Scott Mariani's 'The Silver Serpent' 2022

HarperNorth first edition - 2022

This is the 25th novel in Scott Mariani's Ben Hope series - started in 2011 with The Alchemist's Secret - and neither the author or Hope show signs of flagging. Mariani is now producing two a year - one in the Spring and one in the Autumn and I am, like a potboiler Pavlov dog, pre-booking each one through Amazon.

This time his hero is off to Australia, to possibly the least known of its states - the Northern Territory. I knew of Darwin and Alice Springs, but little else. I assume, as with many of his other novels, Mariani had been to and researched the area; if it was just desk/internet work, then his writing skills led us very realistically into the outback. Hope finds himself on one of his sister's Steiner Industries Bombardier Global 7500 jets. Accompanying him is his mate from the Le Val training facility; Jeff Decker's step-father has disappeared and his mother is crying out for help. The step-father, Kip Malloy, has just inherited a mammoth acreage of the outback from his eccentric uncle, Mick. It is rumoured that on this land is a huge deposit of silver, which the local Aborigines call the Silver Serpent.

The exact location of the silver deposit has never been found; or, has it? Again, rumour has it that uncle Mick left a map and a nugget of silver, which is then found by Kip. Hot on the latter's trail is the archetype Mariani 'baddie', Wiley Cooper, a ruthless local mine and construction owner, who not only covets the potential wealth but has a personal grudge against Kip. Wiley has an army of vicious hired guns at his disposal (all very Wild West) and he is determined to get his hands on the 'loot'. Hope and Decker's mission is to find Kip. 

Romance, not always a given or strong point with Mariani, is in the air from early on. Hope and Decker are met at Darwin International Airport, by Abbie Logan, pilot and owner of a small Beechcraft Baron aircraft. Their lady pilot was a petite blonde of about thirty or thirty-five, dressed in shorts and flip-flops, a red baseball cap and a rumpled old paratrooper jacket a size too large for her...her eyes were the most startling blue, so bright they could have been lit from behind. And like her aircraft, she is a 'goer'. She meets up later, on request from Hope, and proves such a 'chap' that, at the end of the book, it is no surprise when she hops on the return flight to Europe - whether the latest 'flame' is going to last longer than previous ones, we will have to wait until November's promised Graveyard of Empires.

Novelists have to tread very carefully these days, when including 'minorities' in their stories, particularly those who have been treated badly by their conquerors. I feel that Mariani's depiction of the aborigines is sympathetic; there is no sense of condescension in the portrayal of Sammy Mudrooroo and others. Mariani even has the nerve to cast one of them as a ruthless bounty-hunter. The only section which goes beyond likelihood, is the charge of several hundred aborigines on Wiley's thugs; it is a mini version of the Battle of Isandlwana. On the other hand, the author's description of the outback and the close, mystical pull of Nature for the aborigines is superb. On this occasion, I can concur with the 'puff' on the back of the paperback: This savagely beautiful land holds a secret it won't give up easily - and for Ben, discovering the truth will mean not only going up against a small army of hired guns and their twisted paymaster, but also surviving a place where the wilderness is as powerful as the weapons his enemies have trained on him.

Nicola Upson's 'Dear Little Corpses' 2022

 

Faber & Faber first edition - 2022

This is the tenth book in Nicola Upson's detective series featuring the real-life crime writer Josephine Tey. One assumes more are to come, as Tey did not die until 1952 and this volume is set in 1939, on the outbreak of the Second World War.

The story is quite well told, merging two frightening scenarios - the disappearance of a small child and the arrival of another World War. There is minimal 'detection' as such but some interesting village characters and the inter-action between them. Tey's Inspector Grant again figures (as Archie Penrose) and Upson does well to reiterate the very 'ordinariness' of the original - here is no Lord Peter Wimsey, Hercule Poirot or Albert Campion. It was a clever idea to bring another famous real-life author of detective stories into the plot - Margery Allingham. Upson had done her homework on the latter, as I found out when I looked up the Margery Allingham Society webpage. The meeting at Allingham's house, D'Arcy House, in the nearby village of Tolleshunt D'Arcy, where the missing girl is fortuitously 'found', is well written.  The involvement of the famous Wilkin (Tiptree Jam) firm is also good for trade!

There is a mild feeling of the pace being 'rushed' towards the end. However, the two families closely connected with the tragedies (two other little girls are missing, then found dead) - the Herrons and the Chilvers - are realistically described and the unmasked villain rightly meets his deserts on the end of a rope. Even the final 'suicide' of one of the dead girls' mother (she deliberately goes out into the open street as a major air raid starts) is understandable.

The least successful (appealing?) aspect of the book is Upson's determination to insert a lesbian affair between the fictional Tey and her chum Marta. It does not progress or enhance the tale and, if excised completely, would not have been missed. Jennifer Morag Henderson, in her excellent biography of the real Tey (2015) gives short shrift to the idea of Tey being sexually attracted to other women. True, the real-life Marta, a promiscuous lesbian named Marda Vanne, wrote a 'diary' based on her feelings for Tey. As Henderson writes, Tey was tolerant of her friends' (Gwen Frangçon-Davies was another lesbian actress and friendly with Tey) sexuality but, as her own romantic history shows, she herself was attracted to men. She dealt with Marda's declaration of love by treating it as fictional; she also tried, in a letter, to explain to Marda that she was not only not interested in a relationship, but had not even contemplated the existence of such a relationship. This is very different from the image Upson is pushing, more so as her series goes on. The fact that Upson herself is in a same-sex relationship suggests this departure from the facts is more like a mission statement.

Jarrolds' 'Jackdaw' Crime Series last two

 

Jarrolds Publishers - both 1940

The fourth of Herman Landon's crime stories in this Series is a strange book, almost as strange as the house called Bronson's Spite, situated on an elevation overlooking East River in New York. It was an eyesore, a blemish even on this unlovely section of Manhattan. It was out of all symmetry, all out of proportion, and its mismated features looked as if the architects had conspired to do their very worst. It was the brainchild of the late Peter Clayton Bronson, erected as a grim practical joke against former colleagues who had swindled him out of a fortune. Ironically, he had eventually  been forced to live in it due to his poverty. Now he was dead; as was his son Junius. Or was the latter actually deceased? He turns up, very much alive, after years spent abroad, and the tale unfolds around his attempt to give the main cause of his father's misfortune a good thumping! The villain is one Wallace Munger, who turns out to fit the part. He is a squat, hunchback who has seemingly fled from the law, but is hiding in a secret room in Bronson's Spite.

Junius finds this out, rents a lodging opposite, and spies on Munger who plays the violin at night - it was Munger's malign soul, rather than the composer's, that lived and breathed in the music. Landon assembles a cast of characters who are extraordinary even by his pulp fiction standards. Cashel Courtleigh - his eyes had a subtly penetrating quality. They were brownish yellow, or a yellowish brown...thick snow-white hair...weak mouth and wore a shirt with an uncommonly high collar, and it scraped his cheeks whenever he moved his head. Miss Agatha  Munger, Wallace's sister - a great mass of unkempt grey hair framed a gaunt, sallow face in which a pair of sunken eyes gleamed with unnatural brilliance. Junius's landlord, Henry Jonas, had long rabbit ears and a thin face that had a perpetually frozen look. He was a man of meagre proportions...Walter P. Oakhult, Junius's lawyer, whose features were fine and intellectual: even the white-bald skull that surmounted his tall and wiry figure was imposing. Mr Leffingwell, with a keen, dark face and eyes that were steely and grey...with russet slippers, who was a father-figure to Laurel Courtleigh. Napoleon Brown, a long, narrow-chested man, slightly stoop-shouldered, with sluggish, brooding eyes, who despises women and whom Junius refers to as the detective. And, above all, the real detective, Sergeant Dan Cramshaw, member of the homicide squad, a huge bulk of a man...his carrot-head towering a generous six foot four above his substantial feet...he had a reddish moustache, but it was not a success. He seemingly blunders about the murder scenes at Bronson's Spite, regularly pencilling things in a grubby notebook with bright covers  and a yellow tassel, and also regularly complaining that the suspects were gumming up the works.

No wonder Junius, two-thirds into the tale, is totally at sea: His thoughts were all at loose ends. There was no light anywhere, only unanswerable riddles, wicked conspiracies, a house full of whispering shadows (hence the title), the strains of a violin, and fresh flowers blooming in a chamber of death.

Only the girl appeared 'normal'. Laurel Courtleigh, step-daughter of Cashel, whom she hated, with nice eyes (Junius calls her Fawn Eyes) and a nice mouth, who refers to Junius as Mr. Lunatic...idiot...detestable cub and, for much of the book, a bland young man. Naturally, Junius and Laurel end up together at the end.

Three small brass elephants hold the key to this claustrophobic and convoluted tale. Landon certainly had imagination but there are too many unlikelihoods to make his story believable.

Walter S. Masterman's The Border Line is well worth the read. At first, I worried that it might be a tale of the supernatural - I am not keen on such works as, similar to Science Fiction stories, I regard most of them as merely silly. However, there were enough clues early on to establish the murders were clearly the work of a real human being. Masterman sets much of the tale on the border between England and Wales (hence the title), in that still rather eerie and mysterious Forest of Dean. The various characters are clearly defined and realistic, even if the murderer's behaviour and eventual unmasking is a little far-fetched. The involvement of the nascent BBC is interesting and the author pitches the right note in the relationship between Scotland Yard and the local police force.

The possible supernatural aspects are also well crafted - sinister and frightening for several of the characters. The awful and bumptious (common?) Lady Harman and her frightful son are believable and the young (only 16) damsel in distress, Sybil, has enough about her not to appear insipid. What a BBC engineer is doing making love (in the general sense) to her is another matter! No character repelled (I even understood the murderer's motives) and some were positively likeable! So much so, that I have ordered another of Masterman's novels - this time in Hutchinson's Crime Book Society series - The Blood-Hounds Bay. I must beware that it is not the start of another collections-mania.

Kathryn Warner's 'John of Gaunt'

 

Amberley Publishing first edition - 2022

Kathryn Warner has a six-line quotation from Shakespeare’s Richard II at the start of her book; the ‘time-honour’d Lancaster’, who gave that moving death-bed speech on This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, This other Eden, demi-paradise, may well be the first image we recollect of this powerful and intriguing man. Others, perhaps, recall him from Anya Seton’s Katherine - 'A great adventure, powerfully told' (Philippa Gregory). This biography – the first modern one, the publisher’s press release avers (I am not sure Helen Carr would agree; her biography of Gaunt, The Red Prince, was published on 15^th April 2021, was listed as The Times/Sunday Times Best Book for 2021 and short listed for the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography), is a follow-up to the author’s Philippa of Hainault (2019), on Gaunt’s mother. According to the book’s dust wrapper, Warner ‘has carved out a strong online presence as an expert on Edward II and the 14^th century in general’. So, what of this biography?

There are 22 colour photographs, some from the Author’s own collection; useful Appendices on Gaunt’s Will (which stretches to ten pages), details on his eight children and just under 40 grandchildren, who lived into adulthood; 42 pages of detailed endnotes (I much prefer footnotes); and 7 pages of Bibliography. The printing and production are up to Amberley’s usual standard.

Warner appears heavily wedded to John of Gaunt’s Register (1371-75; 1379-83), which was published in two volumes, edited by Sydney Armitage-Smith in 1911 and Eleanor C. Lodge and Robert Somerville in 1937. She also makes use of the Chronicles of Adam Usk, Knighton and others. The result is nearly another chronicle, rather than a biography. Determined to include just about everything she has read, Warner notably fails to sort out the wheat from the chaff, the important from the irrelevant. There is a fixation with individuals’ ages; if they are mentioned, however minor, their dates (if not known, then estimated and deduced at great length) must be attached. There is also a myopia about John’s gifts, with no distinction between the mighty and the also rans. Do we need to be told that John’s brother, Lionel of Antwerp’s, name was pronounced as in Lionel Messi, not Lionel Richie? Throughout her book, excessive detail actively impedes the flow of Warner’s  narrative. Her style suffers. If she cut down on the pointless asides and the irrelevancies, it would be a far better and more interesting tome. Wycliffe flits across just two pages. Surely, discussion of why Gaunt protected him would have been useful.

This is a great pity, as amongst the padding are genuine items of interest. John seemed to be keen on music – a group of minstrels were sent to perform for him at the feats of Candlemas in 1368; also, on hunting and hawking (thus Warner has to tell us the names of all his falconers). From the regular and valuable gifts Gaunt showered on Katherine Swynford, it is abundantly clear he was passionately fond of her. Warner catalogues every one of them. Duchess Katherine was first in the list of family members who received bequests in his will. To be fair, it also appears that he was a genuinely family-orientated man, both to his legitimate children and to the Beauforts. Intense grief and rage were occasioned by the exile of his son Henry Bolinbroke.

There is very little real analysis of ‘one of the great Englishmen of the Middle Ages’. Gaunt died in his town of Leicester, the same day as he dictated his will, a month short of his fifty-ninth birthday. Having read Warner’s account, I am replete with knowledge of his movements, his gifts, the dates of many of his contemporaries and much guesswork. Maybe, as with so many medieval figures, it is wrong to expect much more. Perhaps, I ought to try Helen Carr’s biography. 

Jarrold's 'Jackdaw' Crime Series continued

Jarrolds Publishers - both 1940

Whereas I read eight in this series during my ten days in Corfu, I only managed two paperbacks whilst spending eight days in Rome. Tramping round a very hot city, compared with lazing on a sun lounger, is not conducive to concentrated thought in the evenings. Moreover, there were the restaurants...

The Secret of the Downs was the second of Walter S. Masterman's novels in the series. Set in Dorset, it starts - Agatha Christie-like - at the Fernbank Hotel, where a group of guests are idling their time away. These include Mr Clutterbuck, a wit of the first order, with his wife and two children; Mr Fragson, a hard-boiled business man from Bradford; 'Polly Parrot' Montgomery, with her faded companion, Miss Amelia Smith; Dr. Ingram, a quiet man, and his wife; the Misses Jenkins, elder and younger; a queer old gentleman, Mr. Summerbund, with his valet Wilkins; and Colonel Clayton, a tall bronzed man. The final guest, a young man named Frank Conway, bursts in one glorious summer evening, clearly in a dreadful fright; manages to dress for dinner; sits at his table; leaps up trying to tear of his clothes and expires! Murder? Undoubtedly, through poison of his underwear.

His sister, Mary, arrives and, plucky English girl that she is, refuses to go away until she has hunted down the murderer. Masterton knows how to tell a story and his cast of characters are believable. Red herrings abound and, I must admit, I didn't guess the murderer. The Dorset Downs by the coast figure largely in the plot, which includes an old smugglers inn, lost treasure from a shipwrecked Armada vessel, and a eerie cave - only reached at low tide or through an ingenious mechanism embedded in a large boulder above. At first, I thought it might be the re-appearance of the Agglestone (of previous novels/blogs), but no. Various levels of the Law are dragged in  - the local Inspector Baines - a heavy, stocky man, country-bred, and not over-bright; Chief Constable Godfrey Williams, a lithe, alert man with keen black eyes and grey hair; and Sir Arthur Sinclair from Scotland Yard (he was middle-aged, with reddish hair turning grey, and a heavy moustache. He had the appearance of a prosperous farmer);

so are the local landlord, Black, a shifty character if there ever was one; the Mayor of the little seaside town, Alderman Sproston, J.P., a stout, prosperous-looking man with a florid face, also clearly up to no good. 

All these characters help to move the plot along, helped by sea-fog, phantom-like faces at windows and gloomy cellars. The denouement, when it came, was quite exciting. Yes, Mary, it's true, though how you guessed I don't know. I am glad now that you have, almost glad. I, too, couldn't have gone on. It's true I am the murderer we have been searching for. I am that villain, and I make no excuses whatever. I deserve all I get. This rather puts the kibosh on any future relationship and, within the last 12 pages, not only does the 'hero' shoot himself, but Mary suddenly dies when meningitis supervened. Frankly, the most unlikely aspect of the novel! 

Ruth Burr Sanborn's Murder on the 'Aphrodite' also involved a close-kit group of suspects, this time on a stranded boat. Gems, particularly a ruby, appears to have been the draw. I took some time to get involved with the story, perhaps because I did not find any of the  characters sympathetic. The 'hero', Bill Galleon, spent most of the book being moonstruck over a girl he re-found on the vessel; the murdered woman, Mrs. Van Wycke, was garishly unpleasant; whilst the suspects were uniformly second-rate. The psychologist Professor Burge was unreal; the housekeeper Angeline Tredennick a compulsive talker and eater; the butler Toombs a walk-on part for the main suspect; the young Southerner Ewell Choate a hot-tempered brat; Varro, who looked like a crook and was one; Beulah Mullins, the awfully nervous little down-trodden cousin of Mrs Van Wycke, nondescript; and Jane Bridge/Barron, the apple of Galleon's eye, simply shifty!

The dog Telemachus - born of a runaway match between a Russian wolfhound and a wild Irish terrier - was the liveliest spark of them all; only being run close by the very odd local policeman/detective, Constable Amasa Loose of Trussett, Maine - a high-boned craggy face, all juts and promontories like the Maine coast that reared him, who was much shrewder than his looks. 

The murderer is unmasked by Galleon at the end, but there is ample cause for their behaviour. Loose's late appearance gave a better direction to the plot and probably saved it from mediocrity.