Boredom Comes to the Reader

 It is a truth universally acknowledged that a disappointing book by a beloved author is more depressing than a genuinely bad book by an unknown author.  Death Comes to Pemberley is such a disappointing book. Surprisingly disappointing given my love for P. D. James, especially her Adam Dalgliesh series, and my enjoyment of Jane Austen's books. Jane's suffered more than her share of exploitation of late between mash-ups, story extensions and a series depicting her as busy-body-mystery-solver, and while this latest re-purposing of her characters doesn't involve anything as nutty as sea monsters it is nonetheless a mystifying endeavor

I truly cannot understand why P. D. James felt the need to write this book but my bafflement there is miniscule compared to my total incomprehension of why she felt the need to publish it. I can't understand why, having committed to writing a book based on Pride and Prejudice she felt the need to retell the entire plot of that book in the first 10 pages of this one. Nor can I come up with a reasonable answer as to why an author with a finely honed style like James would want to play ventriloquist with another well-known style.

What really left me staggered in this book is how dull, nay, boring it is. I don't mean slow-moving, I mean actively, aggressively dull. The book focuses on proud, shy and aloof Darcy, which cuts down on the conversational opportunities. The sisters Bennet are barely present and only two of them having anything approaching a conversation. Which made no sense - a murder happens at your sister's house and you don't want to chat it over? The murder isn't interesting and all the opportunities it gives Darcy to plumb the depths of his soul just proves that Darcy isn't all that deep. The absolute nadir, however, involves one character explaining the events of the murder while allowing that another person will probably want to tell their own version. And they do. Except it's pretty much the same version. Just told twice.

To sum up, while this book does not feature zombies, it might as well have been written by one. Avoid this one.

The dead may travel fast but this book does not

I selected The Dead Travel Fast on the strength author Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Gray mystery series. While Silent in the Grave is not perfect, it a decent first-in-a-series that showed real promise. I assumed that this book would be another mystery. The Dead, however, is not a mystery. It is a quasi Gothic Romance, more Victoria Holt than Ann Radcliffe, with strange goings on at a remote castle. It is also a romance. That last part leaves me under qualified as a reviewer for this book.
Set in 1858 Scotland and Transylvania, this is the story of an independent woman, Theodora, who visits an old friend (at that remote castle I mentioned earlier) and the friend’s very odd indeed relatives. Handsome brooding Count Andrei Dragulescu is on scene to make cryptic remarks, gesture haughtily, wash the heroine’s hands and, well, brood. He’s part of the set piece and either the reader is willing to play along or not. I kept thinking that he was a bit of a jerk but some may find him fascinating. Theodora sure does. Even when the locals start to suspect Andrei is a vampire she isn’t all that put off. Is Andrei half-man, half-bat? Is his whole family batty? How does Theodora manage to climb “The Devil’s Stairs” and a narrow turret staircase during the heyday of the hoopskirt?
If you can hang on for all 300 pages you’ll find the answers to most of the above. Portions of this book annoyed me – the random Romanian words, for one – and the repeated references to basil put me in the mood for a caprese salad. For those who like historical romances this is probably decent fare.For mystery fans it will be a disappointment. (Vampire fans will likely be disappointed too.)

Give Pears a Chance

There are few things more exciting for a reader than discovering a new author. Not only do you have the good book you're reading at the moment, you have the promise of reading the author's previous books, you have the anticipation of new books. The only downside is that if the first book you read by the author is not only good but amazingly good, nay, great. It's a downside because you may find yourself comparing every other book by the author against that first, awesome book.

Iain Pears operates in the shadow of this downside thanks to An Instance of the Fingerpost, a historical mystery with multiple narrators, each of them concealing as well as revealing. Stone's Fall is also a historical mystery with multiple narrators, each of them, well, you get the idea. Pears is inviting comparison between these two books so let's just get it out of the way. No, this isn't as good as Instance. So what? Neither are the vast majority of historical mysteries published this year. It is, however, very good.

Stone's Fall is the story of the mysterious death of a mysterious man, John Stone. His power was pervasive yet shadowy, the source of his power is difficult to explain and the goals he sought to advance through the use of that power is far from clear. His wife hires a reporter to locate John Stone's unknown and only recently discovered illegitimate child, a job for which she will pay him extravagantly. This sends the reporter down the proverbial rabbit hole as he tries to find the child, figure out why the missus hire him instead of an investigator and learn the ins and outs of finance so he can understand what it is Stone really owns. Few authors could explain the intricacies of a stock company and make it nearly entertaining; Pears is one of them.

Of course, it doesn't matter how the stock company operates or who owns it. It's a Macguffin, a mere vehicle to transport the story. And what a story it is: sultry Hungarian countesses, shady Levantine salesmen, spies, terrorists, and more lunatics than you can shake a stick out. The first narrator is the most engaging and the most fleshed out. The second narrator is more opaque but still with moments of humor. The final narrator is surprisingly bloodless, surprising because of who it is (I'm not telling) and the story he or she has to tell. There are a few Pears' classic touches along the way: the minor character who is on to the whole thing and tells us but we readers don't believe him, the actual historical characters who have readers wracking their brains to remember what happened to them, and the link between human passions and the things we build that become bigger than us.

If you're a Pears fan, this is a must read. It is a little longer than it needs to be, part two could lose about 100 pages, and as mentioned the last narrator isn't as good as it could be but overall it is very good. If you're new to Iain Pears, I wouldn't recommend starting with this book, for the reasons mentioned above. All in all, it's an entertaining way to spend 700 pages.

As Good as Before

How many times have I read one book by an author, loved the book and then tried the author's other books only to find that the first one was the best. Too many times. that's how many.

That's what I thought I was in for with Iain Pears' Stone's Fall. How could it be as good as An Instance of the Fingerpost? So far (12 chapters) it is as good. All in all, I've been quite lucky with the books I've read this year. It's enough to make me forget all about The Great Upheaval.

Then again, Maisie Dobbs is still haunting me. And her damn document case.

Friends in Low Places

What we have here is a beach read. That's not a dismissive term, at least not to me. But there are good beach reads, bad beach reads, even great beach reads. This is a good beach read that occasionally skirts the edge of great and bad.

A beach read needs a plot that is interesting without being overly complex, characters which are interesting with at least one full on detestable character and, most importantly, a narrative drive set to turbo. That doesn't mean fast-paced, it means that the story needs to propel the reader along. Scott Thurow's Presumed Innocent is an example of a great beach read that has a touch of literary credibility. Back in the day Judith Krantz delivered good beach reads without any redeeming qualities.

The Devlin Diary is not only a beach read, it is two books in one which makes it hard to avoid being overly complex. Story A is set in Restoration England and involves a female physician who gets caught up in series of murders Story B, and I choose my letters carefully, is set in modern day Cambridge University involves a female fellow caught up in a murder. The woman, Hannah Devlin, in Story A is strong, smart and resourceful. The woman, Claire Donovan, in Story B is a ninny. At least it cuts down on the complexity.

And that is the dilemma in a nutshell. Story A is good. The pacing is right, the anachronisms are very few, and the characters surprisingly well-drawn. The plot doesn't completely hold up but it's really a vehicle for Hannah to find good husband material in the veritable cesspool of morals that was King Charles II's court. Story B just lays there, repeatedly referencing the rollicking adventures in the author's previous book without managing to make me want to read it and leaving it's heroine wondering why the cute guy she has a crush on isn't paying attention to her. Which might be fine if this were a teen novel and the heroine were fourteen. Fortunately Story B takes up only about a third of the book but every time the action ground to a halt with a switch to present day England I wondered why Christi Phillips bothered with it. She does well with historical fiction, she might even have the makings of a Rose Tremain. Claire Donovan doesn't make the historical portion any more accessible and, really, who wants to read about their heroine deploying her awesome translation skills?

Still, this is a beach reach and judge by those standards this is a good read overall. Take it for what it is and you'll have fun.

A Cup of Victorianism and a dash of Fascism

Homages to Victorian Thrillers are plentiful these days. Charles Palliser has reinvented the Dickensian novel. John Harwood has stake out territory that adjoins M. R. James and Wilkie Collins. While Andrew Taylor owes a debt to Wilkie Collins, he seems as influenced by Sheridan Le Fanu.

The back of her husband Marcus's hand jolts Lydia Langstone out of the sleepwalking that has characterized most of her life. Lydia packs up and heads to the dreary flat of the father she barely knows, located in Bleeding Heart Square. He shares the building with a cast of characters that would be as comfortable in Uncle Silas as they are here. A few, Fimberry for one, verge on the grotesque both physically and psychologically. The one beacon of normalcy in this house is Rory Wentwood, a journalist newly returned from India. Both Lydia and Rory are drawn into the mystery of Philippa Penlow. Taylor overlays this Gothic mystery with the arguably Gothic events of 1934 England, namely the Depression and the rise Oswald Moseley's British Union of Fascists.

This isn't a subtle story anymore than The Wyvern Mystery is a study in understatement. Those who appear to be villains are villains; the question isn't "are they guilty" it's "what is the crime?" Learning who has done what and what secrets lie beneath the aristocratic surface of Lydia's family form the core of the mystery. There is a whodunnit here but I'd guess than many a savvy mystery fan will have spotted the culprits and the secrets in advance.

What makes this book worth reading even though you may not be surprised at the twists and outcomes is Taylor's undeniable storytelling talent. He invokes the spirit of the Victorian Sensation novel without adopting all of the conceits. His prose is less luxuriant than Le Fanu's or Harwood's, for example, and Bleeding Heart Square has almost no scenes that don't move the plot along. Taylor is particularly good at describing the horrific in a spare, compact style that heightens the horror.

The grotesque elements may be a problem for some: cows hearts sent through the mail, a child who collects animal bones and skulls, and that old Victorian standby - foul smelling food - all feature prominently. Another drawback is Taylor's heavy-handed irony - how many times do we need to see Lydia Langstone reading "A Room of One's Own" to get the picture? I was also disappointed in Taylor's use of British Fascists as stock villains. I certainly didn't want to see them presented as heroes but a few more details than the well-known tendency of BUF meetings to descend into brawls would have been welcome.

All in all this is a satisfying book that left me wanting to explore more of Andrew Taylor's work. Recommended for historical mystery fans but especially Victorian Thriller/Sensation novel fans.

For the Love of God, READ THIS BOOK

It's not every day I find myself doing this: buying extra copies of a book and giving them to friends with entreaties to "read this, you'll love it." Lately I've bought four extra copies of C. S. Harris first book, What Angels Fear, and gifted them to fellow mystery fans. It's my version of doing the Lord's Work.

There are many reasons to read this latest entry in the series: excellent evolving characterizations, a smart central mystery and the sort of edge-of-your-seat action dozens of thrillers promise every year yet so few actually deliver. After four books it's clear that C. S. Harris is qualified to teach a master class on a number of topics. Take her ability to start a thriller out with a bang - just the right amount of set up and then right into the action. Where Serpents Sleep starts with Hero Jarvis in the midst of one of her blue stocking studies having a conversation with a prostitute when all hell breaks loose. It's nothing short of brilliant and the tension never lets up without once seeming forced.

Harris packs in a few twists in both the central mystery and the on-going interactions of the recurring characters. I'm a fan of mystery series though I always get antsy when the recurring characters take up too much of the narrative - call me shallow but I'm in it for the mystery. Harris always strikes just the right balance between delivering the mystery goods and involving the reader in the lives of her recurring characters. (Martha Grimes and Elizabeth George, take note!)

If you love mysteries or thrillers or historical fiction, if you're a fan of Kate Ross or Dorothy Dunnett (or even Georgette Heyer), give C. S. Harris a try. Start at the beginning with What Angels Fear, if you can, but you won't lose too much by starting with this excellent entry. If you still aren't convinced and you have a Kindle, take an advantage of the free sample chapter. What have you got to lose, right? And you can look forward to joining me in all but stopping strangers on the street and urging them to read these books. The Sebastian St. Cyr series is that good - read one book and you may find yourself giving copies to your friends.

A Flaw in the Plot

I don't know how I got into this historical mystery kick. No, wait, I do know. It's all because of C.S. Harris and Sebastian St Cyr. Once I bought all the books in that series Amazon started tempting me with "others who purchased this book also bought." I'm such an easy mark. This is my third mystery set in the Victorian era with a heroine who wants to break out of the accepted role of women and a hero with a past. At least no one has psychic powers in this one.

On the other hand: Victoria Regina, we hardly knew ye.

The plot in A Flaw in the Blood centers around the death of Queen Victoria's beloved consort Prince Albert and the question of how hemophilia entered the Hanover-Saxe-Coburg-Gotha bloodline. If you're expecting the standard prissy widow in serious morning version of Queen Victoria be warned, this Victoria has a secret diary and isn't afraid to confide in it. The narrative is split between third-person accounts of the adventures of English Doctor Georgiana Armistead and Irish-born lawyer Patrick Flanagan, the dastardly efforts of German Count Wolfgang von Stuhlen to silence them and Victoria's secret diary. The action lives up to its "A Novel of Suspense" subtitle by constantly putting Georgiana and Patrick in mortal danger, usually at the hands of von Stuhlen. But is he acting on Victoria's orders or is she just another mark in his game?

I'm hard pressed to explain exactly what didn't work for me in this book without giving away key plot points. I don't want to do that because this book isn't bad at all, it's decently written and I'm sure many an intelligent mystery fan would find it enjoyable. So I'll try to convey my reservations without treading too close to the plot. The writing in general is solid. Barron does occasionally write dialog in phonetic dialect, something that bugs me beyond measure when it's over done but it was tolerable here.

There are a few problems here thought and chief among them being the characterizations of Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, both of which strain credibility. It's ingenuous, I suppose, to have the Little Miss Perfect who ruled England for over 60 years be diabolically ruthless but I couldn't quite swallow that. Strong-willed, spoiled and a little wacky after Albert died, yes. Sex-obsessed and potentially murderous? Not so much. At first her diary confidences are merely surprising - the idea that Victoria desperately needed an outlet for her true feelings rings true. But would Victoria really have written about Albert's "erection surging"?

Nor could I buy the idea that Prince Albert was SO principled and so innocent that he would give up his hard won personal power. Or that he was so principled he couldn't tell when what was "right" might in fact cause national if not international turmoil. An "Angelic Being" is one thing, a village idiot is quite another. Of course, I think I'd buy that quicker than I would that he was a feminist.

Georgiana and Patrick are the least fleshed out characters in the book. Part of the problem is that keeping thinking and saying the same things. Georgiana can't let too long go by without declaring "I'm a doctor" and Patrick has to moon over her at least once a chapter. It doesn't leave them a lot of room to grow. It also got a little tiring for me but then I'd rather "observe" a character than be "told" about them. Patrick thought about how much he worshipped Georgie but I was never too sure what the attraction was for him. Same with Georgie who's too frequently reminding Patrick and anyone else within earshot that she is a doctor! I'm all for a little anachronistic I-am-woman-hear-me-roar but Georgie veered into sandwich board territory at times. Also, what drove a woman to make such an unconventional choice against such enormous odds? Sure she was intrigued and her "guardian" was a famous doctor but that's not exactly depth of characterization. By contrast the villain Von Stuhlen and even the revisionist version of Queen Victoria are better drawn. You can't help but get the feeling that Barron had more fun writing for those two. Von Stuhlen has a key advantage over all the other characters in that he has a motivation for his actions that makes sense.

The plot is intriguing enough. But even there the links to Georgiana and Patrick were too stretched to be convincing. If you can believe that Prince Albert, an arch traditionalist in most matters, would consult a woman doctor on the topic of cholera and public sewage, than you're doing better than me and you probably stand a better chance of enjoying this book.

Catching Up

A good thing about Kindle is being able to carry around a dozen books at once. The problem, if that's the right word, is that the likes of me is likely to read half a dozen of those books at once. Current case in point, I'm now reading: Sacred Causes, Heroes, Great Tales From English History, and the Journals of Sylvia Plath; having just finished When Gods Die by C. S. Harris. It's great to be able to change books as my mood takes me and three of these books do lend themselves to enjoying a chapter at a time.

It makes it harder to finish any one of them, though.

When Gods Die is the second book in the Sebastian St. Cyr mystery series. I broke my rule in reading this book so soon after the first. I think that a good series should be read at a leisurely pace, not one immediately after the other. For one thing, a good series is too rare a thing and should be savoured to make up for the crap that I read in search of a good book. For another, read too close together a series can begin to reveal it's machinery a bit too nakedly. A few years ago I read three later Martha Grimes Inspector Jury mysteries one after the other and dear God were they painful as a result. What is charming in small doses - like the eccentrics of Long Piddleton - becomes downright loathsome in large helpings. (Also, Grimes is trying too hard to make her books about Something More. She needs to knock that off. Immediately.)

Fortunately, Harris avoids most of the usual traps and the only noticeable machinery is Sebastian's lineage (I hope she doesn't go for the obvious) and Hero's future importance. Nothing to make me run screaming in the other direction. The mystery was a good one and I continue to be amazed at Harris' ability to write an action scene that is both coherent and exciting without ever resorting to the use of exclamation points. There should be an Edgar Award just for the avoidance of exclamation points. The running joke about Sebastian ruining his clothing was fun, too. I can see where Harris might be taking the larger story but I'm hoping that she'll continue to tell an oft told story with new twists.

The Power of Books

Too often I forget the power of books, the power of a good story to comfort, inform and transform. I also forget how wonderful it is to find a book that is even better than I hoped it would be. Pictures at a Revolution was better than I expected. What Angels Fear by C. S. Harris knocked me back on my heels. That Harris managed to entertain me during an emotionally grueling flight from London to NYC is even more amazing.

I knew by the second chapter, when Harris introduces her hero Sebastian St. Cyr, that this was a great book. (The first chapter was a bit "meh" with the fog, the soon to be murdered damsel.) Though the comparisons to Kate Ross's Julian Kestrel are obvious - Regency era nob with a knack for solving murders - I'm more reminded of Dorothy Dunnett's Francis Lymond. Sebastian St. Cyr seems every bit as screwed up as Francis Lymond of Crawford and his parentage looks to be easily as fuzzy. (I do hope that Harris doesn't have plans to go all mystic the way Dunnett did towards the end of her Lymond series - I still can't figure out what the hell the point was of the astrologist who wanted to start her own master race.)

Harris kept the story involving, the pace cracking and the characters interesting. I've already broken my rule about not reading two books in a series back to back simply because Harris is so good. If she can keep the mysteries compelling and not fall into the series trap of making her books too much about the detective and not enough about the crime (yes, that means you Elizabeth George and Martha Grimes) then I'm already looking forward to her 25th Sebastian St Cyr mystery.

Big Pimpin' Tudor Style

I tried to like The Other Boleyn Girl. Truly. Friends of mine love it. Smart, intelligent, capable women without a hint of victim in them couldn't put this book down. I, on the other hand, am happy to put it down literally and figuratively.

It's not that Philippa Gregory plays fast and loose with the facts. This is fiction, she's allowed. I loved Elizabeth and that used chronology like an accordion. I love, nay, worship The Lion in Winter and that doesn't let the facts get in the way of a story or anachronisms in the way of a good line. If Philippa Gregory wants to pretend that Mary Boleyn was younger than Anne Boleyn and that George Boleyn was flaming, go right ahead. And if she wants to use dialogue that sounds like it came out of the mouths of the interns at my office, rock on.

No, this book is easy to mock for other reasons. Let's start with the fact that the premise of the book is that the Howard/Boleyn clan has decided that the way to raise the fortunes of their family is to pimp out the available females. And it's not just the them, the Seymours are at it, too. As my mother says: now, really. If it were that easy to get into the King's favor the man would never have gotten out of bed. He'd have spent his days surrounded by naked women and Windsor Castle would have been a Tudor Playboy Mansion. It just doesn't play.

Then there are the characters. Mary Boleyn has middle child syndrome. She's always whining about how she was overlooked during her childhood in favor of Anne. She's gratingly slow on the uptake. After her family has dropped her into Henry VIII's bed for the good of the family it comes as a shock to her that the family doesn't care about her feelings. She's shocked to learn that the king is a tad self-enchanted and spoiled. Wow, you mean someone who has their every whim catered to, is never told "no" and holds the fate of all around him in his hands could be selfish? The best part is, Mary realizes this long after the opening scene in which Henry has a friend and cousin executed. Most people would have taken the hint after Buckingham's head rolled in the hay without his body being attached.

Mary's sister and brother aren't any better. Anne is simply put, psycho. The highlight of this psychoness is when a half-naked Anne demands that her brother George says she's "the best" in front of their sister Mary. George thinks this is just the usual sibling rivalry hijinks. Oh the fun they have, those wacky Boleyn kids. George is useful to have around. For one thing, he invents tampons. For another, he's always happy to father a child even if the mother in question is his sister. George also invents "coming out" and he's miserably married - he's just an all around busy guy. Thankfully this doesn't keep him from participating in a boat race, I am not making this up, between the Howards and the Seymours with Anne urging on her team with "Come on, Howards." Anne is just a loyal family girl at heart.

While Anne is out whoring for the family cause, Mary is busy doing her thing. And by "doing her thing" I mean annoying the living crap out of me. Mary is married and having an affair with the equally married Henry VIII but she's put out when Anne replaces her in the King's affections. She's always going on about how she's "a Howard" and "a Boleyn" and she has "no choice." Blah blah blah. Naturally she remarries a poor man for love and then watches Anne's execution thinking that "the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over." I was thinking that Mary was a complete cow.

Strange Bedfellows

Certain books have been known to make me sleepy. It isn't that they're boring, just the opposite. They require a degree of concentration that at the end of a long day blissfully banishes work from my mind and makes my eyes sag. Paul Johnson's History of the American People and History of Christianity did this brilliantly. So did The Reformation and The Closing of the Western Mind. I love these books, enjoyed every page but I knew that twenty pages or so and the Cappodocian Fathers or Zwinglianism would send me to dreamland.

Now it's Eric Hobsbawm's turn to play Ambien in a bookcover. He's up to the task. Give him a dense topic like, say, the fiscal health of the French government under Louis XVI and I'm gone after two pages. At this rate I'll finish the book sometime in 2009. The Age of Revolution is more economic history than history. It's also more socialist view of economic history. Not that Hobsbawm forgets his duties. He's not a polemicist, thankfully.

If I want to be bored rather than drained I couldn't do any better than Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl. After ten pages I knew I'd be skipping my way through this book. It's not that Gregory plays fast and loose with history - this is historical fiction, after all - nor is it that her dialogue screams anachronism! with every line. (Early on, Mary Boleyn says of Anne "I thought she'd marry a French count or somebody." Somebody?) I don't expect Elizabethan English here but "You can't be more a virgin than me."?

So far George Boleyn has introduced his sisters to the concept of tampons (no joke), Mary has experienced post-partum depression and all three young Boleyns have moaned about the fact that their family is using them to advance their interests. This is about as authentic to the Tudor period as my computer. It's enough to turn me against novelized treatments of real people. Oh wait, I'm already against that. But that copy of Fatal Majesty that's been sitting unread on my shelves for eight years is headed for the donation pile for certain after this.