The Scarlet Papers - Matthew Richardson

 Apparently a debut spying novel, The Scarlet Papers is very impressive indeed.   Matthew Richardson has tackled all the major tropes of the British genre and acquitted himself splendidly.   Moles within the SIS, seedy postwar compromises, double agents, triples, illegals, even the real-life embodiment of super-evil, Mad Vlad.

Max Archer, failed MI6 applicant turned failed academic, is summoned to meet the legendary Scarlet King, first and only female C, active in the field from 1946 all the way to 1992.   Now in her 90s, it seems she wants to publish her tell-all autobiography but needs Max, author of two failed books on Philby and other traitors, to fact-check it.

Obviously, a recipe for disaster.   The powers-that-be can't have that sort of thing coming out.  Some of Scarlet's secrets are big enough to bring down governments, let alone their creepy secret agencies.   The chase is on and it's Max who finds himself on the front-line, with only a dual national private intelligence operative to help him.

Again, Richardson handles this remarkable well.  The theme is preposterous, but then so are all actual spying scandals.   Richardson has not only done his homework, fleshing out the narrative with historical parallels, but he brings it right up to date with the botched Skripol poisoning - one off-the-books op for Scarlet, post-retirement, is accompanying the swapped Skripol to the UK.

The best thing, though, is that the action is suitably thrilling.   I enjoyed The Scarlet Papers hugely and will be searching the shelves for more by Mr Richardson.

The Platform Edge - Mike Ashley (ed)

 From the British Library series 'Tales of the Weird, comes this collection of neglected ghost stories set on the rail system.   Mike Ashley always tries to avoid the well-known regulars, thus there is no 'The Signalman' by Dickens.

There is, however, 'A Short Trip Home' by, of all people, F Scott Fitzgerald, which turns out to be startlingly effective.   Of the Victorian entries I liked 'Railhead' by Perceval Landon, of whom I had never heard but who turns out to have been a friend of Kipling (he lived in a cottage at Batemans) and the author of 'Thurnley Abbey', a ghost story which M R James considered 'almost too horrid.'  I must look it out.

Of the more modern ones, I am always intrigued byR Chetwynd-Hayes, represented here by 'The Underground'.   Of those inbetween, I really liked 'A Subway Named Mobius' which, according to editor Mike Ashley, is the only short story by American astronomer A J Deutsch.

A good collection, then, casting light on several intriguing writers.

The Ariadne Objective - Wes Davis

 This is the story of the SOE in Crete.  It syntheses the personal accounts of Paddy Leigh Fermor and Billy Moss (see various posts on this blog over the last couple of months) with the 'universal' approach of pure military historians like Antony Beevor.   It works well and is probably the best introduction to the subject.  What Davis brings to the party is deeper research than Fermor or Moss could ever have achieved.  Davis, for example, gives us the names of the crew of the bomber that dropped Fermor but was unable to drop Moss onto the Cretan massif in February 1944.   Where Davis differs from other accounts - for example, the type of bomber it was that carried Fermor and Moss - I tend to side with Davis.  In this instance, for example, why would a British crew fly an American bomber?

Davis is particularly could on John Pendlebury, the eccentric British academic who carried out the groundwork for Fermor and Moss (and Xan Fielding, come to that) and who died the ultimate hero's death during the Fall of Crete in 1941.  Pendlebury gets a chapter to himself - richly deserved.   Davis slightly plays down the abduction of General Kreipe in April '44, which reflects its importance with historical retrospect but does not reflect the fervour it raised at the time.

Obviously I am now quite familiar with the central story but Davis adds a lot of fresh detail and has a 100% engaging style.  I thoroughly enjoyed The Ariadne Objective.  I recommend it to generalist and specialist alike.

Nothing More Than Murder - Jim Thompson

 Nothing More Than Murder (1949) is a pulp psychological thriller knocked out by Thompson at the height of US film noir.   It is begging to be adapted by Chandler and directed by Fritz Lang with either Robert Ryan or Sterling Hayden in the lead.   It even has a movie house setting.

Joe Wilmot, a former juvenile delinquent, has built up a thriving picture house in the town of Stoneville.   Ok, he got the premises by marrying the heiress of local bigwigs but he built it up, saw off the competition and negotiated his way through the bewildering and wildly corrupt picture distribution business.   Joe's wife, Elizabeth, has a habit of bringing home strays, the latest of whom is a pubescent Plain Jane called Carol Farmer.   Inevitably Joe and Carole have a fling.   Inevitably Elizabeth finds out.   She wants out - more importantly she wants half the value of the business.

A murder plot is concocted whereby they will lure a housekeeper to Stoneville.   Carol kill her and they will burn the woman's body in a fire in the garage where Joe stores and rewinds and checks his films.   Joe will then claim on Elizabeth's life insurance and mail her the lot.

It sounds like the perfect murder.   Of course there's no such thing.   Suspicion falls on Joe, Carol gets clingy, Joe tries to scam his way out of the jam, only to fall victim to the several scams of others.   Thompson could concoct this sort of story in his sleep.   He keeps it short and punchy and the reader is happy to tag along for the ride.   It's not Thompson at his very best - King Blood is my favourite - but it's still miles better than most of his rivals.

Gold, Frankincense and Dust - Valerio Varesi

Parma is shrouded in autumnal mist.   Commissario Franco Soneri is called to a body found on the verge of the autosrada, where there has been a multi-vehicle pile-up.   A lorry-load of bulls have broken loose and there is a Roma camp close by.   The body has been badly and deliberately burnt.

The victim turns out to be a beautiful young Romanian girl with links to the Roma people.  She operated under various names and had a string of well-off older lovers who have different perspectives on her character.   Whilst they certainly give her presents, she is not a prostitute.   Her day job seems to have been cleaning for a specialist firm of goldsmiths.   She was, however, having an intense affair with the husband of the proprietor and was three months pregnant by him.

Soneri investigates at a leisurely pace.  We are gently introduced to the unique working of the Italian crime and judicial system.   The book was written in 2007 and it is therefore just about credible that a middle-aged commissario like Soneri should still be immune to technological advances.   Soneri does things old-style.   He believes that coincidences happens, that people are fallible, and all will become clear in the end.   His private life is going through a troubled time, so he increases his visits to local bars and trattoria.  He meets a down-at-heel marchese whose aristocratic demeanour gets him carte blanche for his eccentricities.   He too is one of nature's philosophers and his interactions with Soneri are highlights of the story.

I was reminded of Camilleri's Mantalbano novels.  The focus on food, regionality, character - alongside a wry commentary of the current state of affairs.   Reading it was pure pleasure.   I'm no expert on translations from the Italian but I will certainly keep an eye out for translator Joseph Farrell's versions of Dario Fo's plays.  In fact I think I might Google them now...

Patrick Leigh Fermor, An Adventure - Artemis Cooper

 This is a superb account of a long life, well lived.  Fermor was a son of the Raj, brought up by effectively a single mother, who failed at school and, aged 18, set off to walk from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople, an adventure which changed his life.

Fermor was great at languages and making friends.   These skills brought him out of Rumania in 1939 and into the Intelligence Corps.   From there it was the Special Operations Executive and undercover work on what the Nazis called Fortress Crete.   Medals and public recognition came with the abduction of General Heinrich Kreipe in 1944 (see my review of Ill Met by Moonlight, below).

After the war Fermor settled in Greece and became a famous travel writer.  Ultimately this led to a knighthood.  He died, aged 96, in 2011.

I have already commented on Cooper's literary DNA and skills (see my review of her Cairo, below).  By the time she wrote this, in 2012, her skills had developed even further.   Once you know about her, it's good fun to see how she underplays her famial links with Fermor in the final third of the book.   Her husband visits him in Greece, but she doesn't mention herself being there.   Her father and grandmother were close friends with Fermor and she herself has a Greek forename.   Coincidence?

But that's just an extra for those in the know.   Anyone would derive tremendous pleasure from this book.   It is a rare gift to be able to write about war, travel and the making of books with equal care and aplomb.

Snow Country - Yasunari Kawabata

 Kawabata won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, so you have to wonder why he is so little known in the West.  It can't be because he is too Oriental, because Mishima can be equally esoteric.  It might be a translation problem (Edward G Seidensticker, who translated this, was undoubtedly a great scholar but that doesn't necessarily make him a great translator), or it might just be that 120-page novellas are not popular here.

I should perhaps point out that 120 pages took me five sessions to read.   I so enjoyed the poetic quality of Kawabata's sparse writing that I wanted to enjoy every paragraph.  It is a leisurely story, and rightly so, as the protagonist Shimamura is a lazy man taking a lazy holiday in the mountains.

He comes to this particular hot springs resort because Komako is there.  Shimamura and Komako have met before and have had an affair, but now Komako has signed a four-year geisha contract to fund care for a young man who she looks after but who is engaged to another woman, Yoko.  Shimamura has encountered Yoko and the sick young man on the train journey north.   His interest has been piqued in more ways than one.

Shimamura is an urbane city man.   He has inherited enough money not to have to work.   He considers himself something of an intellectual and aesthete.  He has cultivated an interest in Japanese dance and collects Chijimi linen cloth.   Komako is not rich.   To get money she has adopted the archaic profession of a geisha.   She fits in a renewed affair with Shimamura between parties at which she drinks too much and filches cigarettes (she doesn't smoke).  In a sense she is flirting with modernity (the novel was written in 1934), but the two lifestyles are always going to clash.   In any event, the casual love affair is never going anywhere.   Shimamura already has a wife and children, who he seemingly doesn't care much about.  Indeed, he doesn't seem to care much about anything.

The allusive, meandering style is deliberately misleading.  The novel in which very little happens is always leading to a tragic climax.  Old and new Japan come together.  An old traditional barn in the mountain resort is acting as a cinema.  The film jams in the projector, sets on fire and burns the place down.  A shocking death finally jars Shimamura into life and Kawabata ends with the most beautiful paragraph of all.