Robert Curtis' 'Corpses Can't Walk' 1936 and Andrew Soutar's 'Silence' 1930

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.38 - 1936/7?

Robert Curtis (1889-1936) was private Secretary to Edgar Wallace. Meeting for the first time in 1913, and after serving in the Great War, he was reunited with Wallace in 1918. One of his roles was to copy out the master's dictations; he accomplished this at such speed that he was known as the fastest secretary in England. After Wallace's death, he completed several of his unfinished manuscripts, film scripts and plays into novels in the style of Wallace. He also wrote several original novels. Corpses Can't Walk was published shortly after Curtis' death.

Curtis has produced an interesting, if not particularly gripping, straightforward tale of dering-do. Once we read that the batty but harmless Professor Jonathan Stone has invented a cheap means of manufacturing gold, then we know he is in for trouble. Sure enough, not long after a visit from a short, fat, with greasy hair and a double chin rotter called William Smith,  who wants to purchase the invention. the worst kind of trouble does occur. Smith not only had an ample waist line and pendulous cheeks, but had flabby-looking hands and a trace of a foreign accent. In other words, he is the typical pick-off-the-thriller-shelf rogue. The offer of £100,000 to Stone is not enough to tempt him. When Smith watches the professor replace the cardboard box with the formula in his safe, then burglary and worse is sure to follow. And it does. Mersham Manor House is raided, but the safe is found empty; the place is ransacked and the professor is found dead, with a knife in his back.

However, this is not before the story's hero, Michael Pollard, has got involved. The 25-year-old is a recent member of a secret service unit and lives in a comfortable flat on the top floor of a large block in the West End. He is supported by George, a thick-set man, with a cauliflower ear, who serves as valet, cook, housemaid, and general factotum. Pollard is rung up by Joan Chailey, the professor's niece, calling for help from Mersham - something terrible has happened...then the 'phone went dead. So, off our hero goes, in his long, low-slung, slender two-seater...a greyhound of the road. On arrival he is met by the Professor, a man of striking appearance - tall, slim, with black hair brushed straight back from an intellectual forehead, a pale, thin face, with prominent cheek-bones, and a rather spare, closely cropped black beard. he had dark eyes - so dark that they seemed to be absolutely black...[he had] a small black mole on his left cheek-bone. What a sinister description; surely not the professor? No, it isn't. It is Carl and his assistant is the aforementioned Smith, who is really Schmidt. Pollard naively accepts a glass of whisky and...then came darkness and silence. When he comes round, he finds Joan locked in a room upstairs. Everyone else has disappeared. Thus begins the tale and the subsequent attempts to track down Schmidt and the tall, thin man - who turns out to be Carl Dana, leader of a gang of international cut-throats, who has already captured a Foreign Office secret and had then turned to acquiring the professor's gold discovery.

It's all good, if not clean, fun. Pollard's car plays its part in several chases; an aeroplane is involved at the end (luckily Pollard can add flying to his many talents); Carl is supported by the mysterious Zora Vanoff - who is in it just for the money - and his henchman Zornoff, who had murdered the professor. Joan is knocked out and imprisoned again, but will not divulge the whereabouts of the professor's little blue book containing his golden mysteries. A mysterious Chinaman is brought into the story - this only makes sense at the end. Schmidt meets his just deserts through Dana's revolver; and Dana himself makes a much more spectacular end. And the reader knows how things will turn out for Pollard and Joan, as the clue is in the very last sentence - Her eyes were very tender, and she was beckoning him out into the garden.

 

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.40 - 1937?

One of the reasons I am enjoying reading the Crime-Book Society's offerings, is that their writers offer up a variety of styles and stories. Andrew Soutar's tale couldn't be more different from Robert Curtis'. Apart from the very last Chapter (no. XIV) of Silence, the narrative is by Rupert Orion, a minor painter and a member of the Secret Service. He is in love with the much younger  Irene Padua, a magical beauty, who adores her youthful cousin Orlando Padua. Unfortunately for Rupert, Irene has fallen for Glenister Howard, who also turns out to be a member of the same secret service. Rupert and other spies - Carriman, Maccabe, Bruce and Glenister are summoned to a meeting by their boss Colonel Fitzbean.   Orlando, a very clever boy, has invented something which could affect the future of the world. The Colonel opens a box, which contains a small nickel-plated object that suggested a hypodermic syringe. It was so small that it could have been carried in the waistcoat pocket without inconvenience. A stray cat is brought in; the syringe is levelled at it; it drops dead! Call it the silent death, or the silent pistol, as you will... Tiny pellets holding poison can be fired - the propelling force is radium - and kill anyone in a crowded room without the shooter being suspected. 

Within a fortnight, Prince Kashnir is to visit the country; the Colonel was fearful that such a device could be used by Indian trouble-makers against the Prince. So he successfully offered £100,000 to the inventor; hence the object was in the room. Then a 'buzzer' sounds; the Colonel, after listening to the call, rushes out of the room and drops dead. On the left breast of Colonel Fitzbean there was a tiny puncture no larger than that of the head of a pin. And what is far worse,  the 'pistol' has disappeared. On a few more occasions, the same fate awaits others: Maccabe; a fortune teller Madame Zodalan; a wealthy American, Peskett Grisch, who dies at the Opera in Paris . Each time, Rupert is at hand to try and figure out who is responsible. He meets up with Prince Kashnir in the French Capital and offers to escort him to England. However, he is drugged! I had slightly lost track of who was doing what to whom by now; but followed the story to New York. Here, yet another victim, Rochelle, an American investigator, dies in a taxi after saying goodbye to Rupert.

Then, Chapter XIII, where all is explained by Rupert Orion; it is confirmed in the final chapter, which is written by Glenister Howard. Well, this reader, for one, never saw the denouement coming. In fact, I had to look back to one or two events depicted in earlier chapters. Only, then did I 'twig'! Well done, the author, even though once or twice I found the story a bit of a struggle.

Bruce Graeme's 'Hate Ship' 1929 and Basil Carey's 'Left for Dead' 1934

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.18 - 1937?

This is the third novel of Bruce Graeme's I have read, all in the splendid Crime-Book Society's paperback series, published by Hutchinson. The other two were Blackshirt Again (Blog 19 July 2025) and Unsolved  (Blog 24 July 2025). A reminder that Graeme (1900-1982) was a pseudonym for Graham Montague Jeffries. Born in London in 1900, he served in the Westminster Rifles Regiment in the Great War. Throughout the 1920s, he was a reporter at the Middlesex County Times. He also worked as a film producer during the 1940s. Apparently, he was a persistent traveller, making frequent trips to Europe and the USA.  

The main problem with this novel is the whole artificiality of the story. The reader is asked to believe two highly unlikely premises. Firstly, that the main protagonist of the tale - Peter Martin, an employee of the England and Wales Mutual Provident Assurance Co. - who is desperate to achieve fame as a writer, but has totally failed for some years to produce anything of literary value, is summoned to the offices of an elderly solicitor, Silas Cotterill. The latter has charge of the Will of the recently deceased John James Fleming, the editor of Fleming's Magazine - a judge of a good story, and a literary detective. Martin had regularly sent Fleming his work, only to have them returned as examples of an incapacity to write, whether it be over plot or character. Martin's other main ambition, almost as strong as my urge to write - I am insane to travel, to see the world. Well, amazingly, both his wishes are about to come true. The solicitor tells him that Fleming has left him in the Will his magnificent yacht, the Breeze, with a sufficiently large annuity to cover its upkeep entirely, plus a personal annuity of £500. There are, however, certain conditions. By the end of that year, Martin must sell six entirely original and new stories (we never hear of this condition again!); he must follow a set itinerary (Monte Carlo, Grand Canary, Rio de Janeiro, before returning home); and he must accommodate certain guests on board. Who are they? Everyone of them were present in the house of old Judge Fleming, John James' father, the night he was murdered! As if that wasn't unlikely enough, all those individuals accept the invitation to go on the voyage without questioning why they had been gathered together again.

A bonus for Martin, is that the self-described old, stick-in-the-mud, dry-as-dust solicitor, Cotterill agrees to  come on the voyage. The rest of the story details the events of the night the Judge was murdered and which character was in what room of the old lawyer's house. They are a motley crew: Rex and Olivia Fleming, brother of the late John James; Denys Lisle, her mother Mrs Ann Lisle and maiden aunt Miss Gertrude Warrington; their friend Newton Chester; the old judge's butler, Jenkins; Raymond Grant, a friend of the family; John and Freda Friedlander, old friends of Mrs Rex Fleming; and, finally, the Rev. Donald Trollop. One has to be the murderer, as no one else could have got into/escaped from the house on the evening in question. Martin's task is to find out the culprit before the voyage ends.

The journey is uneventful, if mildly tense, until the others discover why they have been invited on board (surely, they can't all have been that dumb?) and what Martin's role is. From then on it is, as the title says, a Hate Ship. Cotterill explains to Martin the layout of the Victorian dwelling where the murder took place and in which room each of the individual were when the shot that killed the judge rang out. As the voyage progresses, we watch Denys Lisle and Martin fall for each other; we learn that both Jenkins and Newton have a criminal past (the latter's real name is found to be William White, supposed to be serving a life sentence in Dartmoor for another murder). On the final leg across the Atlantic, not only is there a well-described storm, but motive after motive is brought to life and untangled. I was not really surprised when the culprit was unmasked. The person does meet a grisly end: then the bow of the vessel pitched, a crashing overturning wave rose to meet it; [x]was picked off the boat as if they had been a piece of wood, then hurled into the churning, raging waves...the thunder crashed their requiem. The final explanation of how Judge Fleming - revealed as tartar, a dictatorial tyrant - met his end was quite ingenious and plausible.

The Crime-Book Society paperback edition No.31 - 1937/8?

I don't have much to say about this novel - hence it is tagged on the end of my comments on Hate Ship. As usual, when I know nothing about an author, I turned to the Internet for information. I was very surprised to read that Basil Carey was a pseudonym and the author was female -  Jessie (Joy) Baines (1898-1942) - who also wrote as Richard Hawke. Born in Plymouth, she wrote a few thrillers between 1926 and 1937, dying young, aged only 44. I was surprised to find out she was a woman author, as the story felt very 'masculine' (if one is allowed to pass comments like that these days). It was also, from pages 12 to 237 of a 252 page novel, thoroughly miserable.

It is the story of a 'weedy' young man, Lambert, whose sailor father drowned at sea and whose mother died soon after; destined for a children's Home, he runs away and joins a little trading vessel as a ship's boy. He ends up on an old ship, Fanny Davis, sailing the China Sea under an irascible and tyrannical master, Maultry. The ship gets into trouble and the whole crew are forced to abandon the vessel. Lambert manages to save his small black box - what appears to contain a valuable heirloom. He is betrayed by another shipmate, one Danvers, and not only does Maultry manage to seize the box but, at the same time, inflicts severe injuries on Lambert, which leaves him with a permanent limp. For the next two hundred pages, it is one hard luck story after another for Lambert, who is determined to track Maultry down and recover his box. If anything could go wrong, it did; whether on land or at sea. 

Nearly everybody appears to be dishonest and, or, seedy.  I had no empathy, or even sympathy, with any of the characters (pock-marked, beady-eyed women or drunken oafs) or places - Macassar, Bangkok, Saigon, the Java Sea. It is an area of the world I have no affinity with.

I did have a smidgeon of sympathy for Lambert at one stage. What sense was there in trying to conquer Maultry? He saw himself as a fool who beats a rock with bare hands. In this time of utter dejection all his plans seemed like dirt. He asked himself why he had ever been so mad as to suppose that he would find the box still in Maultry's possession. Long ago it must have been broken open, its contents ravaged by Maultry's greedy hands. A wild-goose chase, hey? His thoughts grew bitter and more sombre as he considered the folly of supposing that he would ever achieve his ends. However, this was on page 143; there was another 100 pages to go - of self-pity, misery and hard luck. Yes, Lambert's sheer bloody-mindedness, doggedness wins out at the very end, but what a slough of despond. He gets his box back; he gets the girl he had wanted throughout; and I get some relief from putting this debilitating tale back on the shelves.

G.P.R. James' 'Philip Augustus' 1831

Colburn and Bentley first edition - 1831

Another three-decker under my belt; and another G.P.R. James tale, this time one of his earliest, being the fifth (and only two years after his first novel, Adra or the Peruvians.) Philip Augustus was written in less than seven weeks; James received £600 from the publishers Colburn and Bentley (he was given the same amount for his De L'Orme, published  a year earlier). Theodore Watts-Dunton (1832-1914), the poet, novelist and critic, regarded the novel as the author's best work. It is of note that James was living at Maxpoffle House, near Melrose at the time of the novel's publication. J.G. Lockhart later wrote: Mr James and his lady...were welcome additions [to the visitors of the dying Sir Walter Scott] - and frequently so - to his accustomed circle...Sir Walter...seemed when in the midst of his family and friends, always tranquil - sometimes cheerful. On one or two occasions he was even gay; particularly, I think, when the weather was so fine as to tempt us to dine in the marble-hall at Abbotsford, or at an early hour under the trees at Chiefswood. Apparently, on one occasion, James rode over the hills to Abbotsford with eleven dogs of every size and description gambolling and yelping at his heels. Scott would have loved that! It was earlier the the same year that Scott had written to James Skene: I beg to introduce a literary man of great merit who might be called James of that ilk, since he is James of James. Scott died in September 1832 and, partly in memory of the friendship, James named his first child, born two months later, George Walter James.

As usual in his novels, James weaves facts and fiction, real-life persons with creatures of his imagination, skilfully together. He sets his tale in the period from 1199 (just after Richard I of England's death) to around two years' later. Philip Augustus, King of France, has to deal with enemies within and without his realm, particularly in the period when his whole kingdom is placed under a papal Interdict. James peoples the historical events with a goodly array of villains  and heroes. 

Villains?  

Above all, King John of England, who is depicted as personally murdering the rightful King of England, his nephew Arthur. John Lackland, the meanest and most pitiful villain that ever wore a crown... in whose dark recesses lurked a cruel heart.

Innocent III, of an imperious and jealous nature...as keen and clear-sighted as he was ambitious, he was clearly disliked by Philip and the author (and me!). The king's anger when Innocent tells him to forsake his new wife is profound: if in the meanwhile this proud Prelate yields me my wife - my own beloved wife - why well; but if he dares then refuse his sanction, his seat is but a frail one; for I will march on Rome, and hurl him from his chair... Innocent was one of the most powerful of the medieval popes, exerting a wide influence over the Christian states of Europe, claiming supremacy over all of Europe's kings. The Catholic Church ruled over all through the strength of superstition - called out by Scott, James and me.

Jodelle, a fictional mountebank and member of the roaming outlaw bands of the Cotereaux, a subgroup of the infamous Routiers, who deceived nearly all he came across - English and French. He meets a deserved dastardly death at the end of De Coucy's spear, but not before he had mortally wounded the latter's Fool.

Guillaume, the Count de la Roche Guyon - a slight, fair youth, of a handsome but somewhat feminine aspect. He turns out to be a bad oeuf and also dies in battle against Philip's forces..

Heroes? 

Philip Augustus, tall, well-formed, handsome...with the manly florid hue of robust health, exposure, and exercise [whose] eyes seemed to speak that keen and quick sagacity, which sees and determines at once, in the midst of thick dangers and perplexity....(well might he need this prowess for, as the author remarks - the existence of a monarch, without his lot be cast amidst very halcyon days indeed, is much like the life of a seaman, borne up upon uncertain and turbulent waves) there was grace, and repose, and dignity, in his whole figure. The king seemed to have two spirits. There was the one that, bright and keen and active, mingled in the busy scenes of politics and warfare...and there was another, still, silent, deep, in the inmost chambers of his heart...here he had a world apart from aught else on earth, wherein the Spirit of deep feeling swayed supreme; and thence issued that strong control that his heart ever exercised over the bright Spirit of genius and talent, with which he was so eminently endowed. It was his love for Agnes de Meranie.

Count Thibalt D'Auvergne, who also loved Agnes but who suffered in silence, even going mad for awhile and, finally, giving his life for his monarch. "I admire the King though I love not the man".

And the other main hero, the fictitious Guy De Coucy, a brave young warrior, back from the Crusades with D'Auvergne, who falls quickly in love with Isadore but whose father forbids the relationship. Guy (often literally) battles through the story, steadfast in his love  and loyalty to King Philip, imprisoned by King John at one stage but eventually helping his monarch overcome the odds in a major battle. 

William Longsword, the Earl of Salisbury, the illegitimate brother of King John, is one of the few Englishmen to come out well in the story. He saves De Coucy's life and is repaid, in turn, at the end of the tale.

Perhaps, the most tragic figure is Prince Arthur Plantagenet - a slight, graceful boy, of about fifteen, sprang into the room. He was gaily dressed in a light tunic of sky-blue silk, and a jewelled bonnet of the same colour, which showed well on his bright, fair skin, and the falling curls of his sunny hair... endowed with a thousand graces of person and of mind, Arthur still had that youthful indecision of character, that facility of yielding, which leads the lad so often to do what the man afterwards bitterly repents of.

The most annoying character was Gallon the Fool.  Originally one of the jugglers who had accompanied the second Crusade to the Holy Land, he had been made prisoner by the Infidel; and, after several years' bondage, had been redeemed by De Coucy. Never did a more curious physiognomy come from the cunning and various hand of Nature. His nose was long, and was seemingly boneless; for, ever and anon, whether from some natural convulsive motion, or from a voluntary and laudable desire to improve upon the singular hideousness of his countenance, this long, sausage-like contrivance in the midst of his face would wriggle from side to side, with a very portentous and uneasy movement. As if that's wasn't enough to put any observer off, his eyes...had in themselves a manifest tendency to separate, never having any fixed and determined direction, but wandering about apparently independent of each other, - sometimes far asunder, - sometimes, like Pyramus and Thisbe, wooing each other across the wall of his nose with a most portentous squint. The reader gets the picture. Unfortunately, James also gave to his character the (extremely irritating, to me at least) additional expletive Haw, haw, haw! or, more than once, Haw, haw, haw! Haw, haw, haw! every time the Fool spoke. 

Entangled in the account of the machinations of monarchs, popes and nobles is the story of two loves - one destined for happiness after travail; the other destined for tragedy after happiness. Philip, after the death of his first wife, married Ingerburge, sister of Canute, King of Denmark; but on her arrival in France, he was seized with so strong a personal dislike of her (shades of Henry VIII and Anne of Cleves), that he instantly convoked a synod of the clergy of France, who, on pretence of kindred in the prohibited degrees, annulled the marriage. Philip then married Agnes de Meranie, daughter of the Duke of Istria and Meranie. James uses his novelist's skills to portray a genuine love affair - between the manly monarch and the 19 year-old fair girl, with her light hair floating upon her shoulders in large masses of shining curls...with her full, soft, blue eyes. Alas, thanks to the megalomania of the pope, the union will end in tragedy. On the other hand, De Coucy finally gets his girl, the gorgeous Isadore of the Mount, slight in figure, but yet with every limb rounded in the full and swelling contour of woman's most lovely age. Her features were small, delicate, and nowhere sharp, yet cut with that square exactness of outline so beautiful in the efforts of the Grecian chisel. Her eyes were long, and full, and dark...the hair, that fell in a profusion of thick curls round her face, was as black as jet...her skin as smooth as alabaster... I hope Mrs James approved of this outpouring.

Rather like Scott, James plays fast and loose with chronology. Philip and Agnes married in 1196 and separated after the papal Interdict (1199-September 1200). Agnes died - possibly in childbirth - in July 1201. Arthur does not 'disappear' until 1203. The Battle of Bouvines, between Philip and Otho's forces does not occur until 1214. The author has 'telescoped' all these events into just two years. The novelist's licence? 

There is the usual padding - required for a three-decker - mainly of descriptions of the environment and weather, and witticisms which fail to raise a smile: "Art thou sure thou knowest the way, urchin?" cried the man, in a wearied and panting tone, which argue plainly enough, that his corpulency loved not deeply the species of stumbling locomotion, to which his legs subjected his paunch... But I forgive these minor failings, as James spins a good yarn.

Joseph O'Connor's 'The Ghosts of Rome' 2025

 

Harvill Secker first paperback edition - 2025

This is the second novel in Joseph O'Connor's trilogy about Rome during the Nazi Occupation (I0th September 1943 to 4th June 1944). I read the first book - My Father's House - only five months' ago (see my Blog of 14th January 2026) and found it gripping and atmospheric in its intensity. The follow-up is in a very similar vein - after all it describes comparable situations involving the same cast of characters, Hence, I suppose inevitably, it doesn't pack quite the same 'punch'. This time the central figure is the fictitious Contessa Giovanna  ('Jo') Landini, rather than the Monsignor Hugh O'Flaherty. Widowed, Jo volunteered as a Red Cross motorcycle courier on the outbreak of war. Although she has inherited the splendid Palazzo Landini on her husband's death, she - like the rest of the 'Choir' - has based herself in the Vatican City.

I found I had to get used to the author's grammatical style again, which tended to jar, particularly in the first chapters. Short, verbless sentences occurring rather too often and which gave a staccato effect to the narrative. It works with dialogue, but not so well with prose paragraphs. O'Connor also retained the device, used in his first book, of interspersing 1960s radio transcripts and written memoires with the wartime events. It meant the reader had a more rounded view of what took place, from the several viewpoints of the members of the 'Choir'. Notwithstanding the (personal) irritant I felt from the grammar, I found the story had more of a structure running through it this time.

A Polish airman, Bruno, is shot down over the city. He bales out: soon, he knows, the dizziness will put him to merciful sleep, for he is falling too fast, the chute opened late, and his heart starts to sputter, and the words of the Act of Contrition will not be squeezed from his tongue as he turns in the air, feet up, head down, wrestling with the ropes that try to tighten around his torso. Falling past the terrified seabirds. In fact, he survives, but, badly wounded, he has to flee from two German soldiers. Bullets pit at his back...he jinks, ducks, like a dribbling footballer, past the wall-high mural of a scowling, arms-folded Mussolini spattered with slops of red paint. A magenta-haired, high-cheekbone woman smoking at the door-way of a bridal shop sees him coming and mashes her cigarette out with her shoe. Large-eyed. Purple-lipped. She might be thirty. She beckons. He is saved - for the time being. His injured left thumb turns septic and worsens. There is also a serious infection developing from another wound to his neck

Thus, the major story in the novel is - once the Choir hear about Bruno - how to get him treatment and, if necessary a safe transit to the Vatican. O'Connor clearly knows his Rome, its byways, conduits, catacombs, deserted buildings. The other overall surveyor is Commander Paul Hauptmann, the Nazi Gestapo Chief, charged with tracking down the hundreds of Allied servicemen, escaped PoWs and others, and who is constantly being upbraided by Himmler for his failures.  He moves into Jo Landini's Palazzo and develops a sort of perverse 'crush' on her. The author has more than one chapter which portrays a fine and believably psychology relating to the Nazi chief. O'Connor is also good at charting the increasing tension within the 'Choir'; in some instances, almost character disintegrations. There are fall-outs between the acknowledged leader, Major Sam Derry, who borders on martinet behaviour, and the volatile Jo Landini and the teenage daughter of Delia Murphy-Kiernan, Blon. Hugh O'Flaherty is also showing signs of exhaustion; Sir Francis (Frank) D'Arcy Osborne, urbane as ever is often at the end of his tether.

Two other, well-drawn characters are both American - Robert Weldrick, one of a tank crew captured in North Africa and who has escaped from the prisoner-of-war camp at Passo Corese; and 'Moon' Moody, who must have been a problem to his parents and anyone who met him from then on. Both successfully  hide from the German patrols and, eventually, look after the increasingly, and dangerously, ill Bruno. How the latter is successfully brought to the Vatican City and to proper medical care, finishes off the main story.

The final Coda, when Jo Landini, Delia Kiernan and Bruno Wiśniewski (and his wife) meet up in County Kerry for a commemoration Mass for the late Monsignor O'Flaherty, is especially poignant. Taking a golf ball from his pocket, [Bruno] places it on the grave...on the street, he notices in the distance an older man. Dark-suited, homburg-hatted, now leaning through the passenger window. I can't be, Bruno thinks. Not after all this time. Weldrick comes towards him, arms outstretched in silent embrace. For a long time, nothing is said.

In 1962, Marianna De Vries, one of the Choir, writes a statement in lieu of an interview. The story of our Roman Escape Line has been characterised as a tale of courage. But it was always a story of friendship, first and last. The friends we knew and those we did not, some fleetingly encountered, others never at all. I am no sentimentalist, but I call it a love story... And the way O'Connor tells it, that affection - even during the moments of angry and exhausting arguments - shines through. 

J.G. Lockhart's 'Valerius. A Roman Story' 1821

William Blackwood first edition - 1821

I have now read all four J.G. Lockhart's novels, Valerius (1821) being the first to be written. The others I read five years ago and produced a Blog on each - Adam Blair (1822) (Blog 8 May 2021), Reginald Dalton (1823) (Blog 25 July 2021), The History of Matthew Wald (1824) (Blog  26 September 2021). Much has been made of Lockhart's precocious learning. Born in 1794, he attended Glasgow High School and then the University of Glasgow. He fared so well, particularly in Greek studies, that he was offered a Snell Exhibition (available to those with a degree from Glasgow University) to study at Balliol College, Oxford. He was not yet 14! He read not only the Classics, but German, French, Italian and Spanish. Inevitably, he took a First Class Honours degree in Classics. In these days of hyper-inflation of degree success, this would probably be a Triple First class. His four novels, all produced in the early 1820s were dutifully received, but his 'name' was made by his brilliant (and often coruscating) journalism in Blackwood's Magazine; his editorship from 1826 to 1853 of the Quarterly Review; and, in particular, the seminal seven-volume biography of his father-in-law, Sir Walter Scott.

The novel tells the story of a young Roman-British noble, Caius Valerius, who, after the death of his father, sets out from Britain to Rome to claim his inheritance. Accompanied by his loyal slave, Boto,  they journey across the Bay of Biscay and through the Mediterranean, to arrive in the Empire's capital by barge up the Tiber. Another voyager, Sabinus, a Captain of the Praetorian Bands, who had served in all the wars of Agricola, is to prove a solid friend and an integral part of the tale. Valerius is awe-struck by Rome's grandeur - its forums, baths, marble temples - but quickly settles in with his elderly kinsman, a successful orator/lawyer Licinius. Guided by the latter, Valerius learns how to navigate political intrigues and alliances, and listens to philosophical debates between Stoics and Epicureans. He also falls in love with Athanasia, an orphan residing with her cousin Sempronia's wealthy family, the Sempronii. Valerius mixes with the elite of these suburban villas, observing the decadent entertainments there. A major scene is set in the Colosseum, where he witnesses not only gladiatorial combats but the execution of an old Christian man. Gradually, it becomes clear to him that Athanasia is also a member of the clandestine Christian community and he is caught up, by chance, in a meeting where - through treachery - they are all caught by the authorities. He manages to extricate himself, through his friend Sabinus' aid, and, in turn, effects the delivery of Anthanasia, which includes an atmospheric description of time spent hiding in the catacombs. Finally, Valerius, Athanasia and Boto escape to the coast and thence to Britain. The whole story is, in fact, a reminiscence of Valerius, now in his mid-sixties and living in that remote province of an empire, happy, for the most part, in the protection of enlightened, just and benevolent princes.

It is clear that Lockhart had conducted extensive research into the times and mores of the Emperor Trajan's Rome. The novel is set c.100 AD, following the deaths of Domitian and Nerva and charts the recovery from tyranny but also evoking the era's blend of order and underlying friction.  Behind the seemingly rigid hierarchies, class tensions simmer; the lower strata are still exploited; marriages are based on wealth; litigation reigns at the capitol; bloody combats take place in the Colosseum. And, in the novel at least, a major cause of tension is the developing, yet mainly clandestine, spread of that new Jewish faith, Christianity.  Christians are not actively sought out (unlike during the time of Domitian) but are severely punished if accused and unyielding. Lockhart is very much of his own time, and the philosophical debates - featuring Stoicism and its self-reliance contrasting with the Christian call to communal faith and forgiveness - are somewhat heavy-going for this 21st century reader.  The influence of Epictetus' teaching on inner freedom (I do concur with, perhaps, his most famous saying: We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak) amid external tyranny; Stoic resignation to fate; and Christian hope in divine intervention; are all thrown into the mix.  Athanasia's and Valerius' conversions are through intimate enlightenments - the latter convinced that darkness has passed from before his eyes. The author is introducing such categories as the meaning of life and death, time and place, and the role of man in the narrative through the form of philosophical dialogue. As one Reviewer has written: The novel's themes highlight the clash between simplicity and sophistication, loyalty and ambition, and the allure and dangers of empire, making it a notable contribution to the historical fiction genre popular in the early 1800s. Valerius can be viewed as a pioneering example in the classical-historical genre such as the later Bulwer-Lytton's The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), as well as Victorian historical fiction in general. Sir Walter Scott himself endorsed the novel in private correspondence.

Scott Mariani's 'Die for a King' 2026

 

Hodder & Stoughton first paperback edition - 2026

This, the third, in the Will Bowman series looks like it will be the penultimate one. The Black Eagle, due out on 3rd December is apparently to be the final tale. What is even less surprising is the fact that Ben Hope will be back, in his 31st outing on 6th May 2027 - in The Jericho Road. In the early publicity blurb, it states that Ex-SAS soldier Ben Hope has tried to leave his past behind him - both in the forces and the dangerous choices he has made since. But for some people, a quiet life is no life at all. We left Hope and Roberta Ryder strolling barefoot on the sands of Jamaica's north coast, with the latter exclaiming,  "'What's happening with us, Ben? Where do things go from here? Will it work out between us?" The reader will have to wait nearly a year to find out exactly what happened to lure Hope and Mariani back to another adventure. My guess is that the author may have found the historical constraints of the Third Crusade period too tight, whereas Hope can go and do wherever and whatever he likes. Equally, if not more, important is the likelihood that Hope's adventures sell better than Bowman's. I only hope Roberta's okay.

What of Die for a King?  Although the author, in his Historical Note at the end says it is a novel of two distinct halves, in some ways it can be split into three. The first twelve chapters (pp.1-138) charts Bowman's continued service to King Richard I. Once more, it is a tale of fights against the Saracen, or building/rebuilding forts, castles and walled towns. It sees Richard relying more and more on Bowman, who is given command of the household guard, to act as my right hand man in this campaign and from now on answer only to me personally. Thus, Bowman finds himself yet again in the midst of hand-to-hand conflict. One of Mariani's strengths is his ability to take the reader with any protagonist (be it Bowman or Hope) into such a terrifying maelstrom: ...then the opposing charges slammed into one another with a stunningly violent crash and clash of iron and steel, bodies ramming into bodies, metal pierced flesh and organs, shields splintered and lances shattered, saddles twisted round unseating their riders, swords rang off helmets and struck sparks against other blades, blood flew in the sunlight. Broken horses lay pitifully thrashing on the ground with men crushed under them...

Meanwhile, news comes from England that brother John  - Jean sans Terre - is running amok, whilst    the perfidious Philip of France is threatening Richard's French lands of Aquitaine, Normandy and Gascony. It was to be the beginning of the end for Richard and his 'pilgrim' armies' hope of conquering Outremer. Bowman is with the King when they finally sight the Holy City of Jerusalem, still far away, a miraculous apparition bathed in gold by the rising sun. The king weeps, covering his face with his tabard and, bowing his head, his broad, powerful shoulders quaked with emotion. "Fair Lord God, " he wept, "I pray thee to shield the Holy City from my sight. For if I cannot deliver it out of the hand of thy enemies, I do not wish to see it". Richard has decided to return to England to sort out his brother.

So, Bowman feels he has had enough of the endless campaigning and (in my second of the three parts) joins the Knights Hospitallers, thanks to his friendship with one of their Brother Knights, Matthew of Hereford. Chapters 13 to 17 (pp. 139-196) chart a relatively brief period describing Bowman's admission to the Hospitallers (it includes an atmospheric account of his interview with its Grand Master), and his time at the famous Krak des Chevaliers - a breathtaking spectacle... dominating the landscape all around and visible from miles away. Bathed in the fiery colours of the sunset its lofty ramparts appeared to shine like burnished bronze...  It is while managing a Hospitaller estate, that no less than Richard's mother, the famous Eleanor of Aquitaine (radiating dignified authority from every pore of her being), and wife, Berengaria (the black-haired young beauty) turn up and persuade Bowman to undertake a rescue mission.

It is here that Mariani commences his second 'half'; as he says in his endnote, this is where we largely break away from the documented historical record and go off on a journey...of alternative history, pure conjecture, even fantasy. Too true. Bowman's task is to rescue King Richard from a prison in the lands of Henry VI of the Hohenstaufen dynasty, viz. the Holy Roman Emperor and more specifically an area run by Duke Leopold of Austria, no friend to the English monarch. The rest of the novel (Chapter 18 to 32, pp. 197-349) details the slow and dangerous journey taken by Bowman and his little band (the same who have been with him from nearly the first - Gabriel the Irishman, Samson, Roderick and old Joe - but now augmented with five other mercenaries) across the Mediterranean to Genoa. Once again, it gives Mariani the opportunity of using his skills to describe a horrific, near fatal storm and an attack by pirates. From Genoa, it is off to Milan, the Brenner Pass and into Austria. Of course, the rescue attempt fails, but not before (for really the first time) the reader has to suspend their disbelief in yet one more fight-to-the-death with Austrian soldiers. There are shades of Ben Hope's 'Mission Impossible' exploits here and it is the only jarring section in the tale.`

Bowman and his colleagues reach Marseille, not only to find the two Queens are there but that Richard is to be ransomed anyway. The whole rescue mission had not only failed but had been pointless. Notwithstanding this, Eleanor grants Bowman a little castle in the border region of Northumberland, some miles from Berwick-upon-Tweed. It is but a plane and simple domain, but it will be a home for Bowman and his mates. It also means he will be back for one more time, before Ben Hope takes over.                                                                                                                                                                     

R.D. Blackmore's 'Cradock Nowell. A Tale of the New Forest' 1866

 

Chapman and Hall first edition - 1866

This is an early Blackmore effort - and it shows. It is often said, particularly with non-fiction books, that a first is not always the best edition to read. A bookish friend of mine, on hearing I was struggling, informed me that his Cradock Nowell is the new and cheaper edition, 'diligently revised and reshapen'. R.D.B. says in the preface, dated 1873, that the reviews of the original edition were so unanimously bad that he set to work to improve it: "a new book might have been written whilst this old one was a-mending". What had gone wrong? One reason, perhaps, was the appearance of Macmillan's Magazine (and, soon after The Cornhill and other popular magazines). Cradock Nowell was accepted for serialisation in Macmillan's between  May 1865 and August 1866. It did not inspire, mainly because the author could not and would not supply the kind of sensationalism wanted by the majority of readers.

More relevantly, the plot is clumsy (I regard it as 'wayward'). It hinges upon the fact that  the twin sons of the owner of the great New Forest estate of Nowellhurst, Sir Cradock Nowell, were confused by their nurse shortly after their birth. The younger Cradock had expected to be heir, but the doctor who delivered the twins (now returned from abroad after many years) discovers the error - by marks on their shoulders. When his brother Clayton is shot dead close by where young Cradock is hunting, suspicion naturally falls on the latter.

Although Cradock escapes conviction for the murder, his father blames him for it, and he leaves in disgrace for London, beginning a new life in the slums as Charles Newman. His health disintegrates during a long nightmare with thoughts of suicide brought on by feelings of guilt. Taking a ship for the tropics appears the only way to recover his physical and mental stability. Then he gets inadvertently stranded off the south-west African coast (the ship he was on is subsequently destroyed in a hurricane, leading his family back home to think he had been lost at sea with the rest of those on board). Finally, he returns home, health restored to find his honour has also been recovered. The actual murderer had confessed; it was his 'unacknowledged' uncle Bull Garnet, who had shot Clayton for trying to seduce his daughter, Pearl. 

The novel was cruelly 'whiplashed' by the critics. They found the author guilty of obscurity, want of proportion, crudeness, imperfect development, pedantry, involution of diction, and prolixity. Kenneth Budd, in his slim biography of Blackmore - The Last Victorian (1960) - commiserates with the reader who persevered through the novel, stating that the long sentences, the many digressions, the scores of classical allusions and quotations, must render the book unreadable today by any except those who can endure such things for the sake of the occasional felicities of description of field and forest. Ironically, it was the repetition of yet another digression on stately oaks and all sorts of fauna and flora that got me skim-reading sections. But, I do agree that the classical allusions were, after a time, irritating - they were never translated for the ignorant reader such as myself. But, I did read all three volumes, even if I did occasionally struggle to keep going. 

There are, however, some strong positives to take away from the reading. Two of the most powerfully written chapters in the novel are V and VI in volume II, dealing with the real-life, devastating storm of October 1859. Officially known as the Royal Charter Storm (named after the steam clipper which went down off the coast of Anglesey where 459 lives were lost, with only 40 survivors), it struck the English Channel on 25th October, producing ferocious winds. The Solent took a direct hit, wreaking havoc on shipping, coastal defences and seaside properties across Hampshire and Dorset. Over 800 lives were lost in total, with more than 200 ships sunk or severely damaged.  Blackmore's long description is brilliant: beginning with the blobs of cloud which threw feelers out, and strung themselves together, until a broad serried and serrate bar went boldly across the heavens, he paints a vivid picture of the violence of nature which smashed and wrecked and killed. Crusted with hunks of froth and foam-drift, drenched by pelting sheets of spray, deafened by the thundering surf...they battled for that scoop of the bay where the ship must be flung by the indraught.

The description of Cradock junior's first day as a shipping clerk in the railway yard of the Grand Junction Wasting and Screwing Line is compelling: the maelstrom of steam engines and lurching wagons, where danger ran in converging lines, where a man must stand sideways, like a duellist, and with his arms like a drill-sergeant's, and not shrink an inch from the driving wheels evokes the hellish life endured by so many engaged by rail companies in the 1860s.

There are some fine, compellingly drawn characters, such as the Rev. John Rosedew, Rector of the New Forest parish of Nowellhurst, and Bull Garnet. In the first, the beloved friend of old Sir Cradock and respected pastor of the small New Forest community, the author has created a country parson of the finest type - a man with a good taste in wines, a man who can fish and swim and shoot. In all the parish of Nowellhurst there was scarcely a man or a woman who did not rejoice to see the rector pacing his leisurely rounds, carrying his elbows a little out...and smiling gently upon the children who tugged his coat-tails for an orange or a halfpenny. It is a pity that Rosedew, who always thought in Greek, except when Latin hindered him, is made the mouthpiece for the author's interminable classical allusions. In the second, the proud man of power is one of near tragic stature - stubborn, violent and repressed. His almost permanent anger comes from knowledge of his base birth (his mother was wronged by Sir Cradock's father) and his crime is due to his love and protection of his daughter's purity. But he is not a villain in the author's eyes (he dies in bed surrounded by his two children, with young Cradock's forgiveness echoing in his ears).    

++++++++++++++++++++++

Some extracts from the text:

The varieties of canine are as manifold and distinct as those of human nature. But the dog, be he saturnine or facetious, sociable or contemplative, mercurial or melancholic, is quite sure to be one thing - true and loyal ever.

Of a larger-than-life wife: she turned round suddenly on little Rufus (her husband), and standing head and shoulders above him, she opened her great eyes down upon him, like the port-holes of a frigate.

Of Bull Garnet: whoever saw him once was sure to know him again. If you met him in a rush to save the train, your eyes would turn and follow him. "There goes a man remarkable, whether for good or evil."

Do what we will, and think as we may, enlarging the mind in each generation, growing contemptuous of contempt, casting caste to the winds of heaven, and antiquating prejudice, nevertheless we shall never outrun, or even overtake Christianity.

Mark Stote, the head-gamekeeper on the Nowellhurst estate, was a true and honest specimen of the West Saxon peasant - slow, tenacious, and dogged, faithful and affectionate, with too much deference, perhaps, to all who seemed "his betters."

Mr Jupp's face was a villainous one; as even the softest philanthropist would have been forced to acknowledge. The enormous jaws, the narrow forehead, the grisly, porkish eyebrows, the high cheek-bones, and the cunning skance gleam from the black, deep-ambushed squinters...

So, a rambling tale (Blackmore himself says at one point, But, lo! here again we are wandering), with so many asides and byways and inconsequentialities (I need a rest from yet another paeon to trees); BUT, I enjoyed the character drawing and touches of humour and will remember with some affection the following personalities that helped to overcome the weaknesses of the tale - Sir Cradock and young Cradock; Amy, her father Rev. John Rosedew and Aunt Eudoxia; Bull Garnet and his two children, Robert and Pearl; the Rev. Octavius Pell; the scheming Mrs. Georgie Corklemore and slippery lawyer Simon Chope; the flamboyant Eoa Nowell. A grand array of characters.