is determined to place on record the last hours of Alice Arden’s life.

Arden is beautifully written, with meticulous historical research. Alice Arden is a truly tragic figure, certainly not a heroine, but a woman brought low by her own desires and poor choices. I have not read a book that brings Will Shakspere to life with such energy since Anthony Burgess’s 1964 novel Nothing Like the Sun. Arden is published by Ginger Cat and is available now.

GONE . . . Between the covers

Bristol DCI John Meredith is not at peace with the world. His wife and fellow police officer Patsy Hodge was seriously injured when she came face to face with a serial killer. Her physical injuries are, albeit slowly, healing. Mentally, however, she is shattered. Her relationship with Meredith is now fraught, riven with anxiety and tension.

At work, Meredith is saddled with an exasperating pair of cold case crimes. Decades ago, two young women, unknown to each other and years apart, caught trains from Bristol to London. Neither reached their destination, and their bodies were eventually discovered in separate locations in farmland near Reading. What links the two cases is that the forensics indicate that the two young women were not killed when they first disappeared. It seems that they lived for years before being killed. But where? And with whom? Doing what,? The timeline suggests that the first girl, Jasmine was killed in 2008/9, while Louise disappeared in 2010. Could Louise have been Jasmine’s successor, a replacement of some kind? Jasmine Jones was given up by her mother, put in care and then fostered. She married a man called Carl, but the relationship disintegrated when he had a fling with another woman. Louise Marshall was another woman anxious for a fresh start and a new job, but she found only violence and an unmarked grave.

As is often the way in crime fiction, we know the answer to the puzzle facing the investigators long before they do. In this case, there is a decidedly weird and disfunctional farming family who have a disconcerting habit of employing women as a sinister mix of housekeeper and bed-mate – and then killing them.

As involving as this is, the real beating heart of the book is John Meredith’s personal life. The scene where he meets up with his first true love (after Patsy ups sticks and goes to stay with relations in New Zealand) is brilliantly written, and so, so poignant. They wine and dine, make it back to her hotel and …. I am not going to spoil it for you, but it is the most emotionally intuitive piece of writing I have read for a long time.

John Meredith is an engaging and complex man. Realising that Patsy is mentally damaged, he is bowed beneath her slights, physical indifference, and emotional instability, but he never buckles. He hopes (rather than believes) that somewhere ahead are the sunlit uplands of the days before Patsy was so badly wounded. He wants to believe what Philip Larkin once wrote. “What will survive of us is love.” It is, at the end of the day, all he has to offer.

The dark secrets of Brandon farm are eventually exposed to sunlight and justice – after a fashion – is served. What will remain with me about this book, however, is the wonderfully observed account of Meredith’s personal life. Yes, we know that most fictional police Inspectors have tangled lives away from the job. I could start with Tom Thorne, Alan Banks and John Rebus, but CriFi buffs do not need me to continue the list, as it would be a long one. My last words of praise for this excellent novel are to say that the dialogue, copper to copper and Meredith to acquaintances and family, absolutely sparkles. Gone is published by 127 Publishing and is available now.

January 16, 2025 0

THE SERPENT UNDER . . . Between the covers

Leaving aside for a moment the question of whether or not this Sherlock Holmes pastiche is any good, I will tell you that in terms of design and printing, it is to be treasured. The cover is magnificent, and the illustrated capitals at the beginning of each chapter are a delight – each a miniature masterpiece.

To the text. Holmes and Watson receive an urgent summons to Windsor Castle, where a lady-in- waiting to an elderly duchess has been found dead in her bath. Palace officials have peremptorily declared the death as suicide, cleaned the area where the body was found, and moved her remains to another chamber. One glance at the corpse of Miss Jane Wandley is enough for Holmes to realise that she has been murdered. Not only is it impossible that the two slashes on her wrists to have been self administered, she is covered in fresh and unhealed tattoos, depicting an ancient symbol, the Ouroboros – a snake eating itself.

We are reunited with one of the more improbable characters in this series, a young girl known as Heffie, who is an ex-officio member of the Baker Street Irregulars (a staple of the original stories), a gang of street urchins who use their anonymity to eavesdrop on conversations between ladies and gentlemen on London’s highways and byways. They were a brilliant invention by ACD, as they give Holmes eyes and ears in places where he would be too conspicuous to be effective. Heffie is roughly spoken, but highly intelligent and observant. There is just a hint of Pygmalion about this, as Heffie is anxious to speak ‘proper’ as Holmes, in his Henry Higgins mode, corrects her language and pronunciation.

Bonnie MacBride wastes no time in presenting us with a selection of dubious characters. Jane Wandley’s own father will not leave his Home Counties mansion to identify his daughter’s body sending, instead, his estate manager Peter Oliver, a handsome and charismatic university graduate. Jane Wandley’s fiancée, a vulgar and vain German of very minor royal descent, has a cast iron alibi for the probable murder timeline, but is definitely a person of interest.

The key to the mystery lies in the elaborate and professionally executed tattoos on the dead woman. Someone is obviously sending an arcane message, but to whom? And what is the message? Holmes traces the tattoos to the work of a celebrated Japanese artist, much in demand in his home country where his top customers are Yakuza gangsters. However, he was in London at a Japanese cultural event, was kidnapped along with his little daughter and forced to work on Jane Wandley with a knife held to his daughter’s throat. She has been released, but of him there is no sign. Things become more complex when it is discovered that Jane Wandley’s younger brother is an artist who creates designs for an upmarket fabric company. His patterns all feature, guess what? Snakes.

Holmes tributes, pastiches, homages – call them what you will – are almost as old as the original stories. I can cope with most of them, provided they stay in period. Attempts to put him in modern dress, or make him Steampunk, or recast him in a comedy parody, are, for me, beneath contempt. Life shortens by the day, and so I don’t have statistics, but I make an educated guess that SH ‘reimaginings’ probably now outnumber the originals.

I have made this point before, but it is well worth repeating. With the exception of the four novella-length tales, A Study in Scarlet, The Valley of Fear, The Sign of Four and The Hound of the Baskervilles, all other Holmes stories were short and pithy, aimed at magazine readers. Modern novelists are, therefore faced with an inbuilt challenge, which is to keep their stories ticking over throughout 400 pages or so. Hence the need for having other story lines running parallel to the main one – in this case the mystery of who is attempting to damage and disrupt a fledgling women’s rights movement. I have a rather ‘left field” yardstick for these books. If I can imagine Holmes’s dialogue being delivered by Jeremy Brett, then all is well. In The Serpent Under, all is not just well, but flourishing. This is a clever re-imagining of our old friend, and very, very readable. Published by Collins Crime Club, it is available now.