Mississippi Roll - George R R Martin (ed)

 What attracted me to this was the shared setting with Fevre Dream - a Mississippi steamboat actually mentioned in that novel.  Actually, that was an earlier incarnation of the steamboat here, built by an ancestor of the captain here.  And as part of the Wild Cards series of more than twenty novels and stories by forty-plus writers, all edited by Martin, who created the central premise: that is, an alien virus released over New York in the aftermath of World War II, which either kills those infected (Black Queens), mutates them into monsters (Jokers), or grants them super powers (Aces or, less 'super', Deuces).

Wilbur Leathers is in New York on his honeymoon when the virus was released in September 1946.  He is not infected, nor is his wife, and they achieve his post-war dream, a new version of the family steamboat, a new Natchez, steaming up and down the Mississippi.  Five years later he's struggling to pay the bills - and he owes some very unpleasant people.  On their behalf Marcus Carpenter comes aboard and demands payment.  A fight breaks out.  Carpenter pulls a gun.  Leathers finds himself suddenly outside his body - then inside Carpenter's.  Wilbur is the actual steam now, broiling Carpenter from the inside out.

Wilbur is still aboard the Natchez sixty-five years later.  He has learned how to use steam to manifest himself but he cannot speak (though he can pick up the tools with which to write) and he cannot leave the boat and go ashore.  But, all in all, it's not such a bad afterlife.  The Natchez is doing better now, partly because of its famous steam ghost.  This particular trip is up to the Tall Stacks Race in Cincinnati - and there are several complications.  A significant number of Joker refugees from Kazakhstan have been smuggled aboard, 'illegal immigrants' being sought by the authorities for deportation to an island off Northern Ireland.  And the consortium which now owns the Natchez is planning to turn her into a floating fixed-mooring casino.  With her boilers stripped out and sold for scrap, what then happens to steam-ghost Wilbur.

This is the storyline which is then developed by six writers (part of the Wild Cards Trust).  In practice, the Wilbur story is written in eight episodes or parts scattered through the book (but double parts at the beginning and end) by Stephen W Leigh.  Five other stories, by other authors, are set within this framework, self-contained in so much as they focus on different sets of characters, but all linked to the main story.  The quality of these varies, naturally, but all are good.  My personal favourite was the last one, 'Under the Arch' by David D Levine - but would I have enjoyed it so much without being led to it by the others?  I also really enjoyed the end twist.

This sort of gaming-as-series-fiction is a side-alley of sci fi I haven't come across before.  I will certainly look out for more of Wild Cards in particular.

Out of this World - Graham Swift

Swift is interesting: one of those writers from circa 1980, he won the Booker fairly early and then never really rose any higher in public perception.  He was there with Amis fils, Ian McEwen, even Salman Rushdie, back in the day, but not really now.  Scribner, however, seem to have done a substantial reissue of his backlist in these smart, clean paperbacks, and I thought I'd give him a go.

Firstly, you don't really get the title until the end.  The revelation is okay, but it's not worth waiting for.  Otherwise, the story is presented through a series of monologues, mainly those of Harry Beech, a sixty-four year-old former war photographer, and his daughter Sophie, thirty-six, who is married and living in the US.  Sophie is talking to her psychotherapist, Dr Klein.  We don't really know who Harry is talking to - himself?

Harry and Sophie have never been close.  After her Greek mother Anna died in a plane crash, Sophie has been brought up by her grandfather Robert Beech, MD of Beech Munitions Company, one-armed, holder of a Victoria Cross.  Robert, of course, fought in World War I; he was the third son, never expected to take over the family business, but both his brothers died in the trenches.  His wife died giving birth to Harry in 1918.  Robert and Harry were never close.  But the book begins with father and son in a rare moment together, watching the first Moon landing on TV.

Harry served during the second war.  He got shifted into intelligence, where he developed his photography.  Post war, he documented the Nuremberg Trials, which is where he met Anna.

In 1972 everything changes.  Robert Beech and his chauffeur are killed by a terrorist car bomb.  Both Harry and Sophie witness the explosion.  It is the beginning of their estrangement.  Harry, who coincidentally was due to fly to Belfast later that day to photograph the Troubles, gives up journalism altogether.  Sophie, due to go to University, goes off to Greece where she meets and marries cheerful Joe.  Joe is in the tourist business and in 1982, when the main body of the story is set, runs a company selling Olde England to US tourists.

By 1982 Harry is a specialist in aerial photographer, for field archaeologists, mainly.  He has met a much younger woman and plans to marry her.  He finally reaches out to Sophie, inviting her to the wedding.,  Meanwhile, the ridiculous Falklands War happens - such a stunt, such an absurd final convulsion of imperialism, that Harry is reminded of the Trojan War rather than wars he covered in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East.  Does that make his half-Greek daughter Iphigenia?

It's a many-layered novel, touching on many themes, but mainly the disintegration of family.  It was written in 1988, is very much of his time, but none the worse for that.  It was interesting, well-written, and had several compelling male characters.  Sophie, however, is just a pampered bitch, therefore the story lacks balance.  That is probably its only fault.  I was entertained and impressed, always a good combination.  I will try more.

The Shameless - Ace Atkins

Before finding The Shameless, all I knew of Ace Atkins was that he had been chosen to continue the Spenser novels of the late Robert B Parker.  Now it turns out that Atkins has written a whole bunch of novels in his own right, including a hatful of True Crime Novels which seem right up my street.

The Shameless is the ninth in his Quinn Colson series.  It matters not at all that I hadn't read the previous eight - Atkins has used the ingenious device of a couple of podcasters from New York who come to Tibbehah County, Mississippi, to investigate a young man's mysterious death thirty years earlier, who inevitably unearth Colson's back-story.  Colson was at school with the late Brandon Taylor; both were avid hunters given to disappearing into the woods.  Quinn Colson famously came back, poor old Brandon didn't.  Eventually the local sheriff found him with his brains blown out.  Suicide, the sheriff decided.  The sheriff back then was Quinn Colson's uncle.  He, too, shot himself twenty years later.

Back in 1990 Quinn Colson and his best friend Boom were teenage tearaways.  Then they joined the military, became rangers, served in Afghanistan and became heroes.  Boom came home missing an arm.  Quinn returned to become sheriff.  Now he is married to Maggie who, back in the day, just happened to be Brandon Taylor's girlfriend.  When he married Maggie, Quinn also took on her son from her previous marriage - who, of course, is called Brandon.

While the podcasters did into the past, Quinn Colson has more than enough trouble to deal with in the present day.  Senator Jimmy Vardaman is running for the governorship.  Vardaman is a huckster, claiming to be against the corrupt political system, promising to bring traditional values back to Mississippi.  Obviously he is corrupt as hell, riding on criminal money instead of the traditional vested interests.  Quinn Colson doesn't care a damn for Vardaman or his personal militia; he is after the Syndicate who control him.

It's a dense and dangerous system in which it's well night impossible to tell the bad guys from the good.  It gets even more complicated when an anonymous letter to Maggie Colson leads to Quinn finding the remains of a young woman, not far from where Brandon Taylor was found, dating back to the same time he died.

I loved the deep back-story to The Shameless.  I really enjoyed Atkins' writing style - sharp, intelligent, but retaining a flavour of William Faulkner and other chroniclers of the Deep South.  I've got some serious catching up to do with Mr Atkins.

Fevre Dream - George R R Martin

 Everybody's heard of George R R Martin.  After Game of Thrones he's got to be one of the most famous living writers.  But not everyone has read him.  Me, for instance - Fevre Dream is my first Martin, bought because it's a vampire novel and therefore my cup of tea.

It's certainly that.  Abner Marsh is a steamboat owner down on his luck who dreams of captaining the fastest steamer on the Mississippi.  Along comes the mysterious Joshua York, who offers him precisely that.  Together, as partners, they create the Fevre Dream, using York's money and Marsh's expertise.

Things start going wrong on the maiden voyage.  The fastest steamship on the river is constantly being delayed by York's nocturnal trips ashore.  Marsh confronts his partner, who reveals the truth.  I don't think it's giving too much away to say it's about vampires.  I've already stated the fact - it's what drew me to the book.  What kept me at the book, among many other things, is Martin's take on vampires, which includes the idea of the bloodmaster, the dominant vampire, the pale king.  Is it Joshua or his rival, plantation owner Damon Julian.  Well, one of them has Abner Marsh as his partner, the other Sour Billy Tipton.  Marsh is said to be the ugliest man on the Mississippi but he's honest and honourable.  Sour Billy runs him close in the looks department, but keeps his true, profound ugliness on the inside.

With this material Martin embarks on his forte, the adventure quest as full of twists and turns as the great river itself.  He carries it off perfectly, his writing just sufficiently elevated to entertain the higher aspects of the reader's mind while the pounding plot grips the emotions.  I liked it so much that I have already picked up what looks like a linked project edited by Martin.  Mississippi Roll is a portfolio collection by other writers set aboard the steamship Marsh travels aboard after he has lost control of the Fevre Dream.  I can't wait.

Death Likes It Hot - Gore Vidal as Edgar Box

 Mix Agatha Christie with the bitter wit of Gore Vidal and what do you get?  You get the young Vidal writing as Edgar Box and this, the third of his three genteel mysteries featuring PR man Peter Sargeant II.

Sargent is invited to spend a week at the Long Island mansion of wealthy widow Rose Veering.  It's a select group of guests: Rose's niece Mildred and her artist husband Paul Brexton; Allie Claypoole and her brother Fletcher, and later their nephew; and noted penwoman Mary Western Lung.  Tragedy strikes when poor Mildred, who has suffered mental health problems, drowns whilst swimming.  Is it an accident or perhaps suicide?  The police seem convinced that it's murder.  Then Fletcher Claypoole is most definitely murdered.  The police make a swift arrest but Sargeant, who has form as an amateur sleuth has other ideas.

It's charming, funny, clever and, obviously, beautifully written.  Great fun.

Outside Looking In - T C Boyle

It's no secret, the high opinion I hold of T C Boyle.  It's only a month or two since I reviewed A Friend of the Earth on this blog.  I have to admit, though, that I prefer his offbeat picaresque novels to his offbeat academic novels.  I was disappointed by The Inner Circle (2004) and likewise not hugely enthused by this, an account of the early experiments with LSD by Dr Timothy Leary and his acolytes from Harvard.  There's no question about Boyle's ability - he writes like a dream, with irresistible pace and vigour (second only to Stephen King among contemporary US writers, in my opinion) and is always on top of his subject matter.  But Leary, and before him Alfred Kinsey, were the academic mindblowers of Boyle's youth; he is of the generation that came after, and either revered or disowned them.  For him, you have to be one or the other; there is no middle ground.

So here Boyle bolts a fictional grad student, Fitz Loney, onto Leary's ream at Harvard.  Fitz is older than some of his peers, having had to earn a living to support his wife and now teenage son.  He needs Leary's support for his thesis and thus starts attending psilocybin Saturday nights at Leary's house.  He supportive wife Joanie goes with him and throws herself wholeheartedly into the process.  This leads them, in Leary's wake, to Mexico and then New York State where properties are put at the disposal of the 'family' of academics and their children.  Psilocybin is supplanted by LSD, referred to as 'the sacrament', and academic research goes out of the window in favour of continual tripping and sex.

I had no problem keeping with the book but it didn't enthrall me.  The characters, many of them of course real, never really developed.  Leary in the book is as consensus history views him - an intellectual light-weight, a showman opportunist rather than a dedicated teacher.  Is that really all he was?  If so, why did so many intellectual and artistic heavyweights fall for his charms?  I suspect these are questions that any novel involving him so centrally has to address.  And Boyle really doesn't.

On the plus side, I was intrigued when Boyle swapped the narrative viewpoint from Fitz to Joanie for the middle section.  I liked the slightly different standpoint he uses here: where before and after it is 'Fitz' who experiences events, in this section it is just 'she' and 'her', which works well in contrast, and suits her character.  I also really liked the Prelude, set in 1943 Switzerland rather than Kennedy-era America, in which an obscure chemist develops and samples psilocybin, and which I found both funny and charming.

Ah well, we can't always have it all...

The Drop and The List - Mick Herron

 This is fun - two novellas associated with the Slow Horses of Slough House and Spook Street.  John Bachelor is not a Slow Horse - he's not that important.  He was always a low grade employee of the Secret Service and now he's a part-timer, working off-site, for peanuts.  Bachelor's role is called the milk round.  He looks after retired assets, former moles and agents now long retired, on Civil Service pensions, in safe, out-of-the-way accommodation.

Inevitably, old spooks die.  And Bachelor finds Dieter Hess dead in his chair, with a book on his lap and music on the CD player.  Not a bad way to go, and by no means unexpected.  Bachelor arranges the wake.  To his total horror, Diana Taverner, second desk at the Park, shows up, wanting a word.  Did Hess mention a second source of income?  How come Bachelor didn't know about the coded list under the carpet?

Bachelor needs to fix this - fast.  It doesn't take him long to figure out the code.  It's a list of people with German names.  Was Dieter a double?  Jackson Lamb soon identifies that problem.  But one of the names is more interesting than others.  A young woman, Hannah Weiss, living in England.  

That's The List.  The Drop opens with another of Bachelor's charges, Solomon Dortmund, witnessing an Old School 'drop' take place right in front of him in his favourite cafe.  He reports this to Bachelor, who shies away from reporting it to Lady Di.  Frankly, he'd rather she'd forgotten his existence, especially in his somewhat reduced circumstances.  But Solomon managed to get the name of the man making the drop out of a waiter and Bachelor asks a casual acquaintance of his at the Park to run the name.  All manner of chaos ensues as the snow starts to blanket London.

Herron really is on top of his form.  The clever thing here is the linkage of the two novellas.  Neither is sufficient for a novel, together they very nearly are.  And the linkage allows us the time to know more about the characters.  I hope we meet some of them again.

The Vodi - John Braine

 

The Vodi (1959) was Braine's second novel, successor to the seminal Room at the Top.  Braine was an Angry Young Man and so his is hero here, Dick Corvey.  Corvey is confined to a sanatorium with TB, which was a major plague in Britain as late as the 1950s.  He feels he is under a death sentence.  Even if he does recover, he can never hope to marry or find a decent job, such is the fear of contagion - even pub landlords keep special glasses for TB types and throw them away as unfit for use by normal people.

Everything in Dick's life has gone wrong all at once.  His father's business is on the skids, Dick's fiancee has deserted him for a normal, healthy man.  Dick childishly blames the bogey-woman he and his friend Tom dreamed up as schoolboys - Nelly, headwoman of the ratlike Vodi, who dwell in and the under the woods on the fringes of town.  Once Nelly has got her four teeth into you, she never lets go.

The novel is extraordinarily powerful,  Braine, who died in 1986, never equalled the success of Room at the Top, and was always defined by that book.  Ultimately he wrote a follow up, Life at the Top, and scripts for the TV version Man at the Top.  I had heard about The Vodi - mainly that it was not up to the Lampton saga.  Room at the Top I read and admired - and I was an absolute fan of Man at the Top with one of my favourite actors Kenneth Haigh.  But The Vodi is absolutely of the same standard.  Dick Corvey is not as iconic as Joe Lampton but the writing here is superb.  The descriptions of life in the industrialised North as it is about to begin its long slow death are captivating, those of the way we so recently treated TB sufferers are jaw-dropping.

The Order of the Day - Eric Vuillard

 An odd little book, this.  It's a novella, only 128 pages in larger than usual typeface with blank pages between sections.  It certainly isn't non-fiction, yet there's no plot and barely any character development.  It has lofty literary aspirations - it won the 2017 Prix Goncourt - but for me at least the occasional literary flourishes were more off-putting than stimulating.

So what is The Order of the Day?  I suppose it's a pen-portrait of strategic moves made by various of the great powers in the build-up to World War II.  It is a collection of snapshots of those who one way or other appeased the clearly deranged Fuhrer of Germany.  The Munich appeasement by British PM Chamberlain is not one of those featured.  Instead we get a slightly earlier meeting with Lord Halifax, Chamberlain's Foreign Secretary.  Mainly it's about the Anschluss of Austria.  The sections dealing with this shameful episode are the best parts of the book, and I especially enjoyed the descriptions of the stage-managed 'welcome' - the Austrian girls all waiting expectantly while Hitler struggles to get past his own tanks, which have got stuck in mud.  There is a passage discussing how Joseph Goebbels altered the film record to make it look triumphant and how we have come to accept this version as truth even when the facts are readily available.  Framing this episode are before and after scenes showing how the great German industrialists agreed to bankroll Hitler, and how after the war they all got away with their use of slave labour.

What makes the book important is, firstly, the emotional impact Vuillard manages to get into passages like those dealing with the experience of slave labour - no more than a couple of paragraphs, yet they take your breath away.  Secondly, and I suspect this is what prompted Vuillard to write the book, the realisation that our world today is not very different.  Populist sociopaths in power around the world, tearing up consensus, human rights, human dignity, to enrich first themselves and then their capitalist backers, themselves too rich to ever be prosecuted.

In some senses The Order of the Day is an unsatisfactory read.  Overall, though, it's an essential one.

The Long Glasgow Kiss (Revisited) - Craig Russell

Well, it had to happen.  Sooner or later I was going to read a book I'd read before and forgotten all about.  Now is that time.  Below is what I wrote back in January 2014.

"The second novel in Russell's 'Lennox' series sees the eponymous Canadian gumshoe chasing a Vietnamese Dragon (as opposed to a Maltese Falcon) round the extremely mean streets of early 1950s Glasgow.  Lennox is a brilliant idea - modern Tartan Noir with a hero straight out of 1940s US cinema noir.  One criticism: not having read the first, I was some way in before I realised it was supposed to be 1953-4.  Once I realised, though, I was hooked.  Russell works all the classic tropes - rival gangs, women of dubious virtue, boxing - and comes up trumps.  I didn't guess the final twist and that's all you really need from a detective plot.  There are now four in the series, and I'll be reading them all."

Well I haven't read any more.  In fact when I was reading this the second time I knew I'd encountered Lennox before and thought I must have read the first, albeit references to it here didn't trigger any memories.  It's still a good read.  This time through I did guess the denouement but there's probably a reason for that.  And albeit I found the writing a little sloppy for my eight-years-more-mature taste, I would still be perfectly happy to read others in the series - but hopefully not this one for a third time!