Judas 62 - Charles Cumming

 I have blogged before about how highly I rate Charles Cumming.   He is by some distance the best British spy novelist, very much the successor to John le Carre.   For me, Judas 62 confirms his status.  I have enjoyed everything I've read by Cumming, which is most of his work, but Judas 62 is so contemporary and so deeply plotted that I think he has hit a new high.

Judas 62 is the successor to Box 88 which I haven't yet read.  Box 88 is a specialist Secret Service operation combating biological weapons.   Lachlan Kite was tapped on the shoulder whilst still a studentt at Edinburgh in the early Nineties; now he is the senior man in London.   It is the summer of 2020 and the pandemic is raging.   News comes through that one of Box's former moles, now living as a retired academic in the States, has been murdered - assassinated, in facr, with Novichock in the same brand of eye medicine I use (AAAGH!).   The victim, Palatnik, was on Putin's Judas list, the traitors to the state greenlit for reprisal killing.   Kite, too, is on that list, at position 62, not as Lachlan Kite but as Peter Galvin, the alias he lived under when, in the long vacation of 1993, he went to Russia to extract their top biological scientist Yuri Aranov, acting on information supplied by the now deceased Evgeny Palatmik.

So we have two stories ingeniously intertwined, the Galvin-Aranov mission of 1993, and Kite's 2020 scheme to entrap the FSB agents responsible for Palatnik's murder.  Aronov, thirty years older but not a day more mature, is to be the bait because the KGB man in backwater Voronezh in '93, Mikhail Gromik, is now the officially retired ex-KGB oligarch living in the United Arab Emirates, secretly in charge of implementing the Judas list.   The proof of that is Galvin's name on the list.  Only Gromik knows who got Aranov out of Russia, but all that Gromik knows about him is the fake name.

As I say, it's brilliantly done - 500 pages that never once flag.   I must get hold of Box 88 and I genuinely can't wait to find out where the series goes next.

To Have the Honour - A A Milne

 You see the name A A Milne, you think Pooh, you perhaps think Toad of Toad Hall.   You almost certainly don't think witty grown-up West End comedies, yet it was as a playwright that Milne made his name and, no doubt, much of his money.

To Have the Honour was premiered at Wyndham's in the autumn of 1924, produced by and starring Sir Gerald du Maurier,, manager of Wyndham's and father of Daphne.   Du Maurier, in his fiftieth year, plays a matinee idol Balkan prince who finds himself a weekend guest in English surbubia and who turns out to be not or who he seems to be.

The plot is paper-thin but that doesn't matter.   This is a comedy of manners and, most interestingly, an exploration of assumed identity, the face we put on to both impress our peers and to cover own insecurities.

Angela Battersby has met Prince Michael in Monte Carlo, as you do, and has invited him to drop in at her father's house in leafy Wych Trentham if he happens to be in the area.    So he does.  Angela hurriedly scrapes together a dinner party of friends she thinks will be impressed.   But one of them recognises the imposter.   This moment, the exact midpoint of the play, is a total reversal of our expectations.   Far from exposing the fraud, the one in the know turns out to be another fraud and together they plot their way out of the situation.   They also turn out to be married to one another, a plot twist that should be preposterous and yet, with Milne's exquisite touch, seems unremarkable.

JenniferBulger, the wife the fake prince deserted, is content with her life as a non-existant general's widow in Wych Trentham, so Prince Michael - plain Michael Brown - has to make his excuses and leave.  He doesn't want to - he wants to be with Jennifer again - and so builds another fake story to explain the first.   It unravels in Act Three but still contrives to end happily.

Could To Have the Honour be successfully revived today?  I think so.   The issues - outward show, royalty in the modern monarchy, even a hint of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - are all relevant, and Milne is not as mannered as Coward.   In its way it is of-its-time as a Restoration Comedy and could be revived simply as an excellent period piece.

City on Fire - Don Winslow

 City on Fire is the first in what Winslow says will be his swansong trilogy.   A year or so ago Winslow announced he was ceasing to be an author in favour of full time political activism.   in fairness, he does both equally well.

Winslow has always been fundamentally a series writer.   He began with a series and his greatest achievement has been his Cartel trilogy, which certainly brought him prominence on this side of the Atlantic.   It is how me and most of my friends found him.   Is City going to equal Cartel?   Hard to say.   It is certainly a major achievement and clearly has the potential to become a masterpiece.

Winslow openly says it is a take on the Iliad.   Instead of Troy we have Winslow's birthplace, Rhode Island.   Instead of hero warriors we have ruthless mobsters, Italians, Irish, and African American.   We begin with the arrival of Helen - or in this case, Pam, an out-of-town beauty spotted enjoying the beach.    Pam unwittingly causes the break-up of old alliances.   Hitherto, the Irish and the Italians have kept to their distinct patches and the black mobsters are purely fringe players.   Rivalry over Pam changes all that.   Paulie Moretti wants her but the useless Liam Murphy wins her - and corrupts her.

Danny Ryan is our Achilles.   His father was once a major player in the game but became a drunk after being dumped with Danny by his showgirl mother.   The Murphys took over the docks and associated rackets.   Danny is now married to Terri Murphy.   He isn't given a seat at the top table.  He doesn't mind, he doesn't particular want to be a mobster.   But then Pat Murphy, the son and heir, is taken out in revenge for Paulie Moretti...   Terri falls pregnant, gives birth to the first Murphy grandson, then falls ill...

The characterisation and plotting are, as always, superb.   We never really know what is going to happen next or how characters will repsond.   Winslow has given himself an epic canvas and fills every inch.   The prose is nowhere near as punchy as in earlier works like Savages or Gentleman's Hour; that would be tiresome in an epic.   Instead it is terse but polished, always pitch-perfect.   I was enthralled, beginning to end.   A top writer on top form.

1979 - Val McDermid

 1979 is the first of the  semi-autobiographical Allie Burns series.   Like McDemid, Allie is a smalltown Scots girl who wins a place at a major English university and, after an apprenticeship on provincial English newspapers, lands a job on a major Scottish daily.

She's initially confined to 'miracle baby' stuff - so-called women's stories - in the sexisr world of Seventies journalism, but she has talent and literary style, and thus becomes involved in her colleague Danny Sullivan's breakthrough story about tax avoidance.   The problem is, the story came from Danny's adopted brother who is central to the scam.   Danny is praised by his colleagues, ostracized by his family.

When Allie happens upon a scoop of her own - the terrorist wing of Scots Nationalism, she naturally turns to Danny for support.  Only a man would be accepted undercover.   The story gets really big, verging on too big.   Allie and Danny get close, but not that close, because it turns out Danny is gay.   And Allie's friend and supporter from the Clarion's Women's Section is also not what she seems...

The background detaial - the Winter of Discontent - is brilliantly brought to life.   I remember it well.   The world of newspapers, pre-Murdoch, is very much another country.   The characters are compelling.   McDermind is, of course, at the pinnacle of her craft.   Only the best writers can get away with leaving the murder as long as she does.   I genuinely thought there wasn't going to be one - and it didn't bother me one jot.

An excellent book from one of the very best.   I'm looking forward to 1989.

No Tomorrow (Killing Eve 2) - Luke Jennings

 I enjoyed Codename Villanelle and TV Series One of Killing Eve.   Series Two I was less keen on and Series Three I avoided completely (I only just discovered there was a fourth).   Volume 2 of the books, though - No Tomorrow - I enjoyed tremendously.   Here Luke Jennings seems to find his feet, nailing down the core concept and filling out his characters, something the TV adaptation never really did.   Eve Polastri and Oksana Astankova (Villanelle) thus become real people we care about, Eve in particular - for example we believe she really loves her husband, Niko, which we never did in the TV version.

The original Jennings version is, of course, very different to the TV.   Other than the set-up and the two central women, the TV pretty much dispensed with Jennings' plot.  This was a mistake because the plot adds detail and credibility.   In No Tomorrow the picture painted (in 2018) of contemporary Russia is all too credible in 2023.  Jennings is forever tied to the TV series.  To be fair, would he have sold so many books without it?   Then again, would he have sold more with a more faithful adaptation?  These are the quandries of modern fiction.

Babette's Feast - Isak Dinesen

 Originally published in 1958 when Blixen/Dinesen was 73, this is one of her last collections whereas Seven Gothic Tales (reviewed below) was one of her first.  There is absolutely no difference in quality.  As with the Gothic Tales, there is a common theme.  Originally the title was Anecdotes of Destiny, which is exactly what they are, but I fully understand why Penguin have renamed the book.

There are five stories, only three of them substantial.  'Diver' and 'The Ring' really are just anecdotes, albeit excellent ones.  The substantial works are 'Babette's Feast', 'Tempests', and 'The Immortal Story'.  I was absorbed by them all.  In theory, I suppose, I should with my background (theatre) I should prefer 'Tempests', especially given that one of the few Shakespeare plays that still enthuses me is The Tempest.  Actually, though, my favourite was 'The Immortal Story.'   I think it was its oddness - a wealthy English tea merchant in Canton decides to re-enact a modern myth - and its circularity.  I have a theory that the tying up of narrative ends is one of Dinesen's defining traits.  And we must remember the original title.  These events, even the twists and turns of the plot, were all pre-ordained.

I continue to be amazed how the same person can write stories like these and Out of Africa.  I tell myself it is the ghastly, unwatchable film of the latter that puts me off and the book might be perfectly acceptable.  I'm still not going to read it.  I'm tempted to try The Angelic Avengers next.

The Slaves of Solitude - Patrick Hamilton

 The Slaves of Solitude is one of Hamilton's key novels, alongside Hangover Square and Twenty Thousand Streets under the Sky.   Published in 1947, it is set three or four years later, after America has joined the war but before D-Day.   The London Blitz has forced Edna Roache and thousands out of the capital but, in her case, only as far Henley-on-Thames or, as Hamilton calls it, Thames Lockdon.   Always a renter or lodger, she finds refuge Rosamund Tea Rooms, which has become a boarding house for the duration.  There, she shares with the old, the fading, the spinsters like herself.   A former schoolmistress, Roach is currently a publisher's reader, and so long as she commutes daily she is content.   But when her employer says she can work from home, the problems of communal living, the daily grind of despondency, becomes overwhelming.

To start with, things are looking up.   Edna has a friend, the ex-pat German, Vicki Kugelmann.   She even has an admirer, Lieutenant Pike, an American GI.   She also has an enemy of sorts, the bombastic bachelor Mr Thwaites, whose whims and eccentricities dominate at the Tea Rooms.   Then Vicki moves in and slowly takes over.   She charms Mr Thwaites, catches the eye of Lieutenant Pike, slowly but surely excluding Miss Roach.

The title is not only catchy, it is accurate.   War and its retrictions has transformed a whole class of people from active participants in society to passive slaves of solitude.  For such people it is not a case of cheer up and carry on; all they can do is endure.   For Roach everything changes when she challenges the convention and stands up for herself.    Then she is able to escape, returns to London, and comes back to life.   At the end of the day The Slaves of Solitude is a comic novel, and an excellent example of what a comic novel can do.