"The secret speech" by Tom Rob Smith

This is the second of the Leo Demidov trilogy about a former MGB officer in Moscow as Stalin's regime gives way to Khruschev. The title refers to the 'secret' speech given by Khruschev at which he denounced the state security systems for their brutal repressions under Stalin. At the start of the novel these are being distributed to former agents who either then kill themselves from remorse or from fear of what their neighbours will say or who are killed. This is a promising beginning: it offers the opportunity for menace to stalk the city in an atmosphere of moral ambiguity. Leo is, after all, the head of the Homicide Division and unbelievably good at his job, diagnosing that an apparent murder was a concealed suicide within a few minutes of seeing the body. Alas, any pretence at a whodunnit is swiftly abandoned as the Homicide Division is dissolved and the killer reveals herself by kidnapping Leo's adopted daughter in revenge for wrongs done to her by Leo in the past. The story turns into a thriller. Leo must travel to the Hungarian uprising via a prison ship and a Gulag in order to retrieve his daughter who has undergone a Patty Hearst style conversion and fallen for a young pickpocket.

This book has clearly been written with the intention of turning it into an action thriller film. Unfortunately it would be the sort of film that millions watch and I hate. A great deal of action is packed in: the story moves on relentlessly. Tank shells explode all around Leo and his family. Lesser characters are killed off with minimal grieving. Few scenes last longer than a few pages; some moments of potentially high drama last no more than a paragraph.

The characters are mostly shallow and unbelievable. The relationship between the boy who grew up as a pickpocket and became a thriller and the rebellious teenage girl is ludicrous. The transformation of the meek wife of a priest into a hardened manipulative criminal gang leader is justified by suggesting that she became embittered in the gulags. I just don't believe any of it.

Thrill-a-minute action with minimal depth. March 2014, 449 pages

"Dedicated to..." by W. B. Gooderham

Mr Gooderham buys second hand books. Some of these have fly leaf inscriptions. Some of these he has recorded in this unusual little book. Thus Oscar Wilde's 'Ballad of Reading Gaol' was given to Mo in May 2005 and the donor, Claudia, has written: "Sometimes 'only when it is dark can you see the stars'." 'A Book of Surrealist Games' given to Ted is inscribed "My period is 3 days late." On Valentine's Day 1976, Ben explained that his gift of 'Papillon' "is not a text book of how to get out of the wedding." And Dad writes in the front of 'Bawdy Ballads' "Mum says it is disgusting: I say it may encourage you to learn the piano."

My favourite is the dedication in Jean-Paul Sartre's 'Words' (which quotes him on its cover as saying "I loathe my childhood and all that remains of it") which is "To Mummy".

A delightfully quirky little book. March 2014; 181 pages.

"Fidel and Che: a revolutionary friendship" by Simon Reid-Henry

Fred gave me this hardback. It felt heavy and looked really dry. I put off reading it for a couple of weeks. I picked it up with the feeling that I was going to have to push myself.

But Che Guevara is such a romantic figure and Reid-Henry writes so well that I really enjoyed this book. From his youth motorbiking and hitch-hiking around South America to fighting as a guerilla in the Cuban Sierra the story rattled along. And it bounced backwards and forwards to the story of Fidel Castro who, if not so good-looking and less exciting still packed an awful lot into his early years staging an attempted coup, being imprisoned, seeking exile in Mexico and then leading the small group of men on a leaky boat who were almost wiped out on landing in Cuba but went on to defeat an army.

The book falters slightly in the early days of the new Cuban regime. It's difficult to thrill when describing the manoeuvrings of politicians although there is a fascinating narrative in the story of how the US repeatedly pushed the Cubans into the arms of the USSR despite the Cubans feeling terribly betrayed when Khrushchev backed down to Kennedy during the Missile Crisis. But the tale picks up again when Che, desperate to foment world revolution by repeating his Cuban guerilla success abroad, disappears from the Cuban stage. Rumours abound. Is he dead? Has he been put away by Castro? In fact he is fighting anonymously in the Congo from which he barely escapes with his life. After having hidden in the Cuban embassy in Tanzania for some time he then returns to Cuba briefly to move on to try his luck again in Bolivia. Another failure awaits him and he is finally captured and executed.

This book is a brilliant exploration of the enduring friendship of two different but very complimentary men. It is unlikely that either would have achieved all that they did without the other and the fact that they split at the end does not mean that they stopped being friends. Rather, Fidel supported Che in pursuing his dreams abroad. The difference was that Che was the idealist (which caused difficulties and tensions when they were finally in government together) and Fidel was the pragmatic politician, shucking and jiving to stay in power.

There is one brilliant photograph of the pair together in a Mexican prison before they set out to invade Cuba. Reid-Henry says it is the first photograph of the pair together. The unbearded Fidel is buttoning up his jacket; he looks rather like a natty dresser. Che stands to the side. He is topless with his hands behind his back; his trousers are undone at the top and the belt is undone. It looks for all the world as if Fidel is dressing after having enjoyed a rent boy. But what is stunning is how young Che looks. He too is clean shaven and his hair is quite short; he is no more than a handsome boy. He is 28. He looks 17. Within three years this pair will be the leaders of Cuba.

The book stops with Che's death before his fortieth birthday. The friendship is finished although Castro and Cuba continued to honour Ernesto Guevara.

I thoroughly enjoyed this revealing and well written joint biography of two fascinating men. March 2014; 382 pages

"Child 44" by Tom Rob Smith

This thriller has sold over 1.5 million copies and has been shortlisted for or won over 20 awards. It was even longlisted for the 2008 Booker Prize. The cover proudly proclaims that it is NPR's (I understand that this is the National Public Radio network of the US) top 100 thrillers of all time.

Why?

The book starts with young Pavel and his younger brother Andrei hunting a cat in a Ukrainian forest to try to keep themselves from starving.

Twenty years later Leo is a war hero and an officer in Stalin's feared MGB. His job is to 'investigate' denunciations which really means to arrest suspects, arrange torture to extract confessions and arrange for their imprisonment or execution. The system must be perfect which means that once a man is denounced he must be guilty. This is the perfect system for Leo's jealous underling, Vasily, to win promotion by denouncing his boss's wife. Demoted and sent away from Moscow, Leo and his wife start to investigate a series of child murders.

Thus this book is set in the paranoid last days of the Stalin regime (and the Beria regime after his death and the early days of the Khruschev regime after Kruschev's coup) and there is a lot of backbiting and betrayal but somehow I never felt the atmosphere of the novel recreated the sense of paranoia and suspicion and mistrust and general darkness that there must have been. 'Nobody can be trusted' is therefore more useful as a plot device that an ethos. Equally, Leo and his wife fall out because his job entails arresting, torturing and executing mostly innocent people but you don't get the feeling that this is a major flaw in his own character.

The plot is standard. It is not a whodunnit in any sense of the word: there are no clever deductions by the detective: he works out, long after the reader, that the killer of many children in different towns often near railway tracks must be a man who has access to travel. All he then has to do is to work our which two factories regularly exchange people and scan their personnel files. He's still late. We have been introduced to the killer half way through the book. The odd peculiarities of the killer's MO are never properly explained and even the final twist I anticipated long before it came.

I also hated the writing. The author uses the word 'would've' with distressing frequency, not in a dialogue nor even as characterised PoV narration but in the standard author voice.

This is a standard thriller; nothing special. I wish I hadn't bought the whole trilogy!

March 2014; 470 pages

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

"Perfect" by Rachel Joyce

In 1972 Byron lives with his perfect mother and his sister in a lonely house on the moors paid for by Byron's mostly absent banker father. Byron's mum drives him to his posh school in her new Jag. One day, taking a short cut through a run down council estate, there is an accident. And their perfect world, already stressed to breaking point, begins to unravel.

Forty years later Jim, newly released from the closed-down mental asylum, cleans tables in the supermarket cafe. Unless Jim performs his rituals, such as saying hello to everything when he gets home, something terrible will happen and someone will get hurt. The world rests upon Jim's shoulders. He is exhausted.

The two stories dovetail. Jim's mostly meaningless life provides a perfect counterpoint to the story of Byron lurching towards his inevitable doom.

The descriptions are wonderful. The posh world of Byron contrasts beautifully with the tatty world of Jim. The tautness of Byron's mum and her women friends was perfectly portrayed. I found more difficulty with the sordid world of the council estate. But the characters are nicely rounded. Byron's mother has a murky past - she had a show-girl mum - while her nemesis from the council estate is a vicar's daughter who seems to have few scruples about blackmail. Even Byron's dad, the control freak, is allowed a single moment of weakness. But Byron's friend, James Lowe, and his mother Andrea, a very one-dimensional. Worse, I found it difficult to believe in Byron. I couldn't work out his age. At times his naivete, and his young sister, suggested that he was about ten but the maturity of his language, his perception of underlying currents in social situations and the way he took control of situations with adults made him seem adult. At one point he becomes the carer for the family.

There is a twist on page 335. I spotted it coming before page 100. It knits the two narratives together though I found the link contrived.

This book has some wonderful prose and the sense of guilt twisting its knife to compound tragedy is classic. But it didn't quite work for me.

By the author of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. March 2014; 361 pages

"Stoner" by John Williams

The Sunday Times call this 'The greatest novel you've never read'. Of course this put my back up straight away.

Stoner is a farm boy who goes to University in the early 1900s to study agriculture but is seduced by literature and becomes an assistant professor of English. This is his life. The book begins by telling you that when he dies he is quickly forgotten.

Stoner is the everyman who is a holy innocent, making his way through a world scorns him and does him down. His only weapon is his integrity. As he dies he thinks he is a failure.

In some ways this book reminded me of Herman Hesse's Knulp. Williams seems to suggest that there is a transcendence to everyday life.

It is beautifully written. There are moments of perfect description. The prose is lean and tight but each sentence appears to be just right.

The plot is carefully crafted. The characters shape the world in which they live and are shaped by their interactions with one another. What happens flows inevitably though purposelessly from what has happened.

Is it a tragedy? For the first half of the book,Stoner faces repeated trials. There is a sense of impending doom that makes it harder and harder to read. One can scarcely bear to discover what more pain can be inflicted on this patient stoic. Exactly half way through the book, Stoner's integrity and purpose as a teacher faces its greatest test. Happiness does not really arrive until two thirds of the way through; at the three quarters mark this happiness is inevitably snuffed out. But from this moment things get better, even when he faces his terminal illness.

Is it a great book. Certainly it is almost perfect. I did find it difficult to read quickly, in part because I was constantly expecting more heartache. It wasn't a page turner for me. But I think it is a book I will remember for a long time.

Beautifully crafted. March 2014; 288 pages

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

"The Attenbury Emeralds" by Jill Paton Walsh

I used to love the Lord Peter Wimsey stories of Dorothy L Sayers so when  I learned that respected children's author Jill Paton Walsh had continued the series I jumped to read them.

At the start of this book the ageing Lord Peter tells his wife Harriet about his first case. It is 1921, Lord Peter is suffering from shell shock and faithful manservant Bunter decides that a gentle house party (with no shooting!) would be good for him. But (in a homage to the Moonstone by Wilkie Collins) a mysterious Indian has designs on a large emerald owned by the family which has a mysterious inscription on its back. Lord Peter explains how he solved the case.

Back in 1951 the emeralds rear their ugly head again. Somehow two nearly identical emeralds have been switched. Peter delves back into the history of the appearances of these gems: every time they come out of the bank there is some drama and often somebody dies. Who is the serial murderer and what is their motive? Can anyone seriously have planned a crime that takes place over thirty years?

Whilst all this is going on we learn, in the best traditions of fan fiction, how the characters have developed since we saw them last. The great thing about Sayers' books is that they form an unbroken narrative from the early days of Lord Peter through to his wooing and marriage of Harriet. Now Walsh updates us on the kids. Dramatic things also happen to the family: Lord St George has been killed in the War leaving the Duke of Denver without an heir of his body: Peter is the next in line. Denver's wife, the Duchess, is unspeakably snobbish about low-born Harriet and the Dowager Duchess, Peter's mother, is wonderfully loquacious, her stream of consciousness full of joyous misuses. We meet other firm favourites from the past including Freddy Arbuthnot and Charles Parker who was a sergeant in 1921 (who read Origen), married Peter's sister and is now a Commander of Scotland Yard.

Paton Walsh has done all this admirably; I scarcely noticed the join. There are other moments when I could enjoy her craft: I especially loved the two cockney sisters who had an understated but characteristic grammatical style of their type.

What I didn't like was the plot! You may argue that some of the original plots were massively far-fetched but this one was especially difficult to believe in and the solution and the villain were not especially credible.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book, galloping through it in a couple of days, and I am looking forward to reading the next.

February 2014; 338 pages

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

Also read The Late Scholar

The Lord Peter Wimsey novels are reviewed here:

• Whose Body in which my Lord and his manservant, Bunter, are introduced
• Clouds of Witness in which Lord Peter must sleuth to get his brother Gerald, Duke of Denver, off a murder charge; Bunter assists; policeman Parker falls in love with Peter's sister Mary
• Unnatural Death which introduces another Wimsey sidekick: Miss Climpson; Bunter is involved
• The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club; Bunter is involved as is Miss Climpson
• Strong Poison which introduces Harriet Vane, a detective writer who becomes Lord Peter's love interest; Bunter realises Lord Peter's affection first
• The Five Red Herrings; Lord Peter in Scotland; Bunter in the background
• Have His Carcase: Harriet and Peter investigate the death of a gigolo with dreams; Bunter has a small supporting role
• Murder Must Advertise: Peter goes undercover at an advertising agency; Bunter plays a very small role; policeman Parker has married Mary and they have sons
• The Nine Tailors: Peter investigates the discovery of a body in someone else's grave in a small fenland village. Floods and campanology.
• Gaudy Night: Harriet Vane investigates poison pen letters and high jinks at her old college; Lord Peter arrives belatedly to assist
• Busman's Honeymoon: murder follows the sleuths even after marriage ...

"The Plantagenets" by Dan Jones

This is the history of the kings of England from Henry II (although it actually starts with a sort of prologue explaining how Henry I's son was killed in the wreck of the White Ship and how this led to anarchy as Stephen and Matilda tussled to stalemate for supremacy) up to Richard II. The essential theme is that the Plantagenet kings were at their greatest when they ruled England as the embodiment of law and at their weakest and most corrupt when they subverted law for their own profits. Thus John (with Magna Carta), Henry III (with the early Parliaments of Simon de Montfort), Edward II (deposed by Roger Mortimer and Richard II (deposed by Henry Bolingbroke were all bad kings.

To be honest, this does not reflect well on royalty. For every good king (Henry II, Edward I although his wars bankrupted his son, Edward III until he went senile) there was at least one bad king.

Another perspective on this history which Dan Jones does not really explore is that this period was throughout a tussle between the barons and the king. At the start of the period the rules of inheritance were less obvious than they are now. Thus, of the Norman kings, William was a bastard, William Rufus was a second son (and Henry I his younger brother) and Stephen was elected King over Henry's daughter Matilda. And if the king could be chosen rather than merely born then he could be deposed.

And the big problem facing all these kings was how to finance the almost continual wars they had to fight. They needed to persuade people to pay tax. Much of the growth of parliamentary representation came because the barons and later the commons demanded concessions in return for their cash.

Another theme is the regular appeals of the Kings, especially when being crowned, to the pre-Norman past. Edward the Confessor was seen as a golden age and the new kings would regularly offer charters which referred to this Saxon past.

This book is a spirited romp through 246 years. At 600 pages it is just over 2 pages a year. It cannot be other than a skim of the surface. Thus it was not really the book for me because I have read much about this period (including biographies of Edward I, and Roger Mortimer and Dan Jones' own account of the Peasants' Revolt). It is also probably too long for a casual reader who merely wants the briefest overview to the subject. In some ways a book like this has been overtaken by wikipedia in which you can start with a story and pursue it according to your own interests. Nevertheless it is well written and enjoyable.

February 2014; 601 pages

"The Snow Child" by Eowyn Ivey

In 1920s Alaska, an ageing farmer and his barren wife are struggling to survive the long winter on their farmstead. They are beginning to despair. Then they make a snow girl and encounter a real girl who lives out in the snow. Is she a real child or is she a fairy they have conjured up? And what will happen when their neighbour's son falls in love with her?

This is a weird fairy tale which never quite decides whether reality or magic is in charge. But it comes alive in the three dimensionality of the characters and in their contradictory and mutating responses to the snow child. And it becomes wonderful in the breath-taking descriptions of Alaska: "The sun had slipped behind a mountain, and the light had fallen flat .... the flutter of moth wings on glass ... and the way dawn threw itself across the cow pond." It becomes wonderful in the compassionate treatment of childlessness and in the understanding of the hopes and fears of an ageing man pitted against an unforgiving landscape, uncertain whether he will have the strength, the power and the endurance to survive. Even faced with disaster, the couple bicker because they are too proud to admit defeat or to ask for help; sometimes too proud to be gracious when they cannot avoid being helped. And it reaches perfection in the response of the man who is not a father to the possible dishonouring of the woman who is not a daughter.

Runner-up for the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

A beautiful book. February 2014; 404 pages

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

"Tender is the night" by F Scott Fitzgerald

"Tender is the night, and haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne" wrote Keats in his Ode to a Nightingale. But who in Fitzgerald's complex novel is the nightingale who "wast not born for death"?

Is it the hero, the intriguingly-named Dick Diver (Fitzgerald has quite a lot of sometimes crude phallic imagery), who is the master of ceremonies and trend-setter at the Riviera beach in the opening scenes but whose infatuation with film starlet Rosemary Hoyt (who starred in Daddy's girl and is contractually and temperamentally unable to grow up) and the cares and worries imposed by looking after his wife Nicole (who is schizophrenic as the result of her father raping her when she was a little girl)  lead to his problems with alcohol, his eventual social death and final disappearance? Certainly Dick is the only who who seems to grow old in the novel. And so Dick represents the real world while the bright young things frolic in France.

Perhaps Dick is also Fitzgerald himself, worn down with his care of Zelda, and unable to fulfil the promise of his early work (Dick writers a medical text book as a young man which is a big hit but his muse deserts him and his work becomes an endless rearrangement of his first magnum opus).

If this is Dick's tragedy and he is the tragic hero, where did it all go wrong? His sin was, as a psychiatrist, to fall in love with a patient. As a father figure this is another reiteration of the incest theme. Does he have a tragic flaw? Perhaps it is that he allows himself to be bought too easily. There is a moment, in Paris, when he appears to have money troubles: he has to find the right bank teller to cash his cheque. But he seems to live his charmed and gilded life off his wife's money although Fitzgerald seems clear that this was not what prompted him to marry her. 

Did I enjoy the book? I found it difficult. It starts with meaningless people leading meaningless lives on a beach in the South of France (bizarrely, there is a duel fought) and then it moves to Paris where Rosemary, the perpetually reinvented virgin, throws herself at Dick and where there are two unexpected murders. The book then flashbacks to Dick meeting Nicole and rushes forward to their life after the South of France; Dick pursues Rosemary and ends up in jail. In part three Dick, urged on by Nicole, makes an appalling social gaffe, bribes two women out of a French jail, and becomes old. Since the society has no use for an old man he is thrown aside.

I adored the way Fitzgerald weaves colour into the narrative. On page 1 he mentions rose, pink, cream, purple, blue and pink again. The Riviera sea is described as agate, cornelian , green, blue and, in an obvious tribute to Homer, wine-dark. 

I was a little disappointed when I discovered that Dick "stripped off his clothes and dove literally into a heavy sleep" but perhaps this is the first use of the word literally to not mean literally. There are also clear moments of racism typical of the period when the book was written: "No mature Aryan is able to profit by a humiliation" for example. And Dick refuses to treat a homosexual although there seems to be an implicit assumption that homosexuality is a mental disease.

'Tender is the night' is a mature novel with a fascinating character at the heart of it but I found it neither a page-turner nor a great read. 

February 2014; 338 pages

Also reviewed on this blog:
Fitzgerald's The Last Tycoon: still enigmatic but a little more straightforward; unfinished alas

"The Battle of Quiberon Bay 1759" by Nicholas Tracy

Three star: despite the nautical language I really enjoyed this book.

I began life in the little-known town of Sunbury-on-Thames. One of the few historic buildings was Hawke House, where Admiral Sir Edward Hawke had lived and died. I used to drink in the pub opposite, called the Admiral Hawke in his honour. (It had begun life as The Railway although the railway had been built over a mile away due to a last minute diversion; after a hundred years of having the wrong name in the wrong place it changed title; I wonder if it still exists?)

Quiberon Bay is a battle that, like Hawke and like Sunbury, deserves to be better known. It was the culmination of the 'Year of Victories' in which the English, led by William Pitt the Elder, with their allies Prussia, comprehensively defeated the French on land and particularly sea during the Seven Years War. 1759 led directly to the establishment of Canada and to the British Raj in India; the Seven Years War saw the establishment of British Sea Power and the first stirrings of the British Empire. And Quiberon Bay was the equivalent of Trafalgar, a do-or-die battle that prevented a French invasion by decisively smashing the French fleet.

Tracy tells this story well. Despite the fact that I really don't understand most of the nautical terms. I can just about construct some sort of, possibly inaccurate, picture from "dropped her best bower anchor, and rounded to in twelve fathoms" but I get confused with leeward, starboard and windward. I am not even certain whether a 'westerly' wind blows towards or away from the west! As for , or 'haul his wind', "line of bearing and wedge" and "warping" ships, I can guess but I guess my guesses are probably wrong.

It might as well be French to me. So Tracy throws in the occasional passage of untranslated French. This, as readers of my blog will know, is a particular 'bete noire' (black beast) for me. Writers are supposed to communicate with their readers. So don't use jargon or, worse, foreign languages without translations!

I can forgive the naval terms. Most of Tracy's readership will be fans of naval history and will understand the sailing expressions. But a glossary would certainly help the general reader.

Having said this, I really enjoyed this book. He writes well so that the bulk of the book which explains the context to the battle and the political aftermath fairly zips along. He opened my eyes to difficulties I had never really considered before. For example, you need speed to either escape from or catch up with your enemy. Besides ship design and sails and seamanship to deploy the right amount of sails for the right winds, your hull needs to be clean or barnacles (this was just before copper sheathing of hulls made they stayed clean longer). Clean hulls equal fast ships. So Hawke was obliged to rotate his ships back to dock for regular cleaning. This, together with the vagaries of poor weather, the difficulty of provision supply, and the fact that Plymouth was not yet a major and Portsmouth was too far away, made his blockade of Brest all but impossible. He was remarkable in that he kept it up for so long. Perhaps the British Empire was founded on Hawke's ability to defeat the barnacle!

One little quibble. I think that on page 32 Professor Tracy meant Robert Walpole, British Prime Minister, rather than Horace (his son who was only 9 at the time and probably incapable of sending a fleet to the West Indies).

Hawke should be better known! January 2014; 189 pages

"Trilby" by George Du Maurier

Three stars: a classic novel but not as great as its reputation might suggest.

George du Maurier was an Anglo-French Victorian artist who, having studied in Paris alongside James Whistler, became a contributor to Punch (both satirical writing and cartoons) who wrote three novels late in life, the second being the best-seller Trilby. He was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of novelist Daphne du Maurier whose biographies of Bramwell Bronte and Francis Bacon I have reviewed in this blog.

Artist's model Trilby O'Ferrall, living in Paris of mixed Anglo-French parentage, meets three British artists. All three fall in love with her but one, nicknamed Little Billee, proposes. Then his mother, horrified that he is going to marry a woman of an inferior social class (and one who has posed nude) interferes and persuades Trilby to promise to leave Paris and never see Little Billee again. Little Billee becomes ill through grief and is taken back to England.

Five years later all of Europe is rocked by the sensational singing star Madame Svengali. Little Billee, now a successful artist, meets up with his three old friends to return to Paris to see her. They realise that she is Trilby. This is a surprise because the old Trilby was tone deaf. Herr Svengali was an acquaintance in Paris; he was a marvellous pianist. They meet him but he spits at Little Billee and they fight.

How has Trilby learned to sing? Will Little Billee be able to meet her again and propose again? Will true love conquer all?

True to his satirical nature, du Maurier's tone throughout is light and teasing. This makes the creation of the monster Svengali, who became a Gothic Horror character along the lines of Dracula or Frankenstein, more compelling. But the bulk of the novel focuses not on Svengali and his evil plans but on Little Billee and his tribulations and on his two mates. This is a shame because while Trilby is a brilliant character and Svengali, although stereotyped, is a worthy villain, Little Billee is a colourless milksop. Indeed, the three British artists make up a single character between them. Du Maurier's main intent seems to be on making gentle fun of the artistic bohemian community in 1850s Paris; the story sometimes seems incidental to this. In fact, the true chief villain is Little Billee's mum whose narrow bourgeois sensibilities prevent love's true dream.

Du Maurier is clearly critical of the suffocating late Victorian society in which marriage was only possible between two people of appropriate class. Other characters include a French Duke who marries an ugly American for her father's millions and a gentlemen who damns himself by going into trade (retail drapery no less) and then marries the boss's daughter. DM also dislikes the Church: Little Billee is an avid reader of Darwin's Origin of Species and argues with a clergyman who might otherwise have been his father-in-law; Trilby makes an impassioned speech explaining why she didn't need religion to be assured of a place in heaven. But at the same time, DM is a racist (Svengali is the stereotype evil German Jew, wickeder and more horrible than Fagin) and hints at a belief in eugenics (he endorses Trilby's nude modelling on the basis that if we were all nude it would have the advantage that ugly people wouldn't marry and propagate their ugly genes and he makes the same point about the ugly American heiress).

In many ways this is a complex and fascinating book (even if sidetracked from the main story for most of the time). However, it is made virtually unreadable by the author's repeated use of French within the narrative. There is some French on nearly every page. I was fortunate to have a book with notes which translated almost all of this but I had to continually flick to the back to discover what was going on. To make it even less readable, Trilby talks in slang Parisian, Svengali talks with a heavy German accent rendered by the author by the swapping of letters such as b and p (so that bien becomes pien and petit becomes betit) and one of Little Billee's friends speaks French with a heavy English accent, thus combiang for combien and je prong for je prends. So even Google Translate would find this difficult! I have repeatedly in this blog condemned the use of untranslated foreign language in books on the grounds that it is only there to make the author look clever and the reader feel stupid but the frequency of DM's use of French, whilst no doubt adding to the characterisations, made Trilby far less readable than it would otherwise have been.

I was interested by the expression 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Gentleman, Apothecary, Ploughboy, Thief' which is presumably is a late Victorian version of the modern 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief'.

An interesting book which perhaps betrayed the fact that du Maurier was but a beginner as a novelist. January 2014; 302 pages.

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

"The Curious Habits of Doctor Adams" by Jane Robins

Four star: potentially my favourite true crime book of 2014; definitely will be on the short list.

John Bodkin Adams practised medicine in Eastbourne; he was particularly solicitous of old ladies. Many of them died under his care, often after he had prescribed for them huge amounts of morphine, heroin and barbiturates. Many left him money or possessions; he liked posh cars and he was particularly greedy and avaricious for 'mementoes' such as gold pencils that he picked up even while the patient was still alive. 42% of those died of 'cerebral thrombosis' according to his death certificates (three times the expected average of about 14%). Was he a mass murderer?

Jane Robins presents the evidence and charts the history of the police investigation, at the end of which we are left in little doubt that he was guilty. Then she describes the trial and new evidence comes to light. Was Adams killing for gain or was it euthanasia? Or was he simply trying to ease suffering without properly calculating that the effect of his treatment might be to shorten life?

This is a true crime as exciting as any whodunnit and the final result is in doubt until almost the very end.

Riveting. January 2014; 284 pages