fullybooked2017

THE TRIAL . . . Between the covers

First up, this novel isn’t a courtroom drama. Literally, it is about a big pharma multinational testing out what could be a game-changing drug to combat the effects of dementia. Metaphorically, though, Jo Spain’s latest thriller sees the lives of several individuals put under intense scrutiny, as if being questioned by a hard-nosed barrister in a court of law. Serious questions are asked, and some people fall after being challenged.

I am not normally a fan of split-time narratives, as they are all too often distracting short cuts, but Jo Spain is too good a writer to be accused of that, and in her hands it works well. There are three time zones. In 2014 we are in a prestigious Irish university college, St Edmunds, and we meet Dani. She is asleep, but her lover – Theo Laurent, French, and a fellow student – is about to make a very serious decision. He carefully climbs down from their shared bed and leaves. Not ‘leaves’ as in just going back to his own room, but ‘leaves’ as in disappears. Totally. Completely. From the face of the earth. Anxious and baffled hours for Dani turn into days and weeks. The police are not interested. Theo’s estranged and autocratic father reluctantly tells Dani over the ‘phone that he has received an email from his son stating that he has left the academic world to go travelling.

The two other time frames are 2023 and the present day. More so than in her excellent Tom Reynolds police procedural series, Jo Spain, in her standalone novels, likes to sucker punch her readers with astonishing plot twists, none more breathtaking than in The Perfect Lie ( click the link to read my review) These literary magic tricks are usually saved until the final pages of the novel, but here she does her stuff about half way through, when she lets us know that Dani is not who or what we think she is. To say more would be to spoil the fun. Suffice it to say that Jo Spain simply encourages us to make assumptions, which she then delights in shattering.

We learn that Dani, as far as the new ‘wonder drug’ is concerned, certainly has a dog in this particular fight. Her widowed mother is slowly succumbing to the inexorable death sentence known as Alzheimer’s. What if the new wonder drug could arrest her mother’s decline, and restore her memory, and make her sit up in bed with delight when her daughter comes to visit?

Academic impartiality seems to be a things of the past, certainly in the United Kingdom, and in Ireland, where this novel is set. In England, many universities – and even some independent school – have been bought and sold with Chinese money, but in the case of St Edmunds, it is not Xi’s millions that is paying the salaries of lecturers and professors, but the big dollars of the pharmaceutical industry. A convincing report from the medical researchers at St Edmunds, stating that the new drug poses no side-effect risks means that Turner Pharma can go ahead and mass produce the tablets, and ensuring massive world-wide profits. In trying to solve the mystery of Theo’s disappearance, Dani learns that pharmaceutical companies, just like their illegal counterparts in Mexico and Columbia, employ clever but crooked lawyers, use physical enforcers, and have limitless budgets to buy off politicians and law enforcement

The Trial works brilliantly on many different levels. There is the human anguish as Dani attempts to come to terms with Theo’s inexplicable departure. Jo Spain then invites us to be disgusted at the many ways in which academic institutions can become a simple market place commodity, and sold to the highest bidder. Above all, though, is the satisfaction derived from reading something written by a natural born story teller. There is not a word out of place, not a scene that wouldn’t work as a TV screenplay and – best of all – human characters of whom we might say, “Yes – I know someone like that.” The Trial is published by Quercus and is available now.

June 8, 2024 0

WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS . . . Between the covers

David Mark has taken a temporary break from his excellent Aector McAvoy series (click the link to find out more) and his latest novel has a prologue that is as violent and visceral as any of the disturbing scenes in Derek Raymond’s I Was Dora Suarez. If you have read that masterpiece, you will know what I am talking about. If you haven’t, then you should. Here, copper Wulfric Hagman wakes up in a charnel house, apparently of his own creation. His former lover, Trina Delany lies butchered on the bed, while he seems to have tried to hang himself with a length of baler twine.

That was then, but now, Hagman has served a prison sentence, been released, and is now living in a moorland farmhouse he gifted by Jarod, one of Trina’s children. His twin sister, Salome is also living there. She is a traffic cop, formally known,in today’s jargon, as Collision Investigation Officer. At Hagman’s original trial, both Sal and Jarod gave chilling evidence testifying to the abuse they – and the other children – received at Trina’s hands.

Against this unusual human background and with the Northumbrian hills carpeted in deep snow, David Mark weaves his magic. The plot is complex, but this is a breakdown of the main characters.

Salome Delaney, police officer.
Jarod Delaney, Sal’s twin. Now a farmer, living in a house signed over to him by …
Wulfric Hagman, former policeman, served a long prison term for the murder of Trina Delaney. He now lodges with the Delaneys.
Dagmara Scrowther, charismatic Children’s Services officer. Worked with the Delaney family.
Lewis Beecher, senior police officer, divorced. Has recently ended a long term relationship with Sal Delaney.
Barry Ford. Once a child tearaway, now relatively respectable. Former lover of Trina Delaney.
Detective Superintendent Magda Quinn. Has re-opened the Hagman case, believing him to be guilty of more murders.

With transport paralysed by deep snow, Salome – although on leave – receives a call from a fellow officer asking her to go and investigate a car that has come off the road just a couple of miles away. She clings on grimly as Jarod’s quad-bike makes light work of the snow drifts. She finds the wrecked car, but the macabre feeding habits of local crows lead her to a man’s body. Some of the crows who have fed on the corpse are collapsing and dying. The reason? The body has had acid poured into his throat.

This grim discovery sets off a train of events that are as violent and disturbing as anything I have read in recent crime fiction. I am a great admirer of David Mark’s writing, and I make no apology for frequently comparing his style to that of Derek Raymond. Like Raymond, Mark takes us into dark places where monsters – in human form – ply their trade. Like Raymond’s nameless Sergeant in the five Factory novels, Mark’s heroes are often gravely damaged, but have a depth of compassion that always brings about a sense of redemption at the end of the journey, no matter how hellish the road.

The body in the snow is eventually identified as being that of Barry Ford, a man who was a troubled youngster but, thanks to the perseverance of Dagmara Scrowther, seems to have turned himself into something of a decent citizen. However, when Salome, hastily drafted back to work as a Family Liaison Officer, has to break the news of Ford’s demise to his current girlfriend, she opens a Pandora’s Box from which fly demons of cruelty and bestial abuse. Also in the mix is the fate of Lewis Beecher’s divorced wife. She and her two daughters – Nola and Lottie – have a new ‘dad’. He seems jolly and full of jokes, but is he genuine?

In this superb novel we cross paths with many human monsters. Trina Delaney is one, certainly, and Barry Ford is not far behind. But a third monster lurks in plain sight. Its identity is known to me, but you will have to find out for yourselves. When The Bough Breaks is published by Severn House and is available now.

June 6, 2024 0

JACK THE RIPPER AND ABRAHAM LINCOLN . . . Between the covers

Historian and broadcaster Tony McMahon (left) sets out his stall in this book, and he is selling a provocative premise. It is that a celebrity fraudster, predatory homosexual, quack doctor and narcissist – Francis Tumblety – was instrumental in two of the greatest murder cases of the 19th century.The first was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln in April 1865, and the second was the murder of five women in the East End of London in the autumn of 1888 – the Jack the Ripper killings.   Tumblety was certainly larger than life. Tall and imposingly built, he favoured dressing up as a kind of Ruritanian cavalry officer, with a pickelhaub helmet, and sporting an immense handlebar moustache. He made – and lost – fortunes with amazing regularity, mostly by selling herbal potions to gullible patrons. Despite his outrageous behaviour, he does not seem to have been a violent man. Yes, he could have been accused of manslaughter after people died from ingesting his elixirs, but apart from once literally booting a disgruntled customer out of his suite, there is no record of extreme physical violence.

Lincoln’s killer John Wilkes Booth and David Herold, a rather dimwitted youth who, along with Mary Suratt and George Azerodt, was hanged for his part in the conspiracy, were certainly known to Tumblety, although there is little evidence that he shared Booth’s Confederate zealotry. Tumblety does not come across as a particularly political animal, although McMahon makes the point that he had friends in high places, who provided him with a ‘get out of jail free’ card on the many occasions when he found himself in court.

Tumblety (right( was a braggart, a charlatan, a narcissist and a predatory homosexual abuser of young men. Tony McMahon makes this abundantly clear with his exhaustive historical research. What the book doesn’t do, despite it being a thrilling read, is explain why the obnoxious Tumblety made the leap from being what we would call a bull***t artist to the person who killed five women in the autumn of 1888, culminating in the butchery that ended of the life Mary Jeanette Kelly in her Miller’s Court room on the 9th November. Her injuries were horrific, and the details are out there should you wish to look for them. As for Lincoln’s homosexuality – and his syphilis – the jury has been out for some time, with little sign that they will be returning any time soon. McMahon is absolutely correct to say that syphilis was a mass killer. My great grandfather’s death certificate states that he died, aged 48, of General Paralysis of the Insane. Also known as Paresis, this was a euphemistic term for tertiary syphilis. The disease would be contracted in relative youth, produce obvious physical symptoms, and then seem to disappear. Later in life, it would manifest itself in mental incapacity, delusions of grandeur, and physical disability. Lincoln was 56 when he was murdered and, as far as we know, in full command of his senses. I suggest that were Lincoln syphilitic, he would have been unable to maintain his public persona as it appears that he did.

Is Tumblety a credible Ripper suspect? No more and no less than a dozen others. Yes, he was in London when the five canonical murders were committed, but so were, in no particular order, the Duke of Clarence, Neill Cream, Aaron Kosinski, Robert Stephenson, Walter Sickert and Michael Ostrog. Much is made of the fact that Tumblety left the country in some haste, catching a boat across The Channel to Le Havre, and then back to America. He certainly had been in police custody, but for acts of public indecency, and was released on bail, which suggests that the London police did not think he was a danger to the public. The fact is that we will never know. The killings during ‘ The Autumn of Terror’ will forever remain unsolved. At some point, I suppose, the murders will fade into forgetfulness, and books advocating the latest theory will no longer have a market.

The theory that Tumblety also suffered from syphilis could account for the insane rage with which Marie Jeanette Kelly was butchered, but we must bear in mind that Tumblety lived until he was 70, dying in St Louis in May 1903, apparently from a heart attack. This said, Tony McMahon has written a wonderfully entertaining book with an excellent narrative drive, and a jaw-dropping insight into the demi-monde of mid-19th century America. McMahon’s research is beyond question, and he provides extensive footnotes and very useful index. The cover blurb says, “One man links the two greatest crimes of the 19th century.” Tony McMahon establishes beyond dispute that Francis Tumblety was that man. Whether he proves that he was responsible for either is another matter altogether.

June 5, 2024 1

LITANY OF LIES . . . Between the covers

We are back in 12th Century Worcestershire, with Undersheriff Hugh Bradecote and Serjeant Catchpoll. Together with Underserjeant Walkelin, they are sent to Evesham to investigate a body found at the bottom of deep shaft being dug for a new well. Evesham sits partly within a deep curve of the River Avon. Its most notable building is the Benedictine Abbey, but on the other side of the river, built to protect the bridge, is Bengeworth Castle. It is not a grand place. Built by the Beauchamp family, High Sheriffs of the county, on an earthen mound and surrounded by a palisade of wooden stakes, it is damp and insanitary.

The man at the bottom of the well pit is discovered to be Walter, Steward of the Abbot of Evesham. The main part of his job was to collect rents on behalf of the religious order, as they own most of land in the town. We know, as readers, that Walter was involved in a scuffle with another townsman, who bested him by cracking his head open with a rock, before rolling his body into the pit. Bradecote soon reaches the correct answer to the question, “how?” But, although learning the “why?”, of Walter’s death, it some time before “who?” becomes apparent.

Relations between the Abbey authorities and the Bengeworth castellan and his soldiers are anything but cordial, and soldiers from the castle are suspected of stealing barrels of wine from the Abbey cellars, as well as illegally demanding a toll from everyone who enters the town via the bridge. When Bradecote examines documents at the Abbey, they show that Walter has been reporting several tradesman around the town as coming up short with the quarterly rent. This gives Sarah Hawkswood to tell us a little about the tradesmen in the town, and also serve a reminder of the occupational origins of some English surnames. We meet Aelred the Tailor, Baldwin the Dyer, Hubert the Mason and Martin the Fuller. The work of a Fuller was to take rolls of woven wool cloth and – by using some fairly unpleasant substances – remove all traces of grease, dirt (and worse) that remained in the cloth since it was wool on the sheep’s fleece.

Between them, Bradecote, Catchpoll and Walkelin interview the tradesmen, and find that each had paid their rents in full, and on time, to Steward Walter, leading to one conclusion only, and that was that Walter was ‘skimming off’ the rents, and taking a cut for himself. But it seems that none of the tenants knew that they were being cheated, so how could any of them have a motive for murder?

As the investigation seems to be going round in circles, another body is found. It is that of Old Cuthbert a bitter and lonely man. Years ago, he had been a Coppersmith, but found himself accused of murdering a local woman as a result of a love triangle. Taken before the justices, there was little evidence either for against him, and so he was subject to the barbaric Trial by Hot Iron. The accused had to hold a red hot iron bar in his hand and walk nine feet. If, after a few days, the wound healed, it was a sign that God pronounced him ‘not guilty’. If it festered, he was guilty, and would be hanged. Cuthbert was ‘not guilty’, but thereafter, his hand remained clenched as a fist, and so he was unable to carry on his skilled trade. Just about the only occupation left to him was that of a Walker in the fulling process, whereby he walked up and down all day in troughs of urine, treading – and therefore cleansing – the cloth in the liquid.

Of course, Bradecote and Catchpoll solve both murders, as we know they will. What lifts this book above the ordinary is Sarah Hawkswood’s magical recreation of a long lost world. Yes, it was a hard living by modern standards. Yes, medical interventions were scarce and mostly misguided. Yes, justice was rough and frequently random. But the description of the wonderful Worcestershire landscape, now mostly covered in concrete, car parks and convenience stores is sublime. The Avon is still unpolluted, and the Evesham Abbey bees still harvest pollen free of toxic chemicals. How the people in those days spoke to each other, or in what tongue or accent, neither the author nor I can have any real idea, but to me what Sarah Hawkswood has them saying sounds just about right.

A new Bradecote and Catchpoll mystery is a highlight in my reading calendar, and I always turn the first page with a sense of comfort. I am comfortable only in the sense that I know I am in for a few hundred pages of sublime writing. ‘ Comfort’ does not mean ‘ Cosy’, and Sarah Hawkswood continues to show us that greed, malice, vindictiveness and subterfuge were just as common in mid-12thC England as they would prove to be in 1930’s LA, or modern day London. Litany of Lies is published by Allison & Busby and is available now.

June 5, 2024 0

THE BURNING . . . Between the covers

The novel starts in London, March 2020 and, like millions of other people, the Mountford family are sitting watching the news, and there is only one item – The Lockdown. Stringent rules about association and movement have been imposed, but Tony Mountford is nothing if not a quick thinker. He and his family are lucky. They own a holiday cottage in the south of England, and he decides on the spur of the moment to pile everyone and everything into the car and head south. They avoid police patrols, and arrive safely at the cottage. Across Britain, and the rest of Europe, a million nightmares are being enacted as the Covid death toll rises, but for the Mountfords, their nightmare is only just beginning.

The cottage, although it has been brought up to date after a fashion, is ancient: it has a resident ghost, or other-worldly presence; when sensed, it has been entirely benign, to the extent that it is mentioned as a selling point in the advertising brochure. Some renters have even placed a ☹️in their Trip Advisor review, disappointed that it never appeared during their stay.

Something, however, has jarred and jolted the spiritual ambience of the old stones out of kilter, and a far more sinister manifestation has claimed the cottage. There is a dramatic moment when, while Tony and his wife Charlie are making love in front of the log burning stove, with the children all sound asleep upstairs, a spectral hand grips Charlie’s throat. Far more chilling, however, is the moment when eight year-old Alfie appears at the foot of the stairs one night and says:

“Daddy, there’s a man in my room.“

Without giving too much away, the Mountfords’ stay at the cottage doesn’t end well, and after a few months the property is back on the market. Gavin and Simon are a fairly wealthy gay couple and they become the new owners. They decide to gut the interior of the building, stripping it right back to beams, brick and stone and – as far as the local council planners will allow – fully modernise it. In the process they make two startling discoveries. They find a deep well beneath the house, but of greater significance is that the builders have unearthed steps leading down to what can only be described as some kind of a cell. It has bars on the door, through which something of the inside can be seen, but the door remains resolutely locked. Robert Derry has a profound understanding of the latent power of old buildings, ghosts or not, and he describes it beautifully:

“After all, the heavy wooden beams were once living breathing things, until some mediaeval carpenters had cut them down in their prime. Then as seasoned joists they’d been hoisted up to hang from finely crafted oak A-frames, each chiselled peg dovetailed into carved sockets like ancient teeth in an angled jawbone. Dead men, whose hands had once lovingly laboured to shape each broad blade that would one day bear a ton or two of hand-hewn reads. The same dead men that now lay their heads further up the lane; a yew lined root that leads to a secluded graveyard which has long since laid its single tracked secrets to rest.”

As Gavin researches the history of what they pair had hoped would be their ‘forever home’, it is clear that in the mid seventeenth century the house witnessed truly evil acts, and that trauma seems to have been absorbed into the very bricks and mortar. Someone – or something – seems trapped, angry and in pain, and will not leave Gavin and Simon in peace until it is freed. This is an excellent account of dark deeds from the past intruding into modern lives, and Robert Derry has written a very convincing and plausible ghost story, with several moments that are genuinely disturbing. The Burning is independently published, and is available now.

June 3, 2024 1

SOUTHERN MAN . . . Between the covers

This is a massive book physically as it is over 900 pages long. Emotionally, it is huge, as it deals with suffering, death, revenge, remorse and corruption with relentless intensity. Politically it is intensely topical as it deals with the prospect of a Donald Trump second term as POTUS, and the mood of the voters who put him into the White House in the first place. Historically, it is deeply challenging, as it looks at the legacy of over two centuries of prejudice and cruelty in the southern states of America.

The title refers to a 1970 song by Neil Young where he excoriates the archetypal redneck southern male. The song may (or may not) have triggered a musical duel with Lynrd Skynrd, when their response was Sweet Home Alabama. The novel features Mississippi lawyer, politician and author, Penn Cage, who appeared in previous Greg Iles novels. Click the link for more information.

The back story here is complex, but in a rather large nutshell:

Penn Cage, has an obscure terminal cancer which is slowly killing his octogenarian mother.
Cage lost a leg beneath the knee in a road accident.
He is a civil liberties campaigner.
Dr Tom Cage, Penn’s father, a much respected physician, wrongly imprisoned, died in prison riot at Parchman Farm penitentiary.
Cage is a widower. His wife died of cancer and, much, later, his fiancée was murdered.
He has a twenty-something daughter called Annie, also a liberal minded lawyer.

The early narrative darts back and forth between current events and the days following Dr Tom Cage’s death in the prison riot. The reasons for Tom’s incarceration are complex, but Greg Iles spells it out with great clarity. Present day couldn’t be much more topical. Donald Trump is gathering momentum for a second bid for the presidency, but the almost unthinkable has happened. A charismatic war veteran called Robert Lee White is aiming to be the first independent candidate since Ross Perot in 1992, and he has a huge following via his Tik Tok videos and a very popular radio show. He came to national prominence when he led a special forces team searching for a notorious Taliban leader. They found him, and White administered the coup de Grace.

Present day. As Bobby White hones his media profile for TV audiences, he receives a boost. Attending a largely black music festival, he heroically rescues Annie Cage and several others, mostly black youngsters, who have serious bullet wounds after white Sheriff’s deputies open fire on the crowd after a shooting incident. However, Bobby White’s pitch for POTUS has a serious problem. He lacks the prerequisite adoring wife and clutch of tousle-haired children. Why? I can only direct you to the coded words at the end of many a Times obituary – “He never married.”

The deaths at the music festival have serious repercussions. Within days, a treasured pre Civil War mansion, is burned to the ground. and there is a calling card from The Bastard Sons of The South, apparently a militant BLM organisation. Penn Cage, as a white man, is thrust onto the horns of a dilemma. He is white with serious influence in political circles, but he is also widely respected with the black community, both for his own integrity, and the legacy of his late father. Can he prevent a bloodbath, as the calls for revenge lead to a disastrous polarisation on the streets between black and white factions?

The conflict is not just between black and white people. America has a bewildering number of layers of law enforcement. At the apex is the FBI. Their remit extends across the nation, irrespective of state boundaries. Then we have Sheriffs, appointed by vote. They and their deputies rule the roost over large state subdivisions, known as Counties. Large towns and cities will have their own independent police departments. Last, but by no means least, are the National Guard. They are volunteers, but basically members of the armed forces, and will usually have access to military standard weapons and vehicles. In Southern Man, each one of these agencies come head to head in the streets of Natchez, while the barge-trains and freighters battle against the Mississippi current, beneath the cliff top where thousands of black peace protestors stare in the muzzles of National Guard issue AR-15 rifles.

There is a substantive second story which emerges at different times in the novel. Penn Cage’s mother has been researching her family history, and has pretty much completed it. What it reveals is that Cage and his daughter are descendants of a woman who was the product of a union between a slave owner and one his female slaves. This document allows Greg Iles to explain the complex and often contradictory relationships between slaves (before and after emancipation), and their owners. He also makes the point that the members of the victorious Union army were all too often nothing like liberating saviours.

Cage’s declining health make him rather like Tennyson’s Ulysses:

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

With an increasing sense of frustration, he tries to get to the bottom of who seems to be manipulating the perilous situation on the streets, as rival groups – militant Black activists, peaceful protesters, far right militias, City police and Sheriff’s Deputies edge ever nearer to a cataclysmic explosion of violence.

Greg Iles just doesn’t take sides. He is scathing and abrasive about everything to do with the concept of the honourable South. He has little truck with historians like the late Shelby Foote, who, memorably, appeared several times in Ken Burns’ magisterial documentary The Civil War, and attempted to explain that a typical Southern Man of the Confederate era was not always a brutal redneck bent on raping and brutalising black people.

In several ways, Penn Cage mirrors the real life author.

Both lost part of a limb in a road accident.
Both had fathers who were doctors.
Both had mothers who died of cancer.
Both have a rare form of cancer.

This is a brilliant novel, for sure, which rolls a rock away, and exposes all manner of nasty creatures scurrying away from the light. Is there any room for nuance in the north v south controversy? Greg Iles doesn’t think so, and his superb writing underscores his argument. Me? I am on the fence, not because I approved of the concept of slavery, or the horrors meted out to its victims, but because when you severely punish a nation – which the South thought it was – there are unintended consequences, as The Treaty of Versailles proved in 1919. Post Appomattox 1865, a long lasting sense of grievance was born, and it has yet to die of old age. So-called White Guilt looms large in the novel, as my occasional visits to North Carolina suggest to me that it does in real life.

Aside from the politics, Iles has written a powerful and gripping book in which, despite their number, the pages fly by. The descriptions of the simmering tensions between the communities are breathtaking and apocalyptic. I only hope that in the months to come, they remain fictional. if they play out in real life, there will be a second War Between The States, and America will suffer grievously. Southern Man is published by Hemlock Press and will be out on 6th June.

June 3, 2024 0

THE VENUS OF SALO . . . Between the covers

Not for the first time, I am a late arrival at the party. This is the eighth book in a series featuring Wehrmacht soldier, Colonel Martin Bora. We find him in the north of Italy, in October 1944. It is a strange time in Italian history. The Allies have, at huge cost, breached the various German defensive lines, even the formidable Gothic Line. But winter, with its rain and snow, is not far away, and the fighting in late 1943/early 1944 was a brutal and sapping experience the Allies are unwilling to repeat. In the far north, there is a last pocket of Fascism. This time line of that eventful period may provide a useful backdrop.

25th July 1943, Mussolini dismissed by KIng Victor Emmanuel III and arrested.
12th September 1943, Mussolini rescued from imprisonment by German special forces.
23rd September 1943, Italian Social Republic created, with its capital at Salò.
29th September 1943, the rest of Italy surrenders to the Allies.
28th October 1943, National Republican Army (Esercito Nazionale Repubblicano) created, loyal to Mussolini.
8th December 1943, Republican National Guard created, loyal to Mussolini.
4th June 1944, Allies enter Rome.
20th July 1944, Hitler survives the von Stauffenberg assassination attempt.
14th October 1944, Rommel commits suicide. Announced as death from complications from an earlier road accident.

Most of the action takes place in and around Salò, a town on the shores of Lake Garda. In the mountains and valleys around, German forces and Italian troops loyal to Mussolini are fighting a savage war against Italian partisan groups. Martin Bora, a veteran of campaigns including a spell on the Eastern Front, has been driven by Gestapo agent Jacob Mengs to Salò, where he is told to investigate the theft of a priceless Titian painting, known as The Venus of Salò. It had been ‘borrowed’ from its owner – Giovanni Pozzi – a rich Italian textile magnate, and was hanging in the HQ of the local German army commander when thieves created a diversion, and cut it from its canvas.

In the novel, everyone is at each other’s throats. The ENR can’t stand the RNG (see the timeline), the SS and the Gestapo loathe the regular German army, and the German high command have scant respect for their Italian allies. Even the Italian partisans – divided into communist and royalist bands – are at daggers drawn with each other; both however are contemptuous of local farmers and peasants, especially those they suspect of being collaborators.

As Bora investigates the theft of the painting, there are three deaths which puzzle him. First, a music teacher hangs herself. Then, the maid of a renowned soprano apparently shoots herself with a pistol given to her by an RNG captain, and a seamstress is butchered with a razor-sharp blade. While trying to work out how the three deaths are connected, Bora is entranced by his own flesh and blood ‘Venus’ in the shape of Annie Tedesco, widowed daughter of Giovanni Pozzi. What Bora doesn’t know (but we do, of course) is that all the while he is being set up by the Gestapo and SS. Orchestrated by Jacob Mengs, a dossier of Bora’s apparent disloyalty to the Third Reich is being prepared and, in the wake of the July plot.

Most of the book’s characters are fictional, with the exception of a few more exalted figures (left to right, below), such as SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff (Himmler’s adjutant), Marshal Rodolfo Graziani, head of Italian troops loyal to Mussolini, Generalfeldmarschall Albert Kesselring, and top SS man Herbert Kappler.

The notion, in WW2 fiction, of ‘the good German’ as a central character, is certainly not new. Perhaps the best known of these characters is the late Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther, but there is also a good series by Luke McCallin featuring Hauptmann Gregor Reinhardt. The ‘good German’ as a concept in real history is much more complex; at a senior level, Rommel was forced to commit suicide over his alleged involvement in the von Stauffenberg plot, and Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, chief of the Abwehr (German Military Intelligence), was hanged for treason by the SS just weeks before Hitler committed suicide. Shamefully, Albert Speer, after his release from prison in 1966, made a decent career – lasting almost twenty years – as a media personality and TV ‘talking head’ on the Nazi era.

Ben Pastor’s brilliant novel is an engaging mix of military history. murder mystery, love affair and a study in pyschopathy. Beyond the fiction, however, she reminds us that, for the Allies, the fighting continued almost to the proverbial eleventh hour – the surrender of German forces was formally accepted on 2nd May 1945. The carnage in Italy cost the German army between 30K – 40K dead. The allies suffered more grievously, with deaths estimated as 60K – 70K. The Venus of Salò is published by Bitter Lemon Press and is out now.

May 22, 2024 0

THE ESTATE . . . Between the covers

Police Scotland’s Detective Inspector Cara Salt has been sidelined (because of a serious career blip, of which more later) into what can only be described as a dry and dusty branch of law enforcement, the Succession, Inheritance and Executory Department, SIE for short. Their job is to deal with breaches of the law that happen as a consequence of wills that upset people who assumed they were going to be beneficiaries but, for whatever reason, feel they have been short-changed.

A celebrity hedge fund manager, Sebastian Pallander has died on TV. No, not ‘died’ as in a comedian who fails to get a laugh, but ‘died’ as in suffering a massive heart attack while being interviewed on a live politics programme. It is his will – and its consequences – that are central to this story. When one of Sebastian’s sons, Jean Luc, manages to blow himself up while trying to sabotage a wind turbine, DI Salt is initially surprised to be asked to investigate. Along with her recently acquired assistant, DS Abernathy Blackstock, she visits the site of the wind farm, and finds that young Jean Luc is in many pieces, decoratively spread across the Scottish hillside.

Blackstock is not all he seems to be. The fifty-something Sergeant has not only been working on a top secret investigation into the late Sebastian Pallander’s links to highly dubious Russian money men, but he is the scion of a formerly wealthy branch of Scotland’s aristocracy.

One by one, the Pallander siblings seem to be the in the cross hair gun-sights of some rather nasty people. First Tabitha is kidnapped, then rescued by a mysterious man who tells her that she and her husband must make themselves scarce. When the hotel they are staying in, anonymously, catches fire, Cara Salt decides that Tabitha needs sanctuary – with none other than her former boyfriend – and fellow copper, Sorley MacLeod, now running a laptop refurbishment business in London, but with an lonely fishing cottage out in the Essex marshes as a retreat.

Meanwhile, Silas Pallander, once destined to take over his father’s business but – since the reading of the will – relegated to manager of the family estate, has also been seized, along with his personal assistant Anna. He is forced to sign certain papers, and then the gang make a hasty exit, leaving Silas and Anna to emerge, blinking, from their captivity, to find themselves in a disused Belgian airfield.

About halfway through the book, we learn the reason that Cara Salt is now involved in a policing operation that is as far from the mean streets of Glasgow as it could be. She had headed up a police take-down of a violent local gangster. It went pear-shaped and, faced with her Detective Sergeant – Sorley MacLeod – being held at gunpoint by the man who was the target of their raid, she took a chance and fired two shots. The first shattered MacLeod’s shoulder, but the second hit the gangster right between the eyes. Salt was sidelined and, after a long and painful recovery, MacLeod left both the police force and the world of Cara Salt.

Macleod and Tabitha Pallender, after a helter-skelter chase and a too-close-for-comfort brush with the bad guys, are eventually reunited with Salt and Blackstock, and are whisked back to relative safety in the Pallander company helicopter. However, anyone connected to the Pallander financial empire is about to enter a whole world of hurt. Pallander and his associates had for years basically been operating a Bernie Madoff-style financial scam and, with his death, the corporate chickens are about to come home to roost.

Towards the end of the book Denzil Meyrick (left) throws a sizeable spanner into the works in terms of what we think we know about what is going on, but this nothing to the shock we get during his version of the classic crime novel denouement in the library. In this case, it’s not the library, but the baronial dining room of Meikle House, the home of the Pallanders. The Estate is fast paced, witty and full of those plot twists that make Meyrick’s books so entertaining. It is published by Transworld/Bantam and is available now.

May 21, 2024 0

THINK TWICE . . . Between the covers

A bit of back story. Myron Bolitar (read my review of an earlier book in the series HERE) is a New York sports agent who, before a career-ending knee injury, was a top basketball player. One of his bitterest rivals on the court – and in romance – was Greg Downing. Bolitar went on to become his agent, but not before impregnating Downing’s soon-to-be wife Emily, a young woman they had fought over. The resultant child, Jeremy, now a serving soldier, was brought up to be the Downings’ son. Citing psychological problems, Downing retired from sport, and went to the Far East to “find himself”. He never returned, but his death was announced, and his ashes returned to the USA. Bolitar, being a decent man and putting past grievances to one side, gave the eulogy at his memorial service.

Understandably, Bolitar’s jaw drops when two FBI agents enter his office, and tell him that Downing’s DNA has been found at a recent murder scene. We know from the very start of the book that someone is very good at committing murder and putting someone else in the frame by acquiring their DNA via, say, a hairbrush or a used tissue, and leaving it at the scene of the crime. To say more would be to spoil the fun, but all I will say is that readers should not make assumptions. Across New York and its suburbs, people are looking at serious jail time for crimes we know they didn’t commit but, strangely, as well as irrefutable forensic traces, the suspects have motive, too. Like the young woman who worked a building contract with her father, for a big developer. When that developer simply refused to pay them, citing shoddy workmanship, was she finally driven to desperation, borrowed her father’s rifle and shot the crooked developer dead?

Many fictional American investigators have a brutal sidekick who can be relied upon to dish out extreme violence from time to time. Robert B Parker’s Spenser had Hawk, John Connolly’s Charlie Parker has Louis, and Myron Bolitar has Windsor Horne Lockwood III, a billionaire playboy who loves guns – and using them. Here, he rescues Bolitar from having a toe removed by mobsters, and plays an important part at the end of the book. The relationship between Win and Myron is complex. Win is borderline psychotic, and he does things which, in his mind, are for the good, while knowing full well that Myron would not conscience such behaviour. He doesn’t utter the words, but he is thinking, “I will do this so you don’t have to.”

The plot becomes more complex page by page, and I trust it is not a spoiler to say that Greg Downing is very much alive and well. What neither Bolitar, Win, Emily, Jeremy nor we readers know is why Downing faked his death and – most importantly – with whom. The FBI involvement develops far beyond the two agents we met at the beginning of the novel, and heads right to the core leadership of the agency, but all the while, the pieces of the puzzle stubbornly refuse to fit together, until Coben creates a tense and violent conclusion played out – of all places – under the gloomy Gothic shadow of the Dakota Building on the edge of Central Park, while a busker does his unknowingly ironic stuff with John Lennon’s Imagine.

The book is trademark Harlen Coben – razor sharp East Coast dialogue, relentlessly entertaining, witty, and with enough violence to keep noir fans satisfied. The back cover blurb describes the author as a ‘Global Entertainment Brand.’ I am a bit old fashioned, and would much rather think of him as an immensely talented writer. Think Twice is published by Century and will be out on 23rd May.

May 17, 2024 0