The Anarchy - William Dalrymple

 

I adored Dalrymple's Return of a King; this one not so much.  I knew no more about Afghanistan than I did about colonial India, but Dalrymple managed to educate me about the former - again, not so much about the latter.  Of course, the latter is even more complex, but I never felt confident about the geography or tribal ethnicity of the main protagonists of The Anarchy.  That said, I was clear about the causes of the Anarchy and its timeframe.  Unfortunately, it was all rather a depressing mirror of the state I now live in and detest.  Debauched, long-outdated aristocrats desperate to claw their last profit from the poor, outwitted by the first global corporation, imposed upon a culturally rich nation by foreigners who had yet to accumulate much culture of their own.  The standout character was Shah Alam, the last hope of the Mugal Empire, who did his best, suffered much, and ultimately came to nothing much.  Tipu Sultan of Mysore was another strong character but overall the cast seemed to be rather two-dimensional.  Dalrymple only really came good when discussing those on both sides who truly loved India as much as he does.  And the chapters were far too long.

The Detective and the Devil - Lloyd Shepherd

The Detective and the Devil is the fourth in Shepherd's historical crime series featuring Charles Horton of the Thames River Police. It is 1815, the year of Waterloo, and Horton is back on Ratcliffe Highway (scene of his debut case in The English Monster, reviewed below), this time investigating the murder of an East India Company clerk and his family. Horton finds himself drawn into the inner workings of "John Company", in those days still a private company but nonetheless ruling an imperial continent, with its own army and indeed investigators. Horton finds himself increasing ostracised but gets funding to visit the Company's most remote and yet most secretive holding, the island of St Helena. Here he finds the secret which the Elizabethan magus John Dee seemed to refer to two hundred years earlier.

The St Helena scenes are greatly enlivened by the presence of Horton's wife Abigail, former nurse and now formidable autodidact. The flashbacks to the days of Dee are great fun. Overall, though, I was slightly disappointed. It certainly isn't as good as The English Monster. Equally, it isn't a bad book and it wouldn't necessarily put me off the next in the series when it comes.