The Insider - Matthew Richardson

 Matthew Richardson's second novel is blisteringly up to date.   It asks the question all espionage afficianados are asking: just how deep does Vladimir Putin's interference run in contemporary western states.   Richardson starts with the obvious answer in Britain, which Britain was just beginning to wake up to when Richardson wrote The Insider in 2021, when first Dominic Cummings and then his clownish front man Boris Johnson both fell: Westminster was rotting from the top down.

Richardson then smartly turns the British situaiton on its head.   Both Cummings and to an extent Johnson were outsiders who used Russian money to break Britain.   It was an unusual coincidence that the supremely corruptible Johnson happened to be Mayor of London at the time it was dubbed Londongrad because Russian oligarchs were paying ludicrous sums to buy it.   That was an accident unlikely to be repeated.   Richardson therefore imagines (as the title makes clear) a government corrupted from the inside, a thirty year Putin plan to place a mole to the very top of the British Civil Service.

Solomon Vine, a disgraced head of counter-espionage, is summoned from unwelcome retirement when a Russian media tycoon is murdered at the Savoy.   Alexander Ivanov was Britain's mole with access to Putin's Kremlin.   He was so important, his existence so critical, that only four people knew about him: the Chief Secretary at the Foreign Office, the Cabinet Secretary, the head of MI6, the Chief of the Defence Staff and the National Security Adviser Emma Lockwood, who has summoned Vine.   If there is a mole in government circles, which Ivanov swore there was, it has to be one of these so-called 'Elders'.

Vine is given the highest possible security clearance so he can interview each one.   Very quickly two of them are murdered, clearly by the same person or team who killed Ivanov.   The suspect list is down to two.   But each murder victim has left clues for Vine.   There are files so secret that even MI6 doesn't have copies...

What makes The Insider so compelling is that it seems so simple.   Only two suspects...?   How can anyone get a full-length novel out of that?   Very cleverly is the answer.   And, even more important, wholly convincingly.   This is Russian interference as we all think we know it.   Yes, I guessed the mole by the midpoint, but I in no way guessed what the great plot actually was or the final twist.   It's the best contemoporary British spy novel I've read this year - and I've read some really good ones in 2025.   One of them was Richardson's first novel, My Name is Nobody, which I didn't like as much.   I've also read and reviewed the third, The Scarlet Papers, which was The Times' Thriller of the Year 2023, and which I do remember enjoying hugely.

A For Andromeda - Fred Hoyle and John Elliot

 ET doesn't always have to come on a ship...  A For Andromeda is the classic of British science fiction in which First Contact is via a complex message from the stars.    The remote aliens send a blueprint and the gullible and hawkish military-industrial complex of which Eisenhower warned only a year before Andromeda was published can't wait to build it.

That, of course, leads to further challenges and problems which the combination of super-scientist Hoyle and scriptwriter Elliot handle very well.   The book is of its time but the questions it asks and poses its characters are timeless.   The science, thanks to Hoyle, is as it stood in 1962.   So is the fiction, with British women just starting to emerge from the home into science.   Interestingly, the stable characters here - Judy Adamson the security specialist, Madeleine Dawnay the super-scientist, and Andromeda herself - are all women.   The computer-whiz John Fleming is unmistakably Hoyle, the truculent big brain who most times turned out to be right in the end.   The two research bases, Bouldershaw and Thorness are almost certainly Jodrell Bank and Windscale-Sellafield.

Yes, there's an element of the formulaic about A For Andromeda, but the ending caught me by surprise.

The Mammoth Book of Cthulhu - Paula Guran (ed)

 The subtitle, 'New Lovecraftian Fiction', is an exact description of the concept.   Virtually all the contributions are original to this collection.  By and large they bring Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos into the twenty-first century.   A majority are by women, which in itself casts a fresh light on Lovecraft's originals in which there are few if any women.   Lovecraft's personal attitude to women was to say the least unusual (see Houellebecq on Lovecraft, reviewed here earlier this month).   On that subject, and on Lovecraft's racism, the final item in the collection is a bracing non-fiction piece by Veronica Schanoes called 'Variations on Lovecraftian Themes.' 

There were no stories I didn't enjoy reading.   I thought the standard overall was high.   Naturally, some appealed more to me than others, a personal preference reflecting my own perception of Lovecraft rather than anything in the work itself.   I liked 'A Clutch' by Laird Barron, 'It's All the Same Road in the End' by Brian Hodge, 'I Believe That We Will Win' by Nadia Bulkin and (probably my favourite) 'In the Ruins of Mohenjo-Daro' by Usman T Malik.

Regular visitors to this blog will notice that I get through a fair few anthologies, particularly in speculative fiction.   Through that I am beginning to notice anthologists to look out for and who to avoid.   Paula Guran is definitely one of the former.

Absolution - Jeff VanderMeer

 Absolution is the fourth and final part of the Southern Reach Series, written ten years after the first trilogy came out - in one triple release - in 2014.

Southern Reach is the agency tasked with reclaiming the Forgotten Coast.   The problem is Area X, a space that has been sealed off beyond the Border, where bizarre things occur.   The first section of Absolution is the story of an early expedition in which biologists go to the Forgotten Coast to research alligators, some specimens of which they take with them.   In Area X they are plagued with carnivorous rabbits, each of which carries a camera.   The biologists cope with the rabbits, wiping them out the American Way, only for more rabbits to arrive with more cameras to munch up the dead rabbits.   Some of the cameras are captured.  They show videos of the the expedition members doing things they would never dream of doing.   Then one of their number goes rogue, morphing into something more than human, rampaging through the camp with one of the alligators as a sort of pet sidekick.

All this is gleaned by a longstanding agent known only as Old Jim, who is plucked off skid row and rehabilitated by the Central command of Southern Reach.   Part of his rehab involves puttting together the story of the expedition.   He becomes obsessed with the enigma "Rogue".

Next up, Old Jim is sent to the Forgotten Coast.  His cover is as the new owner of the local bar where expedition members drank twenty years before.   He is joined by his daughter Cass - only she isn't reeally Cass but another agent sent to spy on Old Jim.   They establish a real relationship and together get a long way into the central mystery of Rogue.   But at the last minute, after things have been getting increasingly weird for some time, the Border comes down.   How and where from are questions never answered.   All we know is that, one year later, another team is sent in to Area X to find out what happened and, perhaps, to recover Old Jim.

With this second team things start extremely weird.   We experience it all through the eyes of James Lowry, a foul-mouthed gung-ho action man, whose response is to shoot before thinking.  And with Lowry the last man standing - standing on the edge of the intestinal link with reality, discussing matters with his bio-hazard skin-suit - the tetralogy ends.

It is a powerful piece of work, perhaps best approached by reading the four novels in the intended order.  Nevertheless, VanderMeer dragged me in.   I genuinely couldn't stop reading, albeit I wasn't always enjoying myself.   Old Jim is a compelling character, Cass an effective mirror for him.   Lowry (Young Jim, ppssibly?) is less so and I didn't care much about his fate.   VanderMeer's writing is dense and sparky and I am definitely on the lookout for more.

H P Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life - Michel Houellebecq

 As stated in my last post, I had to buy this book as soon as I saw it listed in the front of Serotonin.   It arrived whilst I was reading Serotonin and I wolfed my way through it, finishing before I finished reading Serotonin.   Usually I try and space out my reading of authors I have suddenly discovered (no real reason for that, other than a general concept of neatness and variety).   In this case, however, the two really became one.

Lovecraft was Houellebecq's first publication, Serotonin his most recent translated into English.   Almost thirty years between them - and yet the tone, outlook and style is identical.   Short, snappy passages of intense writing marked by a profound pessimism.   The latter is very like Lovecraft, the former very much not.   Houellebecq's main preoccupation is Lovecraft's literary style and, though I have read most Lovecraft and not so very long ago, I hadn't really realised how odd that style is - so prolix, so arcane, archaic and artificial.   It is in fact a wall Lovecraft is building, not so much between author and reader as between reality and midnight black fantasy.   The same applies to Houellebecq's thesis as expressed in the subtitle, Against the World, Against Life.   Lovecraft's fiction is exclusively unreal, unworldly and not about life as we know it.  Like his style, his vision is absolutely unique.   There are no models he can have followed; those who follow him signally fail to achieve the overall mordancy.

Traditionally Lovecraft is seen as being reclusive and remote.   Houellebecq is at pains to point out this is not entirely true.   Lovecraft had friends.   He even had a wife (which I had not realised) and remained on good terms with her even after retreating back to his old home.   He was (and I did know this) enormously supportive of younger writers who wrote to him.   He won their affection and Houellebecq is much kinder than other critics to those like August Derleth who maintained Lovecraft's reputation after his death and, indeed, brought him into the literary mainstream.

This is a marvellous book, beautifully written, inscisive and empathic.   The inclusion of two of the 'master texts', The Call of Cthulhu and The Whisperer in Darkness is a wonderful bonus.

Serotonin - Michel Houellebecq

 For me, Serotonin was an extraordinary introduction to the work of one of France's most controversial contemporary writers.   Not only is Michel Houellebecq contemporary, he is also virtually my contemporary (he is a year younger).   Is that why we seem to have similar mindsets?

Houellebecq's protagonist, Florent, is solitary, reclusive and taking anti-depressants.   Yes, sounds familiar to me.   He is forty-six and undergoing a midlife crisis.   I was forty-seven when I had mine.   He is a successful bureaucrat with the European Agriculture Agency.   I was a successful local bureaucrat.   He hates the free market economy.  Yup.

His lovelife is complex and not very successful.   His Japanese girlfriend is extremely liberated sexually, but Florent hankers after Camille, who he now realises was The One.   Not that he will be much use to her.   His anti-depressant, Captorix, is now the most important thing in his life, and it has rendered him impotent.  (Captorix is fictional, but Houellebecq has done his research on anti-d's.)

Anyway, Florent resolves to quit his job and withdraw from life.   He sells his apartment in Paris, dumps his girlfriend, quits his job and moves into a hotel in a different part of the city.   He goes for a walk every day, eats out, but otherwise stays in his room, watching TV and reflecting on his past.

After a couple of months he decides to explore his past, revisit the key places and, if possible, contact those who matter.   He has a brief affair with one old girlfriend, which doesn't work.   He moves on to Normandy where he meets up with his college friend Aymeric, who lives in the family chateau and tries hard to make a living by farming in the traditional way.   Florent ends up living on the estate, where Aymeric teaches him how to shoot.   While Florent vegetates, Aymeric's life and business collapse.   He becomes involved with the yellow vest movement, with consequences.   Florent witnesses all this, wondering if he should get involved.   In the end he moves on, and tracks down Camille...

Serotonin is a complex and troubling read.   You don't always know where or when you are as you read, which is absolutely intentional.   Houellebecq favours short, punchy passages in short chapters.   I was fascinated, and whilst reading Serotonin, which was written in 2019, the year Houellebecq won his Legion d'Honneur  and seems to be his most recent book to appear in English, I bought and read his first book, a non-fiction study of H P Lovecraft's writing from 1989 - and the style and attitudes are absolutely the same.

His opinions are not necessarily mine.   Some I found offensive (but then I have had years of therapy as well as years of anti-depressants).   Nevertheless I am absolutely hooked on Houellebecq.