"A Shetland Winter Mystery" by Marsali Taylor

 Another murder mystery involving sailor Cass Taylor and her policeman boyfriend Gavin. Cass is on shore  for once, preparing for Christmas with Gavin, Cat and Kitten, when mysterious footprints appear outside their remote cottage: 'Trows' (Shetland fairies) are traditionally active at this time of year. But is this a prank, and how is it linked to the controversial wind turbines being built? 

Then a young boy disappears, possibly one of the prankers ...

What makes this series of whodunnits exceptional is that Marsali Taylor is more and more able to take time with her stories. Much of it is about Shetland's preparations for Christmas and the momentary difficulties experienced by Cass and Gavin as they navigate the early waters of living together, and on land. This is allied to a careful exploration of the relevant characters who are so well-developed that I felt apprehensive about their possible fates. The depth and texture of the story is further enhanced by the (fully explained) use of Shetland vocabulary (eg "She was in a right ammerswak. The goddess poise was gone. She was wearing the pinnie she’d worn yesterday, but the buttons were done up squint."; Ch 8)  and by some superb pieces of description of the Shetland countryside:

• "There had been an intense frost during the night. The orange-brown kelp on the shore was crinkled white with ice, and there was a glaze of ice in the curve by the point where the burn ran down." (Ch 7)
• "It came on a serious shower of snow as we hit the main road. The windscreen wipers quickened to double speed, flack, flack, and still there was snow running down the window, as if we’d caught a foaming wave going over us. The tyres hissed through pools of water on the salted road, but the ditches at each side were white with snow lying on frozen water."  (Ch 18)

I want to go there (maybe not in winter).

In short, it is a good little murder mystery in the classic style, but books of this quality transcend the genre.

Selected quotes:

• "I woke to the rattle of the kitchen Rayburn being riddled, followed by the clank of an ashbucket and the crackling of flames in kindling." (Ch 2)
• "She was a tortoiseshell, with a coat the colours of several different spice jars shaken together over a worktop." (Ch 2)
• "It wasn’t much after two, I reckoned, yet already the air was beginning to thicken at the sides of buildings, and the sky was darkening." (Ch 5)
• "His voice softened to the gentle note of a drummie bee drowsing round flowers in summer." (Ch 6)
• "The downward-angled streetlights lit the frost hanging in the air like spotlights in a theatre" (Ch 12)
• "Motive: love, lucre, loathing." (Ch 18)
• "I have a cousin in Canada who’s so like me that we could use each other to shave by." (Ch 26)

This is a crime fiction series that gets better and better. The books, in order, are:

• Death on a Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders
• A Handful of Ash
• The Body in the Bracken
• Ghosts of the Vikings
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders

January 2022

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"The Shetland Sea Murders" by Marsali Taylor

 Ninth in the Cass Lynch series and the books have matured so they are less about a murder mystery - though that is still part of it - and more about another fascinating glimpse into Shetland life. And into the life of our heroine Cass Lynch, jobbing sailor, in particular. It starts with a mayday from a ship in trouble on Shetland rocks and there is a thrilling sea-rescue at the three-quarters climax. 

A hallmark of these Shetland Sailing Mysteries are the wonderful descriptions. These have been improving throughout the series and this book is full of them. I luxuriated in these descriptions; the two cited below are from chapter eight:

• "The water was lighter than the land, a pale grey-blue circle around us. There was a blue rim above the eastern hill, which gradually lightened to milky white, then flushed palest gold, darkening the hills below it to a black silhouette where every rock, every house roof and chimney, every telegraph pole, stood out sharp and clear against it. Now I could see the land reflections in the water. Slowly, much slower than in summer, the textures of the land became visible, the knobbled brown of heather and smooth grass, then the houses sharpened into focus, white against the green parks." 
• "The first sun had come through at last, picking up the autumn colours on land, the chocolate hills, the rusty sword leaves of iris in the ditches, the tinted flowering currant bushes around the houses. The orange lobster buoys glowed on the water." 

But also, perhaps for the first time in the series, this book contains some hard social commentary about the position of women relative to men through history and nowadays and the plight and exploitation of refugees.

Selected quotes:

• "She looked frail and delicate, but there was an iron paw inside every one of those little white mittens." (C 1)
• "It was a bonny day to be out, more summer than autumn, with the blue sky fretted with high cirrus, and the hills smooth green. Only the colour of the water betrayed the season, a cold steely-blue." (C 3)
• "Some US president had once said that you had the face you deserved by the time you were sixty." (C 4)
• "He had that straight-at-you look that I associated with someone telling me a lie." (C 5)
• "With the moon waning gibbous towards the neap-bringing crescent, every tide would be slightly lower than the one before" (C 7)
• "Mermaid’s eyes, I’d always thought, indifferent to human wants and failings. Every so often she tried to be chatty about furniture or flats, but I didn’t believe it; she lived in a cavern under water, hidden behind waving kelp, and when she walked on land each step was a knife stab." (C 12)
• "I’d come across some awkward customers in my time, but not many in whom violence simmered so close to the surface, like a shark in shallow water." (C 16)
• "The couch was a deep leather affair which was going to take serious leg muscles to get out of." (C 18)
• "Now I tell you straight, I thought he was as frank as a donkey moving backwards." (C 27)
• "The habit doesn’t make a monk." (C 27)
• "it’s like pedalling in semolina to get anything out of a bank." (C 27)
• "dumb enough to swallow snakes." (C 27)

This series gets better with every book. The books, in order, are:

• Death on a Longship
• The Trowie Mound Murders
• A Handful of Ash
• The Body in the Bracken
• Ghosts of the Vikings
• Death in Shetland Waters
• Death on a Shetland Isle
• Death from a Shetland Cliff
• The Shetland Sea Murders

This review was written by the author of Motherdarling  and The Kids of God

"Swallowdale" by Arthur Ransome

 In this classic children's adventure book, written in 1930. the Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger) and Nancy and Peggy Blackett, who sail the Amazon, continue their adventures in the Lake District. When their sailing dinghy, Swallow, is shipwrecked, the Walkers have to camp ashore and the Amazons are being forced to behave like young ladies by the visit of their Great-Aunt. But there is still room for lots of adventures including climbing the highest hill, getting lost in the fog both ashore and afloat, and racing. 

It is very much of its time in that colonialist attitudes are ingrained. These are privileged white upper-middle-class children. The role of Susan as home-maker is also potentially sexist: "That was Susan's strong point. She never allowed excitements such as sleeping in the open half-way up a mountain, or a naval battle, or a dangerous bit of exploring, to interfere with the things that really matter, such as seeing that water is really boiling before making tea with it, having breakfast at the proper time, washing as usual, and drying anything that might be damp. Really, if it had not been for Susan, half the Swallows' adventures would have been impossible." (Ch 26) But the other girl characters include Titty, the imaginative dreamer who turns their everyday adventures into magic by drawing on her knowledge of story-book pirates and explorers, and Nancy, a larger-than-life tomboy who is a match for 'Captain' John in every way. 

There are some great moments:

• "They found, like many explorers before them, that somehow, in their absence, they had got into trouble at home." (Ch 4)
• "'You needn't mind now', said Nancy, looking at John. 'It isn't as if she was at the bottom of the sea'." (Ch 6)
• "Just think what it would have been like if you had had to swim ashore in the Arctic, in winter, with no sun and no wood to make a fire, and nothing but snow and seals and polar bears. There'd have been some proper shivering of timbers." (Ch 9)
• "Never take off too much. If you take off too little you can always take off a bit more, but if you take off too much you can never put it back." (Ch 15) Advice I have always remember (too late) throughout my long and disastrous career in DiY.

Swallowdale isn't usually remembered as a S&A book but to my mind its careful story-telling make it one of the best.

This review was written by 
the author of Motherdarling

The Swallows and Amazon series contained twelve books:

• Swallows and Amazons: Children camping on an island in a lake have sailing based adventures
• Swallowdale: More sailing adventures are threatened when the Swallow sinks
• Peter Duck: The Swallows and Amazons and Captain Flint sail on a big yacht into the Caribbean in search of pirate treasure; pirates pursue
• Winter Holiday: the lake freezes allowing a sledge-based expedition to the 'north pole'; the 'D's are introduced
• Coot Club: The Ds join the Death and Glory kids in the Norfolk Broads but the excitement is just as great when birds have to be protected from rowdies.
• We Didn't Mean to go to Sea: The Swallows accidentally find themselves at sea in a yacht they scarcely know: for my money this is the most dramatic and exciting book of the series.
• Secret Water: The Swallows are joined by the Amazons in an expedition to map some tidal mud-flats
• The Big Six: The Death and Glory kids have to be cleared of accusations of crime; the Ds help.
• Missee Lee: The Swallows and Amazons and Captain Flint are shipwrecked near China and captured by a lady Chinese pirate with a taste for Latin.
• Pigeon Post: The Swallows and Amazons and Ds search for gold in the hills above the Lake; one of my favourites
• The Picts and the Martyrs: The Ds have to hide in the hills when the Great Aunt comes to stay with the Amazons
• Great Northern: The Swallows and Amazons and Ds and Captain Flint are protecting birds in the far north of Scotland.

Other books by this author:

• Bohemia in London
• Old Peter's Russian Tales
• Oscar Wilde: A Critical Study

"In the Heart of the Sea" by Nathaniel Philbrick

This book recounts the story of the whaleship Essex, from Nantucket, which was sunk by a whale in 1820. The crew subsequently travelled in three whaleboats across the Pacific, many died, some being eaten by their starving shipmates; there was one case in which one of the crews drew lots and one lad was killed by his friend for food (this latter story is adapted for the novel Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch). The account of the voyage by first mate Owen Chase (who possibly unknowingly incited the whale attack: “On the morning of November 20, 1820, sperm whales were not the only creatures filling the ocean with clicking sounds; there was also Owen Chase, busily nailing a piece of canvas to the bottom of an upturned whaleboat.”; C 5) was written in 1821; Herman Melville read it and was inspired to write Moby-Dick. Philbrick speculates in chapter 14 that the theme of Ahab's revenge came via a story told by Ralph Waldo Emerson who in 1834 was told of a white whale, famed for attacking whaling ships with its jaw, which had been hunted and killed by a boat called the Winslow or Essex; Owen Chase, first mate of the Essex, became captain of the Winslow.

This account is based on the account written in 1876 by the cabin boy (he also happened to be at the helm of the Essex when it was rammed by the whale) Thomas Nickerson which was lost until 1960 and only published in 1984.  

It is a tremendous story and beautifully written. Whilst written at a distance and thus able to reflect on the economic and social circumstances surrounding the Nantucket whale industry and the lives of the whalers (which, for example, enables understanding of the fact that those seamen who died first were predominantly African American), at the same time it transports you to the deck of the Essex and into the small whaleboats which attacked the whale. There were times when I was in those whaleboats and I felt hungry. At the end one is left with admiration for the indomitability and the ingenuity of the survivors, as well as deep sadness for those who died.

The story goes on to look at the consequences. Amazingly both Captain Pollard and Owen Chase returned to the sea, although only temporarily. Even more amazingly, when the captain of the Essex took his next command two of the Essex crew served under him again, one being Thomas Nickerson and the other Charles Ramsdell “the boy who had spent ninety-four days in a whaleboat with him” and who had been the one to propose drawing lots to see who should be sacrificed and who would actually kill the victim. (C 13)

Other consequences include, of course, Moby-Dick but also The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe in the early part of which the ship-wrecked hero survives an open boat voyage through cannibalism, the victim being chosen by the drawing of lots.

Selected quotes:

• “Unfortunately, the anger which [the Quakers] are forbidden to express by outward actions, finding no vent, stagnates the heart.” (C1, quoting William Comstock)
• “A sharp-sighted man was a jewel in the estimation of the genuine whaling captain.” (C 1)
• A treatment for seasickness: “The sufferer was made to swallow a piece of pork fat tied to a string, which was then pulled back up again. If the symptoms returned, the process was repeated.” This remedy also appears in Peter Duck by Arthur Ransome. (C 2)
• “Salt beef and salt pork ... was so salty that when the cook placed it in a barrel of saltwater for a day (to render it soft enough to chew), the meat’s salt content was actually lowered.” (C 3)
• “The strong winds and unpredictable currents that boiled in and around these volcanic outcroppings sometimes created the illusion that the [Galapagos] islands were actually moving.” (C 4)
• In both Sperm Whale society and Nantucket Society the males spent most of their lives alone only returning to the female pod to breed. “In their dedication to killing sperm whales the Nantucketers had developed a system of social relationships that mimicked those of their prey.” (C 4)
• “Nantucketers recognized that the positions of captain and first mate required contrasting personalities.” Captains needed to be authoritarians, first mates needed to be more personal. (C 6)
• “The human body, which is 70 percent water, requires a bare minimum of a pint a day to remove its waste products.” (C 7)
• “The act of self-expression - through writing a journal or letters - often enables a survivor to distance himself from his fears.” (C 7)
• “The biological anthropologist Stephen McGarvey has speculated that the people who survived these voyages [the original voyages of the Polynesians to colonise remote Pacific islands] tended to have a higher percentage of body fat before the voyage began and/or more efficient metabolisms, allowing them to live longer on less food than their thinner companions. (McGarvey theorizes that this is why modern day Polynesians suffer from a high incidence of obesity.)” (C 9)
• “Many of the so-called American characteristics ... abounding energy, generosity, optimism - become intelligible as the expected behaviour response of a well-fed people.” (C 10)
• “Anthropologists and archaeologists studying the phenomenon of cannibalism have estimated that the average human adult will provide about sixty-six pounds of edible meat.” (C 11)

A fascinating and most interesting book which has been made into a film.

June 2019; 238 pages

"Ulysses Found" by Ernle Bradford

Based on a lifetime of sailing the Mediterranean in a small boat, this book locates the places in Homer's Odyssey. Homer often gives precise sailing instructions and detailed descriptions of harbours (the exception is the clearly mythical voyage to the land of the dead) and Bradford uses these to trace the voyage. Sometimes Bradford agrees with classical sources (almost everyone locates Scylla and Charybdis in the Messina strait between Sicily and Italy) and sometimes he disagrees but in every case he has excellent reasons for his identification. Of course, this all assumes that Homer was working with a sailor or sailors or at least with their log books, even when, as Bradford admits, citing the lack of any encounters with other voyagers in the Odyssey, the Greeks of Homer's time never adventured into the Western Mediterranean.

This is a brilliant, fascinating, well argued and convincing book and the meat of the argument is perfectly spiced with anecdotes about the author's own adventures.

The route that Bradford suggests makes sense both in terms of directions, times and likely speeds, and the descriptions of land. In short, Bradford suggests Ulysses travelled north from Troy to raid the Thracian coast near Mount Ismaro. He was then driven by a storm to the Island of Djerba off the Libyan coast, the Land of the Lotus Eaters. He then travelled north to the land of the Cyclopes in SE Sicily, north to Ustica (the Island of Aeoleus) and again north to Bonifacio on southern Corsica, the Land of the Laestrygonians. He then travelled east to Circe's island (actually a headland) on the Italian coast north of Naples. After Circe he travelled west through the r (to the Land of the Dead) and then back to Circe. Leaving her again he went via the Isles of the Sirens (just south of the Sorrento peninsula) through the Messian straits (Scylla and Charybdis) to Taormina in Sicily where grazed the Cattle of the Sun. He spent years on Calypsos island (Malta) before finally travelling home via Corfu (the Land of the Phaeacians).

I've created a series of maps for this which can be found here


Fascinating bits:

• Odysseus means ‘son of wrath’. But Ulysses derives from Olysseus which comes from O Lukos, ‘the wolf’
• When young U is wounded in the thigh by a boar in a hunting accident. “This wounding in the thigh seems to equate him with a number of eastern gods, Tammuz, Adonis, and Cretan Zeus, all of whom were wounded and killed by a boar. These stories all stem from a Phoenician source.” 
• “The rudder, as we know it today, was a north European invention, and probably originated in the Baltic. This axled, hinged rudder was still considered something of a modern invention when used in the caravels of Henry the Navigator in the early 15th century. It was unknown in the classical world.”
• Odyssey ca C12 BC: “ the Cretan, or Minoan, seapower had collapsed before invaders from the north ... the Phoenicians had not yet founded their colonies on the North African coast.”
• Polyphemus has ‘eyebrows’ in the Odyssey: “It is not till later times that he becomes monophthalmic.”
• “Garlic itself has long been associated with magical properties ... s late as the 14th century ... we find that garlic was reputed to neutralize the lodestone, thus putting the magnetic compass out of action.”
• “Comparatively few rivers of any size flow into the Mediterranean, and it loses by evaporation two-thirds more than it receives from its rivers. This steady loss is made good by an inflow of water from the Atlantic.” This will allow U to drift back to the Med after visiting the ‘land of the dead’.
• “The two mountains which face each other across the Strait were called ‘The Pillars of Melkarth’ by the Phoenicians. They took their name from the twin pillars of the great temple of Melkarth in the city of Tyre. ... Melkarth was not only a sea god in Phoenician mythology, he was also Lord of the Underworld, and it was between the pillars of the Strait of Gibraltar that he was believed to dwell.” which is why C sent U to Gibraltar to go into the Underworld.
• “Baltic Amber was being imported overland into prehistoric Greece centuries before the Homeric period.”
• “It was the Phoenicians who first gave the island its name, Maleth or Malet - the Shelter, Haven, or Hiding Place ... the word ‘Calypso’ in Greek means ‘hidden’ or ‘hider’, and the Homeric words for Calypso’s isle, Neesos Kalupsous, can best be translated in English as ‘The Island of the Hiding Place’.”
• “The Maltese archipelago was inhabited many centuries before the basin of the Mediterranean was flooded.”

Great quotes

• “I do not think that anything is lost by attempting to find a skeleton - however magnificent the cupboard that hides it.”
• “Ulysses was the shopkeeper with his thumb on the scales, and an eye for the girls, handy with a knife in a dark alley, and at the same time in some strange fashion or other, capable of honesty - or was it of great consistency? - over most of the major issues.” 
• “When men return from war it is their record as fighting men which usually determines their immediate position in society. Inevitably within a short time the standards of judgement change, so that often the war hero turns out to be a peace-time failure.”
• “In Trapani I have felt history as heavy as a plush curtain. ... One's own life is seen as no more than a minute drop of resin oozing from the trunk of some giant tree.”
• “Places are little in themselves, you must earn them by your voyage.”

A wonderful voyage.

November 2018; 221 pages

"A Pirate of Exquisite Mind" by Diana and Michael Preston

This is a biography of William Dampier, the first person to circumnavigate the world three times, who landed on the coast of Australia 80 years before Captain James Cook and who became the best selling author who inspired the new genre of travel writing as well as Robinson Crusoe (being on both the expeditions which marooned Alexander Selkirk and which rescued him) by Daniel Defoe (whose biography is reviewed here) and Gulliver's Travels. He is also responsible for a host of words including avocado, barbeque, chopsticks and sub-species.

But he started off as a buccaneer. Sailing to the West Indies he began working on a sugar plantation but his wanderlust soon got the better of him. He spent time as a logger before signing on as a pirate. His career in piracy was pretty lacklustre; in his first voyage he sacked a couple of towns but kept missing the rich prizes and he returned to England (having rounded Cape Horn and crossed the Pacific) after twelve years at sea with little to show for his trouble. His second voyage, as a captain of a scientific vessel for the Royal Navy was equally unsuccessful. Only on his third voyage, demoted to navigator under the command of Woodes Rogers, did he help in capturing a Spanish Galleon which earned him some thousands of pounds, enough to pay his debts after he had died. In all, he did better as an author.

The Prestons tell his tale in great detail which sometimes slows the narrative. A great deal of time is spent on the first voyage (to be fair, it was the longest, it took twelve years). But Dampier did so much and discovered so much that it is difficult to see how any less detail would be possible. Certainly the book is action packed to the extent that I got a little lost a times. I would have liked to see some (modern) maps to show exactly where he was at which time.

This is is an interesting biography of a fascinating man and well worth reading.

August 2015; 461 pages

"Commander" by Stephen Taylor

This is the biography of "Britain's greatest frigate captain" Sir Edward Pellew. Rising from an ordinary seaman with a particular acrobatic ability in the tops, Pellew's early naval career matched that of his near-contemporary Nelson. Following service fighting Americans in their War of Independence he became captain of a frigate, the Indefatigable, and trained both ship and men to become the most successful prize-winning ship of the time. His later career as captain of a Ship of the Line and later as Rear-Admiral and then Commander-in-Chief in the Indian Ocean kept him away from Trafalgar and led to anti-climax. However, his last fight against the slavers of Algiers restored his reputation.

This is Hornblower stuff. A number of Pellew's exploits (rescuing men from a sinking ship in surf and landing marines at Quiberon Bay) seem to have inspired C. S. Forester. Yet the facts are as compelling as the reading and Taylor has created a brilliant page-turner which encapsulates this brilliant but flawed exponent of the Age of Sail.

Thrilling and fascinating. December 2012; 310 pages